Spiritual Discernment

Well, Happy Sabbath, everyone! It's okay to say Happy Sabbath.

I got up this morning and I looked at my wife and I said, boy, am I nervous!

I'm going to go say hello to all these new folks.

I do bring greetings from about 220 brethren in San Antonio and Austin and Waco, Texas, and people we've been close to for many years. But we're very excited about being here. We really are. You get close to people. I don't know how many times in the last six months my wife and I have looked at each other and said, how are we going to leave all these people? And now that we're here, I told her, you know, a year from now, we'll be saying, how can we ever leave these people? It's just the way it goes. As you get close to everybody, you become part of the family. And so we're looking forward to it. Mr. Keller said that he wouldn't be introduced as the pastor here anymore. We could call him pastor as long as he wants. In fact, I'll call him pastor. He'll be my pastor. So someone actually asked me, one of the ministers asked me, how are you going to go up there and take over from a legend? And I answered, I'm not going to be telling jokes.

Our move has been a very interesting experience. We thought we had everything set up to move. We're coming here, and the bank messed up on paperwork. And it started a whole chain of reaction that we've been living out of our car for two and a half weeks. Because one problem leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. So hopefully we'll be settling in. This Monday we'll buy the house. And we haven't actually... it's not final on the house yet.

And then we can move in on Thursday. I guess we're not sure we have stuff left. In some place, we're not sure where it is. But there's... In fact, I was going to call the home office and said, because they said, look, if you have to store yourself or your stuff for a little while, we'll pay for it. I was going to call them and say, it's not worth the money you're spending to store it. Just sell it and we'll buy all new stuff. But hopefully we'll get in by this Thursday. We are living in Murfreesboro. We wanted to find a place to try to be central to both congregations.

We looked right in the center and we went on to this... a couple of the sites, realtor sites. We typed in that area. We were going to see what came up. There was only one place that came up in our price range. I'm not sure... It was sit in the woods and it was on stilts. We decided we weren't going to live there. We looked around and, of course, there's the jokes about Texas, how everything's bigger in Texas and the distances and everything.

But this is true. We sort of made a circle around the Nashville-Murfreesboro area and we said we would like to live where we could be at least 80% of the people, we could be an hour or less to their house. And we realized if you take Nashville, Franklin, Murfreesboro, that area, it's about the size of San Antonio. San Antonio is 1.3 million people. So we said, well, it's just like driving across San Antonio. So the distances, we want to be able to be close to everybody.

We want to be close to the hospitals. Well, we can be to the hospital in downtown Nashville in 30 minutes, 35 minutes. So we think we, even though we had to live on sort of one end of the circuit, we think we could get around to see everybody and be there when people need us.

We will try to spend time to get around to know everybody, try to visit everybody. I say that because usually when the pastor calls, I've literally gone to somebody's house just to meet them. And I walk in and they're all nervous, like, what did we do wrong? We're going to try to ride and just get to know everybody, come by your house or have you buy our house. But it will take some time and put up with this place as far as names. We're trying to memorize everybody's names.

And right now, I've already got people's names and faces all messed up. But it'll probably take close to a year to get around and see everybody. Of course, we will be doing all soviet on today. And that's a very labor-intensive job. I was telling somebody here before services, they said, well, we've seen you on television. And I said, well, that's all smoke and mirrors. You have to forgive me, too. I have allergies. Actually, it's not allergies. I almost worked myself to death and I have some immune problems. So I get allergic to anything.

So I can be fine for two or three days and then it'll look like I'm crying. So please bear with me. But I'm going to tell you today, it's very labor-intensive, and it's all staged. And there's reasons for that. People have asked me why. On television today, the average person will only watch if you change something every five to ten seconds. Which means you have to change your voice, you have to move, you have to show a picture, you have to do something.

And the only way we could figure to do that was do what we do or put us in front of a crowd and let us walk around. There's a reason those guys do that on television. They're televangelists. You think, why do they stand in front of a crowd and walk around? There's actually a psychology behind that. And that's why they build crowds. They build TV audiences doing that. So it was decided to have us do what we're doing now. That's why you see lots of pictures and reenactments and pieces of video. And times are sort of staged. Well, we are. There's reasons for that. It's just uncomfortable to do that, especially when people come out and put makeup all over you.

And they have to stop because it gets hot into the lights. You know, your makeup starts to run. And it's like your manhood's attacked because you're wearing makeup to begin with. So you try to talk in a real low voice and they come in and do stuff on you. So it's labor intensive. I will be involved in that. So, you know, every week we're involved in script development. But I only have to go to the home office an average of once a month. And it's never been on a weekend. So I could be back in the area for the weekend. So I shouldn't be gone for long periods of time.

You know, so even when I'm involved in the Beelow today, I'll be here. So you can call me. You can, you know, get a hold of us and we'll be around. So, and we hope to be here. You know, even when I'm not speaking, at least hear much of the time.

