The Word of God serves as the ultimate test of truth, providing a reliable standard to discern what is right and true from what is false. This principle is established in Deuteronomy thirteen and eighteen, which outline tests for prophets to ensure they speak God's truth and do not lead people astray. The sermon emphasizes that any teaching, practice, or idea must first honor God and align with His established Word to be considered true. It warns against relying on personal experience or practical outcomes as the sole measure of truth, urging listeners to consistently bring all matters before Scripture for evaluation.
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I'm very glad to be with you in Bristol for this conference. I've told several people I'm no stranger to Tennessee. I'm not really a stranger to Bristol, but I'm a stranger to this conference. I've never been to it before. And the reason for that is probably fairly obvious. I've never declined it before. Anyway, I'm glad to be here. And I thought I ought to go take a couple of minutes, a couple, and tell you that there's been a lot of false and misleading statements going around the campus and how I arrived last night. I won't try to clarify the whole thing. I'll merely say that for all of you who are sleeping soundly at night, thinking that your lives are safe and your goods in hand, because you have a trustworthy group of guards on the property, you're in big trouble and thus don't know it yet.
When I have walked up the steps last night in a dignified manner, whistling an old hymn, in a joyous Christian testimony sense, I've been accused of looking otherwise today. But what really hurt was the fact, though, there were three strong men there, and a guard fully equipped an arm, was that they all looked scared. And then I walked up and asked if I was near Cullen's College, and none of them could really say, yes, this was it. They all looked apprehensive, see. And to see the guard half talking his fistful, getting... It would make you wonder what's happening in the South when grown men are worn down by one misguided Yankee. So, I only say for those of you who think that you can sleep comfortably at night because the grounds are protected and the dormitories are washed and the buildings are secured, better you should stay awake.
Having clarified that bit, I would like to read in Deuteronomy thirteen and also in Deuteronomy eighteen. I am very happy to be with you. I counted the real privilege in the Lord. I'd be here but the Sharon's ministry with Brother Rogers and many other fellowships too. You will not see me at many of the recreational activities. I was a little surprised by them. If anyone in our home assembly in Philadelphia finds that Brother Detweiler approves of all its recreation, I don't know what they will say. But we'll see about those things in time to come. And I'd like to read in Deuteronomy twelve, really, the last verse of Deuteronomy twelve, and then the first five verses of Deuteronomy thirteen.
And then I would like to move over to Deuteronomy eighteen and read a battery of verses there also. So the first reading is in Deuteronomy twelve of verse thirty and two. What things, however, I command you of birth to do it. Thou shalt not add thereto nor diminish from it. 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, for I'll be fake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them, thou shalt not part them under the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God tests you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. He shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and cleave unto him.
And that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken to you to turn away you from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, and thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shall thou put the evil away from the midst of thee. And then in Deuteronomy eighteen quotes from verse eighteen to the end of the chapter. Deuteronomy eighteen, verse eighteen to the end of the chapter. Deuteronomy eighteen, eighteen. I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth. And he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.
And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearten unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. but the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, for that shall speak in the name of other God, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken, when a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken. But the prophet hath spoken it presumptively, thou shalt not be afraid of him. These two readings in Deuteronomy thirteen and Deuteronomy eighteen.
And this is what's known as a page holder like that. There are a lot of things that I personally am thankful for as a result of the grace of God and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're enormously thankful for salvation, for the joy of being born again through faith in the Son of God. being able to say, Father, to the Creator of this world, thankful for the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit, thankful for the fellowship that believers have together. These are spiritual blessings and areas of thanks which if you tried to put enough words together to describe them rightly, you could not do. They are too high and too mighty to be boiled down to a few words. But in addition to those works of grace, there are a lot of other things for which I personally am thankful.
You can't really call them secondary things. They are just other things. Maybe in the long run they're all rather equally important. But these first few I mentioned relate to a very high spiritual level of life. Then there are a number of things eminently practical and useful in the day-by-day course of life for which I personally am very glad God has granted them to us. Things specifically given so that we might know how our lives are to be ordered and how our time and energies are to be used and spent. I don't know whether I will think of more than one or two of those things or not, but one is very much in the mind this evening, and that's the one which comes from the general understanding of these verses in Deuteronomy thirteen and Deuteronomy eighteen.
