A Discerning Church

SUMMARY

In this sermon, Karl Ihfe explores the concept of discernment in the church, focusing on how to be a "discerning church." He begins by referencing Paul's prayer in Philippians, which asks for love to grow in wisdom, leading to discernment and righteous living. Ihfe then traces the theme of discernment through the Old Testament, citing examples such as Joseph, Moses, and Solomon.

The sermon centers on Acts 15, where the early church faced the challenge of including Gentiles without requiring them to follow Jewish law. Ihfe uses this passage to illustrate how the church leaders engaged in a process of discernment, relying on Scripture, personal experiences, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He emphasizes that discernment is not about having a clear "book, chapter, verse" answer for every situation, but rather about faithfully improvising based on God's Word, the Spirit's guidance, and the church community's wisdom.

Ihfe concludes by applying these principles to the church's current mission work, encouraging the congregation to participate in discerning new mission partnerships through prayer and reflection on God's work in the world.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Well it is good to be with you this morning. Church, if you have your Bible, I invite you to turn over to Acts chapter 15. We'll spend a little bit of our time there. Today we're in a little two week miniseries on prayer and discernment. Normally this would have happened after Easter, but with Mission Sunday coming up one week after Easter Sunday, we don't have a whole lot of time.

So we decided to bump up a couple of things and on behalf of our missions committee, wanted to share and to think together about this process of praying and discerning God's will for our missions and where we might open up a new opportunity, where we might see a door open and walk through together. It's something that's been unique, at least in my experience. Here at Broadway, we've had mission points for decades and in the last couple of years we've seen a couple of those move into retirement. And so we've got some openings, some opportunities to explore new mission partnerships. And so we're inviting you to help us discern where is that and who is that.

So this last week, if you joined us on our prayer initiative, you got a prompt each morning just inviting you to consider, to reflect, to think about, to read some scripture and then to pray about different opportunities where God may be at work in the world and how we might come alongside him to partner with him in this next year. So thank you for joining us in that. Last week I focused us in and around this prayer that Paul opens Philippians with, and he also encourages prayer as he closes it. But I want to return for just a minute to this prayer because I think it will lead and point us to where I want us to go today as we think about this process of discernment. How to discern, what does that look like?

The title for my message today is the Discerning Church. What does it look like to be a discerning church? Well, Paul's prayer, as we looked at last time, he prayed for three things. He said, I want your love to grow in wisdom and that that wisdom filled love would then turn into wise decisions. Discerning, being able to discern what's happening, what's going on in the world around us.

And then that discernment would lead us to live in a righteous holy way. Today I want us to think together some about that same passage as we do to consider what partnerships might be at work in the world, what opportunities are out there for us to come alongside what God is already doing and how can we be a part of that well, Paul ends his letter to the Philippians by encouraging them once again to return to this life of prayer, this habit of prayer. He says, don't be anxious about anything, but instead, instead with prayer and petition, with supplication, with thanksgiving, present our request to God. And he says, church. If we'll become that kind of praying church, that what comes along with that is this peace.

And it's a peace that transcends understanding. It's beyond what we might normally expect to happen in the midst of chaos and disorder. Paul says, we can find this incredible peace that comes to us knowing that we are living into the way of Jesus. And so I want us to spend some time thinking about this prayer that your love may abound more and more knowledge and depth of insight so that you'd be able to discern. Paul says, now, I think this is interesting.

Paul's praying that their love would grow in wisdom and with the outcome being discernment, that they’ll be able to see what's happening around them and make some wise decisions. This word discern, if you looked up kind of the etymology of it, it actually comes from this idea of being able to recognize a pure metal. Can I see what's happening in and around me? And can I see what's actually pure, what actually matters, what's right, what's good? Paul's prayer is that their love would grow deep in wisdom so that they could figure some things out.

As they're trying to navigate their way in a world that doesn't often believe what they believe, how do they live out their faith in a way that's meaningful, that's a testimony to. There is a God who created you and who loves you and who longs to be restored in relationship with you. And he knows that doesn't just come naturally. That the church would begin to see others the way that God sees them and then begin to treat them the way that God has called us to treat them. That's an important prayer.

