GC
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" A Call for Discernment--Part 2"
1 Thessalonians 5:21-22
As we come now to the joy of examining the truth of
God's Word, I ask you to open your Bible to Paul's letter to the
Thessalonians, the first letter, chapter 5 and look with me at verses
21 and 22. We began two weeks ago to consider the truth of 1
Thessalonians 5:21 and 22. We'll continue this morning and then again
next Lord's day.
Let me remind you of its truth with a simple and straight forward
reading. "But examine everything carefully, hold fast to that
which is good, abstain from every form of evil." This is a call
to discernment. Examine everything carefully. Beloved, this is
absolutely critical in the Christian life, absolutely critical. The
Christian life is the most precise life of all. It is the most
disciplined pattern of thinking and conduct. It calls for exacting
precision, in comprehension, in deed, precision that conforms to an
absolute standard revealed by God in Scripture. The Christian life is
a life that pursues perfect and total conformity to fixed laws
commanded and empowered by God Himself. There is no life so precise
and demanding as the Christian's life because it not only calls for
precision on the outside in terms of behavior, but precision on the
inside in terms of thought and belief. We do not life a happy-go-lucky
catch as catch can, free-wheeling, do-as-you-will, do whatever feels
good kind of existence. The Word of God sets fixed demands for every
area of our lives. There are no changing doctrines in Christianity.
There are no changing values. There are no changing morals. There are
no changing ethics.
It is amazing to me, and I'm sure to you, to be watching over the
last couple of weeks all of these major denominations meeting...the
Methodists, the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians, to vote in new
theology...to vote in new morals, to vote in new ethical standards, to
change the tradition of what has been believed in the past. And as one
Presbyterian leader I heard interviewed on the radio said, "If we
don't change our morals to accommodate today, we're going to lose all
our members."
In true Christianity of course there are no changing morals, there
are no changing values, there are no changing ethics and there are no
changing doctrines. We are required to live in a disciplined pattern
of thinking and we are required to live in a disciplined pattern of
conduct. And at the very foundation of this disciplined precise kind
of living is the necessity for discernment. We must be able to discern
what is true from what is false. We must be able to discern truth from
half truth as well as truth from error. And when the church loses its
ability to so discern, it therefore forfeits its precise theology, it
forfeits its precise morals, values, ethics and doctrines and
therefore abandons any hope of precise living...precise conduct. And
when you look at Christianity today and you see it filled with
immorality and a low-level commitment to holy living, you must
understand that that imprecise kind of conduct is the result of
imprecise kind of thinking which is the product of an inability to
make discernment work.
Evangelical Christianity is in a severe state of confusion. It is
not sure how it is supposed to act because it is not sure what it's
supposed to think because it is not sure what it believes. Watered
down diluted theology will fail to produce deep reverence, deep
worship, deep repentance, deep humility, deep understanding of God,
His nature, His work, His ministry, His laws, His standards, His
principles. It fails to make people God centered. The church today
caught up in relativistic thinking about doctrine, relativistic
thinking about morality cannot then come to precise living.
Discernment then is crucial.
Paul knew it when he put it in this little list. Starting in verse
16 he is giving us what amounts to a composite summation of the very
cardinal elements of Christian living...rejoice always, pray without
ceasing, in everything give thanks, that deals with your attitude
toward God. Don't quench the Spirit and don't despise revelation,
prophecies which God has given namely the revealed Word, and then
examine everything carefully, those are the components that are at the
heart of Christian living.
Paul then is calling us to something very basic when he says,
"But examine everything carefully." It isn't easy to do
that. There are three reasons why. Reason number one, human weakness.
Our minds are fallen. Our thinking is skewed. We are biased to be
subjective in our own favor. We are debilitated by the indwelling
unredeemed human flesh which has a propensity toward sinfulness. So we
have to fight human weakness. Our mind is depraved. Secondly, we have
Satanic deceit. There is an ongoing onslaught against the church by
the king of darkness, the prince of this world, and he is doing
everything he can to confound and confuse the church. Thirdly, you
have the overpowering inundating influence of the ungodly world around
us. Between the world, the flesh and the devil the process of
spiritual discernment can be quite easily debilitated. And
unfortunately the church has fallen into chaos and confusion under
this onslaught. It is unable today to discern true from false and good
from evil and that is creating imprecise doctrine, imprecise conduct.
In fact, as essential as it is to precise Christian living, being
discerning and discriminating is not popular today even in the church.
If you take stands strongly on issues you are looked down on.