These two passages, most Old Testament scholars will tell you right away, give the test for prophets to tell whether a man spoke the truth or whether he didn't speak the truth, whether he was a good guy or a bad guy, whether he had credentials from God or whether he were merely appointed himself. They were given to the children of Israel because in their long history they would need to have some way of knowing who spoke for God and who only spoke out of his own head. And of course that age of Israel is over and that walk through the wilderness is over. But the nature of the character of redemptive truth is continually true. And so I look at a passage like this and say, I am not so much worried about prophets. I worry about a lot of interesting things, but I'm not so much worried about prophets.
But I am enormously worried about the character of truth and knowing what things are right and what things are not right. So I recognize that in passages like these, we are not only given a test for prophets generally, but specifically we are also given a test for truth. to determine those things that are true and good for us and those things that are false and not good for us. So that we're not left to make up our own mind about a lot of things and we're not left to be great, careful students of everybody's opinion and figure out what's good and bad about it. We're left with some concrete ideas in the Word of God to guide us, especially with regard to knowing what's true and what isn't true. So I like to look at a passage like this and say, just from a human point of view, from the own sphere of reference, that what we have in the passages together is a test of truth.
And I'd like to go a step beyond that and point out that by putting them together, you'll recognize immediately that the word of God is the test of truth. Now we're using truth here, not in the personified sense of Jesus in John, fourteen, six, but we're using truth in a noun adjectival sense to describe those things that are right. So I look and Moses is saying, here I will give you a word. And that word will let you distinguish between things true and things false, all the way through the wilderness, all the way through the giving of Scripture, all the way through the New Testament age, until the Lord gathers us all to be with himself and wraps this whole thing up. A test of truth, and that test of truth is the word of God.
And what I said a few moments ago, I mean very fervently. I'm thankful that I haven't been left to figure out everybody's opinion with my limited mind and come up with ideas of what was right and wrong and all that sort of thing. Thanks to letting his wisdom and providence trust, God has given us an infallible word of truth. Inerrant and exact truth. And by and large, pretty readily understand a bull that anybody will put its head to it and put its heart into it. Maybe nobody knows it all, but a lot of us know a lot more, really, or could know a lot more and do more, a lot more than we might otherwise be expected to by the work of the Spirit of God through it in us. So what I'm trying to say is that the thing I want to look at tonight is the test of truth.
bearing in mind specifically that the Word of God is that which tests everything to determine its trueness or its falseness. And you'll forgive me if I repeat it very often, because when you get to be my age, you have a tendency to forget what you just said and to say it over again several times. But the Word of God is to test the truth. We bring everything to it, to test it. to see whether it's good or bad, not only the writings of men, not only ideas, but even the practices of your life, and worse yet, the practices of my life. We bring them all to the Word of God, knowing that it is the test of truth. Now, comrades, in this day and age, I can impress on you how important it is to know that, because this is an age of great learning and great ideas and big imaginations.
It's an age in which people are furiously busy with ideas of their own and very much interested in delivering themselves from standards that go contrary to their own will. So I don't really care what your age might be or any other single thing about you. The thing I want to press for tonight is the positive knowledge that the Word of God is the test of truth. and things written and things acted, things said and things done are to be measured or tested by it to determine whether they are accurate, honest, and true, or whether they come into some other category. If you want to sometime at your leisure, you can read some fascinating passages about it in Isaiah where the prophet stands back and he says, this people would like to say that things have to be line on line and line on line, precept on precept for them.
When the Lord speaks to them, he says, that's exactly the way it will be. And they will find that their own claims and their own works are tested by one thing, the Word of God. I don't want to ramble too long, but let me point out to you that a lot of people would like to test things by whether they work or not. And so it's not unlikely to find somebody doing some bizarre practice, and he says, well, it works. And that is not a bona fide test of truth. You might make your automobile one by dropping gas, by dropping dynamite caps in the cylinders. I don't know. Not a test of truth, whether it works or not. And some people would like to make their experiences be pets of truth. And so you can come to various things in the Scripture and you can say, here's what the Scripture says and they can look at you with a straightening eye appearance and they can say, well, you haven't heard my experience yet.
And a lot of us sometimes are almost guilty of preaching experience more than that word of truth. But the thing that Moses said to the children of Israel is, Whenever anybody comes, saying, I know something about God, a prophet, a dreamer of dreams, a giver of signs, a worker of miracles, a teacher in the sphere of faith. Whenever somebody comes saying, I know something about God, Moses said, You put him to the test. And the test was the word that God had spoken, the word of God being the test of truth. Moses had to go no farther than that. He brought them to the word of God, which was the test of truth. And we remember how beautifully our Lord said it in John's Gospel when he says, Thy word is true, meaning thereby that it is true in all its parts, and the standard by which everything else is measured to.
