The Touchstone Of Truth and Its Teaching

It was good singing. I know some of you will be

thinking of another word there, the word beautiful.

Well, we can describe the Word of God as beautiful as well,

couldn't we? Amen.

We're going to turn this morning in our Bible reading to 1st

Thessalonians chapter 5. Now we're coming near the end of

our studies here, First Thessalonians chapter 5, and

1 Thessalonians 5 · chapter mention

we'll read again from verse 16 to the end.

OK, just a couple more sermons and Thessalonians will be

finished. First Thessalonians chapter 5,

1 Thessalonians 5:16

verse 16. Let's hear the Word of God

reading, of course, from the King James Bible, 1st

Thessalonians 5, verse 16. Rejoice evermore, pray without

ceasing in everything, give thanks, for this is the will of

God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Quench not the Spirit, despise not prophesies, prove all

things, hold fast that which is good, abstain from all

appearance of evil, and the very God of peace.

Sanctify you holy. And I pray God, your whole

spirit and soul and body preserved blameless unto the

coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithfulness He that calleth

you, who also will do it. Brethren, pray for us.

Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss.

I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all

the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus

Christ be with you. Amen.

And we know that God will bless to us this reading of His own

infallible and very precious word.

This morning. May we welcome you in the Lord's

name. And we want to say how delighted

we are to see all of you. And for those who are visiting

with us, maybe for the first time or maybe the second.

Amen. Now this morning we are

continuing with our series of expository sermons in the book

of First Thessalonians. And today my text is in First

1 Thessalonians 5 · chapter mention

Thessalonians chapter 5, and we're in verses 20 to 22.

It reads as follows. Despise not prophesying, Prove

all things. Hold fast that which is good.

Abstain from all appearance of evil.

Now have entitled The Message The Touchstone of Truth, and

it's teaching. In these 3 verses, you've got 4

but weighty exhortations from the Apostle Paul.

Remember, these words are written to a young church

navigating itself in a world of confusion, persecution, and

spiritual claims. These three verses, of course,

are not isolated sayings, but they're part of a closing series

of rapid fire royal commands. Each one of these royal commands

press upon the believer the necessity of living by the grace

of God and a vigilant, sober stanfast discerning Christian

life. You see, when I read these 3

verses, one word screams out from these 3 verses, one word

seems to be written over them, and that word is discernment,

discernment, discernment. You see, that is something

that's missing today, even within the Protestant and

Reformed Church, and it's definitely something that's

lacking. Many of us, sadly myself

included, were gullible and we're naive.

So the apostle here is speaking to the whole church, not just to

the scholars, not just to the ministers only, not just to the

elders, but to the church young and old, the Church of men and

women. Every born again believer is

responsible to think and to test and then everything by careful

examination under the authority and sufficiency of the Holy

Scriptures. See, let me tell you, true Bible

believe in Christianity is not anti intellectual.

True Bible believe in Christianity is not passive.

It is not gullible. It is not careless.

It is not naive. It's not a cynical rejection of

all things. No Bible believe in Christianity

involves a careful and a cautious commitment to that

which we rightly call the touchstone of truth.

You see, this morning I want you to understand this.

There is a standard by which all claims, all ministries, all

teachings, all preaching, all doctrine, every sermon written

and spoken, all opinions of men, all philosophies, all religions

must be proved by. And that standard is the

infallible and errant Word of God.

And these 3 verses especially are needed in every age, and

I'll tell you, they're needed in our day more so than ever.

Today. Like in days past, error often

disguises itself as the truth and even believers, folks like

us, without the Spirit of God and without the grace of God,

maybe LED astray. If we fail to exercise

discernment, we need to examine what we hear and what we read.

And that's what these 3 verses are about.

So I have entitled it The Touchstone of Truth and it's

teaching. Now there's four things here

very quickly. One, the proper regard for

prophesying. Look at the text in verse 20.

Despise not prophesying. Now let's try and consider the

meaning here. What does that mean in the New

Testament context? We're going back to the 1st

century. Prophesying included revelatory

as well as declarative elements. In other words, there was a

foretelling and a fourth telling.

