Testing and Discerning the Truth

Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you for speaking to us. Lord, I just pray for all of us.

You would have ears to hear and eyes to see. You would remove the veil from us. You would have eyes on our hearts.

So we could perceive the word with weakness and it could produce its fruit in the long run. In Jesus' name, amen. Matthew 16.

Matthew 16, verse 1. And the Pharisees and the Sadducees came, testing him. And they asked Jesus that he would show them a sign from heaven. It's interesting that the Pharisees and the Sadducees were teaming up together to test Jesus.

Because they had totally different teachings. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection. They had most of their teachings right.

And the Sadducees, they didn't believe in the resurrection. You know, but somehow they were able to find unity to test Jesus and to ask him to show them a sign from heaven. And it's interesting that they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.

Verse 2, Jesus answered and said to them, When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the morning, you say it's going to be foul weather, for the sky is red and threatening. Hypocrites.

You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the sign of the times. So the key word there is hypocrisy. That's the key word in that passage, it's hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy blinds your eyes to truth. The sign of the times was that the Christ was going to come. That's what they were all waiting for.

Everyone was waiting for the Christ to come. And here Christ is standing right in front of them and they are asking the Christ to show them a sign. But he is the sign.

But they missed him. They all missed him. Why? Because their lives were filled with hypocrisy.

When your life has compromise and hypocrisy, you miss Jesus. That is why it is important for us when we read the scriptures that our life lines up with what we believe is to be true. When we compromise and we have another way worked out, you are going to miss when Jesus is speaking to you.

When he speaks to you, when he is trying to show you something, he is trying to get your attention, you will miss it because you are looking for something else. And that is what happened to these guys here. This is what he said the hypocrisy produced in them.

Verse 4. A wicked and an adulterous generation that was seeking for signs and wonders. But he said no sign shall be given to it except the sign of Jonah. And he left them and he departed.

Now there is two things that we can talk about about the sign of Jonah. And Jesus emulates himself as the one who came in the likeness of Jonah. Preaching repentance.

And then in the end going three days and three nights in the belly of the earth and being resurrected from the dead. So the first thing the Lord spoke to Jonah when he spoke to him about going to that great city Nineveh, was that he was to go and preach repentance, but he said he was not willing because he knew that God was going to have mercy on them. So he just went exactly the opposite direction of what God's word said.

And this is what these men were doing. God had shown them truth, they had a lot of good doctrines, but they also had bad doctrines. Doctrine is the teachings.

When you mix truth with error, you end up having a foundation of iron and clay. Some strength, some weakness. And this is where we go astray.

When we're brought up, I was brought up in a certain Mennonite type teaching. They had some good strong doctrines, but they also had some teachings of men that went along with that. And in all the different denominations, they have a lot of truth, but there's also teachings of men.

And it's not the teachings of men that are going to cause us to stand in the evil day. It's the teachings of Christ that are going to cause us to stand. It's the word of God that will cause us to stand.

And like Aline shared about adding to scriptures, when we start adding to things, and we go by not only eating of the fruit, but also touching it, and we mix the senses in with the word of God, we end up with Jesus and psychology. We end up with wisdom from God and wisdom of the brain. Wisdom from men.

And this is confusion. And what ends up happening is you have the feet of partly iron and partly clay. And the end of it is going to be destruction.

And so what we see from hypocrisy is that it says here specifically, a wicked and an adulterous generation. Now adultery is in terms of sexual things, but it also is in terms of having other gods. Loving other gods.

When you worship the brain, you worship men. You worship the creation. And so when men who don't possess the Holy Spirit come up with wise teachings, and you mix that with the teachings of God, you get the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

You reason through the scriptures. And reasoning through the scriptures is what the Jehovah Witnesses do. That's what their book is called, Reasoning Through the Scriptures.

And they teach people how to answer from the scriptures with their human reason. And they have all these doctrines of men mixed in with the teachings of Christ. And we call that a cult.