And somehow, until people like me and critters like you also, until we get to the point where the Word of God means that much to us, we're not very well prepared to make judgments and conduct things in life as far as our world goes. The Word of God is the test of truth. Now, actually, I want you to look at some things more in detail with me in these two sections. And I want you to note it very emphatically, especially in Deuteronomy thirteen, how the constant emphasis is laid on the fact that the dreamer or the sign giver must do nothing to lead the people away from Jehovah, away from the Lord your God. Now, personally, I'm not happy with the pronunciation of Jehovah, but I know nothing better to do with it, so I just let it go at that.
but he says no matter who he is or what he does he is not to do anything to lead you away from the Lord your God somebody may show up like that he says and if he does the Lord may be testing you to see whether you're really sincere if you are sincere don't follow that man follow the Lord your God hear him keep his commandments obey his voice and so forth and the person who does contrary to that is to be put out of the fellowship likewise in Deuteronomy eighteen The emphasis is on the fact that the Lord would rape of a prophet. Of course, Deuteronomy eighteen eighteen is predictive of the coming of our Savior, but that the Lord would rape of a prophet and the words of God would be put in his mouth in verse eighteen, and he would speak unto the people all that God had given to speak.
And consequently, he too would speak those things to point them to the Lord. So I like to say it's up this way. The word of God is the test of truth. and in bringing it to any point. The first step in that test is that the thing being tested must honor the God who gave it. It cannot lead away from that God, cannot disgrace that God, cannot lead the people who follow it into any failure from that God, and still be a true word. It must honor the God who gave it. The word of God is the test of truth. And so any proposition or act or any means of life that comes up, you'll look at it, you say, is the ultimate end of it, as well as the immediate end, the honor of God whom it professes to show.
Now, we've taught a lot about man's chief end being to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And I don't doubt for one moment that's exactly true. But I also know that it's easier to use the words than it is to put it into practice. I won't condemn you at that point. It just happens that it's easier for me to say great things than it is to do great things. In this emphasis, when we say it must honor the God who gave it, you can say to yourself two things. It must be a credit to him, and it must also direct yourself and others to it. By being a credit to him, it must reflect on his character and his work for you, and by pointing others yourself to him, it means that it will set him in a place where they will look to him and desire to have some real knowledge of or about him.
When we talk about the particular thing being tested, honoring the God who gave it, we mean that there can't be any question raised with regard to if and the way in which it reflects on God. I once attended a service not far from Pittsburgh, where they took the offerings in a singular fashion. They stretched ropes across the room, and they put clothespins on them and had donors reach up and pin money with the clothespins on the ropes. Pretty hard to put a nickel there, fellows, but they had them pin money on the clothespins with the ropes. I don't doubt what they got great offerings. I don't doubt it. There's something about displaying your offering that tempts you a little bit sometimes.
I don't doubt what they've got great offerings. But if you have thought and say to yourself, is there any conceivable way in which the act honors God, not the offering idea of giving, but is there any conceivable way in which the method honors God, you're hard-pressed to think how it is. Hard-pressed to think how it is in my judgment. But that's a small thing. You'll often find people who hold teachings. will go contrary, like some of these things that we're going to discuss, I guess, in the afternoon, whose whole concept of teaching will go contrary to his words. And the emphasis is that if God is not primarily on it, the word of God says, you have a false thing there. The Apostle Paul in First Corinthians two, one and two, and many other places.
makes keen reference to the fact that he doesn't come with enticing words and clever devices in order that he might make God, the Lord Jesus, known primarily. And he's not going to do anything in any way that will detract from the honor that ought to belong to his God. So what I'm trying to say is that whether it's something you're doing, whether it's something you're reading, whether it's something you're writing, whether it's something you're thinking, The word of God is the test of truth, and the word of God says that thing must first and primarily honor God. It must be a credit to him and must in some way set him forth before others.
Now, there are all sorts of areas of life to be examined in greater detail later on, maybe, or under some other circumstance, but that's the general principle, and that general principle cannot be enforced too rigidly. can't be enforced too rigidly. I don't want to elaborate much more on that, I don't think, except to point out to you that with most of us, there's a great tendency to figure out ways to honor ourselves, and a great tendency to do that, kind of whether God, well, without much intelligent thinking about whether God is honored or not, and without trying to sound vindictive or judgmental or anything like that. It's a thrust of life or ministry or deed or practice.
