The convention ground outside Enugu was full by six in the evening. Kenechukwu had driven his mother down from Nsukka that afternoon, because she had been talking about the meeting for weeks. The guest speaker was famous. His sermons circulated on every WhatsApp group in the family, his books were sold in airport bookshops, and his name on a banner could fill a stadium. Kenechukwu, who lectured in chemistry at the university, had found a plastic chair for his mother near the front and stood behind her through four hours of worship and preaching.
The preaching was electrifying. The speaker was funny, fearless and completely sure of himself. He moved across the platform like a man who had never once doubted a word he said. Thousands responded to him with a roar. And near the end, in a passage about faith for healing, he made a declaration that was greeted with the loudest shout of the night.
“Some of you are carrying drugs in your handbag,” he said. “Your doctor gave you a prescription and you are swallowing it every morning like an unbeliever. I tell you, a child of God does not need tablets. If you truly believe, throw them away tonight and receive your healing by faith. Your medicine is a confession of doubt!”
Kenechukwu’s mother had been diabetic for eleven years. She took insulin twice a day. In the car on the way home, she was quiet for a long time, and then she said, “Kene, I think God was speaking to me.”
On Monday he called to ask how she was. She told him cheerfully that she had stopped the injections. By Thursday her sugar had climbed so high that her neighbour drove her to the clinic, where she was given fluids and an injection and a stern lecture by a young doctor who had seen it before.
When Kenechukwu sat with her that evening, she was confused and ashamed. “But he is such a great man of God,” she kept saying. “Thousands of people follow him. How could he be wrong?”
It is one of the most important questions a believer can ask.
A message can convince before it is examined
Most of us like to think that we believe things because they are true. But much of the time we believe things because of how they are said and who says them. A speaker who is confident, eloquent and popular can carry an audience a long way before anyone has stopped to ask whether his claim is actually supported by Scripture.
Confidence feels like authority. When someone speaks without hesitation, we assume he must know. Popularity feels like confirmation. If thousands follow a teacher, surely they cannot all be mistaken. Emotion feels like evidence. If a message stirs our hearts and brings tears or shouts, we take the stirring as a sign that God is in it. Repetition feels like proof. When we have heard something many times, from many voices, it begins to sound obviously true.
None of these things is bad in itself. Faithful preachers can be confident, popular and moving. God’s truth often stirs the heart. But none of them is a test of truth. A false message can be preached with great confidence. A teacher can be popular and wrong. A crowd can be moved by something that is not from God. Discernment means learning to look past the manner of a message to its substance, and past the reputation of the messenger to the faithfulness of what he says.
This matters especially in our setting. Nigerian Christianity has been greatly blessed by bold preaching and powerful ministry. But we also have a culture in which the “big man of God” can be treated as beyond question, in which ordinary believers feel that it would be disrespectful, even dangerous, to test what a famous minister says. That culture leaves God’s people vulnerable. Scripture does not.
Senses trained by use
The writer of Hebrews tells his readers that discernment is something that grows with maturity:
For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
He is frustrated with them. “For the time ye ought to be teachers,” he says. They had been believers long enough to be teaching others, but they still needed to be taught the basics. They had remained on milk.
Then he describes what maturity looks like: “strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” Three phrases in that sentence deserve attention.
“By reason of use.” Discernment develops through practice. It comes from habitually handling the word of God, reading it, applying it and comparing what we hear against it. Elsewhere in this series we have considered the responsibility of personal study. Here we see one of its fruits. The believer who reads the Bible regularly is gradually training his spiritual senses.
“Their senses exercised.” The word exercised is the Greek word from which we get gymnasium. It is the language of athletic training. Discernment is like a muscle. It grows stronger with repeated, disciplined use. The word senses refers to the faculties of perception. Just as a trained musician can hear when a note is slightly flat, or an experienced bank teller can feel a counterfeit note between her fingers before she has examined it, a mature believer develops a sensitivity to what is true and what is false.
