A Call for Discernment
by John MacArthur - http://www.biblebb.com/files/mac/52-34.htm
1 Thessalonians 5:21 and 22. "But examine everything carefully, hold fast to that which is good, abstain from every form of evil." This is a call to discernment.
Paul said it when he wrote to Timothy. He said this is how it is going to be, expect it, in the later times some will fall away from the faith because they have paid attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons spoken by hypocritical liars. There will be deception. There will be hypocrisy. Peter says the same thing. False prophets, false teachers will introduce secretly destructive heresies. People will follow their sensuality and their greed they will exploit you. They are greedy, they are sensual, they exploit through deception.
Now our only defense is to be sound and strong in the knowledge of the truth. Our only defense is to be discerning and discriminating. The problem is we live in a time when the climate in the church is intolerant of that, when to be discriminating and discerning is not popular. The climate in the church today is actually intolerant toward discernment. It wants everyone to be loving. It wants to elevate love and unity and non-divisive attitudes, don't say anything against a brother, don't say anything that is divisive, everyone is entitled to what he wants to believe, let's be loving, let's be united.
If you endeavor to name names or to draw lines or to say this is true and this is false, and you are discriminating and discerning, some will even attack you. And usually what they attack with is a passage of Scripture that says, "Touch not My anointed ones and do My prophets no harm." Have you heard that? First Chronicles 16 and Psalm 105, both those chapters include a verse to that effect. Touch not My anointed ones and do My prophets no harm. You need to know that a proper understanding of that does not yield the way it is being used today. Touch means physical injury in the Hebrew, doing bodily damage. Anointed has to do with kings. What He is saying to them is don't kill the king, don't do bodily harm to the king. The second part of the verse "do My prophets no harm," the word harm means physical harm again, physical injury. My prophets are those who speak My Word, a true prophet who was right when he made a prediction 100 percent of the time. Don't physically harm a true prophet and don't physically harm a king. That is a far cry from evaluating the theology of a heretic who is not a true prophet, nor a king. Softness on false teachers has poisoned the spring of the church.
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Listen, if we are to rightly dispense the word of truth, then we have to be very diligent in the study of the Word of God. There is no short cut for that...no short cut. It is that which makes the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works...Paul says later.
So if you are to be discerning, it requires desire, prayer, example, maturity, the Holy Spirit, diligent study, knowledge of the Word. And what will happen? That kind of approach, if we set our path to follow in those steps, it's going to strengthen the doctrinal conviction of the church, it's going to make us antithetical, absolute not relative, it's going to call us to church discipline, it's going to keep us from foolish compromises with the world, it's going to make us good interpreters of Scripture, it's going to mature us, it's going to honor God. And then we'll be a discerning church.
Let me close with Philippians 1, very important text, turn to it, Philippians 1, verse 9, "And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more..." stop right there. We're not against love. We don't want to be unloving. I don't want to be unloving. I want your love to abound more and more. I want more love and more love and more love toward others. And he's talking about love toward others, other people. He says I want your love to abound. I don't want you to be thought of as unloving. "But it must abound more and more in real knowledge and all discernment." You see that? You can't have love as a hermeneutic. You can't have love as the principle of interpretation. You want to have a greater and greater and greater love but that love is contained in real knowledge, or knowledge of reality and discernment. Then you will approve what is excellent...verse 10, "Then you will be filled with the fruit of righteousness,"...verse 11.
Now we want to be loving but a love that abounds in real knowledge and all discernment, approving what is excellent, being filled with the fruit of righteousness and both of those verses, 10 and 11, he says...and that will show up in the future in your glory. That's God's call to discernment. Let's bow together in prayer.
Lord, we have been blessed in these days to have considered this important subject and we ask that You would give us understanding even of this, to know why there is such a lack of discernment, to understand what discernment is and now to know and pursue being a discerning person. Father, help us to guard the truth, guard the treasure, pass it on pure and unadulterated to our children and another generation. Help us, Lord, not to be victimized by the Trojan horses that have come in to the church as gifts and have turned out to release enemy armies to tear us to shreds. Help us to examine everything in the light of the Scripture, use it as the plumb line, as Amos said, by which we measure truth. Help us to be unashamed some day to stand beside You and say I preached it just the way You intended it as best I could, I was faithful to discern. Grant us that ability that we may protect the holiness and the righteousness, the excellence of Your name and Your church for Jesus' sake. Amen.