Ignore the honor of God, then the word of God says it is a false thing in scope and execution. That's really pretty simple, friend. Now it's true that there are some areas in which one might not be able to give an immediate answer. I'll look at a couple of those in a minute. There are some where it might, but in many other areas it is. Many other areas, it's perfectly possible to give an honest and immediate answer. Here comes a prophet. He has a great vision. He predicts a great thing. It comes to pass. And the people stand back and they say, with prophets like that around. And then the prophet looks at them and says, I didn't get it from Jehovah. I got it from Baal. And Moses says, no matter what he says or does or shows, if he doesn't honor Jehovah, don't listen to it.
And you can say that for every teacher and every practice and every thought. If it is not aimed with intent to honor Jehovah, pay no attention to it unless you want to condemn it. But certainly don't follow it, certainly don't honor it, and don't let it be a thing that lingers with you. I want to press ahead and make another observation. The Word of God is the test of truth. It becomes rather obvious that if one is not a student of the word or a reader of the word, he may not have very much the test-proofed with. You're not going to find it in a dictionary. You will find it in the framework of a book. I am one of those fellows who says we believe the Bible because of the words of Christ and the testimony of it, and I'm not in the business of going about proving it.
I let it prove and test other things. At least that's the attitude I want and the attitude that I want to honor. But that word then comes and tests everything. And it says to me, let's keep it on my level, it says to me, the honor of God is primary. By the grace of God, you're not left to figure out things yourself. You're given a word that tests truth. And it tells you that the honor of God is not primary, then the thing is not bona fide or helpful. Now, in these verses with Moses and his words of children of Israel, he makes great emphasis on the fact that especially in chapter eighteen, that the Lord would give this word. The word that the Lord would give him.
And in chapter eighteen, verse nineteen, the word that he would speak in his name. The true prophet is in verse eighteen of chapter eighteen. And that's a prediction of the Lord Jesus, of course, that becomes the final and last fulfillment of this particular concept. But the true prophet is in view there. And in that regard, he says, when he speaks it in my name, every man will have to hear it. But the prophet will come, who will think to speak the word in my name? They will act presumptuously, and they'll think in the name of the Lord. And they may say it just that way, or they may actually speak it in the name of other God. But many will come and say, we were saying it in the name of the Lord. There's a great example of it in Jeremiah twenty-eight.
Hananiah, the false prophet, steps up and says, the Lord hath said. And Hananiah, in Jeremiah twenty-eight, for a few verses, sounds better than Jeremiah. It is just the nature of error to make great claims for itself. And Hananiah, actually, just for a few verses, by the end of the chapter we know who's on the right side, but just for a few verses, it sounds better than Jeremiah. but he's already told us. He'll speak it in my name. Well, it's rather obviously that he's not going to speak one thing in his name and then something other in his name.
It's quite obvious that he isn't going to tell you to believe and be saved in his name and then tell you, on the other hand, not to believe and be saved anyway in his name. It becomes rather obvious because of the character of God and the truth which is basic and inherent in that character. So the second thing is just that simple. The thing being tested must agree with what he has said already, must agree with his name and with the truth and vitality of that name. And if it does not agree with that name, then the Word of God tells us it is not wholesome in character. Now, in this line of thought, in our modern age, there are two or three things you have to think of.
And one of them is that sometimes a proposition may be so, so long or so complicated that you can't always tell exactly what the level of agreement with it is. Now, if there's something in it that obviously doesn't agree with this word, you can scrap the whole thing right away. But where it's long and complicated and you can't tell step by step, you may have to wait a while. It was that way in the Old Testament. A prophet would come and make a prediction in the name of Jehovah that wasn't to be fulfilled for a long, long time. Like in Isaiah seven, predicts the virgin birth. That's all he's predictions. I mean, in that verse, many little sub-predictions, but he predicts the coming, the virgin birth of the Messiah.