“To discern both good and evil.” The goal is not suspicion of everything. It is the ability to tell the difference, to recognise and embrace what is good as readily as to recognise and refuse what is evil.
This is encouraging. Discernment is not a rare gift reserved for a few spiritual giants. The Bible does speak of a particular gift of “discerning of spirits” (1 Corinthians 12:10), but the kind of discernment Hebrews describes is something every believer can and should grow in. It is a mark of ordinary Christian maturity.
Quench not the Spirit, but prove all things
Paul gives the Thessalonian church a short series of instructions that hold together two things many believers find difficult to combine:
Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil.
“Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings.” Paul begins by warning against the opposite error to gullibility. Some believers, having been burned by false teaching or excess, become so suspicious that they reject anything that claims to be from the Spirit. They despise prophecy. They quench the fire. As a teacher who holds firmly to the present-day work of the Holy Spirit, including His gifts, I want to say clearly that this is a real danger. Other sincere believers hold that some of these gifts ceased with the apostles, and they too want to honour the Spirit and the word. But whatever view one takes, Paul’s warning stands: a church that refuses to hear anything from the Spirit for fear of error has also gone wrong.
“Prove all things.” The word prove means to test, to examine, to assay, as one would test metal to see whether it is genuine. Paul does not say “accept all things” or “reject all things.” He says test them. Everything: every prophecy, every sermon, every teaching, every claim.
“Hold fast that which is good.” Testing is not an end in itself. Its purpose is to find what is genuine and keep hold of it. A believer who tests everything and keeps nothing has missed the point.
“Abstain from all appearance of evil.” The word appearance here means form or kind. Whatever form evil takes, even when it comes dressed in spiritual language, we are to keep away from it.
Paul applies the same principle in his instructions to the Corinthians about prophecy in the gathered church: “Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge” (1 Corinthians 14:29). Prophecy is welcomed, and prophecy is weighed. Both happen together. That is the posture of a healthy church.
Try the spirits
John wrote his first letter to churches that had been troubled by false teachers. Some of them had left the fellowship, and their teaching was causing confusion:
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 is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
“Believe not every spirit.” John assumes that there will be many voices claiming spiritual authority. Some of them are of God, and some are not. The word try is the same idea as Paul’s prove: test them, examine them.
“Because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” John is not paranoid. He is realistic. There were false teachers in his day, and there are false teachers in ours. Jesus Himself warned, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15). Sheep’s clothing. They look like members of the flock.
Then John gives the central test: “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.” In John’s day, the particular error was a denial that Jesus had truly become human. But the principle reaches further. Every teaching must be tested by what it says about Jesus Christ. Does it honour Him as fully God and fully man? Does it rest on His death and resurrection? Does it centre on what He has done, or does it shift the focus to what we must do, or to the personality of the teacher, or to some new revelation?
Paul gives a similarly searching test to the Galatians: “though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). Notice whom Paul includes in that warning: himself. Even an apostle could not change the gospel. Even an angel could not. The authority does not belong to the messenger. It belongs to the message, and the message is Christ.
PunchlineTest every message by what it does with Jesus Christ. A speaker’s confidence, fame or signs cannot make a claim true if it moves you away from Christ and His finished work.
When signs are not enough
One of the most surprising passages on this subject is found in the law of Moses:
If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.
Look carefully at what this passage allows for. A prophet arises. He gives a sign or a wonder. And “the sign or the wonder come to pass.” It actually happens. Yet if the prophet uses the sign to lead people after other gods, they are not to listen to him.
This is a remarkable statement. A sign that comes to pass does not, by itself, prove that the message is from God. The test is not the miracle but where the message leads. If it leads away from the Lord, it must be rejected, no matter how impressive the sign that accompanied it.
Moses adds, “the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart.” God allows such tests to reveal whether His people’s loyalty is to Him or to the spectacular.
