46 Sermon Illustrations on Discernment

The more members of a group like and respect one another, the more probable it is they will make a poor decision. A well-known example of the dangers of this unhealthy group orientation took place during the John F. Kennedy administration. A faulty decision caused the defeat of American forces in the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, embarrassing the President and the nation. President Kennedy had surrounded himself with a committee of some of the shrewdest advisors in the country. This group of experts didn't make a poor decision because of low IQs. They failed because they wanted to be liked by others in the group. They allowed friendship and loyalty to overwhelm their decision-making process. Advisors who were tempted to speak up in opposition to the attack decided against it out of fear of being disliked, or because they didn't want to waste everyone's time. In a memorandum written before the committee assembled, Arthur Schlesinger, one of the members of the Kennedy inner circle, acknowledged that he considered the invasion of Cuba a mistake. But he kept silent when he participated in the discussion. Robert Kennedy, the President's brother and the U.S. attorney general, got Schlesinger in the corner after discovering that he opposed the invasion. Kennedy put it bluntly, "Arthur, you may be right or you may be wrong, but the president has made up his mind. Don't push any further." Schlesinger kept quiet. The environment wasn't right for voicing dissent.

TO: Jesus, Son of Joseph Woodcrafters Carpenter Shop Nazareth 25922 FROM: Jordan Management Consultants Jerusalem 26544 Dear Sir: Thank you for submitting the résumés of the twelve men you have picked for management positions in your new organization. All of them have not taken our battery of tests; and we have not only run the results through our computer, but also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant. The profiles of all tests are included, and you will want to study each of them carefully. As part of our service and for your guidance, we make some general comments, much as an auditor will include some general statements. This is given as a result of staff consultation and comes without any additional fee. It is the staff opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background, education and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have team concept. We recommend that you continue your search for per sons of experience in managerial ability and proven capability. Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership. The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale. We feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, the son of Alpheaus, and Thaddaeus definitely have radical leanings, and they both registered a high score on the manic-depressive scale. One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind and has contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your comptroller and right-hand man. All the other profiles are self-explanatory. We wish you every success in your new venture. Sincerely Yours, Jordan Management Committee

Have you heard about the elderly woman on a busy street corner who was confused and hesitant to cross because of the heavy traffic? Finally a gentleman came up to her and asked if he could cross the street with her. Gratefully she took his arm, but grew progressively more alarmed as he zigzagged randomly across the street, to the blare of horns and screech of locked brakes. Finally on the opposite curb, she said angrily, "You almost got us killed! You walk like you're blind." "I am," he replied. "That's why I asked if I could cross with you." Jesus said of the Pharisees of His day: "They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch" (Matthew 15:14). We need to be very careful not to entrust our souls to the guidance of someone who cannot see the clear teachings of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Our eternal destiny is too important to put at such risk.

If we listen carefully to those around us, we will learn to distinguish three voices, or influences, which direct the thinking, attitudes and actions of us all. We can hear them at our work, in our homes, and in the quietness of our moments alone. Fear (the first voice) disguises itself as "being safe," as "practical," "conservative," "cautious," or "reasonable." Look for the motive behind the disguise. Fear is a demanding master, never able to be satisfied. It disdains any voice but its own. Fantasy (the second voice) disguises itself as "visionary," as "progressive," "imaginative," or "creative." Look for the motive behind the disguise. Fantasy is a demanding master, never able to be satisfied. It, too, disdains any voice but its own. Both of these voices claim to be spiritual and wise. But both of these voices reveal an obsession with personal agendas. Both demand that all others see things from their perspective. Both deny that God may have a desirable goal beyond their view. Faith is the third voice. Faith reminds us that this is God's world, that He is always with us, that He works with us and in spite of us, and that He will complete the wonderful work He began in spite of what it may look like to us today! Faith lives based on what God has done and said. And Faith lives in trust that God does break into our situations with power and resources and vision and peace beyond what we can presently imagine! All three voices will call to you today. Only Faith offers life. May we govern our personal decisions and our decisions on behalf of the church through the voice of Faith.

There is an old tale about a peasant who, while hoeing in his field during the spring thaw, came across a snake. He raised his hoe to kill it, but the snake begged for mercy. "I am too frozen to do you any harm," it cried. The farmer, full of compassion, picked up the half-dead serpent and put it into his tunic, against his chest. As he began to work, the snake got warmer and warmer. Suddenly, the snake bit the peasant. The peasant frantically reached into his tunic and pulled out the snake, throwing it to the ground. "Why?" asked the man, "I befriended you. I trusted you." "True!" hissed the snake as it slithered away, "but do not blame me. You knew I was a snake when you picked me up." Many people today take sin into their own bosoms and go about their business. Someday when these things have passed away and they are faced with eternity, they will cry out against sin and accuse it. But it will be too late for some! Sin will reply, "You knew I was sin! You knew that I was but for a season. Do not blame me!"