To be here with everybody and participate in our congregation, you know, our family. We're here with everybody. So I will have a speaking schedule out. Hopefully this week. I know I'm looking at all the men who lead songs and speak. And speaking schedules, of course, are illusions for pastors because once you send them out, they all get changed. But I will try to get something out this week so at least you can know sort of what's going to be happening over the next month or so.

You know, someone said, well, you can tell us a lot about yourself. There's really not, you know. I was blessed by God with a wonderful wife. And when I say that, when I was at Master College and I went home and I took my wife home, my wife to be, and introduced her to my mother, my mother said, oh, thank God.

I've been watching the girls you've been dating and I've been praying. God, that man doesn't know what he's doing. Please get him a wife. And God has answered my prayer. So I married her. We've had three children and we have... I worked in radio for six years, small market radio, and then came into the ministry. That's an interesting story in itself because I never thought I'd be pastoring churches. And we've been all over the place since, although I just realized today, out of the last 35 years, we've spent 30 years in Texas. But, you know, a number of years ago, this is probably 20 years ago, I was asked to make a list of places I would like to go to as pastor.

Now, that was sent in, you know, to the powers that be and then was disappeared. No one ever paid any attention to it. No one even remembers it. But I can remember filling out the form. And on the form was Nashville.

That was a long, long time ago. So I told Kim, I said, hey, we're going where we were supposed to go. That's the way we were supposed to go. We marked this down decades ago, and here we are. So it is a beautiful area. And we like it. My wife has relatives that live in Chattanooga. Her parents live in Chattanooga. Some of you probably know the dance family, and that Alan Dance is married to Kim's sister. So we have relatives there. And this is a little bit, even though I've lived all over the country, this is a little bit like where I grew up. I grew up five miles north of the Mason-Dixon line in Pennsylvania. And, you know, the Blue Ridge goes up and dies in Pennsylvania. We lived at the foot of a 3,000-foot mountain that was the last of the Blue Ridge. And that's where I grew up, a little town there. And this looks a lot like that area of the country. And that is why, by the way, you'll hear me say a word every once in a while, and you'll look at each other and want to know what language I'm speaking. It's Pennsylvania Appalachian. And sometimes we say words. I've got most of that out, but every once in a while I'll say a word, and nobody else in the country knows what I'm saying. It's just, and television. They'll all look at me and say, Gary, you know, you always hear this voice, because out of the... you're standing here in front of a TV camera, and there's nobody else in the room but the TV guys. So you hear these voices of the people in the sound room. You know, uh, Gary, what was that word?

Nobody here knows what that means. Would you please... you'll have to redo that segment today. So if you hear me say a word once in a while, just come and ask me what it means. And it's a word that we made up, and it's... Probably many of you have a $20 bill in your pocket. I have one. I had to check and make sure I do. Mainly they're ones. I have a 20. Okay. Most of you probably have a 20. It's a very common bill, because it's high enough, you know, to buy things with, but some places won't even accept bills bigger than this because of counterfeiters. The 20 is one of the most counterfeited bills, because it's big enough that to print them, you know, you could use them, and it's hard, but you know, by the time people figure out his counterfeit, you could spend a lot of them. How many of you here... There was one person at Murfreesboro. How many of you here know how to determine the difference between a counterfeit $20 bill and a real $20 bill? One, two, three. Three. That's it. The rest of us have handled counterfeits and don't even know it, because there's a lot of them out there. If I said, how would you know it was a counterfeit? That was obvious, you know. If Mr. Clinton is on the front, it's not. If Mr. Reagan is on the front, that's not it. But outside of something so obvious, how would you know it's a counterfeit? The only way... And this is... I went online a while back, just months and months ago, to figure out how do they train agents to know, or how do they go to banks and teach people working a bank how to determine if it's a counterfeit? First of all, you have to teach them what a real one looks like. You have to know what the real one is first. Once you know what the real one is, you can compare it. At camp many years ago, I used to take a Confederate... I think it was a five-dollar bill. I had a Confederate five-dollar bill. I still have it someplace. And then I had a fake. Now, I took it and I would tell people, I bought both of these over the years ago, thinking they were both real. One is real, and one is a counterfeit. I didn't know it was a counterfeit until I found out what the real one was. So I would have the kids figure out which one they thought was real and which was counterfeit. And usually, we'd end up with the group in half, half saying one, half the other. And then they would tell me all the reasons why, oh, I think that's real. Oh, I think that's a counterfeit. And the problem was, even the ones who were right were guessing, because nobody knew what a Confederate five-dollar bill was supposed to look like. I had done.

The ability to discern. That's what the word discern means. The word discern literally means to look at two things and tell what is different. The ability to discern. Now, we use discern in a lot of different ways in English language. One of the problems with the English language is that each word has so many different uses. You know, I was driving in fog and I couldn't discern what was in front of me. I was looking at the blueprints and I couldn't discern what this meant. We use it a lot in different ways. Today, I'm going to talk about spiritual discernment. Spiritual discernment. Now, let me give you a simple definition so you can know where we're going to go.