And so we can call many denominations a cult because the teachings of Christ are mixed with the teachings of men. But if we purify our souls in obeying the truth, then you'll know what the will of God is for you. If you will to do His will, you'll know concerning the doctrine whether it is of men or whether it is of Christ.

When the Jews who believed in Jesus' name, they came and Jesus said, Come to me to be free, they were hanging on to their tradition saying, We are free. We're the king's kids. We've never been in bondage to anyone.

Abraham is our father. And so they had this teaching of this doctrine, you know, like there's this saying that says, If you're not Dutch, you're not much. Right? And so you have these different sayings.

And so you can hold on to these traditions and there can be so much pride mixed in. And when the pride is mixed in with the word of God, you are on dangerous, shaky ground. And so we love the traditions that come from our father.

I'm not talking about the food and the culture. I'm talking about the teachings of men. When you mix the teachings of men together with the teachings of God, you have a weak link.

And so what you have, and when I grew up, right, my dad was leaning away from the Mennonites and he was leaning towards the Pentecostals. And like Brother Zack says, you can have ten fingers and you make tongues the emphasis and you have one pinky, which is the least of the gifts, and it's ten feet long. And everywhere you go, you're whacking someone in the head trying to teach them to speak in tongues.

We had over a hundred people in our home and my dad taught them to speak in tongues. And that's how I grew up. Does it mean that tongues is not a genuine gift? No, it is 100% genuine gift.

But you go and you speak in tongues and then you go and you watch a filthy movie. You go and speak in tongues and then you go and get sensual with a boy or a girl. This is not the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Because the evidence of the Holy Spirit is holiness. It will lead you to purify your soul in obeying the truth. That doesn't mean that sometimes we won't stumble, we have an advocate.

If we stumble, we have an advocate. But we have to be lovers of truth. Rather than looking for an experience in a sign.

I remember this Westerberger guy. And he got the Holy Spirit in Costa Rica, totally in rebellion, he ended up in a psych ward. What in the world is that? You get the Holy Spirit, you speak in tongues, you end up in a psych ward.

This is not the Holy Spirit. This is a demon spirit. And so we have to test and discern truth.

Because Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. Now should we despise speaking in tongues? Absolutely 100% not.

We need the Holy Spirit. If it comes with an evidence of tongues, praise the Lord. But if you have to teach someone to speak in tongues and just let your tongue loose.

That is demonic. I don't see it that the apostles are sitting guys in a chair teaching them how to let their tongues loose. So that they can get the gift.

That's not from the Holy Spirit. That is a teaching of men. When you mix the teachings of men together with the teachings of God.

You have partial iron and partial clay. And there's going to be a collapse. This is important for us to understand.

Because there's many other teachings of men. You know, you talked about the fruit. That God said, you should not eat of it.

And then there was this added element of, nor touch it, which Eve said. Well I'm going to tell you that it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. That it's good for a man not to touch a woman. And so the word of God clearly says that touching a woman leads to sexual sin.

You can say, well in the Greek and in the lexicon and in the Septuagint and all this. It really means in a sexual sense. You know what? You just grab a girl by the hand in a prayer meeting.

And she's not your wife and you just see how the flesh starts to respond. As soon as you have sexual touching or you have any kind of physical touch with a woman that's not your wife. It starts to put demonic thoughts into your head.

It's uncleanness. And so we're to abstain from every evil way. Uncleanness.

And so we need to keep ourselves pure. How shall a young man keep his way pure? By taking heed according to the word of God. We need to take the word of God seriously.

And if we have another way worked out, maybe a doctrine of men. Oh, well, you know, my father has taught us that we can do this and we can do this. Once we're engaged, we can do those things and then this thing.

No, no, my friend. You want to keep your way pure? It's good for a man not to touch a woman. Keep your heart pure.

As soon as you enter that realm, that flesh is like a beast. All your senses will be going off. Just think about when you were dating and did things wrong.

You just couldn't get your hands off of that lady. Even if it wasn't in an unclean sense, it was sensuality which is uncleanness. It talks about the wisdom which is worldly, is earthly, sensual, and demonic.

