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Brooksyne Weber
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Tuesday, October
18, 2022
Lancaster County farm north of
Quarryville, PA from the BB's parking lot.
Click
on photo to enlarge
"Discerning
Good From Evil"
Message
summary: Obfuscation is
all around us. How is your discernment today? Are you in
regular training? Are you actively practicing it? Are
you discerning good from evil?
“But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14).
Lancaster
County, PA is a relatively conservative area, in what
has been called the Bible Belt of the northeast. For
many years we have had a community wide fundraiser that
raised nearly 16 million dollars last year for a wide
variety of local non-profits, many of them
Christian-based. This year LGBT activists succeeded in
changing the requirements for non-profit groups to
participate by requiring approval and affirmation of the
LGBT agenda in a "nondiscriminatory statement",
asserting that not doing so was hateful and harmful
to the community. So, many Bible-faithful organizations
are no longer participating based on their biblical
convictions.
Obfuscation and discernment are two bigger words we will
consider today.
From the
beginning deceptive language has been a tactic of the
devil (Genesis 3). Today we face so many forms of
emotionally manipulative verbiage and language tricks
intended to obfuscate.
Obfuscation
describes what is going on all around us, especially in
government, education and media. The Merriam Webster
dictionary defines obfuscate in this way: “to make
(something) more difficult to understand”; “to be
evasive, unclear, or confusing and uses this example,
"Politicians keep obfuscating the issues".
Wikipedia
describes it this way: "The hiding of intended meaning
in communication, making communication confusing,
willfully ambiguous, or harder to interpret". In many
cases it is outright lying though we often hear the
words, "mis-statement", "disinformation" and
"misinformation" used in place of "lying"!
GK
Chesterton wrote, "It is difficult to believe that
people who are obviously careless about language can
really be very careful about anything else".
Due to
this flood of obfuscation we need discernment!
Discernment means "the ability to judge well". In a
Christian sense we apply discernment in obtaining
spiritual direction and understanding. Bible teacher
John MacArthur states,
"In its
simplest definition, discernment is nothing more than
the ability to decide between truth and error, right
and wrong. Discernment is the process of making
careful distinctions in our thinking about truth. In
other words, the ability to think with discernment is
synonymous with an ability to think biblically."
The daily text describes the spiritually mature as those "who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil". Other versions state, “have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (ESV) or “who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (NIV).
Conversion is the miracle of a moment, maturing takes a lifetime. As a maturing believer I want to be able to discern good from evil. The world is full of obfuscation making it essential that we practice discernment. We all have a part in this as we choose to regularly feed on God’s Word and apply it to everyday living. This is the sense of the phrase "who because of practice have their senses trained".
The need to discern good from evil is ongoing and will surely increase as we deal with “a spirit of delusion” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-12). Our source and guide must be the unchangeable standards of God’s Holy Word, not the fickle opinions of others. Going with the latter would be much like a dog chasing his tail in circles. Don’t we see this a lot in politics, the media, education and, dare I say, even in religious settings?
The Holman New Testament Commentary makes this point,
“Christians
are able to distinguish between good and evil. The
terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ may have both a moral sense
and a theological sense. Christians are those who can
spot moral evil and avoid it. They can see moral good
and attach themselves to it. Christians also can
distinguish between true and false doctrine. They will
turn aside from the false and faithfully follow the
true. Living the Christian life demands the spiritual
skills of stamina seen physically in a long-distance
runner. Unswerving, relentless applications of
Christian truth and practice will equip us for a
lifetime of usefulness which will continue into
eternity.”
Obfuscation is all around us so I ask you, "How is your discernment today"? Are you in regular training? Are you actively practicing it? Are you discerning good from evil?
Be
encouraged today, (Hebrews 3:13)
Stephen
& Brooksyne Weber
Daily
prayer: Father, just as
we hunger and thirst for physical
substance, intensify our hunger and
thirst for godly discernment, spiritual
knowledge, and righteous living. Jesus
declared, “Blessed are they who hunger
and thirst after righteousness.” Through
the daily grind of life the
inexhaustible truths revealed in Your
Word brighten our outlook and make
certain of our eternal hope, while they
also teach us discernment so that we
know good from evil, those who are
genuine from those who are impostors.
Jesus is the living bread for hungry
souls so it is our prayer that we look
to Him to satisfy our spiritual hunger.
Amen.Phillip
Hughes, in his Commentary on the Epistle
to the Hebrews, comments,
“Good
and evil should not be understood merely
in an ethical sense here as signifying
good conduct and evil conduct, but more
particularly, as the context requires,
in a comprehensive theological sense,
namely, of good and evil, or true and
false doctrine, which would include
moral teaching. The power of discernment
is something very necessary in those who
are “mature” enough to be “teachers,”
and something to be expected of those
who, like the recipients of this letter,
have been members of the Christian
church for a number of years.”
Today's
Suggested Music and Supplemental
Resources
Today we share some fall
scenes from rural Lancaster County
We took these photos when we
headed over to the Shady Maple last
Friday morning for my free
birthday meal!
You never
know what kind of traffic jam you will get
into driving the backroads of Lancaster
County! This wagon near Strasburg is
hauling tobacco.
Click on photo to
enlarge
Lancaster
County farm south of New Holland, PA
Click on photo to
enlarge
Lancaster County farm along
322 east of Ephrata, PA. In the
foreground are corn shocks, stacks of
corn piled upright for curing or drying,
evidence of this being an old-order
Mennonite farm.
Click on photo to enlarge
Click on photo to enlarge
East of
Ephrata we passed this old order Mennonite
school with the older students playing
volleyball during recess. The teacher joined
them as well!
Click on photo to
enlarge
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Scripture references are from The Holy Bible: New International Version. © 1984 by International Bible Society; NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, New King James Version (NKJV) Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. and the King James Version.
Personal Mission Statement: "I am created by God to bring Him glory. Through God's Son Jesus Christ I have been redeemed and make it my life's goal to please the Lord. My mission in life is to honor God through my faith and obedience and prepare myself and all whom I may influence for eternity."
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