“How to acquire spiritual discernment.”
This morning
He introduced his text by referencing Hebrews 5:12-14: For though by this time you ought to be
teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles
of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For
everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of
righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who
because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and
evil.
This truly is powerful, and illustrates we “must train our senses to discern good and evil,” and thus acquire spiritual discernment, which is the way to see things as God sees them, to see them from a Biblical basis----an inner sense----spiritual sensitivity-----to make the right choices----wise decisions. Are our decisions “self-centered, and carnal,” or are they in harmony with God’s will?!
And, we will come back to this. But the Bible is a “living word” and can challenge us all our lives. As I was following along with brother Stanley, I came to Hebrews, chapter 6,-------and feel I must write about it, not to try to “convince you,” but to stimulate your heart and mind to seek God’s truth personally on this-----and give you some “food for thought.” I will come back to the theme above too, but this time, you may have to truly “plow through a lot” to get to it with me.
Hebrews is a “challenging” book to understand, because it speaks of “Apostasy,” and “falling away,” (especially in Chapter 6) and if not careful, we can interpret that to mean an event of a “true believer,” a “follower of Christ,” then “losing the salvation” Christ has given a person who has truly recognized their own sinful state, the need for a Savior, confessed their sin, “repented,” and asked Jesus Christ to come into their heart as Savior and Lord, and at that moment been indwelled by the Holy Spirit.
I feel it has thus been used by some churches or religious leaders wrongly.
I love Schofield’s statement
about the Bible, which is always good to repeat here: "Anything may be proved by the 'Bible' is
both true and false------true if isolated passages are used; utterly false if
the whole divine revelation is in view."
We see over and over,
people using "isolated passages" to develop their doctrine, and getting lost,
and worse, leading others to be lost.
I believe in the
preponderance of evidence scripturally, that “once saved, always saved!” So, at
this time, I won’t go into those scriptures, but will proceed in this
devotional.
A
wonderful old saint named William MacDonald, who has written many
wonderful books that help unfold the scriptures for us, has also written a great
“commentary” entitled “Believer’s Bible Commentary”------and, I would
like to herein quote part of his preface to the book of
Hebrews.
IV. Background and
Themes
In a general way, Hebrews deals with the tremendous struggle involved in
leaving one religious system (my note, in this, it was Judaism) for another.
There is the violent wrenching of old ties, the stresses and tensions of
alienation, the formidable pressures exerted on the renegade to
return.
But in this Epistle the problem was not just a question of leaving an old
system for a new one of equal value. Rather it was a matter of leaving Judaism
for Christ, and as the writer shows, this involved leaving shadows for the
substance, ritual for reality, the prior for the ultimate, the temporary for the
permanent------in short, the good for the
best.
The problem also involved leaving the popular for the unpopular, the
majority for the minority, and the oppressors for the oppressed. And this
precipitated many serious problems.
The Letter was written to people of Jewish background. These Hebrews had
heard the gospel preached by the apostles and others during the early days of
the church, and had seen the mighty miracles of the Holy Spirit which confirmed
the message. They had responded to the good news in one of three
ways:
Some believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and were genuinely
converted.
Some professed to become Christians, were baptized, and took their place
in the local assemblies. However, they had never been born again by the Holy
Spirit of God.
Others flatly rejected the message of
salvation.
Our Epistle deals with the first two classes------truly saved Hebrews and
those who had nothing but an outward veneer of
Christianity.
Now when a Jew left the faith of his forefathers, he was looked on as a
turncoat and an apostate (meshummed), and was often punished with one or more of
the following:
Disinheritance by his family.
Excommunication from the congregation of
Loss of employment.
Dispossession.
Mental harassment and physical
torture.
Public mockery.
Imprisonment.
Martyrdom.
Of course, there was always the escape route. If he would renounce Christ
and return to Judaism, he would be spared from further persecution. As we read
between the lines of this Letter, we can detect some of the strong arguments
used to persuade him to return to Judaism:
The rich heritage of the prophets.