Spiritual discernment is the ability to clearly see the difference. Spiritual discernment is the ability to clearly see the difference between truth and error, good and bad, wisdom and foolishness.

Three things. Spiritual discernment is the ability to clearly see the difference between truth and error, good and bad, wisdom and foolishness.

Let's go to Philippians 1. It's a very interesting little passage here in the letter that Paul wrote to Philippi.

There's a very personal remark he makes at the beginning of this verse. Remember, these were letters and Paul knew these people. And there was a personal connection between him and these people.

Verse 9 of Philippians. Philippians 1, verse 9. And this I pray that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment. Now, I want you to notice that Paul makes a differential between knowledge and discernment.

One of the things, many of us have been around a long time. So when I talk sometimes, I'm talking, some of the things I'll bring out are really for people who've been around for a long time. And if we're not careful, we can think that knowledge and discernment are the same thing. And they're gone. Knowledge is really, really important. In fact, you can discern without knowledge. But knowledge without discernment, and there's certain things ministers will say over and over again, certain little catch phrases, and tell everybody, oh, I know who's going to say next. Okay, well, here's one of mine.

Knowledge without discernment is like owning a dictionary. I have definitions. But what good is a dictionary if those definitions don't turn into something?

He says he wants us to grow in knowledge. He's talking to people, Philippi, he's talking to us too. In knowledge, but also discernment, the ability to discern, spiritually discern. Now let's look at how he finishes the sentence. That you may approve the things that are excellent. That's an interesting way to say this. The things that are the best from God. The excellence here has to do with God.

That we may be able to approve, to see, to discern, to accept what God wants in your life.

What God wants in your life right now, every day. That you may approve the things that are excellent. That you may be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ. Sincere is a whole subject in itself, in the way that word is used in the New Testament. And what the Greek actually means. That we can be sincere and without offense, without sin.

That we're growing out of sin, and our sin is being covered, until Christ returns. But the sentence isn't finished. Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, the glory and praise of God. Verse 9, 10, and 11. We can spend the next 45 minutes and never leave these three verses to really understand what they say. But Paul says he wants God's people to grow in knowledge and discernment. Over the years sometimes we've become very, very good at the accumulation of knowledge. But we're going to talk about discernment today. Discernment. Specifically, the ability to tell the difference between truth and error, good and bad, wisdom and foolishness. There is no magic formula to this in terms of, okay, do this and all of us will have perfect spiritual discernment. Because I don't have perfect spiritual discernment. I can't give you the formula because I don't have it. I can only tell you how we can grow in it. And so all I can do is tell you how we can grow in it because that's all I'm doing with it. We're learning to grow with this because discernment isn't something you learn by simply opening a container and pouring information in. The sermon takes, well, we're going to talk about three steps. And when we talk about discernment, this applies to all different aspects of life, but it starts with discerning yourself. You and I can't really discern other things and other people until we have discerned ourselves. Now this is the problem. That's the opposite of what we normally do.

We're trying to discern others, but we have to first discern here, me, who I am, and what God wants in my life, the best. I'm going to read this in Philippians here from the new international version. And this is my prayer, that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and, and this is an interesting way they translate this, this Greek phrase, depth of insight.

Discernment is a depth of insight. You're just not looking at something on the surface. You're looking inside of it. You're looking at the depth of it. So discernment is to be able to have a depth of insight, not just the surface view, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ filled with the fruit of righteousness.

So now let's go through three steps. Three steps that can help us learn to practice spiritual discernment. And I say practice it because this has to be practiced. It has to be done. It's a thought process. It just does, it's not easy to do. It's actually easier to collect knowledge. It's easier to collect knowledge. But what am I supposed to do with all this knowledge? What am I supposed to do with this dictionary that God has given me?

The first step is in 2 Corinthians 13. So let's go to 2 Corinthians 13.

You with me so far? Okay. I got a few. Okay, good. I have to admit it. I do envy. The Protestant ministers every once in a while. I say, give me an amen so I know you're really with me. But I won't do that.

Mr. Keller's made me back as your pastor if I knew that. So I go to Corinthians 13. Verse 5.

We usually talk about examination in terms of examining ourselves before Passover. That examination of ourselves and of everything is something we should be doing all the time. Looking for the truth isn't just the truth of the Bible. I don't want this to be a shock to anybody, but not everything in Wikipedia is true. I do research in Wikipedia, then I look at all the resources and I check the resources. Because not all that analysis is true. So we have to search for the truth. And believe me, the Internet is full of the most bizarre sometimes ideas that are written in such a style that it's, oh, that has to be true.

And then you look on scopes or something to find out, someone just made that up. So searching for truth is examining that it's also examining yourself. So he says, examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith.