And at the formation of the New Testament church at its

foundation, God did grant extraordinary gifts to the

church. The gift of tongues, the gift of

healings, the gift of the words of knowledge, the gift of

revelations. Now we call these same gifts,

and these same gifts served as a temporary and a foundational

purpose. In Ephesians 2 and 20, Paul

writes that the church is built upon the foundation of the

apostles and the prophets. Now, how many times is the

foundation laid? Well, it's laid only once.

It's not repeated over and over again.

We've just put in the footings for the church months and that

will only go in once. Think of a foundation of a house

only goes in once. Now I believe when the Canon of

scripture was completed, the need for these same gifts for

giving us revelation ceased. The writer the Hebrew says in

Hebrews chapter 1 verses one and two, he declares God hath in

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

these last days spoken unto us by his Son.

And I believe that the finality of Christ's revelation is now

inscripturated in the Word of God.

The Free Presbyterian Church believes and affirms in the

cessation of the same gifts, not because God has grown weaker,

but because His revelation is complete.

The sufficiency, the supremacy, and the authority of the Holy

Scriptures leaves no room for an ongoing revelatory prophecy.

Now I know that others disagree with me, and they are at liberty

to do so. We believe in liberty of

conscience and freedom of speech.

And I think of some very dear brothers and sisters who are

part of the Pentecostal church. But hear me out.

I'm going to ask this question. You see, modern speaking in

tongues, What does it consist of?

It consists of babbling in a nonsense syllables, not a

language. But the New Testament gift of

tongues was a same gift, for the speaker could speak clearly in a

translatable foreign language that the speaker had not

learned. So let's say I met a man from

China and he could only speak Mandarin Chinese, and I didn't

know Mandarin Chinese, and the Spirit of God came upon me and

helped me to speak fluently in a language I hadn't learned in

Mandarin Chinese to communicate the truth of the gospel to him.

That's what was happening in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

That was what was happening in the House of Cornelius.

We'll ask another question. You've heard reports of examples

of miraculous healings, but not one report in the 20th or the

21st century compares to the healing ministry of the Lord

Jesus. The blind see, the lame walk,

the deaf hear. The lepers are cleansed, the

dead are raised. It's not there folks.

It's not happening. Even in Pentecostal churches

where they say they've got the same gift of healing, for 100

years there's been fraudulent and spirit spurious claims but

no reported of miraculous healings like in the ministry of

the Lord Jesus. We'll go further.

Where's the prophetic revelation from God today?

Nothing that is practised his practise with the sufficiency

and the accuracy and the authority of those who proclaim

the New Testament gift of prophecy.

And I will give illustration after illustration, but let me

just give one. You've heard the name John

Piper. John Piper had a woman come to

him when his wife was in the hospital.

His wife was pregnant with her fourth child.

And this woman knocked on the door and announced, Mr Piper,

I've got a word from God for you.

I've even written it down. Now think of it a word from God.

God told me to tell you this. Here's what she told them.

Your wife's going to die in childbirth and a baby girl is

going to be born. Now that was spoken about by

John MacArthur in his book Strange Fire in Page 241 to 242.

John Paper went in from that woman at the doorstep.

He closed the door nearly his study and he wept and he wept

sore because John Paper is one of those who believed in a word

from God prophetically, that that's how God speaks today.

But let me tell you this, it doesn't come to pass.

That's the test. What actually happened is this.

Some weeks later he shouted for joy because his wife was spared

in childbirth and she gave birth not to your baby daughter, but

to a baby boy. So where was this so-called word

from God? When someone says the Lord told

me to tell you this, or the Lord gave me a vision, or I had a

dream in which the Lord showed me this, or I have a word of

knowledge for you, or the Lord wants me to tell you this, treat

that with great caution because all that is spoken and all that

is shared must be tested. It must be evaluated by the Word

of God because it can be erroneous.

The speaker can be mistaken. The Bible says in Isaiah 8 and

20 to the law and to the testimony.

If they speak not according to this word, it is because there's

no light in them. Suppose I'm sitting in a

restaurant down there in Belfast, right?

And someone comes up to me and says, hey, reverend, you like a

bargain. Now we all love a bargain.

You love a bargain, don't you? I've got a wee bar of gold here.

And he takes it out of his pocket and he says, look, this

is worth between 4 and 5000 lbs. It's a Troy ounce of gold.

I don't know what weight that is in your hand.

Not very Bighamshire, but it's worth 4 or 5000 lbs.

If you give me £100, I'll give you this here.

