Scripture is filled with warnings about liars. God hates liars. God cannot lie, the Bible says. He is truth. Satan is a liar.
He is the father of lies. They all sort of generate out of his spiritual mindset. We then have to be able to discern between the truth and the lie with regard to everything that God has revealed to us. Welcome to Grace TU with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
It's the most important issue you will face as you live out your Christian life in this world. That's what John MacArthur said about today's topic on grace to you. And what was that most important issue? In a word, it's discernment. But what exactly is discernment?
And why is it so important? And how do you cultivate it? John answers those questions as he issues a plea for discernment. That's the title of the study he begins today, one that John preached to over a thousand students during chapel services at the Masters University.
So follow along now as John begins today's lesson. As I was thinking about what I might uh addressed in our chapels together. I just kind of asked myself the question: what's the most important thing that I could address? What's the most important issue that's going to face us? As we live out our Christian lives in this world, Given that we know the Lord Jesus Christ, given that we understand the theology of justification and sanctification and all of that.
What do we really need to know? And I thought that this is an educational institution, this is all about learning, this is all about gaining knowledge, a body of knowledge, so that you are a truly educated person. But more than that, Knowledge is only valuable if it The driving compelling Force. in the choices that you make. It uh It really is the height of folly to have a lot of knowledge and then make bad choices.
So, in the end, knowledge should lead to wisdom. Particularly if knowledge encompasses the truth of God's Word, that should make a major contribution to the wisdom that you exhibit in the choices you make in life. And your life will be the byproduct of your choices. I mean, you'll go through life, you'll make choices. Making the right choices is critical.
It's crucial. Making the wrong choices obviously is critical in a negative sense. But life will become a series of choices. What are the criteria for you to make the choices that you need to make to assure that in the end you can look back over your life and be grateful for all the blessing of God that you've enjoyed? I want to help you with that a little bit.
Another way to approach the subject would be to ask the question: what is the greatest need? People ask me this all the time: what's the greatest need in the church today? What is the most compelling need? What do you see as the biggest problem in Christianity, the biggest problem in the church? It's simple for me to answer that.
Biggest problem. in the church today is the absence of discernment. It's a lack of discernment. It's the biggest problem with Christian people, they make bad choices. They accept the wrong thing, they accept the wrong theology, they are prone to the wrong teaching.
They're unwise in who they follow, what they listen to, and what they read. I'll tell you a funny story that'll sort of set us on our course here to talk about discernment. It was a number of years ago, my son Mark, who graduated from the college, was assigned to play baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals. And um He said, I don't know where they're going to assign me, but would you bring me my car?
Wherever I'm going to be, I'm going to need my car. Would you bring it to me? And I thought, you know, Palm Springs or Arizona be great. They assigned him to Savannah, Georgia. And he had this little Honda.
that I was going to have to drive from here to Savannah, Georgia. But what's a father going to do? I said, sure, I'll bring you your car and I'll have it there when the season begins and you get there from spring training.
So I jumped in this little Honda and off I went. shifting my way through the five speeds. I finally arrived in Arkansas. I like Arkansas, I really do. And there was a pastor, I think it was a Sunday, and I visited a church.
The pastor said, You're John MacArthur, and I'd like to take you bass fishing. And I said, you know, I'm not a good fisherman. I'm sort of fisherman's roundup. You're taking me fishing and everything dies. You just spray me on the fish, and I don't do well.
So, we took, oh, no, no, we'll catch a lot of bass.
So, he took me out bass fishing, we caught absolutely nothing. After about five hours, I got back in my car. By then, it was just raining like crazy, and I was back on my way to Savannah, and I was putting along a country road going up and down these hills. I saw a little sign. One of those handmade wooden signs.
with the word quilts on it. And I thought, well, I'm gone for a week doing this. Maybe I could pick up a quilt for Patricia. She'd appreciate that. And she likes quilts, and probably they're handmade and be kind of neat, and so.
I had took off this dirt road with little arrow-pointed quilts. And I drove through the rain and the mud. And I came to this shack, really just a shack. with one of those flapping screen doors. And I jumped up on the porch in the rain, and it was really dark inside and smoke-filled.
And I kind of looked like, you know, is there anybody here? And then I said, hello? And this voice from the inside comes back and says, What do you want? I said, I want a quilt. She let me in, and I walked in the door, and I knew I was in a bad situation.
