15. The Gift of Discernment

In the United States House of Representatives, in Washington DC, there's a marvel of bureaucracy that is known as the Committee on Committees.  I am assuming that it is to coordinate and to regulate the work of all the other committees.  But I can remember the stress that I felt when I first recognized that there was such a committee on committees.  In a similar way, I suppose the gift of the Holy Spirit that we are considering today from I Corinthians 12, the gift of Discernment of spirits, could be called a gift on the gifts.  Because it is given to determine if what proports to be of God, is of God, or if it's merely natural, or even from Satan.

It's odd to me that when I mention "from Satan", there's some of you that are reacting with either disbelief or with a kind of soft chuckle at such a medieval idea.  I say "odd", because the non-Christian world we're a part of believes very much in spirits.  10,000 full-time, and 175,000 part-time, astrologers ply their trade in 20th century America.  40 million of our citizens dabble in the occult.  Major universities of pride and learning give credit courses in the occult.  6,000 spiritist meetings, weekly, across our country.  The First Satanic Church in San Francisco numbers 10,000 members and advertises "every member with his own demon controlling him".  One quarter of a million Satanic Bibles are being sold in our cities, including Seattle.  You see, the world knows the reality of what Paul calls "the principalities and the powers and the rulers of darkness of this world."  And it's tragic that part of the church is busy smiling indulgently at such things.  By the way, the Christian is specifically forbidden by God's word to in any way be involved with such things as those spiritism matters.  Read Deuteronomy 18.

Now the New Testament makes it very clear that whenever God is manifesting His power, there will be a corresponding abundance of the manifestation of evil.  I've been in the ministry - I can't even tell you exactly how long now; I'm getting older and I'm losing my memory I guess - I don't recall ever a time when there has been such a hunger for the meaning and reality that only Christ can give; when there has been such receptivity to the gospel on the part of not just young people, but on the part of people like Sonja's aged father - 85!  Praise God, what a victory!  And yet, whenever there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit throughout the history of the church, there has always been a corresponding outpouring of the counterfeit, and of the false, and the activity of evil.  False prophets and lying signs and deceiving spirits and counterfeit wonders.  And so people begin to ask "how in the world is the body of Christ supposed to know the true from the false?"  How's the body of Christ supposed to know what is of Satan and what is just simply of the psyche, and what is really of God?  Some people respond in two different ways.  They ignore, or laugh at, or ridicule the whole idea of Satan and his minions of evil as being medieval.  Or they become so paranoid they become preoccupied with it, and they find him under ever rock and behind every pew and behind every seat, and they're scared to death of him, and they lose sight of the sovereignty and power and majesty of God.  We need balance.  And one reason why the Holy Spirit has given among that glorious list of gifts one that is called the gift of the Discerning of spirits is for this very purpose: to keep the body of Christ safe, protected, corrected.  So it's kind of gift on the gifts.

Now the word of God says in I John 4 that we are to test the spirits to see whether they be of God.  And then it gives us some very simple tests.  For instance, I Corinthians 12:13 says, "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit."  So one of the first tests that we must know and apply to the things we see and hear and are exposed to is: is Jesus Christ clearly Lord of that person's life?  Is Jesus Christ clearly Lord of that person's life?  If not, don't worry about it.  Forget it.  Set it aside.  Don't follow.  Secondly, I John 4:2 says, "by this you know the Spirit of God.  Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God."  So the second test is: is Jesus Christ acknowledged as God's Son?  Is He divine?  If not, it's not of God.  Third test: Matthew 7, Jesus says (also II Peter 2), "Every sound tree bears good fruit.  A bad tree bears bad fruit.  Thus you will know them by their fruit."  Not their words, or their followers, or their number of books, or their television, or their radio, or their newspaper columns, or their gifts.  But by their fruit.  So the third test is: is there evidence of true Godliness and holiness in that person's life?

Now, together with these three simple tests, God has given, by His Holy Spirit, to His church, a spiritual ability to distinguish between the spirits.  This ability's given on two different levels to Christians.  On one level, it's given to all Christians.  All who have been born of the Spirit have been given the spirit of spiritual discernment.  But the gift - the supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit, called the gift of the Discerning of spirits - is a more precise and greater power than the general spiritual discernment.