It's not going to happen for seven hundred and thirty-five or thirty-six years, give or take of you. But you see, if you say, well, if we have to wait that long to see if he's true or not, we won't know. In a passage like that, the prophet begins by predicting one thing that will happen in less than two years. He predicts that the plan of the northern king won't work. And then he predicts something that will happen within four years, that those kings will be cut off from their throne. And then he predicts something that will happen within sixty-five years, that Ephraim will not be a recognized people. and then he predicts something that won't happen for a long period of time. But the godly person would see the first thing come through, see the second thing come through, his son would see the third thing come through, and they would say this man, both in the name of the Lord, gave credit to the Lord, and his prophecies come to pass.
So when you have a long, complicated book to read, or a long complicated thing to think through, you look for all the areas of close and immediate agreement and you work for those through things that are more remote and removed from you. I have a feeling that that's awfully complicated, but that's one of my gifts. One of my gifts is to take simple things and make them very complicated. Then later somebody else will explain them and they will say, well, I see what Taylor was talking about, but they'll think that that other fellow is a very gifted teacher. So I take simple things and complicate them and give somebody else a special kind of ministry we have here. What I'm saying is that nobody knows everything.
Nobody does. Somebody may come to you with an idea and say, what do you think about this? And you may say, well, does it agree with the word of God? And you can't immediately see any disagreement, but it might be ten pages long. You might have to think through it for a little while. It might not be something written. It might be some idea for implementing the work of the local church. And you'll say simply, well, I don't see any disagreements with the message in Scripture, but maybe we have to look at it a little further and a little harder to be sure. That's not too difficult, is it? But the emphasis is that when the Word of God tested, if it does not agree with what God has given, it is not healthy and right, no matter how it works, no matter what one's experience is.
He says to Moses, he says, that man has not spoken by me. Moses says to the people, you will not hear that particular party. In Isaiah eight twenty, in Isaiah eight twenty, the prophet calls the nation of Israel. He calls her Judah really, Judah and Israel together, to the law and to the testimony, he says. They will stand to the law and the testimony. If they don't, he says, and he implies that they really don't, It's because there's no light in them. You know, there's a striking reference in the New Testament in First Peter four, fourteen, where the writer says to those who minister, he says, if any man minister, and my own rendition of it is, let it be in agreement with the word of God.
The oracles of God is your translation, I think. Let it be according to the oracles of God. Let it be in agreement with what God has said. And that means myself, means any of you, anybody, anywhere. If he's going to minister, he's going to be measured by how it agrees with the Word of God. Now some of us would like to think he's going to be measured by the way he entertains people, by various other things, but that's not so. The ministry and the truth will be measured by how it agrees with the Word of God. Now here again, you'll forgive me if I say it once more, but the Word of God is the test of truth. And any act or any proposition not in agreement with the Word of God, not in agreement with it, the Word says, it is not healthy, it is not sound.
And in a day and age like ours where there are so many ideas and so many loose thoughts going around, you need to know that and then need to know the Word a little bit to apply it to that level. So I will just repeat those two. The Word of God is the test of truth. The thing being tested must honor God, or it is not done. The thing being tested at the same time must agree with what God has already said, or it too is not done. And you will find lots of ways to rationalize around those things. Lots of ways. Israel did it all the time, and they were always wrong, and they always suffered the ill consequences for it.
Now yesterday I left another conference about one in the afternoon. I guess the conference was over at twelve, but they were having a big smorgasbord-type lunch, and they let me go at the head of the line. So I left when lunch was over. I guess I left about one. There was no temptation in Ohio. The speed limit in Ohio was seventy miles an hour on the interstate. There was no temptation of speed. My Volkswagen will not comfortably go much faster than ninety anyway. So I drove about sixty-eight miles an hour. No temptation of speed. No temptation of speed. So I just drove along like that and tried to stay out of the way of the truck and buses passing me. But there was no temptation there. Likewise, when you come down to West Virginia on the interstate with seventy miles an hour, no temptation there.
On the West Virginia Turnpike with quotes about it, there is no temptation. It's sixty miles an hour, but on a beautiful road like that, you don't want to go any faster than that anyway. Let's pull off on the truck faster and you're in good shape. No temptation there. But then you come to the end of that place. By the time I came to the end of it, it was twenty minutes at ten. I kind of wanted to be here by midnight because I had a feeling that they'd get cranky if you came after eleven. But what they might forgive one hour, I know better now. So it's twenty minutes of ten. And suddenly I was off those beautiful highways. There are some nice roads. I was off those beautiful highways. I'm coming down roads where there are a lot of slow Virginia drivers out late at night.
