Click here to view the entire service
1 Thessalonians 5:19, Do not quench the Spirit; 20 do not despise prophetic utterances. 21 But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; 22 abstain from every form of evil.
In a world full of deception, lies, and increasing evil and fraud, not to mention the great deceiver, the devil, God knows we need discernment. We need to know the right way. Here is a level and a tape measure. You can’t build a house without tools like this and you need to use them accurately. I put in a tub once and didn’t get it absolutely level. Close, but a bit tilted so the water didn’t drain exactly to the opening.
You need discernment in this world. People choose their mechanics and doctors and dentists very carefully, but when it comes to the most important issues in all of life, like the truth about heaven and hell and salvation, they forget about discernment. They’ll swallow stuff hook, line, and sinker. As long as the speaker is sincere and a good talker and makes them feel good, that’s all that matters to them. Sometimes discernment is seen as being too negative, critical or judgmental. But Paul tells us in verses 19-22 that discernment is important and necessary.
DEVELOPING DISCERNMENT
Paul calls us to develop discernment, to know good from evil. In his book, A Call to Discernment, Jay Adams described this passage “as apt a description of the discernment process as can be found.” I’m going to tie our thoughts from this section to three simple words: yearn, learn, and discern.
#1 Yearn
In verse 19 Paul says don’t quench the Spirit. Keep your heart hot for God. Quenching is used of extinguishing either light or fire or both. Jeremiah wrote, “’Is not My word like fire?’ declares the LORD, ‘and like a hammer which shatters a rock?’” (Jeremiah 23:29). The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to burn the sin out of our lives and turn on the light in our darkness to show us the way. What is the Spirit’s burning desire in your life? Is it to heal you? Slay you in the Spirit? Speak in tongues? Give you chills up and down your spine? Jesus told us the Spirit’s burning desire is to glorify Christ through your life.
John 16:14, He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.
The Bible tells us not to resist, quench, or grieve the Spirit. In Acts 7:51 Stephen charged the unbelieving Jews with resisting or fighting against the Spirit. Ephesians 4:30 says don’t grieve the Spirit by saying or doing things He forbids. Here In verse 19 it says don’t quench Him. Quenching is refusing to do what He wants to do in your life. He wants to blaze in and through your life for Christ’s glory. In Revelation 3:15-16 Jesus said, “I’d rather you be hot or cold, but not lukewarm.” We need to be on fire for Christ. The Spirit gave us the Scriptures and He wants you to be excited about learning and growing. Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:6 to “kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you, which is the work of the Spirit.” Get the fire blazing in your zeal for God.
How do you keep your heart hot for God? Fellowship with God’s people, listen to good sermons, read good books, meditate and marinate your heart in the Word of God. Don’t quench the Spirit. The Spirit doesn’t give us new revelation like some think He does. Rather, the Spirit takes what He’s already revealed in the Bible and sets it on fire in your heart as you prayerfully read and study it. Don’t quench it. Keep it burning. When I want to get a fire going in our chiminea, I squirt lighter fluid on it. Yearn to keep your heart hot, ablaze for God.
#2 Learn
In verse 20 Paul says, “Don’t despise prophetic utterances.” In the first century during the apostolic age, prophetic messages were direct messages from God through prophets in the church. We have a completed canon (measuring rod) in the Bible. New revelation from God ceased by the end of the first century. We believe the signs and wonders of the apostolic age along with direct revelation ceased after the apostles all died. That’s why we are cessationists (see 2 Cor. 12:12). Those supernatural gifts and ministries have ceased. We have all we need right here in these sixty-six books. Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1, “Preach the Word.” That’s what we do, preach the Word, verse by verse, book by book.
Don’t despise prophetic utterances. Don’t reject or despise the preaching of the Word. Keep a keen ear to God’s Word being taught or preached or read. Don’t stick your nose in the air, “I don’t need to listen to the Bible.” When they brought God’s Word through Jeremiah to King Jehoiakim in Jeremiah 36:23, he despised God’s Word, cut it into pieces, and threw it into the fire. Some people think they know it all; they don’t need to listen anymore. But God says be a continuously aggressive listener and learner. There’s always more to learn. You can’t discern truth from error or good from evil or right from wrong unless you learn what the Bible says. The Hebrews were failing to listen carefully to God’s Word.
Hebrews 5:11-14, Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
Remember Martha and Mary? Martha was in that kitchen rattling those pots and pans and, of course, there’s a time to do that. But when Jesus is in your living room teaching, you better take Mary’s position sitting at His feet soaking up the Word of God (Luke 10:39).
Wrong attitudes toward God’s Word include apathy: “I don’t care what the Bible says.” Other’s fall asleep when the preaching starts. I can understand that. I worked Saturday nights in a hotel during seminary and staying awake in the sermon was a real challenge. George Whitefield spied a man sleeping in the back of the little chapel on a dreary afternoon while he was preaching. He stopped, slammed his fist on the pulpit, and woke the poor fellow up with a start. “If I was speaking in my name I don’t care if you sleep. But I am speaking in the name of the Lord and I will be heard!” He got that sleepy fellow’s attention. For others it’s all ritual and routine, they’ve heard it all before. These are all wrong attitudes toward God’s Word.