So just because it's sensual and not sensual, it doesn't mean it's from the Holy Spirit. It's from the flesh. And if we could redo these things over, we would do them differently.

We would do them according to God's will. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks a sign. No sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.

And what Jonah preached when he finally was obedient was, Repent or be destroyed. And that's really in essence what Jesus was telling the Pharisees. You either repent of your leaven, of your doctrines, of your carnal doctrines, or be destroyed.

And if you really want a sign, the sign that you're going to see is that the Son of Man is going to be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth. And on the third day, after you kill him, you guys, after you kill me, I am going to be resurrected from the dead. This is the sign that you will see.

But they did not have ears to hear nor eyes to see. They did not understand. Now, he began to teach his disciples something.

You know, he spoke to all the people in parables. What is a parable? A parable is a story speaking about a spiritual truth. And so you can hear the story, and you can totally miss the principle of the story, the truth of the matter, if you don't have ears to hear and eyes to see.

And so here what we see is that Jesus said, To them I speak in parables, but to you, the disciples, I speak the mysteries of God. I explain the parables to you because he wants us to understand, as followers of Jesus, Jesus being our good teacher, also the Christ, we have a desire to learn of him. That's why we come to him and learn of me, because he's humble and gentle and hard.

And so here he begins to explain to the disciples what he was trying to say when he was talking to the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And he said this, the disciples had come together to the other side, and they had forgotten to take bread. Now Jesus had just done a wonderful miracle.

He's done a couple of miracles now where he breaks the bread, and he multiplies the bread, and he does a wonderful miracle, all by faith. But now they're reasoning among each other. He said, Is it because we have not taken bread? And Jesus being aware of it said, Take heed and be careful of the leaven of the Pharisees.

The leaven of the Pharisees, the yeast of the Pharisees. When you put yeast into something, it expands, it gets bigger. It never gets smaller, it rises, it gets bigger.

And once you get some yeast or some deception inside your heart, you can't just pick it out, it just kind of becomes a part of the whole lump. And so this is the danger of when you receive lies, that gets mixed with truth, it becomes one. How do you pick it out? It's so hard to rid ourselves of the doctrines and teachings of men.

But if you're a lover of Jesus, you'll find those areas where you were taught error, and you'll reject them ultimately. And then you'll all of a sudden be questioning again, and then you'll revisit them, and you'll reject them. You have to keep rejecting lies.

I remember a time when we came to the revelation that we had to all go to church, and we were meeting as a Bible study, all going to different churches. And we were like, If we don't go to church, we're not Christians. And I had to revisit, and revisit, and revisit, and realize that where two or three are gathered together in my name, that's, he's in our midst, that's church.

Church is not a building, church is the people. We're not to forsake the gathering together, but where two or three are gathered in his name. I just had to keep revisiting that, until finally I had to reject the fact that I had to go sit in some dead church, some dead building, listen to some guy that's not even born again, right, who smokes a cigar on the back porch after the thing, and I have to go in and sit there because I have to go to church, rather than finding fellowship in Christ because we are the church, members of one another.

It took a while until we could come to peace with truth. No, we're not supposed to forsake the gathering together, but if you're going to some dead church where the pastors are reprobate, there's another scripture that says come out from among them and be separate. Don't touch what's unclean, I'll receive you.

There's other scriptures that speak to that, and that's why we need the Holy Spirit. But Jesus being aware of it, they said, is he speaking to us in verse 7 as they reasoned among themselves? See where this reasoning from the scriptures comes from? Where you start to try to figure out what Jesus is saying with your head, rather than the receiving and the hearing of faith? That's why it's important for us when we're young to learn from people who have the Holy Spirit, who understand the word of God, so that we can rid ourselves of this reasoning kind of thing, because reasoning will always get you into trouble. When you listen to two sides, I've seen church splits come and go, and you have people with the Holy Spirit who are holding a position, and you have people who are very smart people, educated people also, and they're reasoning through things.