Then he says, test yourselves. Here's the problem. How do I know if I'm in the faith?

If I don't have a real bill, how do I know if I have a counterfeit? If I have a counterfeit. And the problem with you and me is we all have corrupted you in nature. So we're all counterfeit to one degree or another, right? None of us are completely the real bill yet. So how in the world, what do we do? Okay, if I'm going to examine myself, I have to know the criteria. Can you imagine going to school? Teacher says you have a test. On what? Not your business. Here's a test. How are we graded? Not going to tell you. But, you know, it's meaningless. If I have to examine myself, I have to have criteria. I have to know what the real bill looks like. But let's look at what he says here. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves? So if we're going to look for truth, let's first of all examine ourselves. Do you not know yourselves? Now here's the criteria that Jesus Christ is in you. Unless indeed you are disqualified.

The real bill? Well, you have one real bill. It's Jesus Christ.

That's who it is. We've got to look at Him and say, do I need that?

That's the criteria of truth. Am I in line with that?

So we have a real bill. That's one of the reasons Christ was sent. This is one of the reasons God did this. And I don't know about you, but I had asked God before. Surely there was an easier way than sending your son as a human being and having him die that way. There had to be something easier than that. But you know, the older I get, the more I realize the brilliance of it. What a price to pay, though. The brilliance of it is, here's a real bill. You have to be like God. We don't just give up, would we? How in the world are you like God? Okay, here's God in the flesh. Here's what it's supposed to look like. Now let's become like that. We have something to examine ourselves with. Now when we talk about Jesus Christ, I'm not just talking about, okay, let's just study the Gospels. You know, if you want to really understand Jesus Christ, you start with Genesis 1, and you go to Revelation 22, and you see what God is doing through Jesus Christ. It's the whole Bible. And therefore, it is the Bible that gives us the criteria to examine truth. To examine truth. So if they come out with a proof of evolution, which occasionally they do, and then all of a sudden, you know, six months later, a whole bunch of scientists will say, well, that's not true. But for six months, everybody's, oh, we found the truth!

None of you here are ever fooled by that. You know why? Because you take the Bible as the basis of truth. So you've examined it. So you believe that evolution, it is, you know, as pure as form, that we all just sort of evolved from slime and electricity, is not true. We have something to examine by. You know, let's go to Acts 17. Acts 17. Here's a perfect example. Acts 17. Acts 17. This is a passage that many of us know by heart. You've heard and read many times.

But I want to look at it in something we need to pull out of this that sometimes we can miss. Acts 17, verse 10.

Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, where they arrived and went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word and all readiness and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.

Now, understand the enormity of what Paul was doing here.

He's going to the Jewish world. This is a synagogue where there were lots of Gentiles, proselytes and God-fears, but they had already converted to Judaism. He's going to people who know the Scriptures, who believe that they live in the time of the fourth beast called the Roman Empire, who believe that the Messiah is coming to overthrow the Roman Empire and establish God's kingdom on the earth, who believe He's going to stand on the Mount of Olives that's going to split in two and Zechariah 14 is going to be fulfilled. They believed it. There was a huge messianic movement in that time as people were preparing for the Messiah to come. And what is it that Paul came along and said?

He already came. You have to understand the enormity of that to a group of people who are waiting for the Messiah to come, who see all these verses that predict what?

Him coming to earth and establishing the Jewish people back as the people of God. David is going to be resurrected and rule over all of them. They're waiting for that. There's lots of Jewish writings for the first century. They're waiting for that. And he comes along with a really unpopular message that they would have argued from the Bible. They would have gone to Deuteronomy, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, all the minor prophets to prove their point.

So Paul had to be able to reason with them. And remember, these people are studying the scripture in a disciplined way. And that's the point I'm bringing out here. The study of the scripture is disciplined. It's not just everybody giving it together and saying, oh, I think it means this. These people are coming from a disciplined, synagogue background, where there were lots of rules on how to study the Bible.

There are lots of rules. And many of them were good rules, by the way. They're actually rules that we apply today in how we study the scripture. So look at verse 2. So how does Paul deal with this? Then Paul, as his custom was, went to them, and for three Sabbaths, reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying that Jesus, who might preach you, is the Christ. And if you read through this, many of them said, oh, that's true. Isaiah says he would suffer, and he would die, and he would sprinkle the nations. That's true. Psalm says he would be pierced with us. That's true.

He had to use the Scriptures in a disciplined way. So when we examine something, it's true. Whether we're examining to see if something is truth or error, or good or bad, or whether we're examining to see whether it's wise or foolish, we have to be disciplined.

We have to be prayerful. We have to be careful. But we have to examine.

And we have to know the criteria. The criteria is Christ and the Scripture. There's a criteria. Now, the second point is brought out in 2 Thessalonians 5.

I'm sorry. I did that same thing this morning. There is no 2 Thessalonians 5. 1 Thessalonians 5.