Now that means that a call to discernment is appropriate. In
calling you to discernment and helping expand and elucidate the truth
of these two verses, I want to ask three questions. The last two
questions we'll look at next Sunday, let's go back to question number
one which we discussed in our last study. Why is there such a lack of
discernment? I've already showed you the influences, the weakness of
the flesh, Satanic deception and the influence of the world. But why
is it that the church has been victimized by this? What are the
factors that have led to this lack of discernment? First I'll review
and then I'll some new ones.
Last time I told you the main contributor to this lack of
discernment is a weakening of doctrinal clarity and conviction...a
weakening of doctrinal clarity and conviction. There is today an
assault on doctrine. And any assault on doctrine is ultimately an
assault on God. It is an assault on knowing God truly and knowing His
truth properly...therefore it is an assault on His character, is an
assault on worshiping Him accurately, it is an assault on morality as
well. Churches today are not primarily concerned with doctrine as
such. They are for the most part, and of course there are exceptions
to this, they are mostly concerned with making sure that whatever we
are we are loving, we are unifying, we are non-divisive, we are
relational, we are non-confrontive, we are non-offensive. We want to
be experiential. We want to deal with feelings and emotions. And we
want to make people feel better about their life. We want them to be
fulfilled and satisfied in their life. We want them to be comfortable.
And so our dominant hermeneutic has to do with all of this. And I told
you two weeks ago that the liberals couldn't sell us their theology so
they sold us their hermeneutics. What is hermeneutics? It's from a
Greek word hermeneuo which means to interpret. They couldn't sell us
their theology so they sold us their principles to interpret
Scripture. Their principles are you interpret the Bible in the light
of what is loving, what is unifying, what is non-threatening, what is
non-offensive, what is non-oppositional, what is non-divisive, what
makes people feel good and comfortable and relational, what will bring
them joy and satisfaction and happiness and self- fulfillment. And if
you approach the Bible with all of those as the principles of
interpretation, you're going to come up with a liberal theology. And
so they sold us their hermeneutics instead of their theology which
they knew we wouldn't buy but were going to end up with the same
thing.
In fact, today you hear that relevant Christianity is not
doctrinal. I saw an ad for some church in a flier this week and it
made the statement, "Are you tired of traditional church
services? Are you tired...I can't exactly remember the specific
words...of boring preaching which is irrelevant?" The assumption
is that anything that is traditional, anything that is biblical,
anything that is expositional is somehow not relevant. This is a
fairly pervasive viewpoint. Some months ago a doctoral dissertation
was sent to me by a young man who wrote it to complete his Ph.D work
and he wrote it on comparing my preaching to another well-known
preacher. And his final assessment of me at the end of the section on
me was "MacArthur is accurate but irrelevant. He speaks the truth
but is not relevant." Now I don't know how speaking the truth can
possibly be irrelevant. The other side of it would be to speak lies
but be relevant. I'm not sure what that means. Irrelevance is
associated with preaching the Word of God, with being dogmatic or
speaking truth firmly today. So worship and preaching and conduct
reflect this weak kind of doctrinal commitment.
I can think of so many, many amazing trends in the last five to ten
years. Even radio stations that once were eager to put everything we
preach on the air now write us and tell us if you deal with this issue
or that issue or this issue, we're not going to play it because it
will offend some of our listeners and we want to be loving. We want to
be loving too but you speak the truth in love. Obviously discernment
isn't going to flourish in an atmosphere of fuzzy thinking, obviously.
Look at 2 Timothy for a moment, chapter 4. In 2 Timothy chapter 4
verse 1, Timothy is solemnly charged with a pretty intimidating
charge. He says, does Paul, "I charge you in the presence of God
and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and by His
appearing and His Kingdom." In other words, I want you to feel a
lot of intimidation. I want you to feel a lot of motivation. You are
being watched by God and you are being watched by Christ Jesus who is
going to judge everything and I'm telling you, Timothy, verse 2,
preach the Word. Don't abandon that. You be ready in season and out of
season. In other words, when it's tolerated and not tolerated, popular
and unpopular, accepted and not accepted, you preach the Word. And how
is it going to come out? It's going to reprove, it will rebuke, and it
will exhort and you just do it with great patience and instruction.
That's the mandate. We are to preach the Word. We assume that will
reprove people or convict them. We assume it will rebuke them or make
them face the waywardness of their conduct and their belief. We assume
it will exhort them which is a word that means it will warn them about
judgment and call on them to change their conduct. That's how we have
to preach.
Then in verse 3 he says, "For the time will come when they
will not endure sound doctrine but wanting to have their ears tickled
they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their
own desires, will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn
aside to myths." The primary responsibility of any preacher and
any pastor is to make sure he preaches the Word to his people and
gives them sound doctrine. It isn't always going to be what they want,
it is always going to be what they need. And when they begin to
accumulate to themselves teachers who tickle their ears and make them
feel good, who feed them what they want out of their own desires, they
will turn away from the truth and they'll buy myths. Discernment will
not flourish in an atmosphere like we have today which is
characteristically described, I think, as one of doctrinal confusion
rather than doctrinal conviction.