And suddenly the temptation to make yourself the law is very vital. You're going through a nothing area that says forty-five and you can't see a thing in sight. And the fellow behind you is threatening you. And the temptation to drive sixty-five is very real. Well, I've had enough tickets in my day to begin to resist those temptations. Now, if I were rushing to a hospital, you see, and if you were dying and I had to get you there in five minutes, you can understand that's a little different. The midwives could tell Pharaoh a bare-faced lie in defense of the life of the Hebrew children. That was a little different. But actually, whether I got here at slow o'clock, one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, or noon, didn't make any real difference with the success of this conference.
In fact, by the end of the week, you may say whether I got here or not didn't make much difference. didn't make any real difference. So, but see, I could have said, I could have said with some, you know, self-cultivation, I could have said, I've got to be there by midnight and broken every rule in the last eighty-eight miles of the trip. Well, I did not do that. Not that I'm more righteous than others, but that I didn't do it. Well, it felt good when I got here that I hadn't done it. I could preach on it. But listen, you'll find a lot of times in life when you can justify forgetting the word of God and doing something else, you will always be raw when it's your personal convenience.
Now, if you happen to be an Egyptian midwife delivering Hebrew children, that may be another matter. Or if you happen to be... a Jerichoite lady wanting to deliver her house, there may be some fun, and there are other complicated circumstances too. But basically, it's our personal convenience that we sacrifice the most for. And the word of God tests truth, tests every proposition and every deed, and it says, if what you are doing or teaching now does not agree with this word, it is not right. The last thing I will emphasize is pretty much what's told here with regard to the prophet. He says, if it doesn't come to pass, you can forget about it and forget him. If I give a word, it's got to come to pass.
Well, that age is behind us, I think, and the nature of that experience is behind us. But with the prophets of Israel, everything they said had to come to pass, or they were identified, that is, predictably, or they were identified as a false prophet. Nathan made a small mistake once in that area when he told David to go ahead and build a house. But the Lord spoke to him and he came back the next day and quickly corrected the particular situation. The prophet was not expected to give a bunch of predictions and get fifty percent and think himself fortunate or even ninety percent. When he said, this is what the Lord will do, he had to be right or be a false prophet. So here's the thrust of it. The word of God is the test of truth.
And the thing that's being tested must find its fulfillment within the the confines of the Word of God. Now, I quickly rush to illustrate that. I don't mean that the thing that you're looking at now, you have to go back and find it's fulfilled in the Word of God. But I mean the practice being taught or designated must find its development or fulfillment within the guidelines laid down in the Word of God. There are all sorts of resolutions done with regard to the tongue situation, the charismatic gift situation. and I am not in the habit of describing other people how to handle these problems.
There are a lot of ways you can do it. But in my own short-lived ministry, I have found the most single effective way for me. You know, the most single effective way for me. With the best result is to take the individual out of the problem and say, let's look at the Word of God and see if the practice you've observed or experienced agrees with the Word of God. Now there are other approaches that other men use, but that's the one I have found the greatest help with personally. And so here's a chap. There may be exceptions even in a room like this, so just bear with me for a minute. Here's a chap who says, well, brother, you should have been with us. And in the language of verse twenty and fourteen, I invariably say, well, did they ask for an interpreter first?
You know that, Moses. In the biblical arrangement of First Corinthians fourteen, you find out if the interpreter is present first. And if no one with a gift of interpretation is present, nobody speaks. I have never talked to anybody yet, but had had that experience. I've had a lot of people say, well, he spoke and a man got up and interpreted. That is not the biblical order. You have to know that interpreter is there before your mouth or thing. I've usually gone through about seven or eight steps and eventually come and said, well, did any sisters speak? No ill will to the sisters. But the injunction on the sisters being quiet and meeting in First Corinthians fourteen is with that particular situation and background in context.
You know that, of course. And there are other things in view, but that particular thing is in background. And a Pentecostal friend of mine said one day, he said, brother, if a sister didn't speak, nobody would speak. Well, everybody with their own solution, maybe. But when I come to any practice, I have to say, well, does it find its fulfillment in the Word of God? Does the end to which it comes is that within the confines of the guidelines set down before the Word of God? And if it isn't, folks, if it isn't, if it isn't, then that particular thing does not best well, does not ring true. That was true of prophets in our prophecies, the Old Testament, and the New Testament is.