Now, remember what we just read. He said, examine and then test. This word test is very important to Paul. Notice what he says here in verse 21 of 1 Thessalonians 5. Test all things and hold fast when it's good. In other words, you're going to test something and know whether it's good or bad, and then grab what is good. Hold on to what is good.

You know, remember, the first point was you have to examine. And that means you have to know what the real bill looks like. You have to know what the real bill looks like. Then you compare it. The testing part is the intricate testing, comparing the two. It is amazing to me when I just did research on how they get bank tellers to try to tell what a counterfeit is. Some of the things they have to look for are minute. You and I would never catch that. Even if I looked at it, I wouldn't catch it. The testing part is you have to really take this examination process and you have to really compare. So to examine, you have to know what the real bill looks like. To test, you have to be able to look at the counterfeit and tell where it's wrong. Many times, young people who've grown up in the church, they know what is right. How do you test if something's wrong? Because they didn't go through the process some of you did where you had to test everything. You had to test everything to leave whatever church or whatever you were in before. So they know what is right, but how do you test? That's a legitimate issue. How do I test?

So we have to look at things to see if they're genuine. There's a point here I want to bring out in this. Every one of these points, once again, could be expanded into it. But I just want to give you a sort of an overview of this concept that gets you thinking about it today. When you test something, it's not just an intellectual exercise.

Intellectually, we can look at facts and test them. But you know, let's think about where Satan gets us much of the time. There's nobody in this room, I doubt. I don't know every one of you. But I feel safe saying that there's nobody in this room that you're going to be intellectually convinced that you shouldn't keep the Sabbath. You know it! You've proven the real bill, right? So you do it! You know it! It's what you're supposed to do.

Where Satan will get you is not there.

What if they fire you over the Sabbath and you say, I can't feed my family? The emotion is fear. It's the emotion is where he gets us. It's the fear is where he gets us. So when we do testing, this is now beyond just the intellectual looking at something. This is beyond just whether this is doctorally correct or not.

You know, I mean it was easy for Kim and I. We had a situation here with this house. We were trying to buy a house. I wanted to put some money down on a house and it was late Friday and they kept taking time and kept taking time and kept saving time. And finally, we were going to make this offer on the house and it's almost the Sabbath. We said, no, you waited too long now. I'm not going to do this on the Sabbath. And you know what? There was a little disappointment. See, that's the emotion. It wasn't much, but there's some. And Monday we got a much better house. So I'm glad that we really got a better house. We got the nicest house we've ever lived in.

Well, I don't know. We don't have it yet, but we should have the nice house.

But you know, that wasn't a major issue. But you know, when you're in the face with the loss of something like a job, that's a major issue, right? And we have these emotions. And we have these emotions. When we test something, we also have to look at the emotions behind it. Let's look at something here. In 1 John 4. Now, I'm going to take John. I try not to do this too much, you know. There are certain things that are explicitly stated in the Scripture. And then there's things that are implied. And I try to stay with things that are explicit. This is implied. So I'm going to explain to you that's implied to show you how I got came to the conclusion. Verse 1, 1 John 4. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Now, what he's saying here is in that time period, that the church was really being bombarded with people who came up with false teachings and then left the church. Now, the point he's making is, look at the spirit behind what they do. Now, you know, we could say, well, he's talking about the spirit of God or the spirit of Satan. But let's move this to an implication. There are other spirits, you know, the human spirit. And we can be driven by a spirit of hatred. Right? We'll use that word. That person's got a spirit of dignity, a spirit of greed. I mean, think of all the negative spirits that you and I experience from time to time. I mean, let's be honest about it, right? We all struggle with this. And we know when you're feeling that attitude, it's different than the spirit of God. And of course, God's spirit convicts us and brings us back. I think we can take from this, look at the attitude when you test something. Look at the attitude. Look at your own attitude. You ever do something because you're mad? I did that this week. Fortunately, it wasn't a bad one. The bank lost our money.

Oh, I'm sorry. We can't find your money. Wait, I just sold a house. I have money. No, we can't find your money. So I called the title company, and the woman who did all the work is on vacation. So I said, give me your email. And I said, look, I don't want to disrupt your vacation. But here's the bottom line. We will talk today because the money that you said was going to go to the bank is not there, and that means the next house deal is going to fall through. Now, fortunately, that's all I said.

Because an hour later, the bank says, oh, we found your money. And that was the spirit of anger. Now, I was out of control, but it wouldn't have taken much at that point to push me over the edge. So I called her back, and I said, please have a wonderful vacation, and please disregard everything I said. And I hope you're having a wonderful time, and they found our money, and it had nothing to do with you, and I am so sorry. But now, when we're driven, and you know what's not going to be driven by a spirit of anger, you lose control of what's going on. When you look at anything, test the spirit of it.