But this idea of discernment isn't unique to Paul. In fact, we see it all throughout the Old Testament. It's a reality. It's something that God has called his people to be about. You may remember back a few months ago we did a series on Joseph back in Genesis, chapter 43 or 41.

Rather, Joseph's story, if you haven't had a chance to look at it in a while, invite you to go back. It's an incredible story filled with all kinds of ups and downs. But at one point in Joseph's life He's in prison. And they discover that he actually knows how to interpret some dreams. God has blessed him with the ability to dream some dreams.

Well, Pharaoh has a dream. He has a couple of dreams, and none of his wise men, none of his magicians can figure it out. So he's asking, does anybody know who can help me? And finally his cupbearer remembers. Oh, yeah, there's this guy in prison, this Hebrew, who actually knows a little thing about interpreting dreams.

And so Joseph's called to Pharaoh and he interprets the dream. And it's kind of interesting. We learn this in Genesis 41:33. After he interprets the dreams, he tells Pharaoh, look for a discerning and wise man and put him in charge of the land of Egypt. Joseph understands.

Hey, Pharaoh, if you're going to actually do what you need to do with what has been given to you, you're going to need someone who can discern, who has some wisdom, who can look out into the world and make some wise choices. And we know Pharaoh will go on to actually choose Joseph for that job. That's not the only place. You may Remember in Deuteronomy 32, where Moses is about to die and Joshua was going to take over and take the people into the promised land. And right as Moses is about to die, we have this song recorded where he gives warning to the people about what it's like, if they're going to turn from God, what can happen?

What will happen? And he says this to the people. They the people are a nation without sense. There is no discernment in them. If only they were wise and would understand this and discern what their end will be.

Moses is crying, church, be discerning. Engage your minds, engage your hearts. Or perhaps you remember the story of King Solomon. He becomes king after David, and one day he goes to Gibeon, and he's inquiring, giving sacrifices to the Lord, and the Lord asks him, what do you want, Solomon? You remember his answer.

His answer is discernment. Now, Lord, my God, you have made your king in place, Your servant king in place of my father, David. But I'm only a little child. I don't know how to carry out my duties. Your servant is here among the people.

You have chosen a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people, to distinguish between right and wrong, for who is able to govern this great people of yours. And Solomon says, God, would you give me a discerning heart? Would you help me to be able to look at the world through your eyes, to understand the way that you want me to and to make decisions with that kind of heart. And God's so pleased with Solomon's request that not only does he give him discernment, but he gives him all the other things that Solomon could have asked for but didn't.

It's an amazing thing, incredible story. And even though Solomon one day wander away from his faith, he'll challenge the people in so many ways. He makes lots of mistakes, but at least he understands at this moment that to live the life that God's inviting me to live, challenging me to live, calling me to live, I'm going to have to live it with discernment. It's important. In fact, that's the continuing witness through all of Scripture is that God's people, the with God life, it's not one that we can simply navigate by following a bunch of rules.

It's not one that we can do by ourselves. It's not one that we can do with our own power and our own strength. We're going to need some help. We're going to need some discernment. We're going to need God's work in our life.

You see, as our love grows and deepens in wisdom, so too then will our ability to see and understand God's word and his calling on our life. Which again is why I love this prayer that Paul prays to the Philippians. I'm praying that your love will grow in wisdom so that you can discern what's best, so you can discern what's right, the right way to live, the right way to respond, that you can be pure, that you can live the life that God has called you to live. Which is exactly where we find ourselves here in the Book of Acts. The church has been launched into the world not in a way that we would have imagined right.

It starts at the hand of persecution and yet here they are in the world trying to figure out God, who are we to be? How are we supposed to live? In fact, we look back at the passage that Nick read for us just a couple of moments ago and back up just a few verses. As Acts 15 starts, Acts 14 ends and 15 begins. We find Paul and Barnabas have just returned to Antioch from their first missionary journey.

And God has s been doing some incredible things on the way Again, if you haven't read these chapters, I invite you to go back and read them this week. We learned back in Acts 11 that after Stephen stoning, the church is Persecuted. And folks are spread far and wide, all over Cyprus and Asia Minor. That entire area and many of those scattered, they begin to preach the Gospel where they go. And most of the time they're talking to Jews in synagogues.