Now there's another book in my study by John MacArthur called

Fool's Gold and I'm wise enough to know if someone offers me a

bar of gold that's worth four and a half, £1000 and they're

only looking £100 for it, Sammy, then I know that there's

something fishy here. You see, that's the picture.

What should I do? I would say to the man, let's

take the bar of gold and we'll go into Lund's Jeweller shop

here in Queens Arcade and we'll ask them can you test an

authenticate that this is real gold or Fool's gold?

Let me tell you another little story.

See, it's possible to be deceived.

That's what I'm worried about, right?

There's a man called Aben Johnston, and he was a very

wealthy man. I would love to have met him,

but he didn't come to this church.

But I'll tell you, he was investing in precious gemstones.

He spent $3,000,000 on a blue diamond called the Streeter

Diamond that Sam Walden, the founder of Walmart, won in a

poker game. He spent another on 2.7 million

for a collection of diamonds called the Russian Blue

Diamonds. He spent 17 million in a

collection of diamonds called the Sylvia Walton Collection.

She was supposed to be Sam Walton's daughter.

Over a period of time, he invested $83 million.

Wow, 83,000,000 He invested in precious gemstones and one year

later, one year later, he found out he'd invested his money in

fake diamonds. They were all worthless.

Sam Walton didn't have a daughter named Sylvia.

In fact, he didn't have a daughter at all.

And he sued his Florida based jeweller, a man by the name of

Jack Hanson. The FBI arrested Hanson for

fraud. And in the year 2000, that's

what, 26 years ago, he was sentenced to 40 years in gaol.

He's still there. He was ordered to repay

$78,000,000 to this man, Aben Johnston.

But I don't think the money was ever paid certainly to that

extent. Now, what was Aben Johnson's

problem? He took the gemstones at face

value. He didn't exercise discernment.

He should have had the desirements examined by an

expert. He lost his fortune.

And you see, let me pick that up.

That's serious deception, isn't it?

That's what we call fraud. But there is such a thing as

spiritual fraud. You can be deceived about

eternal life. There are religious truths being

propagated by spiritual con artists.

And what's at stake is the eternal destiny of the souls of

men. And of course, Satan is good at

counterfeiting, and Satan can make error look like truth.

That's the meaning here. The meaning is despise, not

prophesying because it's easily to be deceived very quickly

here. So what is prophesying primarily

in the broader sense, it refers to the faithful proclamation of

the word of God. We call it preaching.

When you think of going to prophecy, you go in the sense is

to declare something to expound something to to foretell to to

proclaim the Holy Scriptures. John Calvin said by prophesying

I understand the preaching and interpretation of Scripture

whereby the churches edified. Therefore, the command is clear,

do not despise the preaching of the Word of God.

Do not treat it lightly. Do not grow cold toward it.

Do not harbour bitterness in your heart toward it.

Do not sit under it critically without a spirit of humility.

Now you've heard me saying many times, I know we're visitors

this morning, but I want to repeat this 27 years.

I'm not here to bully anyone, but I want you to understand as

a church you should thank God for a minister today because

many churches don't have one and would love to have a minister.

Secondly, you should thank God for a gospel minister, one who

preaches the gospel because there's some occupying pulpits

who don't preach the gospel. And that's a fact in Northern

Ireland, and that's one of the things that's wrong with the New

Testament church here in Northern Ireland.

The third thing is you have a minister who not only preaches

the gospel but seeks to be faithful to the blood in the

book. These 27 years I've sought to

preach the personal book of Christ, present the doctrine of

Greece, uphold the covenant of redemption.

I do not deny the sinlessness of Christ.

I don't advocate and support the introduction of the Alpha

course, I certainly don't promote homosexuality or

transgenderism, and I don't approve of contemporary

Christian music like practised in Hillsong or Bethel in the

United States of America or any other church in the United

Kingdom. God is their judge to their own

master. They'll stand or fall to their

own master. They'll give an account.

But you also have a minister here, not only who occupies the

pulpit, who is a gospel minister, who's faithful to the

blood and the book, who who who stands by the doctrinal purity

of the personal word of Christ, but you also have a minister

here who's a love for your souls.

And I can say that truthfully, I love all in this congregation.

My heart and soul is in this work.

I'm here because God has called me here.

Now why has God called me here? Well, the Lord alone knows we

have to ask the question despise, not prophecy.

