You want to have a life of purity and integrity and sincerity? In first century Greece, if you wanted to know if honey was pure, you'd hold the jar up to the sun, and you could see as the sun filtered through whether or not they had mixed any impurities into it.
It was judged to be pure honey only after it was tested by the light of the sun. That's the word translated sometimes in your Bibles, integrity. You want to have a life that honors Him.
You take everything of your life, every fad, every ism, every thought, every process, every desire and plan of yours, and you hold it up to the light of the Son of God. There is such a thing as moral absolutes. Because God's Word is true, and because God determines what's right and what's wrong, then the only true way to judge our actions is to line them up with God's Word. Now, nobody likes to have their life judged or evaluated. In fact, the phrase, don't judge me, is a common mantra in our culture. But is it biblical?
Is it right to live an unevaluated life? Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Today, Stephen returns to his Vintage Wisdom series through the Book of Acts, with a message called, A Plea for Judges. It's interesting if you watch the news how Mormonism is trying to line itself with Evangelicalism, adopting more and more of Evangelical terminology. The president of, I don't know what it was called, but a Mormon organization was interviewed recently in the newspaper and was consistently downplaying those views and beliefs of Mormonism that would be at odds with Evangelicalism basically in their attempt to look more like the Evangelical Church. In 1886, a woman named Mary Baker Eddy was recovering from an accident when she supposedly received revelation from God and began to write it all down. And the major work of her metaphysical truth that she supposedly discovered is called Science and Health with a Key to Understanding the Scriptures, or a Key to the Scriptures, and it defines the Christian scientist movement, a movement which is basically repackaging of Hinduism, and yet it claims tens of thousands of followers. In 1879, a man by the name of Charles Russell wrote a book entitled, Zion's Watchtower. He had originally been an Orthodox Presbyterian but began to experiment with Seventh-day Adventism and then Christadelphianism, all of them heretical views of the deity of Christ, and ultimately founded his own cult known as the Jehovah's Witnesses, a movement that claims or is embraced by millions of people around the world.
And I could go on and on. We could categorize all the isms and we could talk about the desire of people to follow spirit guides, the New Age movement, the pandering after, the UFOs, and all the truth that we can somehow glean from the experiences of so-called abductees. The rise of Islam, not only in the East, but in the West, which now claims more than one billion followers who believes that Jesus was merely an enlightened man. None of these beliefs should surprise us, and I'm not necessarily speaking to those beliefs. I'm speaking to what I would consider the body of Christ, those who've accepted the Lord, and we try to prepare ourselves for these doctrines that Paul calls the doctrines of demons, as we take our doctrine, which is the doctrine of scripture, to them.
The thing and the reason I bring that up and the reason I'm very excited about this paragraph of scripture is that while we are at no point perhaps in history confronted with more false teachings and false teachers and extra biblical revelations than today, what surprises me is the response of the church, the evangelical church, the church at large. Human rights, a global sensitivity, a global community feeling, which has taught us to respect the Hindu and to respect, in fact, other peoples of all languages and cultures. And by the way, that is well and good. We ought to respect the Hindu as a person. We ought to respect the Mormon. We ought to respect the Seventh-day Adventist. We ought to respect the Muslim. But somehow, respect for their religious systems that supposedly teach other ways to God has been slipped into the mix as somehow valid or worthy of consideration. Ladies and gentlemen, you most certainly should respect the Hindu and the Mormon, but you are to respect their religious system no more than first-century Christians respected Caesar worship. In fact, by the third century, Christians are being thrown to the lions because they will claim no other path other than Christ. They will claim no other God but the God of scripture. They will lose their lives over their intolerance.
You say, but wait a second, aren't you being unloving by not allowing other religions there right away? Well, let me ask you, if you had in your closet or cupboard, ladies, a bottle of poisonous chemical used for cleaning, would it be very loving to label it maple syrup? If there was a path leading through the woods and you knew that it led to a sheer drop off of several hundred feet, would it be very loving for you to write a sign and plant it beside that path that says, out of respect for your hiking preferences and experiences, this path may work for you?