There's a second cause I noted for you in our last message and it
contributes also to this lack of discernment, it is a failure to be
antithetical. And it follows exactly along the first one. It
fails...this culture fails to want to be antithetical. It doesn't want
to debate. It doesn't want to be polemical, it wants to be
relativistic. We are feeling the in roads years ago of existentialism,
of subjectivism. People just want everything to sort of be in a wide
spectrum of relativity. There are no black and white issues, absolute
issues. But biblical preaching, teaching is absolute. It divides, it
confronts, it separates, it judges, it convicts, it reproves, it
rebukes, it exhorts, that's not acceptable today. That's not desirable
today. It's a day for fun and games. It's a day to sort of dance over
lightly every issue and make sure you don't offend anybody. It's not a
day for debate. It's not a day for polemics. It's not a date to draw
the line and say here's the truth and everything on the other side is
error. And obviously in a relativistic day when there is not the
desire to be antithetical, to put a thesis and an antithesis against
each other and see what is true, in a day like that, a day of
doctrinal relativism, discernment is not going to survive.
Look at Titus 1:9. In Titus 1:9 we have instruction for an elder or
a pastor and he is to hold fast the faithful Word which is in
accordance with the teaching and he is both to exhort in sound
doctrine and refute those who contradict. It is mandated by God that
we be antithetical, that we take issue with error. We must do that or
we do not fulfill our divine calling. But where that is not tolerated,
where you're not allowed to be divisive, you're not allowed to say
you're wrong, that is error, that must be corrected, because the
loving unifying relational hermeneutic dominates, discernment cannot
survive.
Thirdly last time I told you that another contributor to the demise
of discernment in the church is preoccupation with image and influence
as a key to evangelization. The church has bought the idea, the lie
that to reach the world we must become popular with the world. We must
be nice and inoffensive and accepting and accommodating. We need to
make sinful people feel at ease. We need to make the church warm and
embracing. We need to make sinners feel comfortable and happy and
entertained. And if they like us they'll like Jesus. Image and
influence are believed to be more powerful tools of evangelism than
the preaching of God's inspired and powerful Word. And obviously
discernment doesn't survive in an atmosphere of doctrinal confusion.
It doesn't survive in an atmosphere of moral relativism. And it
doesn't survive in an atmosphere of compromise with the world. And yet
that's what the church is in to today. It is accommodating everything
it does to the unregenerate world, trying to win their approval, to
win their approval. Instead of being the light that turns on and
reveals their sin, it wants to be so dark that they can be with us a
long time and they never really have to confront that, they can just
enjoy how nice we are.
Now I want to be loving and want to be gracious and I want to see
sinners repent. But I know the only way that's ever going to happen is
when their sin is confronted and they face the reality of their
eternal doom.
In 1 Corinthians I pointed out to you, and I just remind you of it,
chapter 4, the Apostle Paul had quite a different philosophy of
ministry. He said about his own ministry, "We are hungry and
thirsty...verse 11...poorly clothed, roughly treated, homeless, we are
reviled, we are persecuted, we are slandered and we have
become...verse 13...as the scum of the world and the dregs of all
things even until now." Not popular with the world. The church
has never sought to be popular, never sought to be influential in the
sense that they accept us as we are, never thought that image was the
key issue, that our academic erudition was what won them over, or the
entertaining quality of our services or our non-threatening sort of
loving embracing tolerance, but that's the spirit today. Weak
theology, an unwillingness to be absolute in terms of doctrine and a
preoccupation with our strategy to market the gospel to the world
through image and influence and prestige has killed discernment.
Now let me take you to a fourth one. Failure to properly interpret
Scripture...failure to properly interpret Scripture. You know me well
enough to know that this has got to be close to my heart and indeed it
is. When I was in college I had a great desire to want to learn how to
interpret the Scripture. And I knew that there was a path to get to
that so my freshman year in college I signed up for five units of
Greek first semester and five units of Greek second semester. I took
ten units. My second year I took three each semester. My third year I
took three each semester and my fourth year I took two each semester.