What is motivating this? Because all of us have seen people come into the church, if you've been around long enough, who seem to be this great servant, and they take everybody out to dinner, and they treat everybody great, and then they try to get you involved in their pyramid scheme. We've all seen some of those, right? What's their motivation? What's the spirit here? This is where the servant comes in. The servant spirit says, well, wait a minute. You're not really trying to be my brother here. We need to talk. You have a spiritual problem. Then you sit down with him and tell him, I love you, man, but you can't do this.

You can't use us. We want to be your brother, or we don't want to be your merchandise. We don't want to be your salespeople. I'm not saying it's wrong for people to sell stuff. I'm not saying that. But you know what I'm talking about. That person's spirit is wrong.

The servant is being able to check that, because I've seen an awful lot of people over the years have someone come to the church and mess up half a dozen people's lives and then leave the church. And no one discern. Of course not. You and I have a choice. We either let the barriers down and love each other, or we put the barriers up and we just pretend that we're a family. We'll put the barriers down and get hurt once in a while. That's what God says. It comes with the territory. You don't want to live the other way. But we have to test. Test the spirits. That's part of what we do in this testing process of truth. It's very interesting. If you look at the case of Simon the Magician, Philip goes and baptizes him. He does not discern his spirit. He discerns his actions. Because most of the time that's all we have with each other, is our actions. He discerns his actions. He says, okay, he baptized him. He seems like he repented. Peter comes along to lay hands on him so he can receive the Holy Spirit. Peter says, I discern you're a really bitter person. He discerned the spirit of the man. See the difference? I'm not saying we go around just trying to discern everybody's motivations. I'm just saying, be careful. When it's something that doesn't make sense, that little alarm goes off. Just be careful. Don't be paranoid. Those are two different things.

Test the spirit. Our third point is Hebrews 5.14. Hebrews 5.14.

Then there's a little sub-point I want to bring out of this. Hebrews 5. Verse 14.

Now, once again, this is part of a two-verse passage that many of you know by heart. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Okay. I examine. I know what the real bill is supposed to look like. I now test. I take the real bill and I put the counterfeit and I look at them and I can see, oh, this is a counterfeit. Now, you must exercise. You must do. In other words, to take the real bill and the counterfeit, put it in your pocket and go spend both of them is wrong. You have to do something. You have to take the counterfeit and throw it away. Now, hey, you lost 20 bucks. Take that $20 and take it in and try to give, you know, here, Mr. Banker, I got a counterfeit. He'll say, well, thank you, and rip it up. Right? Or turn it into the FBI. Then the FBI will show up and say, well, I don't know where you got it from. So it's like, what am I supposed to do with this? I tear it up. Well, I can't tell you what to do. But don't spend it. Don't use it. I can tell you that because that would be immoral. We must exercise now the difference between the counterfeit and the real bill. You see? I can spend the real bill. I can use the real bill. I can't use the counterfeit. I can't hold on to both of them. I can't be a legitimate counterfeiter. I can't be both of those things. In reality, that's what we do with much of our Christianity. We try to be legitimate counterfeiters. We try to be both at the same time. It's hard to live in this world. It's hard. We try to be both at the same time. We must exercise to discern both good and evil.

I wish I had a dollar for every time I've been in a counseling session. I've looked at the person that said, you're going to have to decide. And they'll say, but what am I supposed to do? Tell me.

You have to exercise to discern both good and evil. I can tell you something's wrong. I can tell you something's a sin. People will ask me questions sometimes. I'll say it. Okay. Neither decision is a sin. One is wise and one is foolish. I can tell you what wisdom is. And that you have to decide. But what am I supposed to do?

You know the interesting thing about exercising to discern good and evil? It's the great problem of free will. It means sometimes you and I are going to make a bad decision. Sometimes we're going to make a really bad decision. What God will do if we're right with God is we'll know we made the bad decision because we'll look at the real bill and say, well, I wasn't like Jesus Christ. And when we repent, or we'll learn from it, and God will say, good, now what have you learned? What have you exercised? What have you learned to discern? Not to do that again. I really do believe that sometimes we don't recognize what God is doing. It's there, and He's yelling, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. Boy, is that going to hurt. I really think that's what happens a lot of times.

And then we go to God and say, why did you do this? And His answer is, I didn't do that, you did that. And it hurts, doesn't it? And I'm not taking the pain away. And why? Why? Well, you must learn to exercise, to discern what is good and bad. And you're learning. That's bad. It's why God will forgive the eternal consequences of sin, but He doesn't always take away the temporary consequences of sin. It wouldn't be great if He... Now, sometimes He'll take away the temporary consequence, but sometimes He doesn't. You get drunk and you drive that car into a tree at 100 miles an hour and you never walk again. And God says, you've repented, I've forgiven you, you have eternal life. And you say, give me my legs back. And He might say, well, I didn't do that. You did that. Oh, that's hard. But God, it's not fair. But you have to exercise to discern the difference between good and bad. Examine, test, and do. We must do. We must be examining and testing and attempting to do what is right, what is... Remember what we've talked about. Truth versus error. And we've talked about good versus bad and wisdom versus foolishness. And so we live through examination. And a recent conversation with someone, a person that's not in United, one of the churches of God, and they were asking me advice on something. It wasn't a sin. It had to do with a matter of personal conscience. And I could have given all kinds of advice. I gave a little bit of advice. And the person said, I still don't know what to do. And I said, they go do it. And they looked at it. I wasn't sin. Okay. They said, well, I said, no. If you have that much conviction, go do it. I guarantee you, you'll call me up and say, I'm real sorry I did that. But you don't listen to me.