The prominent ministry of angels in the history of God’s ancient
people.
Association with the illustrious law-giver,
Moses.
National ties with the brilliant military commander
Joshua.
The glory of the Aaronic priesthood.
The sacred sanctuary where God chose to dwell among His
people.
The covenant of the law given by God through
Moses.
The divinely appointed furniture in the sanctuary, and the
magnificent
veil.
The services in the sanctuary, and especially the ritual on the great Day
of
Atonement (Yom Kippur, the most important day in the Jewish
calendar.)
We can almost hear the first-century Jews presenting all these glories of
their ancient, ritualistic religion, then asking with a sneer, “And what do you
Christians have? We have all this. What do you have? Nothing but a simple upper
room, a table, and some bread and wine on the table! Do you mean to say that you
have left all this for that?”
The Epistle to the Hebrews is really an answer to the question, “What do you have?” In a word the answer
is Christ. In Him we
have:
One who is greater than the prophets.
One who is greater than the angels.
One who is greater than Moses.
One who is greater than Joshua.
One whose priesthood is superior to that of
Aaron.
One who serves in a better sanctuary.
One who has introduced a better
covenant.
One who is the antitype of the typical furniture and
veil.
One whose once-for-all offering of Himself for sin is superior to the
repeated sacrifices of
bulls and goats.
Just as the stars fade from view in the greater glory of the sun, so the
types and shadows of Judaism pale into insignificance before the greater glory
of the Person and work of the Lord Jesus.
Yet there was still the problem of persecution. Those who professed to be
followers of the Lord Jesus faced bitter, fanatical opposition. For true
believers this could lead to the peril of discouragement and despair. They
therefore needed to be encouraged to have faith in the promises of God. They
needed endurance in view of the coming
reward.
For those who were only nominal Christians, there was the danger of
apostasy. After professing to receive Christ, they might utterly renounce Him
and return to ritualistic religion. This was tantamount to trampling on the Son
of God, profaning His blood, and insulting the Holy Spirit. For this willful sin
there was no repentance or forgiveness. Against this sin there are repeated
warnings in the Letter to the Hebrews. In 2:1 it is described as drifting away
from the message of Christ. In 3:7-19 it is the sin of rebellion or of the
hardening heart. In 6:6 it is falling away or committing apostasy. In
The message of Hebrews is as timely today as it was in the first century
of the church. We need to be constantly reminded of the eternal privileges and
blessings that are ours in Christ. We need encouragement to endure in spite of
opposition and difficulties, and all professing believers need to be warned
against reverting to ceremonial religion after having tasted and seen that the
Lord is good.
So,
to understand “to whom this Letter was written, and why” allows us to start our
understanding of its text.
Remember too, when this was written prior to the
temple being destroyed since there
is no mention of the Jewish Wars (starting in AD 66) and temple sacrifices were
still on going. But to me, it seemed then God allowed the temple to be destroyed
by Rome (I believe about AD 70 when Jerusalem was also destroyed,-----but
the temple completely, as they burned it, the gold on the roof melted down into
the stones, so the Roman soldiers dismantled each stone to get all the
gold-----and that ended temple sacrifice, and thus the centralized ritual, and
instruments on which their faith was based.) With that said, let us look at
Hebrews, chapter 6, written before the dramatic event, and examine it from this
perspective.
First,
lets look back to Hebrews 5:12-----and this part of that
verse: “the elementary principles of the oracles of
God,”------and then in Hebrews 6:1, Therefore leaving the elementary teaching
about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of
repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about
washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal
judgment.
Here if we will see it in this context: He is illustrating the “foundation laid in Judaism” as given in the Old Testament------in which there were 6 basic tenants:
1. Repentance from dead works------was preached constantly by the prophets as well as the forerunners of the Messiah. They all called on the people to turn from works that were dead in the sense that they were devoid of faith. Dead works here may also refer to works which formerly were right, but which are now dead since Christ has come. For example, all the services connected with temple worship are outmoded by the finished work of Christ.
2.