Jesus confirmed this principle. He warned that “there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matthew 24:24). And He said that on the last day, many will say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?” (Matthew 7:22). Their works were real enough to be remembered. But He did not know them.
Paul adds that “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Deception rarely looks dark and frightening. It usually looks bright and attractive.
None of this means that signs and wonders are to be despised. God still heals, delivers and confirms His word with signs. I believe that, and I have seen it. But a sign does not validate a message. The word validates the sign.
The devil can quote Scripture
When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the devil did something that should make every believer careful:
Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
The devil quoted Scripture. He took a genuine promise from Psalm 91 and used it to try to persuade Jesus to do something God had never asked Him to do. Many have noticed that he left out a phrase from the psalm, “to keep thee in all thy ways” (Psalm 91:11), as if to separate the promise of protection from the path of obedience to which it belonged. The verse was real. The application was a lie.
Jesus did not answer by denying the verse. He said, “It is written again.” He brought another Scripture alongside the first, and in doing so He showed that the devil had torn a promise from its context and turned it against the will of God. Scripture interprets Scripture. A single verse, lifted out of its setting and pressed into service for a claim it was never meant to support, can be made to say almost anything.
That is exactly what happened at the convention in Enugu. The speaker quoted genuine verses about faith and healing. But he set them against the rest of Scripture. He did not mention that Luke, who wrote more than a quarter of the New Testament, was “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). He did not mention that Paul told Timothy to “use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities” (1 Timothy 5:23), or that when King Hezekiah was dying, Isaiah brought God’s promise of healing and also told them to “take a lump of figs, and lay it for a plaister upon the boil” (Isaiah 38:21). God’s healing power and the use of medicine are not enemies in Scripture.
The Bereans are the great example here. They “received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11). The question is always whether those things are so, in the whole of Scripture, read in context.
Even when the speaker is admired
There is a strange and sobering story in 1 Kings 13. God sent an unnamed man of God from Judah to Bethel to prophesy against the false altar King Jeroboam had set up. The man spoke boldly, a sign was given, the altar split apart and the king’s hand withered and was restored. God had given the man clear instructions: he was not to eat bread or drink water in that place, and he was to go home by a different road (1 Kings 13:9).
On the way home, an old prophet who lived in Bethel went after him:
Then he said unto him, Come home with me, and eat bread. And he said, I may not return with thee, nor go in with thee: neither will I eat bread nor drink water with thee in this place: For it was said to me by the word of the LORD , Thou shalt eat no bread nor drink water there, nor turn again to go by the way that thou camest. He said unto him, I am a prophet also as thou art; and an angel spake unto me by the word of the LORD , saying, Bring him back with thee into thine house, that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied unto him. So he went back with him, and did eat bread in his house, and drank water.
“I am a prophet also as thou art.” The old man claimed the same office. “An angel spake unto me by the word of the LORD.” He claimed a higher revelation. And then the short, terrible sentence: “But he lied unto him.”
The man of God had a clear word from God. He knew what he had been told. But when an older prophet, with a title and a claim to an angelic visitation, contradicted that word, he set aside what God had plainly said and followed the man. The consequences were fatal. On the road home, a lion met him and killed him.
This story is uncomfortable, and it should be. It tells us that a claim does not become true because it comes from someone with a title, a reputation or a story of supernatural visitation. When any voice, however senior, contradicts what God has clearly said in His word, we must hold to the word. Paul showed the same conviction when he publicly withstood Peter, the most famous apostle of all, because Peter’s conduct “walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel” (Galatians 2:14).
Honour your leaders. Respect those whom God has used. But do not let admiration silence the word of God. The greater the reputation of a teacher, the more people will follow him into error, and so the more carefully his teaching needs to be weighed.
Practising discernment
NuggetHow do we grow in discernment in practice? Here are some questions you can bring to any message you hear, whether from a pulpit, a conference platform, a book or a video on your phone.
- Does it agree with the plain teaching of Scripture, read in context? Look up the verses. Read the surrounding chapter. Ask whether the conclusion actually follows.
