IS BIBLICAL DISCERNMENT ESSENTIAL?

We’re looking at the topic of biblical discernment—a topic that is always relevant to the true believer who stands ready to guard the treasure of the gospel message and to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. There is nothing more important in this life to guard or contend for than the true gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.

I want to focus on the dangers of living without discernment. Also, why are those who exercise their spiritual gift of discernment often attacked and the truth they offer for the purpose of edifying the saints often vehemently rejected rather than received? It will take several posts to answer these questions.

Why is it so dangerous to live in this world with a lack of discernment? The easy answer is that it is because of what is in the world. Discernment is a protection for the believer. Protection from what? It is protection from falsehood and from the source of falsehood. Ephesians 2 says that as Christians we all walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. We all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

Before God was pleased to save us, to free us from the bondage of sin and death, we all walked—it was our lifestyle, it was natural to us—according to our human sin nature. We went with the flow of the course of this world. We walked according to the prince of the power of the air—Satan—the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Satan controls this world to the extent that he controls those who are part of his kingdom. God is in control over even Satan, but for a time He allows Satan to work in and through the sons of disobedience. Satan is a spiritual being and has many demonic spirits working on his behalf. Satan cannot be everywhere at the same time (omnipresent) as God.

How did we live when we walked according to the course of the world? We lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and mind. We lived according to our natural wants and desires. We lived to please ourselves. Even when we served others, it was ultimately for our own good in some way. We were self-centered and loved ourselves over God or man. Living to glorify ourselves, we appointed ourselves god of our own lives. Taking the ruling and governing power of authority for ourselves, we refused to bow the knee to anyone who would attempt to have us removed from our own thrones. Our motto in this world was, “Nobody is going to tell me what to do! I’m going to follow my own heart.” This is the depraved state of all unbelievers. The motto of all unbelievers at the end of their lives is, “I did it my way.”

Later in Ephesians 2, Paul said we all lived separate from Christ, having no hope and without God in the world. We believed that the world and all it had to offer us would ultimately result in our best life now. We lived to that end that we would be able to obtain the greatest happiness here on earth. Our good and our happiness were our number one goals in this world—as we believed only the world could provide. Romans 1 says that even though we knew there was a God by the evidence within us (our conscience) and without us (looking at the Creation which demands a Creator), we suppressed that truth in unrighteousness because we loved our flesh and our sin more than we loved God. We were enemies of God in this unredeemed state (as stated in Romans 5:10). This was our state, and it is the state of many who even profess to follow Christ. We must always remember this.

Who are those who are most easily deceived? Those who are most easily deceived are those who are not well-grounded. We saw that from yesterday’s post. They are easy targets. From my lack of biblical discernment in earlier years I hope you could see that I was an easy target. I hope you could also see that exposing myself to so many different types of teaching put me in a perpetual state of confusion as to what was real and what was false. I was not well-grounded in the truth until I began abiding in the truth. The other thing I hope you saw was that it was the Lord who put good teachers into my path, gave me faith to believe the truth, caused me to turn from error, and gave me a heart that longed to follow Christ as He is revealed in His Word.

Jude 4 says we are to earnestly contend for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. That you contend earnestly is a Greek word transliterated as epagonizomai. You see our words agony and agonize in this word. Jude is urgently pleading that the group of believers he was writing to earnestly contend for the faith because certain persons had crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Throughout the course of teaching small Bible studies in my home, different women would come and go over the years. Some would come out of sheer curiosity for different reasons that are almost comical…if they weren’t so sad from a spiritual point of view. Some came because they were invited by another friend. Many came who were involved in religions that purported to be that of true biblical Christianity but were not. Several of them would sit in the Bible studies for years and then question the burden weighing so heavily on them. Should they stay or should they go? Their families remained in the denomination with which they had a long history. One woman was a part of the study for years, then just dropped off abruptly. A year later, she walked through the door one Friday morning. My joy knew no end! She gave her testimony saying that she had wrestled through everything I taught while she was in the study (I loved that, by the way). She knew that what I taught was completely different than what she had been raised to believe. When she left, she went to the leaders of her church and began questioning why they taught what they did. She read every book on her religion she could get her hands on alongside the Bible. When she walked back in the door she was convinced. She said the leaders of her church could only give her answers using circular reasoning and that the Bible alone held the truths she now believed with wholehearted conviction.

A second woman walked through the door one morning carrying her Joyce Meyer bible cover and coffee mug announcing that she was headed for a Joyce Meyer conference that very weekend. After the first study, she would not stop hugging me as she attempted to leave—which at the time was a little unsettling to me. She never went to that conference after the other women in the Bible study surrounded her with the love of the truth. This woman was part of the very church my first friend attended. (I lived in a very small town.) Over the years, I became very close friends with both women. When I began doing a study on the history of their church, I sensed a bit of push back from the second woman. She had been part of the study for several years, but this was the first time I saw some rebellion in her. Sadly, soon after, she cut off all ties with me and went back to her home church. I was devastated and shocked much more than I should have been.

I love both of these women with all my heart. I warned them both whenever they wanted to expose themselves to false teaching. I repeatedly called them both back to the truth. One came back, and one eventually walked away. An important lesson I learned over these years was that all I’m called to do is to teach the truth of God, and to warn about errors exposing the lies of the enemy. God is responsible for keeping His own, and He will. From my life’s testimony and that of many others, and the more sure testimony of Scripture, we can know that the Lord knows how to rescue us from soul-destroying error.

There are only two sources of religious ideology in the world. Only two. All false doctrine is the doctrine of demons. All false doctrine is propagated by the hypocrisy of liars who have no conscience. 1 Timothy 4:1-2 says: But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. There are seducing spirits behind all false doctrine. There are whole denominations under the Christian label who are propagating a false gospel using hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared.

“But it feels right! But it sounds biblical! But I love the smells, the sights, and the sounds of the rituals and historical ceremonies! But he’s such a nice and kind man; how can he be leading people down the wrong path?” I think I have heard it all. I’m sure you have too if you have walked with Christ for any length of time. I told you that it is my heart’s desire to be able to trust people. It is an area wherein I must set a guard over my own heart. We blindly put our trust in things every day in life. The much-used examples are when we flip on a light switch expecting it will come on, and when we trust a chair to hold our weight, etc. In the spiritual realm, you can only trust the truth of God’s Word. Because the spiritual warfare we fight every single day is a battle for the mind, it behooves us to see how detrimental it is for us to live and judge according to our feelings and emotions. Our feelings and our emotions were given to us by God as a gift, but we cannot let them be governed by the flesh. We must put them under the submission of the Spirit who has given us the mind of Christ in the pages of Scripture.

Tomorrow I want to look at the character of false teachers and their damning heresies and contrast them with that of true teachers. In James 3:13-18 we can see that there are two kinds of wisdom. There is wisdom that comes from above and wisdom that is earthly, natural, demonic. Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Like all soldiers in a battle, we are not to be naïve or gullible. We are to be on guard. We are to be skeptical. We are to keep our swords sharp and ready as noble Bereans. Don’t believe everything that’s being purported in the name of Christianity. False teaching is literally everywhere! How do I know? Because the Bible tells me that is true and because we’re still here living in the world!