But we're told, Luke tells us some of them. However, men from Cyprus and Cyrene went to Antioch and they began to speak to Greeks, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. And the Lord's hand was with them. And a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. And news of this reached the church in Jerusalem.

And they sent Barnabas to Antioch. And when he arrived and saw what the grace of God had done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith. And great number of people were brought to the Lord. Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul.

And when he found him, he brought him back to Ent. So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great Numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. This is where we find ourselves. Chapter 15 opens up, is, we're back in Antioch, back where this incredible missionary journey started, where God's doing this amazing stuff in the church.

He's spreading the gospel. He's capturing hearts of people who are living way outside the box, and they're coming into faith in Christ and they're changing their entire lives, right? And the church hears about it, and it's exciting. It's wonderful, isn't it? I mean, isn't it amazing that people that most thought would never come to Jesus now are turning and they're following Jesus, right?

It's incredible, right? I mean, at least it should be. It should be incredible. But instead there's this question, like, is this okay? Some of you may remember the television show Seinfeld.

They'd sometimes be sitting over lunch and have this conversation. At one point with one of them, will look at the other one and goes, should we be talking about this? I don't think we should be talking about this. That the church is. Seen God move in a direction that he has not moved before and nobody's really sure.

Is that okay? It looks like it's out of bounds. And so the church is kind of going, should we talk about that? I don't know that we should be talking about this. The church didn't know what to do with this new response to the gospel, that now it's not just Jews who are coming to follow Jesus.

It's Gentiles, it's pagans, it's outsiders. And so when Paul and Barnabas returned to the church in Antioch, as chapter 15 opens up, they're telling about the amazing things that God's doing in the ministry. Guys, you won't believe how people are responding to the message of Jesus. Only he finds out that p. Some.

As chapter 15 opens up, some who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, the Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.

It becomes this question in the church, right? Some believers from Jerusalem had, unbeknownst to the leadership, gone down to the church in Antioch and said, hey, listen, if you really want to be saved, you need to be circumcised. And so Paul comes into sharp disagreement with them, Barnabas as well. And so the church in Antioch appoint them and says, go back to Jerusalem. Let's find an answer to this question.

And so here we have the question, verse 5 of chapter 15. The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses, right? I mean, isn't that what we believe? And so this conversation starts to take place. How are we going to respond to this?

How are we going to respond to this new work God is doing in the world that we don't necessarily have book, chapter, verse to speak to. How are we going to make a decision? The elders speak, the apostles are speaking. And then all of a sudden, Peter stands up and he says, church, let me remind you about my interaction with Cornelius. And he recounts how God did this amazing thing outside the box, outside of certainly Peter's box, of what he understood.

And then Paul and Barnabas say, let me add to that. Listen to all the incredible ways that God is at work in the Gentile world, capturing hearts, drawing them close to Jesus. And so finally, James gets up and he speaks verse 13. He says, Brothers, listen to me. Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles.

The words of the prophets are in agreement with this as it is written. After this I will return and rebuild. David's fall intent it ruins. I will rebuild and I will restore it, that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things, things known from long ago. It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.

Instead, we should write to them telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. And so we get to the letter then that Nick read for us just a moment ago. And I want to point it just to one phrase in particular that just jumps out at you. Verse 28 it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements.

Abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You'll do well to avoid these things. Very well.

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following have you ever wondered when you read this why Luke shows all of the theological work going on in this conversation? Have you ever wondered why Luke just doesn't give us the answer? They had this question. Here's the answer. Move on, next story.

Instead, he takes us back through this painstaking process of these leaders gathering together and having these conversations. And they're appealing back to Scripture. They're remembering what they know. They don't have the New Testament. They only have what the prophets had written.

The law and the prophets.

But instead of just giving us the answer right, James could have said, here's the deal, that's not what he does. Instead, Luke shows us all this theological work and why does James throw that little line in there? Why do the elders throw that line? It seemed good to us and to the Holy Spirit. They could have just said, we're the leaders, do it.