Now, let me suggest that there are three levels at which the body of Christ is to exercise discernment.  Every believer is to be discerning, and it's a crying shame when I see so many believers who just believe absolutely anything that is told them.  I mean anything.  You see, there has been given to all men the ability to develop what is called "natural discernment".  Natural discernment is the ability to make wise decisions.  Natural discernment means you observe, you collate and gather information, and you use that information to make a sound judgment.  That's discernment.  You'd call it "good judgment".  In my home town, they always called it "horse sense".  It means the same thing: it's just natural intelligence - the exercise of discernment.  Gathering information and making sound judgment.  By the way, that is a skill to be learned.  There's nothing magical about that.  That's a skill you learn, and parenting is largely guiding our children in the development of this skill, so that our children will be able to gather the information and make sound decisions without mom and dad having to stand there and say "do this" and "do that".  It's tragic when you have to do that when children are in their teens.  They ought to have learned by that time, how to make sound decisions.  And if they haven't, you have not done a very good job of parenting, because you've been making too many of the decisions for them.  Well, that's another subject.

The second level of discernment that takes place is what is called "spiritual discernment", and this is not available to those who are not born from above, but those who have a relationship with Jesus Christ have spiritual discernment.  But listen, spiritual discernment comes as the believer in Christ grows in Christ.  And listen very clearly what I say: the spiritual discernment comes to be developed in you and in me only as we come to know and obey the word of God.  Spiritual discernment does not come by osmosis, by sitting in meetings, or by reading books, or by running to religious movies, or meetings of any kind.  Spiritual discernment does not come by seeking superficials.  Listen to what Hebrews 5 says, when it addresses the immature Christian: "I have much to say about this, but it's hard to explain, because you're so slow at learning.  In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you still need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again.  You need milk, not solid food.  Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness.  But solid food is for the mature," (now listen!) "who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."  And that is clearly developmental spiritual discernment.  And how does it come about?  By constant use and training of the things of God.  That's the way you grow in Christ.  Not by getting perfect attendance pins that say you've been to every meeting every time the lights go on in church you're there.  You're not going to get spiritually mature that way - you're just going to get tired out.  What you need to understand is that the general spiritual discernment is our responsibility.  And it is our responsibility because it says "solid food is for the mature, who by constant use" - not something laid on us - something applied in our own lives.  "...by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."  Now the result of this kind of spiritual discernment is being rooted and grounded in the word of God.  And once we're rooted and grounded in the word of God we become spiritually mature.  The entire word of God.

Then there's the third level.  And this third level is what I believe the scriptures refer to when it speaks of the gift of the Discerning of spirits.  Now every believer is responsible to be discerning.  But to some, the Holy Spirit has given a special gift and a special power to do so.  The word translated "discernment" here, or "the discerning of spirits", that word is diakrino which has meaning of "to judge, or to evaluate".  It carries with it, in its connotation, the ability to gather the information and to make a judgment - not based on the passage of time, but based on knowledge.  Based on surety (certainty).

So here's a definition.  The definition of the gift of Discerning of spirits is that special ability that God gives by His Holy Spirit to some members of the body of Christ which enables them to know with assurance whether certain behavior or teaching purported to be of God, is in reality of God, or if it's of the flesh, or if it's of Satan.  To know with assurance whether certain behavior or teaching purported to be of God, is in fact a reality divine or human or satanic.  Here's a shorter one: it is the ability to distinguish between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error before the difference is manifest to everybody by the results.  Now, anybody can figure out whether it's good or bad on down the line when the fruit comes on the tree.  Anybody can figure that out.  But the gift of the discerning of spirits is earlier than that - it is God, by His Holy Spirit, protecting His body from that error.  It's the ability to discriminate between false and true; to recognize false teachings and teachers; to see the false before others finally getting around to see it; to be able to read a religious book and to sense - instantly and confidently - the subtle errors that it may contain; to listen to a sermon and to be able to put the finger right up on any deficiency of the full gospel that is presented; to be able to tell what the atmosphere in a service is just emotion, or it is emotion based solidly on Biblical truth.

Now let's look at the Bible for some illustrations of this gift that Paul refers to.  Matthew 16 tells the story of Jesus, in His relationship with His disciples.  He's just beginning His trip to Jerusalem for His betrayal and death and resurrection, and He says to His disciples, "Who do men say that I am?"

And they report back, "Well, some say Moses, some Elijah, and some say John the Baptist back from the dead."