And that's a danger in evangelical Reformed churches

that there's the preaching of the word is despised.

Now why is it despised? Because there's a careless

rejection of that word in heart and mind.

Because that word confronts sin. Because that word doesn't suit

someone, doesn't make them comfortable, It hurts them.

But a sword is meant to hurt fleshly.

Preference. Some prefer trinkets over truth.

Doctor Paisley used to say sermonettes produce

Christianettes. See.

Think of Jeremiah. Jeremiah 6 and 10.

The word of the Lord is unto them a reproach.

They have no delight in that. In other words, they didn't

receive the word with delight, but but the godly man.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord and his Lord of the

meditate day and night. In Second Chronicles 36 and 10

we read they mocked the messengers of God until the

wrath of God arose. You see, to despise prophecy is

not merely to ignore the preacher simply because you do

not like him, therefore you don't listen to him.

But to despise the preaching is to ignore the messenger of God

to your soul. To despise preaching is to

disregard the voice of God speaking in and through his

word. And you see, once you begin to

neglect and despise the preaching of the word, the

reality is there's a problem with your heart.

It's a lack of appetite. It's a lack of knowledge,

Spurgeon said. Nobody ever outgrows the

Scriptures. The second thing I want to say

very, very quickly, if you look at the text, prove all things.

Here's the persistent responsibility of proving.

Not only is that the proper regard for prophesying, but

there has to be the persistent responsibility of proving.

Prove all things. Now here's the balance.

We are not to despise prophesying, but neither are we

to swallow everything uncritically.

The word prove means to test, to examine, to scrutinise, discern.

As I've said, Bible believing Christianity is not anti

intellectual. We are commanded to examine and

evaluate and test and think everything that we hear,

everything that we read. The example of the Bereans, Acts

1711, they search the scriptures daily whether these things were

so. Did you know that Paul's

preaching was tested? They heard Paul preaching.

Could that be right? And they searched the Old

Testament Scriptures not out of belief or out of unbelief, but

out of a revelation for truth. You see, to be discerning

requires an evaluation and an examination.

And that evaluation and examination must be tested in

the light of the Holy Scriptures.

The Bible is our sole infallible guide, the inerrant, sufficient

supreme guide for determining truth and discerning error.

We have to guard the Church from false doctrine, from counterfeit

spiritual experiences, from emotionalism without truth, from

man's centre teaching. Remember, even Satan can

misquote and misuse the Scriptures.

Matthew 4. He quoted the scriptures to

Christ but twisted its meaning. The Lord Jesus responded not by

rejecting the scriptures, but by rightly interpreting it.

Prove all things requires one knowledge of the Word. 2A

Dependence of the Holy Spirit, 3 Humility of heart, 4A Love for

the truth, 5A Fear of God and 6A love for Christ.

You see, if even the Apostolic teaching of Paul was examined by

the Holy Scriptures, how much more must modern preaching be

tested? Can Christians be deceived?

Yes. Think of fool's gold.

Think of strange fire by the late John MacArthur.

Genuine people can be misled. Even the South.

Even Abian Johnson, the man who bought the gemstones that turned

out to be fake, spent $83 million and lost his fortune.

You think of the woman prophesying to John Piper?

Was that woman wrong? Absolutely.

Was that woman totally insensitive?

Absolutely. See every purported prophecy.

Listen to me carefully. Every dream, every vision, every

pronouncement or word of knowledge, if it contradicts the

Scriptures, it's wrong. The Bible says thy shall not

steal. So if you go out and steal,

you're breaking the law of God. The Bible says thy shall not

kill, You go out and kill. Cold blooded, premeditated

murder. That is breaking the law.

The Bible says thy shall not commit adultery.

You go out and commit adultery, you're breaking the law of God.

The Bible says remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

And those who profane the Sabbath, they're breaking the

law of God. See, Jesus said, take heed that

no man deceive you. Paul said in Ephesians 4 and 14,

he warned of being tossed to and fro and carried about by every

wind of doctrine. It's not what the false cults

are doing. The Mormons, the Juve witnesses

think of the false religions that are blossoming in Northern

Ireland, Buddhism, Islam. You see, the possibility of

deception is real not because the truth is weak, because we

are often careless and I believe there needs to be awakening

within grassroots Protestant loyalist communities and a call

for them to repent and return to the House of God in the day of

God to receive the word of God has found in the book of God.