When you hear two opinions, you just don't know who's right. That's why we need the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth. You know, should we paint the barn red? Should we paint the barn green? Should we paint the church blue? Should we paint it white? And you can get a church split in an argument over that.

Should we sing hymns? Should we sing choruses? Should we speak the language of our motherland? Maybe in our case it was German, but should we add an English service? Church splits over that. Craziness! We divide over teachings that are salvation issues. Those are things that we divide over.

But if we can pass over, and it passes the purity test from James 3, then we can unite. If we can find things to unite over, then we unite. But if it doesn't pass the wisdom which is from above first pure, then peaceable, we have to divide.

And so this is where we need the Holy Spirit's help for sure, 100%. They were reasoning among themselves. Is it because we didn't bring bread that he says to be careful of the leaven of the Pharisees? And Jesus being aware of it, he said to them, Oh, you have little faith.

Why did he say, oh, you have little faith? Because they were using their brains to figure it out. As Brother Alain shared, when you use your brain, you get into trouble. You go by your senses.

You go by men. Yeah, I'm starting to feel a little hungry. I wonder if he's talking about because we forgot the bread.

And you start reasoning, and you start thinking with your belly. It says whose God is your belly, whose glory is in your shame. It's one of those things.

Just because your belly's telling you something, it doesn't necessarily mean that the Holy Spirit's telling you something. Yes. And so it's important for us to understand what the Holy Spirit is saying.

Oh, you have little faith. When you're operating from your senses, you're not operating from faith. The senses are the opposite of faith.

Reason is the opposite of faith. That's why you can't mix the two. We need to purify our souls in obeying the truth.

Why are you reasoning among yourselves? Because you have not brought bread. Do you not understand? Do you not understand or do you not remember the five loaves and the 5,000, how many baskets you took up? Or the seven loaves and the 4,000, how many large baskets you took up? He's saying, listen, it's a righteousness by faith. It's like when you have no way to make it happen, the Holy Spirit comes and the power of God is manifested and a miracle happens.

In every situation, even being born again, you can't reason someone through the four laws and get them to pray a prayer and say, Aha, now you're born again. And just put a little checkmark on the box. If anyone being Christ, he's a new creation.

He'll take a heart of stone, turn it into a heart of flesh. There's repentance involved. When repentance happens, it doesn't happen with the head.

It happens from the heart. And when sorrow happens, it's not because you got caught. It's because you sinned against the Holy God.

And so godly sorrow has to follow repentance, not to be regretted. And then the fruit of it will be righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And this is how we can begin to discern who is holy and who is his, rather than those who pray the prayer and belong to a club.

This is not what we preach here. How is it that you did not understand, verse 11, that I did not speak to you concerning bread, but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees? Verse 12, then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the teachings of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the mixture of the teachings of God and the teachings of men. And because they were a wicked and adulterous generation, their hearts had found loopholes.

Oh, well, I'm going to marry the girl anyway, so I may as well live my best life now. It's okay to touch. No, the word of God says it's not okay to touch.

We need to take heed to the things that we've heard as we drift away. Oh, but I have another way worked out. The Holy Spirit told me that I can do these things.

No, but the word of God told you that you cannot do these things, and the word of God and the Holy Spirit have to agree. This is how we begin to test and prove those who are of the faith and those who have a mixture. Now, we all have a certain measure of mixture.

Coming from our background, we have to ask the Lord and the Holy Spirit to help us. We have to come to Him. We have to come to Him in truth and in sincerity and be purified of these doctrines and teachings of men so we don't lead other men into error.

Because we're going to be responsible when we tell someone, you have the Holy Spirit, but they don't have the Holy Spirit. They may even have an unclean spirit, and we can't discern it because we have a problem with our discernment. When we get the right discernment, we will not be like the Pharisees who had most of their doctrines right or the Sadducees who don't believe in the miracles and the power of God and the prophetic gift for today.

There's a lot of people in the denominations who say that the gifts have ceased. They're Sadducees. They don't believe in the resurrection.