Go ahead and do it. No, it's not sin. Remember, I'm not telling them it's sin. It's a decision. And I said, the decision you want to make, go do it. And let me know how it turns out. And the person said, well, I don't know if I want to do it now.

If you do it, God's not going to say, oh, you just say, you know, I'm going to punish you, God's not going to punish you for doing that. But you won't like the consequences. So I would suggest, if you really, really feel that strong about it, go do it. It'll be interesting to see what the person does. One way or the other. Because you've got to exercise it. You've got to exercise it. We've got to make these decisions. We've got to examine and test. And sometimes we're going to be wrong. The problem is, is when it's sin. Because that separates us from God. And we have to repent. But then I want to bring out a sub-point here. Because as we talk about this exercising, I tell you where this really becomes important. You know, the difference between when we look at truth and error, you exercise it by doing it. You know, once you discover the truth of the holy days, you do them. Right? Good and bad. Okay. I'm going to exercise not committing adultery. I'm going to exercise being honest. Okay. These are what you do. Here's where we have a real problem with the exercising part of this. It's with the wisdom foolishness part. Because it's not sin. So we don't analyze it scripturally as much as we do, say, doctrine or sin. And yet there's an awful lot in the Bible about wisdom. An awful lot in the Bible about wisdom. And yes, that's the area where we tend to do the least amount of examination and testing. I used an example this morning. I said, you know, make a mistake at keeping your gas turned on and your house burns down. Now that's just life. Right? That happens. Not having insurance on your house is a lack of wisdom. He said, there's where the lack of wisdom was. Now you have a horrible camp penalty. And most of you know Jason Prince. He came up to me after services and said, I left my gas grill on last night and it blew up in the middle of the night. My house almost burned down. I said, but you had insurance, did you? Yeah, but my house almost burned down. You see what I mean? That's human. Human is to leave your gas on. We've all done that. Wisdom is, and here's the basis of wisdom, understanding consequences so that you maximize positive consequences in the way God describes, because remember we're talking in a spiritual sense, and you minimize the negative consequences. You'll never not have any negative consequences because you live in Satan's world. That's reality. You and I are going to have negative consequences all the time because it's not even our decisions. It's our neighbor's decision, right? It's all kinds of things that go on. You might be born with some genetic defect because of something five generations happened ago. Ah, well, so it happens. But wisdom is being able to say, okay, how can I study the consequences so that I maximize the positive spiritual consequences and minimize the negative consequences? Isn't this what business tries to do all the time? But they don't have the same criteria. Remember what our criteria is? Jesus Christ and the Scripture.

Jesus Christ and the Scripture. That's our criteria. And it's always going to be out of step with society. So wisdom is being able to do that. You know, in Galatians 6—let's just turn here. And then I have one more example to give you. Galatians 6, verse 4. This is part of a bigger passage, and there's a lot in here. And I'm skipping a couple very important points just to bring out one point that are in the first few verses that lead up to this. Let each one examine his own work. Remember, I said examination starts with ourselves in any situation. And this really especially applies to when you have conflict with another person. You have conflict between you and another person. Examine yourself first.

I have to say, you know what I hate about that? It's every time I do that, I find that my wife usually has a good point someplace. Well, God, can't I ever be 100% righteous once?

Doesn't work that way, does it? You examine yourself, and it's like, oh, okay, I'm wrong here and I'm wrong there. I guess I better deal with this differently. Let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself a load and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load. Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, he will also reap." And he goes on and he applies this in the spiritual sense.

You know, if we take all that God has given to us, the salvation through Christ, God's Holy Spirit, the calling, the Scripture, and we just throw all this out, we can lose our salvation. But let's apply this to wisdom. The basis of all wisdom is knowing how do we maximize spiritual, positive spiritual consequences and minimize. Now, the negative spiritual consequences. It's hard for us to do that because we're always thinking of physical consequences.

And sometimes, doing what is right costs us physically. It can cost us friends. It can cost us money. It can cost us jobs. In some cases of the Scripture, it costs people their lives.

So we have to recognize that. So we have to maximize. In other words, it's hard to think of this way, but for Paul to be headed was the maximization of wisdom. I pray to God I never get that choice. But that was the maximization of wisdom.