I graduated with all of that Greek background because I believed that
if I was going to interpret primarily my work would be in the New
Testament and I was going to interpret the New Testament, I needed to
know how to interpret it from its original language. I went away to
seminary and I took three more years of Greek and I took some years of
Hebrew and I studied theology and I endeavored to discipline myself in
understanding doctrine and church history and background history and
culture and philosophy and all of the things that I could learn in
order to enrich and enhance my comprehension of the context and
understanding of Scripture. And I have endeavored through the years to
try to apply the things that I learned, to rightly divide the word of
truth. Being able to interpret Scripture is crucial, especially for
one in my position because James 3:1 says, "Stop being so many
teachers, for theirs is a greater condemnation." The one who
rushes into teaching better realize that when you take the profile of
teacher you bring upon yourself potentially a greater condemnation
because now you are responsible not only for what you believe and
affirm, but for what you have caused everybody else to believe and
affirm...who listened and believed you.
There is a very very exacting science in Bible interpretation...a
very exacting science. Some of our men were telling me recently, they
were talking to a famous preacher in America and one of them asked
him, "What are you going to preach on this Sunday?" It was
probably middle of the week and he said, "Oh, I don't know yet,
I'm a Saturday night special guy." You cannot interpret the Word
of God like that. It is not something whimsical. But you have today in
the churches many preachers who do not pursue the discipline in the
science of interpretation of Scripture. And as a result of that what
they do is go lightly across the top of things, preach relationally,
sort of a quasi Christian psychology or tell a lot of stories or
whatever it might be, and as a result they're not ever really
interpreting the Word of God. And then you can add to that the reality
that there is a sort of a new elevation of everyone to the level of an
expert in Scripture. Everybody coming down the line seems to feel they
can interpret the Bible when in fact unless they have sat under good
teaching or unless they are well read and have learned how to
interpret the Scripture from someone who knows, it is highly unlikely
that no matter how spiritually minded they are and how much they love
Christ they will be able to accurately divide the Word of truth.
People who have inadequate training in the Bible but who have advance
training in some other field, somehow feel that they can just move
over and interpret the Scripture. And then many folks just feel that
because they're Christians they can interpret it for themselves with
little or no training and not having sat under careful explanation of
Scripture so that they learn how to interpret by listening to those
who do it. So we've somehow pulled everybody to the same level and
everybody has an equal right to write books about the Bible and
interpret the Scripture no matter who they are or how inadequately
prepared they might be.
And you can add another problem that leads to this lack of proper
interpretation and that is that the Charismatic Movement which is
sweeping the world basically says that you just...you just read the
Bible and somehow Jesus will tell you what it means, somehow it
just...it rises up from within you mystically which eliminates the
need for interpretation at all. By the way, virtually every cult and
false teaching ever spawned was begun on the premise that Jesus gave
them some new revelation. This is a very frightening thing because
it's so pervasive. And you hear people all the time if you listen to
radio or watch the Christian programs on television who come along and
do these kinds of interpretations and talk about how Jesus told them
this and God told them that, there's no need to interpret the Bible
with that because it just comes from within you.
Bill Hayman(?), for example, heads a network of Charismatic
prophetic ministries. He advises people to ignore reason, logic and
the senses when attempting to discern the truth. Ignore reason, logic
and the senses when attempting to discern the truth. He writes, I'm
quoting him, "Our traditions, beliefs and strong opinions are not
true witnesses to prophetic truth. The spirit reaction originates deep
within our being. Many Christians describe the physical location of
its corresponding sensation as the upper abdominal area." Do you
hear what he just said? If you want to know truth it comes by a
reaction in your upper abdominal area. "A negative witness with a
message of no, be careful or something's not right, usually manifests
itself with a nervous jumpy or uneasy feeling." So you read the
Scripture and then you wait for something to happen to your upper
abdominal area.
He goes on, "There is a deep almost unintelligible sensation
that something is wrong. This sense can only be trusted when we are
more in tune with our spirit than with our thoughts." What is
that? Double talk, nonsense. He further says, "If our thinking is
causing these sensations, then it could only be soulish
reaction." So mindless, irrational, senseless nothingness while
you sit there and wait for an upper abdominal jumpy nervous feeling.
And if it happens, then that's not true. You've got to come up with
another interpretation. "On the other hand, when God's Spirit is
bearing witness with our spirit that a prophetic word is right, you
found the truth, then our spirit will react with the fruit of the Holy
Spirit. We have a deep unexplainable peace and joy, a warm loving
feeling, or even a sense of our spirit jumping up and down with
excitement. This sensation lets us know, the Holy Spirit is bearing
witness with our spirit that everything is in order even though we may
not understand it." In other words, ignore your mind, forget your
beliefs, disregard your theology, reject your common sense and don't
ever take Tums, that will mess up the Holy Spirit's process. Don't
fool with your upper abdominal area because then He can't lead you.
I..it begs language to even look for adjectives to describe such
idiocy. Utter nonsense. You're not going to find that in the
Scripture. We don't read the Bible and sit around and wait for some
feeling in the upper abdomen to determine what truth is. Indigestion,
heart problems, that's ludicrous, could give you the same or even
greater feelings.