And that's not what they say. It seemed good to us, to the Holy Spirit. I can't help but think that part of what Luke is trying to help us see is how does a young church learn how to faithfully improvise what God is calling them into when it's not super clear exactly how and what decision we're supposed to make? There may not always be book, chapter, verse to give us the quick answer. Instead, we have to rely on, well, what do we know to be true about God?

What has scripture? What is the testimony of Scripture? And then how is God at work in the world? And how do those things combine? And then based on that information, God, what do you want us to do in response to that?

Now that can be a little scary. It feels a little unnerving. Especially those of us who grew up in churches of Christ, where we prided ourselves on not doing anything that didn't have book, chapter, verse. It's key. It's crucial.

It's all that we can do. And so if it doesn't talk about it, then we don't talk about it. If don't do it, then we don't do it. And all of a sudden we see these examples in Scripture begin to come up. All of a sudden this idea of discernment comes back around again.

Say, God, how do we faithfully improvise what you would do if you were living our life, if you were a part of our family, our church, if you were living in our city, in our town, in this moment of time? It's a community that you lived in. We were facing the same challenges and problems that we're facing, the same obstacles to overcome that we're having to overcome. The same kind of racial tension that we're facing, the same kind of relational tension that we're facing, the same kind of political tension that we're facing God, how do we live in the midst of that? There's not always book, chapter, verse.

So what do we do? How do we respond? Again, I don't think this was a challenge that was unique to the early church. This was actually a process that Jesus was training his disciples in. He was teaching them, as we read from Paul just a few minutes ago, he's teaching them about discernment.

In fact, Jesus would say this in John 14 as he's explaining to his disciples that he's going to be crucified. He's going to leave, but they're not going to be alone. He says the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything that I've said.

Very truly, I tell you, it is for your good that I'm going away. Unless I go away, the advocate will not come. But if I go, I will send him to you.

And when he, the Spirit of truth comes, he'll guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears. And he will tell you what is yet to come.

He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said, the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you. See, he says, if Jesus operated with this idea of his disciples didn't know everything and he wasn't going to be able to be with them long enough to teach them everything that he understood. They weren't going to be able to look out into the world and simply just discern by their own wisdom how to respond, how to improvise, how to reflect the way of Jesus into the world.

And so he said, you're not all alone. I'm going to send you our West Texas translation, y'all. I'm going to send y'all the Spirit. And the Spirit is going to be at work in y'all. He's going to be prompting and leading and questioning and convicting.

He's going to remind you of the passages that you spent so much time studying and thinking about and reflecting. And he's going to draw that together and say, okay, now, given what you know to be true about me and my way of life and given the way I'm at work in the world, how can you move into this faithfully being a witness to the way of Jesus?

Jesus knew his disciples wouldn't remember everything.

I take a lot of grace in that because I forget a lot of things. And I appreciate that it's not all up to me that the Holy Spirit is at work reminding me and teaching me, inviting me to lean into community, to come alongside other trusted brothers and sisters who have spent time, in weeks and days and years and months reading and reflecting on God's Word.

It's the way that we see, actually if we read through the rest of the New Testament, the way that Jesus first disciples would also try to train the church like we heard Paul pray just a few minutes ago. I'm praying that your love is going to grow in wisdom.

I'm praying that what you've been learning and reading and studying every day will not just stay up here, but that it will begin to filter down into your heart. It will begin to shape the way that you live. I'm praying that you'll be so captured by God's amazing love for you and that wisdom of that love will grow in such a way that you'll be able to discern what's right. That when a situation or circumstance comes up that may be new or different or challenged to something that was before, that you might be able to stop and say, okay, God, help me, lead me, help us, lead us in the way we should go when we see it. In John 1 of Jesus First Followers, when he writes to the young church First John 4, he says, Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

Because many false prophets have gone out into the world, right? Jesus would remind us followers. All the New Testament authors remind their followers there's a force in the world that's working against you, that's trying to deceive you. You know, it's interesting. One of the biggest criticisms of Christianity is folks just blindly following things.