Jeremiah and Job give us the right attitude to learning discernment from God’s Word.
Jeremiah 15:16, Your words were found and I ate them, And Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart; For I have been called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.
Job 23:12,15, I have not departed from the command of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.
Don’t despise the preaching and teaching of God’s Word. Love and pray for the ministry of God’s Word first in your own heart, and then for everyone. Pray for a yearning, learning heart for God. It’s the only way to develop discernment.
#3 Discern
Verse 21 tells us to examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil. Measure everything by the Bible. This is your “canon,” your measuring rod. Put everything to the test of God’s Word. There is no greater need in the church than a discerning spirit, and that can only be developed as people yearn for and learn God’s Word. We need cultural and theological biblical discernment. Our godless, secular culture is throwing all kinds of craziness at us. Romans 1:30 says the godless are “inventors of evil.” We never heard of non-binary or gender dysphoria or transgenderism or unconscious bias until 2020. We must use our discerning plumb line and spiritual level and tape measure to discern if what we are hearing squares with the Bible.
Discernment is the ability to think biblically about stuff you hear. The Hebrew word means to separate and see through an issue. Proverbs was written to give discernment: “to know wisdom and instruction, to discern the sayings of understanding” (Prov. 1:2). You must run everything you hear through the grid of God’s Word. Job spoke of discernment in chapter 12.
Job 12:11, Does not the ear test words, As the palate tastes its food?
And the Levites were responsible to teach discernment.
Ezekiel 44:23, Moreover, they shall teach My people the difference between the holy and the profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.
Paul says, “examine everything carefully.” The word “examine” means you put it to the test to see if it is genuine. This is how you learn to discern. Paul refers to the Bereans in Acts 17:11 as people who tested what they heard. They received the word with great eagerness. They examined the Scriptures daily to see whether the things Paul was preaching were so. Luke called them “more noble-minded.”
THE STANDARD FOR TRUTH
So how do we know what we are hearing and reading is truth? What is the speaker really saying? Is this author giving me truth or telling me the current trend? Is this book telling me what I need to hear or what I want to hear? Am I hearing about the harder issues of God’s Word as well as the more comforting? We need to hear about God’s love, care, and guidance, but we also need to hear about God’s holiness, justice, and wrath. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said you can tell a false teacher not by what they say, but by what they don’t say. But what is the standard by which we measure truth and gain discernment?
Tradition isn’t the standard. Your daddy’s church isn’t the standard. “If it’s good enough for Papaw, it’s good enough for us.” Others may think, “We can’t understand these things, so we’ll just trust what the priest or the church says.” Luther would have never been God’s tool for the Reformation if he’d have taken that stance. What did he say? “My conscience is captive to the Word of God.”
Everything must be brought under the plumb line of God’s Word. And as you read, use good principles of interpretation, or hermeneutics. Take the words literally, grammatically, and historically, trying to understand the author’s intention. Peter himself said in 2 Peter 3:16 that some of Paul’s writings are harder to understand. When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense, or you’ll have nonsense. Peter also said some people (the untaught and unstable) put the Scriptures on the rack and try to make it say what they want. I call that slingshot hermeneutics. People use the Bible to defend all kinds of perversions. But no matter how you stretch the Bible, it will never affirm more than two genders or same sex marriage. Some bend the Scriptures to make it fit with the various issues of the woke movement like critical race theory or social justice issues of all kinds.
Human reason or feelings aren’t the standard. How many people have said, “I just can’t believe God would do this or be that.” This is Kirk Cameron’s error when he says he just can’t believe a good God would make people suffer forever in hell. He purports to believe in annihilationism, meaning lost souls will suffer for a certain amount of time and then no longer exist (annihilated). What I can believe or what makes rational sense to me or what fits into my little peabrain is totally irrelevant. It’s hard to believe there are little photons zooming past us, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I can’t believe there are kazillions of waves moving through this room right now. I can’t believe everything is moving, all those little atoms and protons and electrons and neutrons spinning and making up solid materials.
What I think or believe is irrelevant. What God says is the issue. No matter if secular scientists try to convince us the universe is 13.8 billion years old and that we evolved from apes. That’s not what God says, so I don’t believe it. If you haven’t heard Justin Peter’s interview with astrophysicist Jason Lyle on “A Young Universe,” you should hear it. As Calvin said, this universe is one grand theater displaying sparks of God’s glory everywhere you look. Our standard isn’t tradition, or reason, or feelings. Truth is objective, outside of your thinking and feelings. God told the Israelites to put tassels on their garments to remind them of God’s truth and not to follow their feelings or their reason.