I said, well, I saw the sign about the quilts and I just wondered if I could see some quilts. And then I looked to my left and I saw this man sitting in this huge, overstuffed, cheap recliner. I'll warn. And I know he had been in there for years. I mean, he just was in there.
And to his left were stacked all kinds of magazines and newspapers and to his right were videos and he had two TVs and two video machines. I mean, he might as well have been a statue. And he said, uh he said, my name's Johnny. He said I said, well, Johnny, I said, you got a lot of literature here. And I looked over, and he had books by James Dobson, and he had books by the Unity Fellowship, Unitarianism.
He had Mormon stuff. He had Christian Science magazines. He had the Worldwide Church of God literature. He had Moody Press stuff. He had all kinds of stuff in this assortment, and I said, You know, you have quite a mix of things here.
And I'll never forget what he said. He said, there's good in all of it. There's good in all of it. That is a lack of discernment, isn't it? Then, all of a sudden, his wife says to me, I have just a quilt for you.
And she ran in the back. She said, I made it myself. She ran in the back. She came out. with the ugliest quilt.
you have ever seen. It was absolutely nondescript. It was no particular color or pattern.
So I didn't know what to say to this lady and So I said, that is a quilt. She said, I made it myself. And I had to think fast, so I said, well, you know, it's... It's just not the color I was looking for. And she said, well, It's got every color in it.
And I said, no, I don't think I... I'd want that. And I thanked them, and I left, and I went out, and I realized that. She had quilted her husband's theology. Into that quilt, sort of metaphorically.
That quilt was like a metaphor for her husband's eclectic theology. It was a whole bunch of nothing all sewn together that made no sense. That's a little incident that sticks. By the way, I bought my wife a quilt somewhere else in Arkansas, it worked out fine. A blue one, you know, just.
But I realized, as I think back, it was like a.
Sort of a Symbolic experience. No discernment, no discrimination theologically. And she had no discrimination in terms of Beauty. You know, so many people's lives are like that. They're just ugly quilts that make no sense, that have no rhyme or reason, just the bits and pieces of life all sewn together without any particular pattern.
Indiscriminate. I'm afraid. That is uh pretty typical of the contemporary evangelical scene. There's a lack of precision in thinking, there's a lack of consistency, there's a lack of integrity. It's just a hodgepodge.
Listening to anybody and everybody. Reading anything, making no particular judgments, in fact, to make a judgment may be seen as unchristian. Boundless, endless credulity, anything and everything accepted. There's got to be good in all of it. How dare you question anybody's view on anything?
And I really believe that because of this pervasive attitude, evangelical Christianity, biblical Christianity, as we know it, is fighting for its life. Amazing to think about. But by the grace and intervention of God. The biblical Christianity that you and I know. Could go out of existence if left in the hands of the general evangelical consensus.
So it seems to me that if any problem outstrips the other problems in the church, and if any problem outstrips the other problems in an individual Christian's life, This growing lack of spiritual discrimination. In my judgment. The main issue. This is really what is the death knell. To biblical Christianity.
Bad decisions, faulty reasoning, superficial understanding, shallow knowledge. Ignorance. Are contributing and always have contributed more anguish to the church than any persecution. I would rather the church be persecuted. I would rather Christians shed their blood than abandon their theology.
In fact, there's no question historically that the lack of. discernment, discrimination, precision. Regarding the truth has cost the church far more than all the persecutions of the church. Combined. You show me a persecuted church, and I'll show you a church that clings with tenacity to the truth.
You show me an affluent, flourishing, comfortable church, and I'll show you a church that. easily abandons the truth. Persecution has taken its toll on lives. But it strengthens the church. Because it strengthens our grip on the truth.
So, I want to talk about this issue of discernment. And I'm not just talking sort of historically, although we will look at that a little bit. I want to get it down eventually as we go through the week to our own practical lives.
Now, just in general, if you look at the literature of the Bible, really from the beginning to the end. The Lord makes it very clear that there are two things.
Sort of available to us in the world. One is the truth of God, and the other is the lie of the enemy.
So we live in a world where truth and lies are in constant conflict. And you get that all the way back in the book of Genesis, where Satan comes. to Eve and he says to Eve, did God really say this? He's Causing her to question what God said, and then he says, You shall not surely die, which is to say, God lied to you. God said, You die, I'm telling you, you won't.