And Jesus said, "Alright, but who do you say?"  That's a very crucial question.  These men have followed Him now for some several months and He is now asking them, "Alright, now that you've had a chance to walk with Me and listen to Me, and see Me at all hours of the day and night and in all kinds of pressures and situations.  What is your evaluation of Me?"  He didn't say, "What's your evaluation on the basis of what I said when we stood on the Mount of Beatitudes?"  He said, "You've lived with Me.  Now tell Me what you think."  And believe me, brothers and sisters, that's when the rubber hits the road - when people who live with us evaluate.  I want you people to think highly of me.  I want you to say, "Pastor Palmberg is a man of God."  But far more than I want that, I want my children and my wife to say I'm a man of God.  And that is tough, because they see me on my day off, and my off days.  Jesus turns to His apostles and He says, "Alright fellows, who do you say that I am?"

Peter, bless his heart - he speaks up and says, "You're Christ.  You're the Son of the Living God."

And Jesus perceiving the spirit within Peter says, "Simon, blessed are you, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven."  There's a spiritual source to that knowledge.

And yet, just a few verses later, Jesus has told His disciples He's going down to Jerusalem there to be betrayed, suffer, and die.  And old Peter, being emboldened, I suppose, by the compliment he just received, steps up and says, "No You're not going!"

And Jesus said to the same man He had just said, "this knowledge came from God", He turns to Peter and says, "Get out of My sight, Satan.  You are a stumbling block to me.  You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."  You see, Jesus would never tolerate, throughout the entire Biblical account, even true statements about His own Person if the statements came from the Evil One.

Then the story of Peter in Acts 5 which Pastor Steve read.  Somebody asked me when they saw what the scripture reading was - the story of Aninias and Sapphira, and that's a scary story - and they said, "Is there a reason why the same Sunday you read that text, you put the financial statement of the church as a bulletin insert?"  That's really not connected.  Unless the Holy Spirit wants to make a connection - that's up to Him.  But that's not why we did it that way.

I wanted to use that passage of scripture, because it very clearly shows an illustration of the gift of the discerning of spirits as exercised by Peter.  You remember the story: Ananias had just closed a big real estate deal and in that day and age, many of the early Christians sold their property and turned over all of their assets to the church and they lived from a common fund.  As they would work, they would just continue to put their wages in and then live from the church according to their particular need.  Now, Barnabas was the one who had done this - he had extensive real-estate holdings.  He liquidated his assets and turned over the assets to the church.  And Ananias says, "Boy, people really think he's something."  So Ananias sells a piece of land and come trucking in there, waited until it was a good-sized service so that everybody would see it.

We had a man in my home church that everybody knew owned more property in Nebraska than anybody else we knew.  And he would come to church about once a quarter.  And every time he'd come to church, you could see the trustee board would just relax, because when he would come to church, he'd pull an envelope out when the offering was given and that envelope (I've never such long envelopes in my life - it would just come out like this so that everybody could see that.  "Aha!  Here it comes").  And he'd lay it in the offering plate.  Now there's a lousy $3,000 every time he gave it.  And that guy, $3,000 - that was small change and coffee money.  But everybody said "ahhhh", you know.  But that's kind of like Ananias.

Ananias comes trucking up to Peter and he says, "Alright, here's the money.  I've sold my land.  Here's the money."  And the implication he very clearly gives is "I am doing what others are doing - I am giving it all."

Peter did not ask to see a financial report.  He didn't ask for a Dun and Bradstreet rating on the man.  He just simply looked at him and the Holy Spirit, speaking to him - gifting him with a spirit of discernment - said, "Ananias, why do you lie to the Holy Spirit?"  Listen.  That is such an awful thing.  He fell dead.  And then Sapphira comes along.  And she's thinking she's going to get in on a little of the glory rub that's going around because Ananias had been so generous.  And instead, she met her own death.  "Why have you lied?"  "Ananias, why has it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit."  And I'm sure that the other people didn't know what in the world is Peter talking about.  Ananias knew.  The Holy Spirit knew.

And then you remember the story in Acts 16, when Paul and Silas are in Philippi.  They're trying to get the church started in Philippi and things aren't going too good.  In fact, every place that they go in the city of Philippi and Paul is preaching, there's a little girl following them around there.  She's a little slave girl owned by a couple of guys.  She had the spirit of divination, which means she could foretell the future, and she's following these guys around.  And every time Paul really gets wound up in his preaching, this little girl stands up and starts to holler.  Now what does she holler?  Listen.  "These men are servants of the Most High God who are telling you the way to be saved."  True, right?  Every word was true: they were servants of the Most High God.  They were telling people how to be saved.