They just imagine that we just check our brain at the door because we just do whatever. And if you really know what Christianity is all about, this way of following Jesus, what we find is that it's not possible to be a Christian and check your brain at the door. You've got to engage your entire mind, you've got to engage your heart, you've got to engage the community, you've got to engage God's word. You've got to be open to and willing to be engaged by the Holy Spirit that we might discern to have wisdom, to have this incredible love full of wisdom that helps us make a decision on what's right. You know, James, the same James here in Acts 15 who stands and makes this proclamation is the same one who would write later to the church, if you lack wisdom, ask God.

He loves to give. If you don't have wisdom and you need it, ask God. He loves to give wisdom to his people and he’ll give it to you. You see, there's the standard practice that the church must learn how to discern together what God is doing in their midst so that they can faithfully improvise who they are to be in the world. Because it's not always clear.

There's not always a simple book, chapter, verse, solution. Sometimes we have to stop and engage. Okay, God, here's the kind of people you've called us to be. We know this in the testimony of Scripture, just like James said, we understand from the prophets of Amos that God is doing a work with the Gentiles. And now we see God's amazing work in the world.

We've seen in the testimony of Peter, we've heard about it in the testimony of Paul and Barnabas. So God, what might you be doing in and through us?

Where are you calling us? This is why we wanted to spend a couple of weeks thinking and praying together as missions committee to say, would you help us discern? Would you help us in this process? Would you reflect on the Scripture, all that you've been taught, all that you've learned, all that you've seen lived out around you? Would you reflect on the testimony of God's work in our church?

Where is he moving? How is he opening doors? How is he impacting lives. Would you consider all of that and then would you stop and share with us? How do you see God at work in the world?

When you think about missions and where we can take the gospel, about partnerships of amazing things happening, where we could come alongside some groups of folks, would you help us to discern that? See church, we need to do that together. The missions committee sat around thinking, yeah, this is not a problem we can solve on our own. We need the help of the church. And so that's where this prayer initiative came from.

That's where this survey you'll get tomorrow. That's where it's coming from, is we want to be faithful to the practices that we've seen in the testimony of Scripture and in the life of God's spirit in his church. I love Adele Calhoun has written a book, an incredible book, and defines discernment this way. She says discernment opens us up to listen to and recognize the voice and patterns of God's direction in our lives. That's the work we're inviting you to participate in with us over the next couple of weeks.

Would you help us to discern God's movements? Would you help us to listen to his voice as we think about God? Where in the world can we partner with you that others might come to know and follow Jesus just like they did in the early church? Amen. We have incredible stories to give witness to, to bear witness to of God doing amazing things.

Would you help us to pray in that direction, God? That is our great hope as your church here at Broadway. We want to be the kind of people who learn to discern, who rely on the testimony of scripture, who know your word back and forth, who recognize it, who can see it, who can hear it. God, we also want to be attuned to your spirit that promised advocate, that counselor that Jesus said would come when he went back into heaven. O Holy Spirit, would you do that work in us this week to open our eyes and our ears to see your movement in the world that God, you have placed us at this time, at this place, in this location, with this group of people in this city facing these challenges?

And you want us to be a witness to the world, oh God, would you show us how you want us to be that we're exciting about the ministry partnerships, the heart of missions that Broadway has had from its very beginning days. And we're excited to be in a season now where we get to discern some new directions, some new opportunities, some new partnerships. Oh God, would you help us to see together. Would you give us wisdom? Would you bless Kevin and the missions committee as they help us kind of sort through all that you're doing, all that you're saying as together we discern a pathway forward with new mission opportunities?

Thank God, for those of us who are here today, that discerning just seems a little just to reach too far. For those of us who are just trying to get through another day. God, would you help us to sense your presence with us, you're deep and abiding love for us to know that we can trust you even when we're not sure where the road goes? God, would you help us to remember that we're yours? Thank you for loving us in such an incredible way.

Thank you for this picture of your early church sorting through and navigating the ups and and downs of trying to be your church, a faithful witness in the world. God, we long to be that same instrument. And would you help us as we encounter people this week who are far from you, who don't know you. They don't know the good news of the gospel. I pray that they would encounter us, God, as a loving and kind witness to a new way of life.

God, we pray every day. I pray every day. Would you transform Lubbock and would you use Broadway as your hands and feet? God, would you use us this week in Jesus name? Amen.