Message 16 - 1 Thessalonians Chapter 5:21 – Examine Carefully And Hold Fast To What Is Good – No Excuses! Series

MESSAGE 16 - 1 THESSALONIANS CHAPTER 5:21 – EXAMINE CAREFULLY AND HOLD FAST TO WHAT IS GOOD – NO EXCUSES!

{{1Thessalonians 5:21 “but examine everything carefully. HOLD FAST TO THAT WHICH IS GOOD.”}}

[A]. THE INTRODUCTION

When we consider this short instruction, two questions may come into our minds. Think of what you would wonder about the verse. I expect the questions might be, “What does it mean to “hold fast”, and how do we tell what is good?” Holding fast and defining good!

The first of these questions about the literal meaning tells us the range of usage the Greek word has. It can mean "I hold fast, bind it to me, I take possession of, and it is the same word for “arrest”, and for holding a ship on the right course, by keeping its head.” All that means a conscious effort and a determination. God wants you to take His truth and bind it to you; to take possession of it, and to hold it steady as steering a ship through opposing seas. That which is good needs to be our pursuit, and one of the purposes in our lives. The word for “good” is in the sense of “genuine,” answering to the proper concept of what it intends to be.” The same word is used in the same sense in in John 10 v 11 where Jesus says He is the good Shepherd. The word signifies what is good or fine in quality, as in {{2Thessalonians 3:13 – “As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good.”}}

When we come to the second question, “How do we tell what is good, or not good?” it is more difficult. Why is that so? Well, it is because of who we are. It is necessary to judge the goodness of something by an exact standard, and we are not an exact standard. We are failures. We are emotional, and we make decisions according to our fallen natures even though we have the Spirit of God dwelling within. Determining what is good or not good, is not easy, though God has given us a lot of help, which I will come back to, later on.

[B]. THERE IS NO ONE WHO IS GOOD

We need to recognise, that what is not good, can not do good things, in other words, good can’t come from evil. The verse from Romans gives the human position outside of Christ – {{Romans 3:10 as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one. Rom 3:11 There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. Rom 3:12 All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one.”}} Good does not permeate (spread, or soak through), but evil does. Even Nature teaches this. A good apple in a box of bad apples will not make the bad ones good, but a bad one in a box of good ones, will make all the good ones bad.

One can not becomes good by thinking of it or hoping for it. We are evil by nature, not good by nature. It is evil that permeates us – thoughts, feelings, actions, desires; and not good that permeates us. That is why the unconverted person can never hope to improve his goodness (which is not good in the first place in any way whatever) before God or man, without a radical change, the bible calls being born again. It is at that point a converted person receives the God nature, but then the battle begins – the flesh against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh.

We live in a world today where all the boundaries have been blurred and are increasingly, becoming blurred. We have no fixed point for marriage, no correct lines for morality, no division of good or bad in gender or behaviour or attitudes. There is little concept of God and 60% of Christians in the USA believe that Jesus is just one way to God, according to figures from David Jeremiah and the PEW Research. The absolutes in morality, and theology, and righteousness, have been overturned and substituted by man’s own codes of behaviour and by what is right in his own eyes, according to the days of the Judges of Israel where everyone acted according to what was right in his and her own eyes.

God’s standard has been replaced by man’s framework. Isaiah described these days correctly – in Chapter 5 he outlines 4 woes, which are significant for our time, as for his. {{Isaiah 5:18 Woe to those who drag iniquity with the cords of falsehood, and sin as if with cart ropes - Isa 5:19 Who say, “Let Him make speed; let Him hasten His work that we may see it and let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come to pass that we may know it!”}}