Finally Paul turns around and he says, "In the name of Jesus Christ, get out of that little girl."  She was healed.

I'm sure there were people saying, "Isn't it wonderful to hear that little girl testify to the truth of these men?"  Except that every time she did, she kept disrupting the preaching of the gospel.  Satan is never shy about even telling the truth, if it will serve his purposes.  And this little girl's clearly true witness was designed to disrupt the preaching of the gospel and to break down the possible establishment of the church at Philippi.  And you remember what happened as a result.  The two guys who had this little slave girl that she lost her profitability to them.  And so they pressed charges against Paul and Silas and said they're setting off riots.  And they got put in jail and then there was that earthquake and all that kind of stuff.  You know the singing at midnight, and they got set free and the Philippian jailer and his whole family became Christians.  And what do you know, there's the nucleus of the church at Philippi.  God can take some of the most destructive, disastrous things Satan can do and if He gets all the pieces, He can make a beautiful thing out of it. Brother Dave McCarther, sharing the weight of what he's had laid on him is really bearing witness to the fact that God makes beautiful things out of broken pieces.

We, as a body of Christ, need the gift of the Discerning of spirits today.  We need it exercised within our body.  And praise God for those who have it.  And there are some of you who do have this gift and it is clearly evidenced in your life and in the clarity with which you are able to cut through the foam and the froth and the wordage, and get to the heart.  And I praise God for it, because every genuine work of God is going to be challenged and counterfeited by Satan.  He can come as an angel of light, so the body has got to be protected from the error of both words of error and ways of error.  That requires a gift of Discerning of Spirits.

And that gift can operate on several levels.  One is, it operates on the level that a person will know when the apparently good behavior or teaching of another is - in fact - not of God.  Apparently good behavior or teaching - but is, in fact, not of God.  Let me illustrate it.  There's a man by the name of Petrus Octavianus, who is a native of Indonesia.  He served on the Luzon Committee of World Evangelism.  He was preaching to over 3,000 people in Stuttgart, Germany, a couple of years ago.  And at the end of his message, he just felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to call the people to stand silently to their feet and wait while he prayed.  And he said there was such an absolute confidence in his heart and mind that the Holy Spirit was moving through that silent standing 3,000 people and touching hearts.  And all of the sudden, behind him a man on the platform leaped to his feet and grabbed the microphone and started to speak in tongues.  Now, don't get shook up.  If you think I'm all against tongues, you'll have to come back next Sunday, because that's the next gift on the list.  But this man began to speak in tongues and Petrus turned around to him and said, "In the name of Jesus, be quiet."  The man dropped the microphone and sat down.  I mean, he was a preacher.  And he was speaking in tongues.  That's a religious-sounding activity from a religious-acting man.  And yet Petrus recognized - and he says in his own writings concerning this - "when I prayed for clarity in the situation, it became so clear I could not deny it.  That this speaking in tongues was not brought about by the Holy Spirit, but by the enemy in order to disrupt the work the Spirit was doing in the hearts of the silent throng."  And it was evidenced by the response - by the fruit that was born - he was right.

Now at another level, there is that of discerning whether someone who is a Christian brother or sister does something from a Godly or a carnal motive.  And that is the Ananias and Sapphira story.  On a third level, that involves supernatural ability to distinguish truth from error - even when motives are proper.  Now the exercise of this gift involves very sensitive judgment.  And that's why I believe it is evident from the scriptural witness that the gift of the Discernment of spirits must be accompanied by an extra measure of the fruit of the Holy Spirit.  Otherwise, it turns into a self-styled heresy hunt.  And God knows we've got enough of that going on today.  Or simple cruel harshness.  Or character assassination.  And because of that tendency, there are some who have that gift who are reluctant to use it, because, wow, it takes confidence and courage to speak out when everybody's going, "Oh, isn't that wonderful!"  To be able to stand up and say, "that is not of God," and tell why.  It's not a popular position to be in, I can assure you.  But it is mandatory for the well-being of the body of Christ.  Not everything that is supernatural in appearance or origin is Divine.  So, we must not uncritically accept all spirits and all manifestations and all witness to the work of the Spirit, when it may not be the Holy Spirit.  Listen to the instruction of God's word: "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God, because many false witnesses have gone out into the world and this is how you can recognize the Spirit of God.  Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is from God.  But every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.  Who is the liar?  It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ.  Such a man is the antiChrist.  He denies the Father and the Son.  No one who denies the Son has the Father.  Whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also."