The most loving thing you could do is plant a sign in the dirt next to the path that says, danger, drop off ahead. And isn't that what we're doing? When we declare the gospel, we're telling people that there is a drop off ahead into hell. And the most loving thing, my friend, you can do to a Mormon is to tell them he's wrong. The most loving thing you can do to a Jehovah's Witness is tell them they're wrong, that Jesus is indeed incarnate God.
The most loving thing we could do as a church is funnel money into missionaries going into the Muslim world to tell them ultimately they're wrong and that Jesus Christ is the truth. Well, aren't you being judgmental to say that one billion Muslims could be wrong? Doesn't the Bible say you're not supposed to judge? Yes, judge not lest you be judged.
Aha, I got you, says that. Matthew chapter 6 is where it says that. If you care to study that at length, you'll discover that Jesus is talking to those who judge as the Pharisees. They weren't judging truth from error. They were judging petty external ritual. And Jesus Christ said, judge not like them. Did you know that there are passages in the Bible that tell you to be a judge?
Let me give you four of them. Four times when it is not only right but imperative that you're to judge. Number one is right to judge when it relates to the truth of Christ's deity. In fact, turn to 1 John, if you would, quickly, and let's look at chapter 4. 1 John chapter 4, and look at verse 1. And I want you to notice how John labels the religions of the day who deny the truth of Christ's claim to be the only savior known to man, the only path to eternal life.
All others lead to eternal death. Look what he says. 1 John chapter 4 verse 1, beloved, do not believe every spirit, that is every teaching, every doctrine, but test the spirits. Literally, put those teachers to trial. Examine the evidence. Scrutinize their teaching.
Why? To see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Turn over to chapter 2 and look at verse 21. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? Christos, the Messiah, God incarnate. John says, anybody who denies that Jesus Christ is the incarnate God is a liar. That's the label he puts on him. It sounds judgmental to me.
Is he being unloving? He goes on, this is the antichrist. That is, this is the one who is against antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son, literally the equality between Father and Son in essence. He says here, the one who denies the Father and the Son is against Christ. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father.
And by the way, the underlying similarity, men and women, between Mormonism and Hinduisms, the underlying similarity between them is this basic fact. They all deny that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh and that he is indeed the revelation of God who came into the world to among other things reveal the only path back to God. Verse 2, back in chapter 4, by this you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist of which you have heard that is coming and now it is already in the world.
Skip to verse 5. They, that is these who deny the deity of Christ, are from the world, therefore they speak as from the world and the world listens to them. Jesus Christ came declaring not universal salvation but universal condemnation and judgment. He came on the basis of the fact that he can now offer himself as Savior because the world was in fact already condemned, already judged. And so he said, you need a Savior, here I am. That I'm one of many paths but I am the path of a condemned world to God. He said the world is walking along a very broad path and there are many people on that path and that path leads to what?
Destruction. And at a very time when the church needs to be planting a sign beside the path that says you're wrong, beware, drop off a head, caution, stop, the church at large is saying, well, aren't you being a little judgmental not to validate the view of the Hindu? And so we do them no good. We need more people willing to judge as it relates to the deity of Christ. Second, it's right to judge when someone rebels against the scripture.
These are all studies all their own. 1 Corinthians 5, 1-5 refers to the man who was openly immoral in the church and the church refused to act. They kind of closed their eyes. They allowed this man to be a part of the church. And Paul comes along and he says you should expel him from the church because of his incestuous relationship with his father's wife. And he said, although I'm not there in body, I am there in spirit. And Paul says, I have already judged him. And he encouraged the church to judge him as well and put him out. Third, it's right to judge our own relationship with Jesus Christ, how we stand with the Lord. 1 Corinthians 11 talks about the relationship of the believer to the Lord when it comes to communion time where we're not to drink unworthily, that is, we're not to drink with cherished sin. We're to evaluate through introspection and confession.