END OF SIDE ONE
SIDE TWO
And yet how many people follow that kind of advice? Millions. And
move their church membership over to that church and donate their life
savings to that ministry. The price of Charismatic mysticism and
subjectivism is much too high. Everybody is free to do and say and
teach whatever his upper abdomen tells him. And the uniqueness and
centrality and necessity to interpret the Scripture has been
eliminated. So on the one hand you have people who perhaps could
interpret it but they've opted out for Christian psychology and story
telling. On the other hand, you've got people who really don't have
the tools to interpret it but they're making a whack at it. And then
you've got a third group of Charismatics who are sitting around
waiting for some feeling to tell them what's right. Is it any wonder
why we can't discern the truth because we go at the scriptures all
wrong?
The following letter was written to an acquaintance of mine from a
young man in the Charismatic Movement. It illustrates this typical
attitude toward Scripture. This is the letter, quote: "The
greatest experience in love I have ever had was at the foot of the
cross as the blood of Jesus Christ poured out over me. He filled me
with His Spirit. He brought me across the vale in to the city of
Jerusalem, in to the holy of holies, there I beheld myself in Him and
He in me, I received the baptism as by fire and from this His love
dwells in me, from this I have communion daily." Well that whole
paragraph is pretty mystical to me, I don't know what he's talking
about. And I don't think he really wants the baptism of fire, that's
judgment, but we can excuse him that mistake for a moment and follow
the rest of the letter.
"I do not feel the need for the study of the scriptures for I
know Jesus as He has revealed Himself to me within and as He dwells in
me there is the Word, scriptures are a secondary source." Do you
understand why people can't be discerning? Because they don't have a
standard for discernment. Do you understand why people can sit down on
those television talk shows and just continue to advocate bizarre
things and wild things and no one ever says, "Hold it, stop,
that's wrong, not true, not in the Bible, can't be defended?" No
one ever says that because experience is the validator. The Reformers
fought error with the proper interpretation of Scripture. Now in the
twentieth century the church is going to have to fight the same battle
only this time we're not fighting the Roman Catholics, we're fighting
the Protestants who have fallen in to the same kind of patterns of
ineptitude in dealing with Scripture. And the Word must be properly
interpreted and it will yield all necessary truth precisely for holy
living, if rightly understood.
Look at 2 Timothy chapter 2 for a moment and I want to reacquaint
you with familiar ground and enhance your understanding, I trust. In
verse 15 of 2 Timothy 2 Paul says, "Be diligent to present
yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed
handling accurately the word of truth." That's very straight
forward. "Be diligent" has been translated "study to
show yourself approved to God, a workman who doesn't need to be
ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth." The implication
of the verse is if you don't handle the Word accurately you ought to
be ashamed...you ought to be ashamed. And if you don't want to be
ashamed and you want to handle it accurately, you don't wait for some
motion in your upper abdomen, you diligently study for God's approval
as a workman, a skilled craftsman, cutting straight the Scripture.
This gives us, by the way, rich insight in to the precision required
in biblical interpretation.
Remember this now, people do not move in to false doctrine by
design. I mean, they're not all saying "I want to find a false
doctrine. I want to find a lie. I'm looking for a deception
here." No. It isn't by design or by motivation that they err so
terribly. It is by laziness, ineptness, carelessness, foolishness in
handling the Scripture.
Follow down in to verse 17 and meet two people who here would be an
illustration of this. Hymenaeus and Philetus, it says they are men,
verse 18, who have gone astray from the truth. Now stop at that point
for a moment. That little verb "have gone astray" means they
missed what they aimed at. And the idea here is they were aiming at
the truth, they just missed it. People don't come up with error
because they're seeking error. People come up with error because in
the process of seeking truth they don't know how to find it or they
don't make the effort or they don't appropriate the necessary
elements. They missed what they aimed at. They may have had the right
target, truth. They missed it and they missed it and they came up with
a ridiculous thing, they came up with "the resurrection has
already taken place." Now how do you sell that? You're going to
tell people they've already died and been raised? You'd say,
"Well now wait a minute, I know whether I've been dead and alive
again. You can't fool me with that one." Sure I can. They must
have come up with the fact that it was some kind of a spiritual
resurrection, that the only resurrection there's going to be is a
spiritual one and it already was. Maybe they were the original
annihilationists coming up with the idea that when you're dead you go
out of existence, soul sleep or whatever. Maybe they were saying that
Christians have already had all the resurrection they're going to have
and there isn't any future one and that resurrection was a spiritual
one. And you know what? They upset the faith of some, for every
screwball idea there is a following. Right? Especially in Southern
California. Grow a beard, put on a bathrobe, go to the beach, say
you're Moses, you'll have 50 followers in a half hour. There's always
a group to follow you. And it wasn't that they were aiming at error,
it was they were aiming at truth ineptly, carelessly, lazily,
foolishly. And they came up with error.