The spiritual consequences way outweighed the physical consequences of living. Now, you and I usually face things a whole lot less important than that. I want to show you one case. This isn't a sin. It's not a sin. It's just a decision, a very, very bad decision that has had consequences that have lasted thousands of years. Let's go to 1 Kings 12.

So this doesn't have anything to do with doctrine. It's not even the issue of God's law.

It is an issue of what is wise and what is foolish. And it seems so apparent. Yet to the men involved in this, Solomon had died. When Solomon died, Israel was at its greatest zenith. Under David, Saul had sort of brought it together. Under David, the country had really grown and expanded in wealth and in size and in numbers. Under Solomon, it exploded into really basically an empire throughout the Middle East.

And it was at its zenith. And Solomon dies.

And we have this new young king. Verse 3, Then Jeroboam and the whole assembly of Israel came and spoke to Reoboam, saying, Reoboam, son of Solomon, a man who is known for wisdom, a man who had written hundreds of proverbs, the book of Ecclesiastes, famous throughout the world for his wisdom.

Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore light the birds of service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, that we will serve you.

It's interesting, what is this service? It was commitment to the state.

Many commentators believe that Jewish historians had specifically to do with taxes. You can't compare their government with ours, okay? This is a totally different government. They're living under a monarchy where the king has an enormous amount of administrative power.

But there reached a point that for Solomon to maintain this empire oppressed the people. Now as long as all this wealth was flowing in, it was okay. But obviously it wasn't flowing in the same way. And now the people are oppressed. The king Reoboam consulted the elders who stood before his father Solomon while he was lived and said, how do you advise me to answer these people? Okay, this is a good step. Okay, I need to find out what maximizes here the positive consequences for my nation and what minimizes the negative. Because there was going to be negative and positive no matter what decision he made. So who does he call together? Oh, all the men who advised and learned under his father, not a better group of men on the face of the earth. And he calls him together. And they spoke to him saying, in verse 7, if you will be a servant to these people today and serve them and answer them and speak good words to them, they will be your servants forever. This isn't hard. You know, take away some of these restrictions. Take away some of these taxes. Let this country breathe a little bit and they'll follow you any place you want to lead them.

Good sound advice.

Verse 8, but he rejected the advice which the elders had given him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him who stood before him. And he said to them, what advice do you give? How should we answer these people who have spoken to me saying, light the yoke which your father put on us? And then the young man who had grown up with him spoke to him saying, thus you should speak to these people who have spoken to you saying, your father made our yoke heavy, but you made it lighter on us. Thus shall you say to them, my little finger shall be thicker than my father's waist. You're going to look on those as the good old days because we and my advisors deserve what we want to get from you. Now, you know, it didn't take much examination or testing of wisdom to know this wasn't going to work.

And he exercised it, and what happened was bad. Verse 11, and now whereas my father put a heavy yoke on you, I will add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, I will chastise you with scourges. He said, you think he was tough? You haven't seen tough yet. So Jeroboam and all the people came to Reebold the third day as the king had directed, saying, come back to me on the third day. Then the king answered the people roughly and rejected the advice which the elders had given him. And he spoke to them according to the advice of the young men, saying, my father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scourges. Unwise. You can say, was it a sin? I don't know if it was a sin. It's a wrong attitude. It's a wrong spirit. It's sure, not wise. You know what the result was? Israel and Judah separated and have never been together since. Israel and Judah will not come together again until Christ comes back. They will never be together again from this point on. They would separate. And they've never been together again. Ezekiel gives a prophecy of the time when God brings them back together. What was the catalyst for that? A young king and his advisors who are incredibly unwise. You see, wisdom does matter because wisdom has long-term effects.

And how we grow in wisdom is a whole other subject. So we've defined spiritual discernment as the ability to clearly see the difference between truth and error, good and bad, wisdom and foolishness. And we've looked at three simple steps. Well, they're simple. They're hard to do. First is examine. Using the life of Jesus and the Scripture itself, examine. Does this fit? Then test. Test. Look at the real bill. Look at the other bill. It is part of that testing. Ask, what is the spirit? What is the intent? What is the motivation? Where does this take me emotionally? What is the emotion? How this is coming at me? And then three, exercise. It is not enough to discern the truth. It is not enough to discern what is good or discern what is wise. We must choose and do the truth, what is good and what is wise. We must choose to do it. Learn spiritual discernment, and you will never get handed a spiritual counterfeit, because you'll recognize it. Well, my wife and I are very excited about being here. She reminded me, I've almost forgot, to give you my phone number if I can find it. I stuck it in my wallet, and now I can't find it. Well, I will have Mr. Keller send it out to all of you.

I have it somewhere. My email account is gcpeddy at yahoo.com. As I said, we are very, very happy to be here. My wife said, Gary, do you think these people will like us? I said, I don't know, but I don't think they have a lot of choice.

Which was a little bit comforting, you know. We're glad to be here. This is going to be our home. And thank you for inviting us in to be part of your family.