And he uses the word judge five times in three verses in that passage. You need to judge yourself, he says. Don't eat and drink judgment if you do not judge the body rightly. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged. And he's hung up on the word. Our contemporary culture is erasing the need for repentance and confession and the church at large is doing the same thing.
Because that isn't too positive. It doesn't make me feel all that good when I think of the holiness of God and the wretchedness of me. Yet there isn't anything more cleansing than understanding my wretchedness and His holiness and His grace. As I confess my sin to Him. Fourth, it is right to judge every experience and teaching the light of Scripture.
That just sort of categorically covers everything else, doesn't it? 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 15, Paul is talking about the natural man and the wisdom of the world as compared to the spiritual man and the wisdom from above. And he is saying the spiritual man judges all things. So if you want a verse that gives you the proper perspective on how you're going to live your life, the Apostle Paul says the spiritual believer judges all things. If anything, the Word of God doesn't tell you not to do it, it tells you to do it.
We don't need less of it, we need more of it. Judging things in light of the Scriptures. In fact, Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 calls this book with that same word, a derivative of that word, kritikos, which gives us our word critical, but also gives us our word criteria. This book, ladies and gentlemen, is God's divine criteria for truth.
It is the grand decider between truth and error. So the spiritual man or woman puts everything to the test of Scripture to see if it is indeed pure and true. One of the most incredible illustrations of a group of people doing this who are unbelievers even, Jewish men and Greek men, Jewish women, Greek women, is the illustration we discover in our next stop on our tour through the book of Acts. So let's turn back there to Acts chapter 17.
Acts chapter 17, look at verse 10. And the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. And when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the Word with great eagerness. Isn't it interesting, ladies and gentlemen, to this day, centuries later that you never hear of a church being named Thessalonica Baptist Church, Thessalonica Methodist, Free Church of the Thessalonians. But you do hear of Berean Baptist. I've heard of Berean Methodist.
You hear of Sunday school classes known as the Berean class. Luke tells us why they were more noble-minded. First, back in verse 11, the Bereans received the message with great eagerness. That doesn't mean they believed it, by the way.
That will happen later. They simply wanted to hear it. They received the message eagerly.
The original word carries the idea of rushing forward. We want to hear this. You may remember the Thessalonians didn't want to hear it.
They wanted to drown it out. In fact, in verse 4 of that same chapter you're looking at, it tells us just a few believed. Some believed in Thessalonica, but many will believe in Berea. There was a difference in the way they approached the exclamation of truth.
And you discover the very same thing when you witness for Christ, don't you? Two kinds of people, Bereans and Thessalonians. The Thessalonians says, I don't want to hear that stuff. I don't want to read that. Get away. The Berean says, I want to hear more about that. I want to hear what you have to say about the Word and God.
I've never heard that before, and I want you to tell me more. Who would you rather witness to? You feel like you're surrounded by Thessalonians?
Probably. The Bereans were more noble-minded because they wanted to hear. Secondly, they were more noble-minded because they examined the message thoroughly. Look at the next phrase in verse 11. They examined the scriptures daily.
The incredible thing was this loyalty and openness to the Old Testament, scriptures. And so now they're examining the scriptures to see if they're supposed to change their lives. You and I tend to examine the scriptures to try to find some point or proof that we don't have to change our lives. Or we ignore the book because we know it's telling us to change our lives, and so we'd rather not see it. The Bible says, look, they examine the scriptures for an hour on Sunday morning. Wouldn't that have been nice if that's what it had said? Because then we'd all done our time. This is it.
Circle that very challenging convicting word daily. They examined the scriptures daily. Didn't they have farming to do?
Herds to tend? Didn't they have meals to cook? Didn't they have children to teach? They had a synagogue and a rabbi. Didn't they pay them enough to do it for them?
Don't want to get too personal here, but I'm going to throw that in there. Oh, the rabbi wasn't supposed to do it for them, nor am I supposed to do it for you. Third, they examined the messenger objectively. Verse 11, they examined the scriptures daily to see whether these were so, that is to see whether or not Paul was telling them the truth.
Now, wait a second. Wasn't Paul a Pharisee? Wasn't he a graduate of Gamaliel School of Theology?