And now you go back to verse 15 and he says, "Don't be like
Hymenaeus and Philetus, but you study and be diligent to present
yourself approved to God as a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed
because you have handled accurately the Word." You need to have
conscious integrity before God whose judgment is always accurate. The
handler of the Word should never be ashamed because he didn't use all
the resources and all the energy to do quality work and master the
true interpretation. There are plenty of preachers, dear friends, who
are popular with men, but ashamed to God...popular with men but
ashamed to God. And any time that I would ever misrepresent the truth,
I would be ashamed to God. Poor work in the Word is intolerable. It
must be accurately handled, rightly divided.
People say today, "Well, I...boy, if you say this and you say
this guy's wrong and that guy's wrong and that interpretation is
wrong, 1 Chronicles 16:22, touch not the Lord's anointed...touch not
the Lord's anointed...touch not the Lord's anointed." Well if
somebody is teaching error, they're not the Lord's anointed. We have
to be faithful to the Word of God. It isn't the personal attack, it's
the preservation of truth. Whether failing to interpret Scripture
accurately, being preoccupied with worldly image, failing to be
antithetical, whether a lack of clarity and conviction of doctrine,
any and all of these things will literally kill discernment. How can
we be discerning if doctrine isn't an issue? How can we be discerning
if we're not willing to say this is right and this is wrong and get
rid of relativity? How can we be discerning if we're trying to
compromise and make the world comfortable? How can we be discerning if
we don't even know how to rightly interpret Scripture?
Two more in closing, very brief ones...failure to discipline in the
church...failure to discipline in the church. Beloved, here is a
really serious issue and I want to just mention it briefly, but listen
carefully to what I say. One exact point to mention, church
discipline...what is it? Confronting sin in individual lives. If your
brother's in a sin, go to him...go to him, confront him. Try to lift
him up. Try to build him up, strengthen him, try to get him to repent.
Jesus said, "If someone's in a sin, go to him, if they don't
repent, take a couple with you, if they don't repent, tell the whole
church and if he still doesn't repent, put him out." Paul said,
"Don't have a meal with him. Don't treat him like a friend in
terms of accepting everything but love him like a brother and pray him
to repentance."
Paul told the Corinthian church to turn him over to Satan and his
body would be destroyed, his flesh would be destroyed in chastening.
The church must hold up a holy standard, a high standard. There are
times when we have to confront sin. Two weeks ago a member of our
church took me with him to confront a sinning man who had left his
wife and was living with a girl, not his wife. And we were there
waiting when he showed up at a certain place and said, "We're
here to call you back to holiness. And we want to pray for you and
with you." If he does not respond, you'll hear about it because
we have to follow that process.
Now listen very carefully. When you discipline in the church that
means that you deal with sin confrontively, you put a wall up between
the world and the church...no question...you put a wall up between the
world and the church. Because if you confront someone about sin and
they don't stop sinning, you put them out. Maybe they're not even a
Christian. But it keeps the wall very very clear. Here are the people
walking in obedience to the Lord and here are the ones that aren't.
And that wall of separation between the church and the world is
crucial. But as soon as you stop disciplining sin, the wall comes
down, the world mingles with the church and you can't tell the
difference...can't tell the difference. The world feels comfortable.
And you don't know whether you're dealing with believers or
unbelievers. Why do you think the Lord killed Ananias and Sapphira in
front of the whole church? Now today any church marketing, church
growth strategist would say that was a foolish act for God to do
because it gave the church a bad reputation. You know what the
reputation of the church was? Don't join that organization because
people die in there. The word went through the city like wild fire.
Two people came to the offering and didn't give what they told God
they would and they're dead...wow, stay out of that organization.
How's that for marketing? It's like running a restaurant where the
last two people that ate there died. How's that for publicity? You
don't want to join that organization, people die in there. They're
serious about sin in there. They're real serious about sin. You know
if they find you sinning, they come to you and they confront you and
if you don't deal with it they publicly speak about you.
I heard about a church this week, has a two-year rule and one of
their people said that someone coming in to their church living in a
sinful situation...they were talking about a homosexual...they don't
want to say anything for at least two years until the person feels
very comfortable and accepted and then they want to deal with the sin.
You know what that tells me? If a homosexual can sit in a church
comfortable and accepted for two years, that church hasn't said what
it's supposed to be saying. I don't think a homosexual can come to
Grace Community Church for two years period...comfortable or
uncomfortable. He's going to say to himself...I'm getting out of this
place, I don't need to listen to this guy, who needs this? Or he's
going to repent.
