Judging

Joseph Stowell once wrote, “Discernment in Scripture is the skill that enables us to differentiate.  It is the ability to see issues clearly.  We desperately need to cultivate this spiritual skill that will enable us to know right from wrong.  We must be prepared to distinguish light from darkness, truth from error, best from better, righteousness from unrighteousness, purity from defilement, and principles from pragmatics.”

The disciple of Christ is called to judge rightly.  This is not a judging of people, but of the teaching from leaders, pastors, and other disciples of Christ.  In John 7:14-24 Jesus provides us with practical ways to judge rightly between right and wrong, truth from error, and light from dark. What is God’s Word really saying?  How can we discern between truth and error?  And how can we know that Jesus’ words are truth?

Join us this week at ElmCreek Community Church as we search the words of Christ for truth and seek to cultivate the skill of discernment in our own walk with Christ.  May we be prayerfully prepared to encounter God this week and allow him to mold, change, and encourage us in our faith.

Striving to know Christ and make Him known,

Pastor Mark

John Calvin on the Spirit and the Word

"There is nothing repugnant here to what was lately said (c. 7) that we have no great certainty of the word itself, until it be confirmed by the testimony of the Spirit.  For the Lord has so knit together the certainty of his word and his Spirit, that our minds are duly imbued with reverence for the word when the Spirit shining upon it enables us there to behold the face of God; and, on the other hand, we embrace the Spirit with no danger of delusion when we recognize him in his image, that is, in his word.  Thus, indeed, it is.  God did not produce his word before men for the sake of sudden display, intending to abolish it the moment the Spirit should arrive; but he employed the same Spirit, by whose agency he had administered the word, to complete his work by the [efficient] confirmation of the word.  In this way Christ explained to the two disciples (Luke 24:27), not that they were to reject the Scriptures and trust to their own wisdom, but that they were to understand the Scriptures.  In like manner, when Paul says to the Thessalonians, 'Quench not the Spirit,' he does not carry them aloft to empty speculation apart from the word; he immediately adds, 'Despise not prophesying' (1 Thess 5:19, 20).  By this, doubtless, he intimates that the light of the Spirit is quenched the moment prophesying fall into contempt.  How is this answered by those swelling enthusiast, in whose idea the only true illumination consists, in carelessly laying aside, and bidding adieu to the word of God, while, with no less confidence than folly, they hasten upon any dreaming notion which may have casually sprung up in their minds?  Surely a very different sobriety becomes the children of God.  As they feel that without the Spirit of God they are utterly devoid of the light of truth, so they are not ignorant that the word is the instrument by which the illumination of the Spirit is dispensed.  They know of no other Spirit than the one who dwelled and spoke in the apostles - the Spirit by whose oracles they are daily invited to the hearing of the word" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion).

J.C. Ryle on the Revelation of the Christ

"There came a time when the world seemed sunk and buried in ignorance of God  After four thousand years the nations of the earth appeared to have clean forgotten the God that made them.  Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires had done nothing but spread superstition and idolatry.  Poets, historians, philosophers had proved that, with all their intellectual powers, they had no right knowledge of God, and that man, left to himself, was utterly corrupt.  'The world, by wisdom, knew not God' (1 Cor. 1:21).  Excepting a few despised Jews in a corner of the earth, the whole world was dead in ignorance and sin.

"And what did Christ do then?

"He left the glory He had had from all eternity with the Father, and came down into the world to provide a salvation.  He took our nature upon Him and was born as a man.  As a man He did the will of God perfectly, which we all had left undone; as a man He suffered on the cross the wrath of God which we ought to have suffered.  He brought in everlasting righteousness for us.  He redeemed us from the curse of a broken law.  He opened a fountain for all sin and uncleanness.  He died for our sins.  He rose again for our justification.  He ascended to God's right hand, and there sat down, waiting until His enemies should be made His footstool.  And there He sits now, offering salvation to all who will come to Him, interceding for all who believe in Him, and managing by God's appointment all that concerns the salvation of souls" (J.C. Ryle, Holiness).

John Calvin on Honoring and Respecting the Word of God

"Their [objection] about our cleaving to the dead letter carries with it the punishment which they deserve for despising Scripture.  It is clear that Paul is there arguing against false apostles (2 Cor 3:6), who, by recommending the Law without Christ, deprived the people of the benefits of the new covenant, by which the Lord engages that he will write his law on the hearts believers, and engrave it on their inward parts.  The letter therefore is dead, and the law of the Lord kills its readers when it is dissevered from the grace of Christ, and only sounds in the ear without touching the heart.  But if it is effectually impressed on the heart by the Spirit; if it exhibits Christ, it is the word of life converting the soul, and making wise the simple.  No, in the very same passage, the apostle calls his own preaching the ministration of the Spirit (2 Cor 3:8), intimating that the Holy Spirit so cleaves to his own truth, as he has expressed it in Scripture, that he then only exerts and puts forth his strength when the word is received with due honor and respect" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion).

J.C. Ryle on Christ and the Fall

"There came a day when sin entered the world.  Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, and fell.  They lost that holy nature in which they were first formed.  They forfeited the friendship and favor of God, and became guilty, corrupt, helpless, hopeless sinners.  Sin came as a barrier between themselves and their holy Father in heaven.  Had He dealt with them according to their deserts, there had been nothing before them but death, hell, and everlasting ruin.

"And where was Christ then?

"In that very day He was revealed to our trembling parents as the only hope of salvation.  The very day they fell, they were told that the seed of the woman should yet bruise the serpent's head, that a Savior born of a woman should overcome the devil, and win for sinful man an entrance to eternal life (Gen. 3:15).  Christ was held up as the true light of the world, in the very day of the Fall; and never has any name been made known from that day by which souls could be saved, excepting His By Him all saved souls have entered heaven, from Adam downwards; and without Him none have ever escaped hell" (J.C. Ryle, Holiness).