Wasn't he a man with a lawyer's logic and an orator's passion? Wasn't this man accompanied by signs and wonders? Didn't he have in his own testimonial a resurrection from the dead? Didn't he have the testimony having seen incarnate God? Did not Paul say somewhere in there, God told me this and now I'm telling you what God told me? Didn't matter. The question is, did what Paul have to say match what God had said?
And if we walked away with one little thing, that'd be it, I hope. When somebody stands up or you see them on a television screen saying, God told me, say, so what? Talk back to that television. Give me a reference. Give me a chapter. That's exactly what they did. It didn't matter. They wanted to know what God had said in Old Testament, black and white, propositional, explicit, expositional truth had God said it. The word examine, by the way, here is that word on a krino or krino, judge. They judged the scriptures. That is, they judged what Paul said in light of the scriptures. And if there was a fit, they were intending to believe it. If there wasn't a fit, they would have never believed it. I thought you weren't supposed to judge anybody. Here they are judging the apostle Paul as well.
They should. Paul's message was revolutionary. It was radical. It would rip families apart. It would it would bring controversy into the synagogue.
It would it would destroy peace, so to speak, in that city for months to come. That wasn't what mattered to them. What mattered most was whether or not Paul's message could be substantiated by Old Testament scripture. And if it could, then obedience to that word was critical because the word was revelation from God, and to disobey the word would be to disobey God. To argue against the word would be to argue against God.
To ignore the word would be to ignore God. And so they examined the message thoroughly, and they examined the messenger objectively, that is, by taking it back to the word to see if these things were so. Verse 12, many of them therefore believed.
Why? Because they found it was so, along with a number of prominent Greek men and women, women and men. But when the Jews of Thessalonica found out that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul and Berea also, they came there likewise, agitating and stirring up the crowds. In other words, Berea was fine until the Thessalonians came along. Then immediately the brethren sent Paul out to go as far as the sea, and Silas and Timothy remained there. They stayed.
There wasn't enough unrest to kick all of them out. They were able to leave Timothy and Silas behind to disciple the new believers and to establish a New Testament church. Verse 15, now those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible they departed. Let's move this, shall we, in the remaining moments from ancient Berea to contemporary believers. What can we pull from not only this passage but other scriptures as it relates to our evaluation and our attitude of judgment in our world today as it relates to what God teaches?
Well, three things. Number one, true doctrine concerning spiritual matters is expounded in scripture. Paul wrote to Titus in chapter 1, verse 13, this testimony is true.
Jesus spoke as was recorded in the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, these sayings are faithful and true. Paul wrote to his son in the faith, Timothy in 2 Timothy 3, 16, that all scriptures God breathed, it is inspired, it comes from God, and it is profitable for what? Doctrine.
That tells you what to believe. Doctrine, by the way, is not some kind of stuffy stuff for faculty board meetings and seminary dialogues. Doctrine, Paul said, is to be robed upon us. We are to adorn our lives with doctrine. Solomon said it this way, as a man thinks in his heart that as a man believes, so is he.
You are what? You believe. If you want to behave biblically, you must believe biblically. Who decides what you believe? This book? If you spend 30 minutes a week in it, would you know what to believe as it relates to contemporary issues?
Who decides what you believe? Your peers? Your professors?
Your past? Well, we better go on. True discernment concerning issues of life emanate from Scripture, secondly. The word is profitable, Paul says, so that you can be thoroughly furnished unto every good work, literally, unto every aspect of life. The word thoroughly furnished, a wonderful term, was used in first century Greece for a man who would stock his wagon for a long journey. Once his wagon was stocked, he had a wagon that was thoroughly furnished, same Greek word used here. In other words, God is saying that if you want to have discernment and wisdom over the long haul of life, stock your wagon with the word.
Do you want to have a life of purity and integrity and sincerity? I found it interesting as I studied the derivatives of krino, judge. One compound use of krino was the word krino, judge, and alea, which referred to the sunlight or the light of the sun, judged by the light of the sun. In first century Greece, if you wanted to know if honey was pure, you'd hold the jar up to the sun, and you could see as the sun filtered through whether or not they had mixed any impurities into it.