They say they believe in the resurrection, but then they don't believe in the gifts for now. They say they ceased when the countenance ceased, all the gifts ceased. What does that say about God? He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The Pharisees believed in the gifts. They believed in the resurrection, but they had the doctrines of men. They found loopholes.

Oh, my wife, I'm not happy with her. Oh, you're not happy with her. Oh, so I can put her away.

I found some uncleanness. I've been reasoning. Yeah, yeah, there's uncleanness there.

I'm going to put her away because, hey, have an eye on this other one over here. She's far better. And so I'm going to justify myself, and it says that they were giving certificates to divorce because they found uncleanness, and they found these loopholes to marry someone else rather than put away their original wife.

It's just demonic. When God joins together, let that man separate. Rather than looking for reasons to separate and divorce, rather, let's find a reason to unite and work things out.

That's the heart of God in the matter. The doctrine is the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. We have to love the Word of God.

We have to take the Word of God as a mirror and look at the Word of God and then examine it based on what I was taught from a young lad in the Scriptures. And when the two are in conflict, I have to come to accept the Word of God as truth. It may take you a while like the Bereans to work through these things.

Paul was preaching to Christ and the Bereans. They were hearing, but they said, you know what, we have to test this thing. Paul commanded them, he said, this is a good thing.

You're going to go and search the Scriptures and get to the bottom. I remember, I was taught from this high that when Jesus is going to come, He's going to come on that hill over there where they've got a mosque, and they're going to rebuild that temple. So we're just living our best life now because once we start to see that mosque come down, we start to see them rebuild that temple over there.

We get more serious about the things of God because then Jesus is going to come. But then I was reading through Scriptures, and he says, don't you know that you are the temple of God? No longer will they worship me in temples made with ants. You are the temple of the living God.

He said it's a spiritual house being built up stone upon stone on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. You as living stones are being built up into a spiritual tabernacle in the Lord. From Hebrews 12, you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the city of the living God.

And I'm looking at that and I'm saying that that's wrong. My dad taught me this way. And you're reading about the rapture.

Okay, well, you know, and all these different things, and all these different teachings. And then big name guys are writing books and making money and millions off of this stuff. And making movies and videos about it.

We're just watching it as our flesh just loves it. Oh, we're just going to get rapture here, there's no persecution coming. And then what happens, a little persecution comes, and because of the word's sake, you stumble and fall.

Because you're not prepared to go through any suffering. It says, he who endures to the end shall be saved. Oh, but I don't like that scripture.

Little Tim LaHaye said this and this and that. Well, who's Tim LaHaye? Listen to Jesus. Don't listen to me, listen to the word of God.

That's the one that we need to gather around, Jesus. When we gather around him, we're going to get light. And then when truth comes, I had to wrestle with this, and I started to realize that it's not the way that I was taught.

It took me months to really get around those scriptures. And really just come to embrace them and understand them as truth. When we come to understand them as truth, it begins to form a solid foundation in your feet.

And there's less and less of these slips going on, and more and more of a solid foundation, which is Christ, happening. May the Lord help you and give you understanding in these things, so that you will test and examine what you believe, so that you know in whom you believe. I was having a talk with my son Dave, we were driving, and I said to him, last thing before I left him, I said, listen son, you have to have your own faith in Christ.

It's time for you not just to go by what mommy and daddy taught you for 18 years, you have to test it for yourself. You have to find Jesus for yourself. You can't ride my coattails to heaven.

You have to know in whom you believe. He has to become real to you. And until he's real to you, then you've got to start to get serious about what direction you're going.

Because you're not going in a good direction unless you seek the word of God for yourself and understand it and know what you believe and why. Otherwise you're just going to lead the car right into the ditch. You're going to lead your family straight into the ditch.

You have to know that you're following Jesus, no turning back. And when you have a solid foundation and you love truth, then you're ready to lead and not until then. May the Lord help us to learn of him, to be humble and meek in heart, and that we can lead others to follow Jesus.

Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. Point people to Christ. Don't point them to your church.

Don't point them to your denomination. Point them to Jesus. He is the we, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father but by me. May the Lord help us in Jesus' name.