You tolerate sin in the church at all and you've got to tolerate
sin overall and now you've destroyed the holiness of the church and
now the church can't be discerning. Where are you going to draw the
line? You've already said you're not going to draw lines. You want
everybody to feel all right. You want to tolerate compromise to the
point where discernment and discrimination aren't tolerated.
Look at 1 Peter 4...1 Peter 4:17, this is as simple as it could be
in terms of an understanding, "It is time for judgment to begin
with the household of God." That's Peter's way of saying...Look,
start to divide, start to separate, start to confront, start to
evaluate, start to make judgments on people's lives in the church, you
can't accommodate sinning Christians. And certainly...certainly if
we're dealing with sin strongly in our church because God tells us to.
We're reflecting God's desire for holiness and he says if it begins
with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the
gospel of God? What Peter is saying is...Look, if God wants us to be
judging sin among ourselves, imagine how He's going to judge sin among
those who reject Him.
We can't lower the standard. We can't accumulate sinning Christians
or sinning non-Christians. We've got to purge and discipline and sift
and purify and if God does that at His own church as a first priority,
then what in the world is He going to do to the unbelievers? So if we
preached judgment and chastening and purity to the church, we have to
preach judgment and chastening and salvation to the lost. We have to
confront their sin. Start that judgment in the church, he says. And
remember, if God wants His church pure and He's going to judge the
church if it isn't, what do you think He's going to do to the
unbelievers?
And then verse 18, amazing statement taken out of Proverbs,
"If it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will
become of the godless man and the sinner?" What does he mean by
that? If we barely get it, if we barely get in...what do you mean by
that? Well, we sin and the Lord chastens us and it's tough enough
being a Christian, feeling the chastening hand of the Lord, if it's
tough for us to make it because we keep stumbling in to sin and God
has to judge us, what is He going to do to the godless? We should be
sending a message to the world. And you know what the message should
be? The message shouldn't be...we're a nice place, you'll like us. The
message should be...this is a holy place where we deal with sin.
That's the message. Not this is a happy place, this is a holy place,
this is a holy place, not this is a place you'll like, this is a place
you won't like if you don't deal with sin, if you don't come to the
Savior, if you're not willing to live a holy life. No, the absence of
church discipline and the absence of a high degree of holiness will
kill discernment.
Last point, one final contributor to the abysmal lack of
discernment in today's church is spiritual immaturity...spiritual
immaturity. I'm convinced that many in the church have shallow
knowledge of God's truth, very shallow, and they follow popular views
and feelings and experiences and they seek miracles and healings and a
solution to the routine trials of life. And they chase personal
comfort and they want personal success and it's a very shallow kind of
Christianity. And basically we could call it "baby
Christianity." And I think it would be safe to say that that
characteristic which is most descriptive of an infant would be the
characteristic I call selfishness...wouldn't you agree? They never say
thanks for anything. And they scream if they don't get what they want
when they want it. They're selfish. If anything characterizes the
immature it is self-centeredness, selfishness. Just look at the church
today. It is utterly preoccupied with itself. It wants its own
problems solved and its own comfort elevated and it's not lost...as
the hymn writer said in "Wonder, love and praise and focusing on
the Lord." The church is selfish and selfishness is an evidence
of immaturity. The church is like a self-centered baby, seeing the
whole world needing to stop while their needs are met and their
desires are fulfilled. There's no discernment in immaturity.
Go back to Ephesians 4, I want to show you a familiar verse that
you already know, but it makes the point...Ephesians 4:14 says this,
"We are no longer to be children, we're no longer to be
children...here's why...children are tossed here and there by waves
and they're carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery
of men and craftiness and deceitful scheming." There you are.
Spiritual immaturity makes victims out of people...makes victims out
of them. They don't know what's right. They don't know what's wrong.
They're yanked all over the place, blown all around. They're deceived
easily. How do you change that? Verse 15, "Speak the truth in
love so we can grow up," verse 15. Speaking the truth in love
we're to grow up. How does the church grow? It grows under the truth,
clear truth spoken in love. That's how it grows up and is built up. It
talks about at the end of verse 16 the growth of the body for the
building up of itself in love. Immaturity just does not discern. Just
like a little baby crawls along the floor, puts anything it finds in
its mouth, no discernment, it doesn't know what's good, what isn't
good. We have such immaturity today and going with it lack of
discernment. And that is a direct result of shallow teaching,
preaching of the strange bizarre mystical kind of stuff that much of
the church is exposed to in the Charismatic end of the sort of
homespun stuff that comes out of people who perhaps are not properly
trained and of the story telling relational kind of preaching that
lacks real deep substance and foundational doctrine which is essential
for us to grow.