It was judged to be pure honey only after it was tested by the light of the sun. That's the word translated sometimes in your Bible as integrity. You want to have a life that honors Him. You take everything of your life, every fad, every ism, every thought, every process, every desire and plan of yours, and you hold it up to the light of the Son of God and His revelation.
You judge it by that light. Third true development of the church is explaining scripture so that its members can explain scripture to others. Paul wrote to Timothy, the things you've heard of me, teach the faithful men who will be able to teach others also. There's the implication of ongoing processes.
You teach others that grow up in Christ and they teach others, and then they teach others, and then they teach others. It may be one to many like this. It may be one to a few. It might be a parent to a child. It might be a small group discussion leader. It might be a Sunday school class. It might be a friend to a friend.
It might be a relative to a relative. It might be a myriad of ways, but one of the marks, according to Hebrews 5, that you and I are growing up in Christ is that ultimately we take what we are learning and we pour it back into the life of somebody else. That's the message and ministry of the church.
This church is not designed to simply fatten everybody up with biblical facts, but by God's grace to give you such a desire and love for this word that you'll want to study it and teach others. You know what a teacher does? Been a teacher?
Somebody who sits alone at a desk or at a kitchen table. It's a man or a woman, young person who pours over this book, who examines the word, who cross-references, who underlines, who outlines, who memorizes, who digs the truth out for themselves. Teachers tend to have a distaste for pre-digested truth. In closing, a story that I was told when I was a seminary student, Howard Hendricks was at the Yellowstone National Park and one of the park rangers told him that they have a problem every winter. Along the path that winds its way through the park, especially where there are bears that are known to live and reside, that they have signs marked along the road that say, don't feed the what? Feed the bears.
So what do people do? They feed the bears. And every winter bears die, especially the young ones. They die by the road because they hadn't developed as young ones who were now supposed to forage and hunt and they simply waited for someone else to feed them.
One of the other problems is some cruel tourists will come through periodically and give bears poison food. What we need to do as a church is give the truth to people in such a way that they can then dig into the truth for themselves, as we encourage you to do, because we are facing a generation and a society that is literally giving people poison food. We need more judges today, not less.
We need more critical thinkers today, not less. We need more people who are willing to evaluate their lives in light of the truth because we're ministering to a world that knows neither truth nor love, but desperately wants both truth and love. And we have come to this incarnate God, the second person of the triune God, and we have worshiped him today as our savior and as the expression, the only expression of truth from God.
He is the word of the triune God. I hope this time in God's word has equipped you today. This is Wisdom for the Heart, and we've gone back to our archives to bring you this vintage wisdom series through the book of Acts. Your Bible teacher, Stephen Davey, first taught this series many years ago, but the truth is just as relevant to your life now as it was when he first delivered it to the church he pastors. One of Stephen's greatest passions is training and equipping men and women for service to God, which is why he founded and serves as president of Shepherds Theological Seminary. Graduates from Shepherds Seminary are making a difference all over the world, serving God in their churches and communities. Many have earned their degrees and gone on to plant new churches, while others are serving as pastors in established congregations. If you or someone you know is interested in graduate-level theological training, I encourage you to consider STS. The seminary offers a 100% paid scholarship for qualified men who aspire to be pastors. If you're willing to study in person in Cary, North Carolina, commit to a full-time three-year program, and if your goal is to become a pastor, this opportunity could be for you. For more information, visit wisdomonline.org forward slash STS. Our nation and the world need individuals who are well-equipped to interpret and teach God's Word faithfully. Stephen and the faculty at STS are committed to investing in you. To learn more, visit wisdomonline.org forward slash STS. Whether you're looking to become a pastor or simply wish to grow in your biblical knowledge, Shepherds Theological Seminary provides valuable resources and training to help you serve God effectively. Thanks for listening. Join us again next time to discover more wisdom for the heart. .