Second, the writer mentions faith toward God. This again is an Old
Testament emphasis. In the New Testament, Christ is almost invariably presented
as the object of faith. Not that this displaces faith in God; but a faith in God
which leaves out Christ is now inadequate.
3.
6:2 refers to ceremonial washings, not baptism in
Christ. Ceremonial washings figured so prominently in the religious lives of the
priests and people of
4.
The ritual of “laying on of hands” is described in
Lev. 1:4; 3:2;
5.
Resurrection of the dead is taught in
Job 19:25-27; Psalms
6.
The final foundational truth of the OT was eternal judgment (Ps.9:17; Isa.
66:24.)
These first principles were represented in Judaism, and were preparatory to the coming of Christ. Christians should not be content with these but should press on to the fuller revelation they now have in Christ. The readers are urged to pass “from the shadow to substance, from type to antitype, from husk to kernel, from the dead forms of the religion of their ancestors to the living realities of Christ.”
Hebrews 6:3-6 And
this we will do, if God permits. For in the case of those who have once been
enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of
the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age
to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to
repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to
open shame.
Who are these people? The answer is given in verses 4 and 5. In examining the great privileges which they enjoyed, it should be noticed that all these things could be true of the unsaved. It is never clearly stated that they had been born again. Neither is any mention made of such essentials as saving faith, redemption by His blood, or eternal life.
They had once been enlightened. They had heard the gospel of the grace of God. They were not in darkness concerning the way of salvation. Judas Iscariot had been enlightened but he rejected the light.
They tasted the heavenly gift. The Lord Jesus is the heavenly Gift. They had tasted of Him but had never received Him by a definite act of faith. It is possible to taste without eating or drinking. When men offered wine mixed with gall to Jesus on the cross, He tasted it but would not drink it (Matt.27:34). It is not enough to taste Christ; unless we eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, that is, unless we truly receive Him as Lord and Savior, we have no life in us (John 6:53).
They had become partakers of the Holy Spirit. Before we
jump to the conclusion that this necessarily implies conversion, we should
remember that the Holy Spirit carries on a pre-conversion ministry in men’s
lives. He sanctifies unbelievers (1 Cor.
6:5 They had tasted the good word of God. As they
heard the gospel preached, they were strangely moved and drawn to it. They were
like the seed that fell on rocky ground; they heard the word and immediately
received it with joy, but they had no root in themselves. They endured for a
little while, but when tribulation or persecution arose on account of the word,
they promptly fell away (Matt.
They had tasted the powers of the age to come. Powers here means, “miracles.” The age to come is the Millennial Age, the coming era of peace and prosperity when Christ will reign over the earth for one thousand years. The miracles which accompanied the preaching of the gospel in the early days of the church (Heb. 2:4) were a foretaste of signs and wonders which will be performed in Christ’s kingdom. These people had witnessed these miracles in the first century, in fact they might have participated in them. Take for instance, the miracles of the loaves and fishes. After Jesus had fed the five thousand, the people followed Him to the other side of the sea. The Savior realized that though they had tasted a miracle, hey did not really believe in Him. He said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seem Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” (John 6:26).
6:6 If they fall away, after enjoying the privileges just enumerated, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance. They have committed the sin of apostasy. They have reached the place where the lights go out on the way to hell.
The enormous guilt of apostasy is indicated in the words since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God, and put Him to an open shame. (v. 6b) This signifies a deliberate, malicious spurning of Christ, not just a careless disregard of Him. It indicates a positive betrayal of Him, a joining of forces against Him, and a ridiculing of His Person and His work.
Going on, let me add here a few of William MacDonald’s
remarks about apostasy.
Apostasy should not be confused with backsliding. A true believer may wander very far away from Christ. Through sin his fellowship with God is shattered. He may even reach a point where he is no longer recognized as a Christian. But he can be restored to full fellowship as soon as he confesses and forsakes his sin (1 John 1:9).