Numbers 15:38-39, “Speak to the sons of Israel, and tell them that they shall make for themselves tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and that they shall put on the tassel of each corner a cord of blue. [39] It shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, so as to do them and not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you played the harlot….
The Bible is our one and only standard. Back to verses 21-22, there are two responses we should have when examining everything. The first response is in vs. 21, …hold fast to that which is good. Grab on to that which is good by the Bible’s standard of truth and hold it tightly. Keep clinging to what is genuine, what lines up with truth given in Scriptures. Keep it in your possession. Don’t let it go. If it’s good, genuine, and the real thing, hold fast to it! Cling to it. Love it. Make it part of your life.
The second response we should have is in vs. 22, …abstain from every form of evil. Reject evil and every form of it. Abstain from anything that looks suspect, anything that is evil or wicked in any form. The same word for evil is used in the Lord’s prayer, “Deliver us from evil.” Paul means we must stay away from every sort of evil, and particularly false teaching. The Lutheran commentator Lenski said, “The worse forms of wickedness consist of perversions of the truth, of spiritual lies.” Test everything by the Bible.
THREE TOOLS FOR YOUR DISCERNMENT TOOLBOX
I want to conclude with three important truths that will help you discern everything you hear biblically. Apply these three truths and you won’t go wrong. If what you hear and read disagree with these truths, it is not biblical. Here are the truths: the Sovereignty of God, the Sufficiency of Scriptures, and the Solas of the Reformation. Let’s take a look at them.
The Sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God means God rules, is supreme, is in control of all things. God has declared the end from the beginning and by the invisible hand of His providence He’ll get us there. He rules the universe and has decreed all things that come to pass, yet without removing the full responsibility of every human being. God sovereignly uses men’s choices to fulfill His decree. The crucifixion of Christ is a case in point (Acts 4:27-28). God is sovereign in creation, in history, in prophecy, and in salvation. Spurgeon rightly said, “There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation – kingship of God over all the works of His own hands.” He added, “There is no doctrine more hated by worldlings…. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on His throne.” But God’s truth tells us in Psalm 103:19, “The LORD has established His throne in the heavens, And His sovereignty rules over all.”
The Sufficiency of Scripture. The sufficiency of Scripture is one reason this church exists. Do we have everything we need for life and godliness right here in the Bible? Yes! Second Peter 1:3-4 says, “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness.” God’s divine power and His precious and magnificent promises in the Bible are all we need. Second Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, convicting, correcting, and training us.” God didn’t have to wait for the 20th century and the army of secular psychologists and therapists and counselors to provide what His people needed to handle life for His glory. His Word has always given His people all that is needed for life and godliness. In John 8:31-32 Jesus said, “If you continue in My Word, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free! “
The Solas of the Reformation. James Montgomery Boice wrote a great little book, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace. He calls these five towering truths “the doctrines that shook the world.” These lay at the center of the teaching of the Reformation, refuting the Roman Catholic church’s false teachings as well as the heresies coming out of the academic institutes of the day. What are these Solas? You’ve probably seen them on the banner in our entrance. These truths give discernment.
Sola Scriptura – Do they believe in the Scriptures alone as their one and only authority and sufficient for life and godliness? As much as we love good books, take every other book away and leave us the Bible and we’ve got what we need.
Sola Fide – Do they believe in salvation by faith alone or do they add something like the Judaizers in Galatians added circumcision? We merit nothing. Baptism is out, good deeds are out, hoping our good outweighs our bad is out. Sacraments and churches cannot save us. Romans 3:24 clearly teaches that God justifies us as a free gift through faith alone, apart from works of any sort. Luther said justification by faith alone is the chief article on which the church stands or falls. Calvin called it the hinge on which salvation turns. Ephesians 2:8 says, “By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” Do you believe this?
Sola Gratia – Do they believe in salvation by grace alone? That means God is the one who saves; we don’t save ourselves or even help Him save us. There is nothing in us that naturally wants to believe in Christ. God the Father chose all that would be saved in eternity past, Christ came and paid for all the sins of all those people God chose, and then the Spirit of God works through the preaching and teaching of the gospel to call to faith all those God chose and the Son redeemed. Do you believe this?
Solus Christus – Do they believe in salvation through Christ alone? No priest, no church, no merits of the saints, no just saying a prayer, no religious organization, but salvation is through Christ alone. Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other for there is no other name under heaven given among men, by which we must be saved.” Every other way will lead to eternal punishment in the lake of fire, so we better get this one right. We are saved by Jesus Christ and Him crucified, period. In John 14:6 Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
Soli Deo Gloria – Do they believe that God alone must receive all the glory? This underlies it all. God is the most glorious being in the universe and deserves all the glory. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Romans 11:33, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be the glory forever. Amen.”
We need to develop discernment. Yearn after God, learn all you can from His Word, and measure everything you hear by the Bible. That’s discernment. May God help us not to be children tossed here and there, but speaking the truth in love, to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.