One last text, Hebrews 5 and it cements this final point of
immaturity. Hebrews 5, in another context this principle here is
certainly illustrated. The writer of Hebrews says to his readers in
verse 12 of Hebrews 5, "It's time you should be teachers."
In other words, you've been around long enough, you've heard enough
that you should be able to teach. But the problem is, "Instead of
being able to teach, you have need for someone to teach you the
elementary principles of the oracles of God and you have come to need
milk and not solid food, for everyone who partakes only of milk is not
accustomed to the word of righteousness, he's a babe." You're
babies. I can't...you've been around long enough to be teachers but
instead I have to feed you milk, I have to keep giving you elementary
things. You can't take solid food. You're not accustom to the word of
righteousness...the Word, the Word, the Word. You've got all this
experiential stuff and you accumulate a lot of stories and you've had
a lot of emotional feelings, but you don't know the Word.
And then in verse 14, "Solid food is for the mature who
because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and
evil." Discernment and maturity go hand in hand. Discernment and
maturity go hand in hand. Sitting under the Word, understanding the
word of righteousness, taking in solid food, engaging in spiritual
practice, conduct, trains your senses to discern good and evil.
So whether you're talking about the lack of doctrinal conviction,
whether you're talking about image and influence as the key to
evangelization, the unwillingness to be absolute and this desire to be
relative, whether you're talking about inadequate interpretation of
Scripture, or whether you're talking about the absence of church
discipline, or immaturity...and they're all overlapping and
intertwined, these things are the contributors to the loss of
discernment. Soft on doctrine, we're not real sure what we believe,
don't want to be black and white, don't want to make issues, want to
be sure we compromise enough of the world to make them feel
comfortable so we can win them over, haphazardly interpreting
Scripture, spiritually immature, we have no hope of discerning. And
yet the Scripture says, Proverbs 14:15, "Knowledge comes easily
to the discerning." Proverbs 14:33, "Wisdom reposes in the
heart of the discerning." Proverbs 16:21, "The wise in heart
are called discerning." Proverbs 17:24, "A discerning man
keeps wisdom in view but a fool's eyes wander to the ends of the
earth." All of those out of the NIV. The undiscerning just wander
all over everywhere. But the discerning is focused.
Now some of you are very discerning. You really are. About the food
you eat, you get the box and you look at it and you read all that
little stuff about how many grams of fat and how much of the daily
required amount of whatever its got, and you're very careful that you
want to avoid any kind of pesticides and you want to eat healthier,
very discerning about that. Some of you are very discerning about what
investment you're going to make and you read all that stuff in fine
print in the newspaper, on the stock market and in the investments and
all of that. You're good at discerning that. Some of you are very
careful when you're going to have surgery, you want to find a doctor
who knows the way in and the way out. And you're very very careful,
you pick somebody who's been analyzed carefully and has
recommendations and maybe you get another opinion. And some of you are
highly analytical politically and you can assess the issues of the day
and you can quote editorials from all kinds of national magazines and
you've got it all figured out in terms of the government and foreign
policy. Some of you are absolutely unequalled as armchair
quarterbacks. You can assess any offense, any defense, you can discern
the whole problem of winning and losing. Some of you know the batting
average of everybody and why they hit the way they do and how they do
it. Some of you analyze things to the inth degree but never get around
to using your analytical faculties in the Spirit and in the Word to
discern what is good and evil. How sad. And because the church is not
discerning, it is being poisoned with a deadly chemical that looks
like living water.
Now, so much for question number one. How do you become a
discerning person? That's for next time. Let's pray.
Father, we pray that through this message this morning we might be
able better to diagnose the issues around us and begin to set our
course to correct that. We don't want to be ashamed. We want to be
like the noble Bereans who search the scriptures daily to see if these
things were so. We want to be as discerning as they were. And we know
that You've given us Your Word and You've given us Your Spirit and
You've given us teachers who teach us, preachers who preach to us,
skilled writers who write to us so that we can learn how to be
discerning. And, Lord, help us to be willing to come to convictions
that are true and strong, to fight for those things, not to become a
part of the drift. Help us to be willing to discipline, to pursue
holiness. Lord, may we grow to spiritual maturity with our senses
trained to discern good and evil so that we might honor You. You've
given us all we need to be discerning. You've given us the truth, the
Word, the standard. You've given us the Spirit to teach us. And You've
given us all our teachers to enrich us. And may we use all that is
given us to be able to properly discern what is most important in
life, and that is Your truth. And we'll thank You, Lord, for what that
will accomplish in our lives and for Your glory in Christ's name.
Amen.