We should be praying to that in and that's what our state of the

nation prayer meetings are all about.

You think of a bank teller. He learns how to detect

counterfeit money, not by studying fakes, but by knowing

the genuine article intimately. And as a Christian, you should

know Christ richer, better and fuller than ever you have from

the day of your conversion. You should seek to know your

Bible. You should measure all and every

teaching that you hear against the word of God.

I say to you, reject all that contradicts the Bible.

Embrace the great truths of the Bible.

Embrace this fact that the Bible doesn't contradict itself.

People think it does. Oh yes, there's difficulties to

be reconciled, but recognise that sincerity doesn't equal the

truth. We live in a day of online

sermons, a day of podcasts, a day when people put on Facebook

posts and say anything they want.

A day of endless opinions, a day of urgence.

I've got a command from God for you or to prove all things.

Remember what we read in the Scriptures, beloved, Believe not

every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of

God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

Hereby know ye the Spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ has come in

the flesh is of God. And that's a confession of the

great doctrine of the incarnation.

That's a confession of the virgin birth of Christ.

And if Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, then

you've got to ask not only who came, but why did he come?

And the chief answer, of course, he came to offer himself a once

and for all sacrifice for sins. But this man, after he'd offered

one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down in the right hand of

God very quickly. Just give me a few minutes.

The personal reception of perseverance.

Notice this text. It says hold fast that which is

good. You see true discernment.

It's in this text. It's not an end in itself.

Once truth is recognised, it must be received, it must be

regarded. It has to be embraced and held

firm and held fast. Whole.

Fast implies effort, vigilance, perseverance.

Truth is not to be admired from a distance, but truth is to be

accepted with delight and conviction in the heart.

Timothy was told this and Second Timothy 113 hold fast the form

of sound words. Why?

As we finish, truth has been constantly challenged in every

generation of the church. Secondly, our hearts are prone

to wander, many hearts of a love for what is new and novel. 3 The

world pressurises us to compromise and change, depart

from the truth. Fourthly, you've got the

subtlety of the devil. It comes as an Angel of light

and to hold fast then against this background of truth being

constantly challenged and our hearts prone to wander and the

world pressurising us to change and compromise, and the subtly

of the devil is an engine light. We're whole, we're told.

Hold fast the form of sound words.

And what does it mean? It means that we lay hold of the

truth. We'll receive it to our hearts.

We will love the truth. We will live it out.

We'll be loyal to the truth. We'll refuse to dilute it.

We'll stand to defend it. Solomon said buy the truth.

That's what he told his children and sell it not.

Do you know why? Because it's not yours to sell.

Because the Bible says sanctify them through thy truth.

Thy word is truth. And one final thing as we finish

the practical requirement of purity.

Notice verse 22. Abstain from all appearance of

evil. Here's the final command.

Paul presses these truths into life.

Now it's not enough to discern truth.

You've got to be disciplined. You've got to decide that you're

going to live right. Think of the the subject of this

that will freeze. Abstain from all appearance of

evil. That means the word abstain

means keep away from distance yourself from deliberately.

Think of the scope here. Oh, avoid all that's clearly

sinful. Avoid all that resembles evil.

You see, we're not to to walk and the Cliff face thinking how

close we can get to the edge. We're to keep a distance from

the Cliff face. Our hearts are weak.

Sin is deceitful. The devil is busy.

Our witness matters. We're called abhor that which is

evil. This has nothing to do with

legalism. This is about living a holy life

unto God. This is having the fear of God

in our heart. This is having a a love for

Christ. Think of a father and child

relationship. What does the child want to do?

To live to please their Father and our heavenly fathers in

heaven. And we should live to please

Him. And we should avoid that which

feeds sin. We should avoid that which dulls

us spiritually. We should avoid that which takes

us away from the Lord. Abstain from all appearance of

evil. Here's the proper regard for

prophesying. Despise it not.

Here, of course, is the persistent responsibility of

proving. Approve all things.

Here, of course, is a personal perception of perseverance.

Hold fast that which is good. And here's the practical

requirement of purity. Abstain from all appearance of

evil. May the Lord take these few

thoughts this morning and bless them to your heart as I have

tried to open up this passage of Scripture once again.