And therein is the conflict framed up in its simplicity. God says one thing, and Satan says another.
So you have two systems working in the world: the truth and the lie. Does it matter whether you sort that out? Does it matter whether you come to the truth or not? It does matter. It matters for your own life, and it matters for the honor and the glory of God's truth, and it matters for all the people that you influence, that you influence them with the truth.
So, Scripture is filled with warnings about liars. God hates liars. God hates those who tell lies. God cannot lie, the Bible says. He always speaks the truth.
He is truth. Satan is a liar. He is the father of lies. They all sort of generate out of his spiritual mindset. We then have to be able to discern between the truth and the lie with regard to everything that God has revealed to us.
We are warned in Scripture about ear-tickling teachers who just want to give the feel-good message to us, no matter whether it's truth or not. We are warned about doctrines of demons, demonic lies, destructive heresies, myths. Perverse teachings, commandments of men rather than God. We're warned about. Speculations that lofty ideas raised up against the knowledge of God.
We're warned about deceitful spirits, we're warned about worldly fables, we're warned about false knowledge, empty philosophy, science, falsely so-called, traditions of men, worldly wisdom, corruptors and adulterers of the Word of God. We're warned about all of that. We're worried about Wolves in sheep's clothing who come along to devour us. They come as if they are prophets. They turn out to be destructive agents of Satan.
I mean, we have these warnings all over the place in the New Testament. They're also everywhere in the Old Testament.
Now, to put it simply, there is a world of chaos and confusion out there. And Satan is very adept, and very clever, and very powerful, and very systematic in the structure of evil that is wrapped up in the system in which we live. Against that is pitted the truth of God. We have to be able to discern. The difference.
If you understand the warnings of the Bible and you understand how critical it is that you know the truth. that you have Discernment. You cannot be gullible. You cannot be sucked off into error without dishonoring God. God is truth.
He has revealed truth. He loves truth. He has given you the Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth. He has given you His Word, which is truth. How terrible it is to think that you might drift into Lies.
A lot of people do it all the time. Even people who sit in churches under very often weak teaching. Let me give you an illustration of what we might be talking about. Turn to Matthew chapter 16. Matthew chapter 16.
Just a simple illustration comes in the first four verses here. The Pharisees and the Sadducees, who never could get together on anything except their mutual hatred of Jesus. They hated each other and they wouldn't cooperate, but they hated Jesus worse, so they agreed to cooperate in assaulting him.
So they came up to him, and the reason they couldn't get along was the Pharisees were the hardline fundamentalists, and the Sadducees were the religious liberals. And naturally, the fundamentalists and the liberals don't get along well, but they did agree to assault Jesus.
So they came up, as they often did, and testing him, asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the morning there will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening. Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky? but cannot discern the signs of the times.
What Jesus said to them is interesting. He said, you're religious authorities. You're the religious elite. And frankly, Your primitive way of telling the weather is better than your spiritual discernment. That's what he's saying.
You cannot discern the signs of the times. What he means by that is, you can't discern spiritual issues. You don't even know you're addressing the Messiah of God. You don't even understand that the kingdom of heaven has come to you. You're unsophisticated weathermen, but you're better at that than you are at your theology.
And so, this is the issue that I want to talk about a little bit: the ability to distinguish between the false and the true, which is essential. and possible for you as a Christian in order that you might make the right decision. Two passages that sort of set the frame for us. Go to the end of 2 Corinthians for a moment, chapter 11. Chapter 11.
I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Verse 1, 2 Corinthians 11. And Paul obviously had a lot of problems with the Corinthian church. Repeatedly, they failed to. fulfill his hopes and desires for them.
Falling into all kinds of sinful patterns as well as Believing false teachers. And here was his concern. Verse 2, I'm jealous for you with a godly jealousy. And I want to present you to Christ someday when you enter into His presence as a pure virgin.
So I have this godly jealousy. I um I have linked you to Christ and I want to keep you pure. until the time you meet him. But I'm afraid, verse 3 says. Lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray.
That's what he was afraid of. He's afraid that their minds would be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Verse 4: If someone comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, different than the Holy Spirit, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully. You tolerate it. Another Christ, another gospel, another spirit, and you don't have a problem with it.
You lack discernment. My great fear, my great fear is this. That you will be led astray. And I can tell you, as a pastor, I can tell you as a president, that's a great fear that I have for you. It's happened.