Now, with regard to this particular thing, you always look to see where a thing is leading and what precedent will set before you go ahead with it. I was at a camp last week. I think I already told you that four times, just so you'll know, I wasn't basking in the sun. There wasn't nearly as many people left and was kind of a different character. They had a lot more youngsters than oldsters, but still not any warmest number of them. And Friday night, a bunch of them wanted to sleep outside. Kind of cold on the shores of Lake Erie. A bunch of boys wanted to sleep outside in their sleeping bed. So they asked their counselor, and their counselor didn't know what to say. Counselors seemed to have that knack from time to time. The counselor didn't see what to say. So they asked the recreation director, he didn't know what to say, so they called for the conference director.
They said to the conference director, we'd like to sleep outside. And the conference director said, well, he was an elderly man, was full of light and a crackly voice. And he said, well, he said, in the first place, you won't sleep. He said, in the second place, you'll make a lot of noise. You'll stir up the whole camp. In the third place, he says, you will sleep in the meeting tomorrow. In the first place, he said, the answer is no. And the fellow looked at him kind of crushed, and then he mellowed a little bit, and he said, well, let me explain to you how it is, boys. Let me explain to you how it is. He says, if you boys want to sleep out the night, he says, the girls who want to sleep out tomorrow night. Then he said, some of you boys will decide to be fun to sneak out of your sleeping bags at night and stare at the daylight out of the girls while they're sleeping.
He said, then the girls will decide to raid your cabin late the night after that. Now listen, it might never happen in Bristol, but I've been at camps where that very thing should happen. More than once. In fact... So what that man was saying, what that man was saying, the Bible doesn't say you can't sleep out overnight. What that man was saying was, let's look at this thing and see if the ultimate end of it will agree with the truth set down in Scripture. For godliness and orderliness and charity, let's see if the ends of it will agree with the thing set down in Scripture.
And when the ends don't agree with the thing set down in Scripture, you better be sure that every step leading to those ends ultimately won't agree either. I would like to say that we have not been brought under some peculiar type of bondage to a book that men have written, but we've been brought to an area of enlightenment in which God has given us an infallible word, which is a lamp unto our feet and a light on our path. And he's given it not to bind us, but to free us, for it's in the knowledge of this truth that you'll be made free, and given a life pleasing to yourself and God too. Therefore, I don't make it my business to try and shackle people's lives, but rather to free them from the things that set them apart from God and alienate them from one another.
And Moses said, There will be plenty of forces in the world that will try to do that. Separate them from God and put you at warfare one from another. And those forces won't come to you and say, ha, another false voice has arrived. Those forces won't come like that. Those forces will come saying, we have something better than you've already got. We have a word from God. We have something that's really alive. We have something that's really going. No, he says, the word of God will be the test of truth. not the claim of a man, not whether the thing works, not whether it's good for your experience. The Word of God will be the test of truth.
The Word of God will say, does this thing first honor God? Does it second agree with his Word? Does it third find its fulfillment in the framework of his Word and its principles? If it does, you can take it from God. If it doesn't, it's from another source, and you should let it go. And folks like me and you and other believers in all places need to come very realistically to that level, applying the word of God to our practices, to our teachings, to our fellowship, and a lot of other things too. In fact, There is no area to which it ought not to be applied.
Now, as I said about fifteen minutes ago, it's easier to say that than just to do it. So we don't suddenly turn a page over and say, well, from the day on, I'm going to let the Word of God test everything I do. That would be another one of those resolutions that has broken before you make it. What we need to do is to become aware of the fact that it is the test of truth. And that our lives are constantly, in the language of James I, needing the light that it sheds upon them, and that our hearts are in need of being malleable and pliable and useful before us. And in light of that, then we can become students, and we can become prayerfully minded persons who say, Lord, let me test all things by this word of truth.
The Lord Jesus said to his own in John fifteen that they were clean through the words that he had spoken unto them. And it's the cleansing of that word that not only removes the sin that condemns us, but the sins that separate us from alienated us in the course of this present life. So I need to know for myself that the word of God is the test of truth. And I bring anything with regard to practice or teaching to it, and the word says, does it honor God? Does it agree with his word? is it fulfilled within the framework of its principles. If it is, well and good, honor it. If it isn't, recognize it as being sinful and harmful, and with God's help for death.
The Word of God is the test of truth. And I'm thankful that God has not left me to have to make all those decisions for you. I'm thankful that he's not left me to have to figure out my way through all the philosophies of men. I'm thankful that having given us new life through our Lord Jesus Christ, he has given us an infallible God. This is the test of truth. Let us pray.