- Does it honour Jesus Christ and rest on His finished work? Or does it shift the focus to the speaker, to a new revelation or to what you must do to earn God’s favour?
- What kind of fruit does it produce? Jesus said, “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). Does this teaching produce love, freedom, holiness and peace, or fear, control, pride and greed?
- Who benefits? Be careful when a message conveniently increases a teacher’s money, power or control over people.
- Does the speaker welcome questions? Faithful teachers are not threatened when hearers check the Scriptures. Teachers who treat questions as rebellion should concern you.
- What do mature, trusted believers think? Discernment is not a solitary exercise. Talk to your pastor and to wise friends who know the word.
Two cautions are needed. First, discernment is not the same as fault-finding. Some believers become so eager to spot error that they can no longer receive anything from anyone. They test every sermon for flaws and miss the good it contains. Paul said, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Testing is meant to lead to holding fast.
Second, not every disagreement is heresy. Sincere believers differ on many secondary questions: the timing of end-time events, forms of church government, the details of certain gifts. Discernment means recognising the difference between the central truths of the gospel, where we must stand firm, and secondary matters, where we can disagree with charity.
And where a teaching touches your health, your safety or your family’s wellbeing, test it with special care. If anyone tells you to stop prescribed medication as an act of faith, speak to your doctor before you change anything. Trusting God for healing and following sound medical advice are not in conflict. If you are being pressured by a church or a minister to act against your conscience or your safety, seek counsel from wise believers outside that setting, and do not be afraid to say no.
Kenechukwu did not mock his mother, and he did not attack the famous preacher. He sat with her that evening and opened his Bible. He read her the story of Hezekiah and the figs. He read her what Paul wrote to Timothy. He read her Colossians 4:14 and told her that Luke the doctor had travelled with Paul and written the Gospel she loved best. And then he read her James 5, where the sick are told to call for the elders of the church to pray over them.
Punchline“Mama,” he said, “God heals. You know I believe that. But God did not tell you to throw away your insulin. Someone told you that, and he was wrong.”
She was quiet for a while. Then she asked him to pray for her, and he did. The following Sunday she asked her own pastor and the elders of her church to pray over her, as James says. And she kept taking her injections.
“I will take my medicine,” she told him on the phone a few weeks later, “and I will thank God for it. And I will still believe Him for healing.”
A message can sound convincing long before it has been examined. Do not let confidence, fame or even signs settle the matter for you. Train your senses by use. Test what you hear by the word, read in context, and by what it does with Jesus Christ. Quench not the Spirit, and prove all things. Then hold fast to that which is good.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Can you think of a time when you accepted a teaching mainly because of the speaker’s confidence, popularity or the emotion of the moment? What happened?
- What does Hebrews 5:14 suggest about how discernment grows? What “use” are you giving your spiritual senses?
- How do you hold together Paul’s instructions not to quench the Spirit and to prove all things?
- What does the story of the man of God in 1 Kings 13 teach you about how to respond when a respected voice contradicts what God has clearly said?
- Which of the practical questions for discernment do you find most helpful? Which do you most often neglect?
This Week
Choose one sermon or teaching you have heard recently that made a strong impression on you. This week, write down its main claim in one sentence. Then look up every Scripture the speaker used and read each in its full context. Ask the six questions above. Write down what you find, including what is good and should be held fast, and anything you are unsure about. Take your notes to your pastor or a mature believer and discuss them together.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, You are the truth. Thank You for Your word and for the Spirit who leads me into all truth. Forgive me for the times I have believed something because of how it was said or who said it, without testing it by Your word. Train my senses by use, so that I may discern both good and evil. Keep me from quenching Your Spirit, and keep me from being carried away by every confident voice. Give me the courage to hold to Your word even when a respected teacher says otherwise, and the humility to hold fast every good thing I receive. Let all I believe be centred on You and Your finished work. In Your name I pray, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.