With people who have gone through the college and graduated and been led astray into some false teaching. That dishonors God, some lies. And then it boils down too to the decisions that you make day in and day out that affect the course of your life. Manifesting discernment at that level is critical as well.
Now, I want to take you to the main passage that we're going to be dealing with, and that's over in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5.
Now, this is a very important passage of Scripture. It's one of those really great summary passages in which the Apostle Paul pulls together, like what you would call bullet points. Basics of Christian living. Verse 16, rejoice always. Verse 17, pray without ceasing.
Verse 18, everything give thanks. Verse 19, don't quench the spirit. And then comes verse Yeah. 21 and 22, and that's where we want to focus. Do not despise prophetic utterances.
That would be revelation from God. Do not despise God's revelation through spokesmen who speak for Him. But Examine everything carefully. Hold fast to that which is good. Abstain from every form of evil.
Now this is virtually a call to discernment. A call to discernment. Let's go back and just kind of take the text apart. Verse 20, do not despise, do not downgrade, that's what that Greek word means, do not make light of. Do not belittle, do not treat as trivial or insignificant.
Prophetic. Utterances, propheteos. What is propheteos? It is the gift of interpreting the divine will. It is the gift of interpreting divine purpose.
It is the skill for the public proclaiming of God's word. What he's saying is, do not despise preaching. Do not despise. the presentation of the divine will. Don't be little preaching.
We could say a few things about that in a day when preaching is often belittled. But he says, don't belittle preaching, don't treat it lightly or trivially, don't downgrade it. Although many people do that today. But while you're hearing preaching and while you're elevating propheteos, the gift of interpreting and proclaiming the divine will. Do this, examine everything.
carefully. That's what that Word means. Examine is dachimadzo, very important Greek word. Very familiar word, by the way, to the students of the New Testament language. used very often to refer to something that is tested.
Something that is tested very carefully so as to reveal its genuineness, something that is subjected to scrutiny, analysis.
Sometimes it's used of testing metals to determine the degree of their purity. Test everything you hear. Be like the noble Bereans, he is saying, search the scripture to determine whether these things in fact are so. If you have had the opportunity to come to the Master's College and to be trained here and taught here and go out of here, you ought to be a frontline person in terms of saying what you hear or what others hear. You ought to be on the front line of discernment.
You ought to be useful in the Dacha-Madzo process. Test Everything. to determine what's True. And he says, What you find is good. Cling to it.
Hold on to it. On the other hand, verse 22. Whatever comes across as evil, Whatever its schema, whatever its form. The word abstain means push it away from you. You have to be able to make that distinction.
Precision is everything. Discernment is everything. I mean, if you were to go to the medical doctor. And you're having Severe headaches. Debilitating headaches.
You went to the doctor and the doctor said, well. Could be a lot of things. Could be a fatal brain tumor growing. Or it could be. too much sugar.
Drinking too much soda pop. Or it could be just being out in the sun. But you're welcome to believe anything you want. That's not helpful. That's not helpful.
You could say, well, I choose to believe that it's just being out in the sun, so I'll wear a hat, drink as much Coke as I want. That's not helpful. The one thing you want to know is the truth about your condition. Why, if we demand such precision with that regard, do we not demand precision in the spiritual realm and in the interpretation of divine truth? Test everything.
That's vital truth from John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, as he began a study today here on Grace to You called A Plea for Discernment. Yeah.
Well, friend, as John originally taught these messages to a university audience, they could be particularly helpful for your teenage child or other young person that you know. Just note, you can download a plea for discernment from our website. Both the MP3s and the transcripts are available free of charge. To download this series, get in touch today. You'll find all three sermons from A Plea for Discernment at our website, gty.org.
That's gty.org. And again, this series of plea for discernment is one that John delivered to the student body at the Masters University in Los Angeles. And if you're interested in learning more about the Masters University, it's a fully accredited liberal arts university that's committed to the authority of Scripture and the exaltation of Christ. You'll find a link to the school's website at gty.org. One more time, that's gty.org.
And if God is using these daily radio broadcasts in your life, let us know when you write to us: letters at gty.org. That's our email address one more time: letters at gty.org.
Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day. Join us again tomorrow to learn more about how to cultivate the vital skill of spiritual discernment and why you can't afford to neglect it. John MacArthur will continue his study called A Plea for Discernment with another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth one Verse at a Time on the next Grace to You.