Hear me.  Any teaching that relegates Jesus Christ to an inferior spot in any degree or measure less than the incarnate Son of God, crucified, buried, and risen again, is not of God.  That teaching's of the Devil.  I don't care how pious the phrases surrounding it and how sweet the smiles on the face proclaiming it - it is not authenticated by pious phrases or sweet smiles.  It is a lie against God Himself.  Jesus Christ is the all-sufficient and only way to the Father, and any teaching that adds to, or subtracts from, that, is not of God.  Paul writes to the Galatians, who were so eager to accept his teaching on the grace of God, but who also were influenced by the Judeazers who came around and said, "Yes, the grace of God is great and its wonderful.  It's marvelous and its necessary, but you ought to have circumcision too."  And they believed it.  And you read Galatians, he writes to them different than he wrote the other epistles.  He doesn't start off with a big long prayer thanking God for them and all the rest.  He just rolls up his sleeves and he says, "You foolish Galatians!  What's the matter with you that you've been led so quickly into another area.  Let anyone that preaches a different gospel than I preached to you be accursed!"  And, in case you missed the point, he repeats it again in the 9th verse.  You see, we are dealing with issues of eternal life and death.  There is no room for wiffling and waffling on the whole issue - for saying, "Well, they're nice people.  They must be Christians."  Anything that is less than Jesus Christ the Son of God, crucified, dead, and risen again - is not Christian!  I don't care what brand hangs on it.  They can be the nicest neighbors in the world, but they're lost according to the word.

Listen to this.  Some People want to add to it today.  "In Christ", Paul says in Colossians, "all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.  And you have this fullness in Christ, Who is the Head over every power and authority."  Listen, when you have received Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, what more do you need?  Nothing.  What more can you have?  Nothing.  You have it all, if you will live in the fullness of what you possess.  And that's why Paul, writing in Ephesians says, "Be ye filled with the Spirit."  Not, "Hey you have Jesus Christ, now you need the Holy Spirit."  Bologna!  That's not Biblical.  But some of us need the filling of the Holy Spirit.  We need to loose the power that resides within us, that has been given to us by our spiritual birth.  Then His gifts pour out upon the body of Christ.  But what more can you have than what you received when you received Jesus Christ?  Nothing.  Any addition to, or subtraction from, the gospel of Christ is not of the Holy Spirit.  It is not Jesus Christ the Son of God plus a ritual.  Or Jesus Christ the Son of God plus another book.  Or plus an experience.  Or plus a sensation.  It is Jesus Christ the Son of God plus nothing.  So Paul writes to the church at Ephesus and warns them, "I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.  And from among your own selves, men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them."  And the Corinthians were warned about counterfeit teachers when he says, "for such men are false apostles, deceitful workers disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.  No wonder.  For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, therefore it's not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.  But their end is according to their deeds."

Church, I have witnesses counterfeit conversions in my life.  But I still seek, by every means, to win men and women to Jesus Christ.  I have witnessed counterfeit spiritual experiences aplenty in my life.  But I still rejoice in the reality of the true spiritual experience.  I have seen counterfeit spiritual gifts exercised aplenty in my life, yet I still earnestly desire spiritual gifts.  The counterfeit does not exist unless there is the true to be copied.  Because God has provided a way to deal with the false prophets, He has by His Holy Spirit given some believers within our body the special gift that is called by Paul in I Corinthians 12, "the gift of the discerning of spirits".  Listen church, pray for that gift in our midst.  And listen to that gift when it is exercised in our midst.  And praise God for that gift, which expresses His unconquerable and incomparable love for His body, the church.  He says, "even the gates of hell won't prevail against it."

So go into a world that has no question of the existence of the spiritual, but has so little experience with the existance of the Divine, as men and women who - being born from above - filled with His Spirit, gifted by His Spirit, touch those who dwell in darkness and bring them, by His grace, to the Kingdom of God's dear Son.  God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will be with you in your ministry and with me in mine until, by His grace, we're together again.