Some Christians are troubled when they read Hebrews 6 and similar passages. Satan uses these verses especially to unsettle believers who are having physical, mental, or emotional difficulties. They fear that they have fallen away from Christ and that there is no hope for restoration. They worry that they have drifted beyond redemption’s point. The fact that they are even concerned about it is conclusive evidence that they are not apostates! An apostate would not have any such fears; he would brazenly repudiate Christ.
I believe once we have truly repented of our sinful position, and asked the Lord, Jesus Christ into our hearts, and receive His salvation, and then are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, (and I believe that event is all one------instantaneous-----and eternal-----though as time passes we can be “more filled with the Holy Spirit” as we grow in Him),-------that we are saved,------redeemed to God the Father,------reconciled to Him eternally in Christ! I do not believe we can then “lose that position in Christ!” Ephesians 1:7-14 really is one of the powerful verses that speaks to my heart on this, especially the closing words in v. 13, 14: “having believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance,……….” And, there are many verses that then promise nothing can separate us from His love.
So, when we read Hebrews, I hope this helps you to not become concerned that you can “once saved, lose the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.” If we understand who this Letter was written to, and when, we can then understand it better------but at the same time it is still relevant today!
Now back to the topic I began: “How to acquire spiritual
discernment.”
To acquire spiritual
discernment:
1.
You must
seek it
2. You must recognize your dependence upon the Holy Spirit and be submissive to Him. Acts 2 and Acts 10-----The Holy Spirit is the gift of God for us-----our Helper-----the revealer of God’s truth in Christ. (1 Cor. 2:10-16) The issue is not “what I believe” (1 Cor.2:14) but what the word of God says. Without illumination by the Holy Spirit, we could not understand God’s plan of redemption through Christ.
3. You must be willing to study the word of God. God has unfolded Himself throughout the Bible----for us to know Him, His precepts, how He acts and thinks and operates. (Hebrews 4:12) For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
It is a living and active word, and it teaches us
how to relate to our heavenly Father. It is current and up-to-date. He is never inconsistent-----He never
changes. (If this seems to you to be contrary to what I just shared about
Hebrews, it is NOT. He has “grown our relationship” as His creation------as He
revealed Himself to us, and then, “in the fullness of time” came to earth as
Christ Jesus, to fully reveal Himself, and to redeem us by personally paying the
price of our sin, to fully reconcile us to Himself-----forever. And Hebrews
speaks of that period of His advancing us in relationship from “the foundation”
including ritualism, to the body becoming the temple, to spiritual worship and
personal relationship-----and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.) The Bible is
the basis for all spiritual discernment. His “principles” are throughout the
Bible. We need to “wash in the word.” Titus 1:9-11;14-16;
4. You must be instructed. Ex 44:23-----it is progressive-----a process of seeking,
understanding, and learning. Ps. 119:66----we are taught principles----so, we need
to instruct in God’s word and principles----to implant His precepts in our minds.
(Read 2 Tim 3:16-17 followed by this warning: 2 Tim 4:3-4-----and Prov. 22:6)
5. Practice the principles and observe the consequences. Prov. 9:9-10; 3:4-7;
1 Samuel
Matthew 16:21-22 Peter here had “no” spiritual discernment, and Acts 5:1-3 here he had spiritual discernment. Great men can “be wise and have spiritual discernment”-----but if they ignore it, they can get into serious trouble.
With spiritual discernment we will know who to fellowship with,-----and who not! Where to go-----and where not! What to eat------and what not! What to do-----and what not! Who to listen to------and who not-----(including men who proclaim to be men of God, even are pastors or ministers---------but are not well-grounded, or have their own agenda, or are perverting God’s word, and misleading. If you have spiritual discernment, and compare their message thoroughly to the Bible, you will know whether or not they are imparting God’s truth and wisdom.)
1 Thess.
Finally: Spiritual discernment will only work when you
are living in obedience to the living God! Without Jesus, there is no spiritual
discernment!
Thank you for bearing with me, I hope this stimulates your heart and mind to seek God’s truth on what is presented here.
In Him,
Bill Watts