A father who had three sons wanted to teach them a lesson in discretion. He gave each of them an apple that had some part of it rotten. The first ate his apple, rotten and all. The second threw all of his away because some of it was rotten. The third picked out the rotten part and ate the good part. No one is perfect in this world. Shall we reject all of them because they have some imperfection? The thing that we need the most is the spirit of discretion in choosing that which is good in everybody. The Bones of the Missing Link A number of years ago, a farmer in Louisiana plowed up some large bones. On reporting his find, a little "two by four" scientist drove out to the farm and pronounced the bones as that of the missing link. Scientists of all kinds began flocking in to that section of the state. Each declared that this undoubtedly linked man back to the lower animals. The newspapers carried this story far and wide. A few days later an old countryman with a blade of alfalfa dropping out of one corner of his mouth stopped in at the office of the newspaper and said, "What's all this I hear about this prehistoric monster? About 30 years ago I owned that farm where those bones were found. Barnum & Bailey's big circus elephant died when they showed here in town and I permitted them to bury him on my land." And thus the missing link is still missing, the lower animals still produce lower animals, and all forms of life still beget life after their own kind, and we still believe that Jesus Christ is the Creator of this universe and all things therein. The Right Perspective A landscape artist does not always stand at an arm's length from his canvas. He must not limit his attention to the isolated details of what he is doing. Occasionally he steps back to view his work from a distance. He needs to see how his thousands of small brushstrokes fit together to produce an overall result. Likewise, our perspective on life is much improved if sometime we can step back and see it whole. We can become so occupied with its daily brushstrokes that we have no real perception of the whole scene we are painting on the canvas of the ongoing years. Our attentions can be so consumed by the requirements of daily living that we have little awareness of the dimensions and directions of life itself. Step back from the canvas a little, and try to see the picture whole. Look beyond the varied episodes of our daily doings and see the glory of it all. Look beyond the brushstrokes to see the art which the brushstrokes have made-and are making. "But we all... beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 3:18).

As a boy in the Middle West, I used to amuse myself by holding a stick across a gateway that the sheep had to pass through. After the first few sheep had jumped over the stick, I took it away; but all the other sheep leaped through the gateway over an imaginary barrier. The only reason for their jumping was that those in front had jumped. The sheep is not the only animal with that tendency. Almost all of us are prone to do what others are doing, to believe what others are believing, to follow, without question, the testimony of prominent men. The Circus or the Parade? A little boy living in the country had never seen a traveling circus, and one was coming to his town on Saturday. Saturday morning came. He asked his father for some money. His dad reached in his overalls and pulled out a dollar bill-the most money the boy had ever seen at one time. Off the little wide-eyed fellow went. As he approached the town, he saw people lining the streets. Peering through the line at one point, he got his first glimpse of the parade. There were animals in cages and marching bands. Finally, a clown was seen bringing up the rear of the parade. The little boy was so excited that when the clown passed, he reached in his pocket and handed him the precious dollar bill. Thinking he had seen the circus when he had only seen the parade, the little boy turned around and went home. The tragedy of most of our lives isn't that we aspire too high and fail. It's rather that we settle for too little. We could have a greater influence, and yet, because of fear or ignorance, shame, or inertia, we take the precious dollar of our lives and settle for the parade instead of the real thing. To What Are You Listening? A naturalist, walking with his friend through the busy streets of a great city, stopped suddenly and asked, "Do you hear a cricket?" "Of course not," laughed his friend. "You could never hear a cricket with all this roar of traffic." "But I hear a cricket," persisted the naturalist, and turning over a stone, he uncovered the insect. "Did you actually hear the cricket chirping above the noise of the street?" asked his friend in astonishment. "Certainly," said the naturalist. "I spend my time listening to nature, whether I am in the forest, the field, or the town. Everyone hears what he listens for." Taking a coin from his pocket, he dropped it on the pavement, and each passer-by put his hand in his pocket to see if he was the one who had dropped it. They were listening for coins. What a lesson! If we are listening for the truth-for that which is stimulating, elevating, inspiring, we will hear it, even above the noise and bustle of this busy world, above the din of lies, tattling or gossip so commonly heard by many. And if our ears are attuned to scandal, backbiting and false reports, we will hear that, regardless of how loudly the principles of love, justice and truth may be proclaimed in our direction.

Plutarch tells us that the Rhodians appealed to the Romans for help, and one suggested that they should plead the good things which they had done for Rome. This was a plea difficult to make strong enough, very apt to be disputed, and not likely to influence so great a people as the Romans, who would not readily consider themselves to be debtors to such a puny state as Rhodes. The Rhodians, however, were wiser than their counselor and took up another line of argument which was abundantly successful. They pleaded the favors which in former times the Romans had bestowed upon them, and urged these as the reason the great nation should not cast off a needy people for whom they had already done so much. When Entertaining, Know the Angel So many are like the traveler who came tired and exhausted to the door of a Christian and asked to stay overnight. When the Christian showed some unwillingness, the traveler started quoting Scripture and telling the Christian not to forget that he might have the opportunity of entertaining an angel unawares. "Yes," said the Christian, "but I don't believe that an angel from heaven would smell of liquor." The Lord's Will A little boy about eight or nine, who liked to have his own way, was told by his father, "Philip, you ought not to want your own way." He dropped his head as if he had been given a big problem to solve. After thinking a while he said, "Father, if I choose the will of the Lord and go His way because I want to, don't I still have my own way?"

In South America there is a tribe of Indians that interprets the past and future quite differently from us. We look at the past as being behind us and the future as lying ahead of us. We may laugh at this tribe as being less advanced than we, but they place the past in the future, and the future in the past. Instinctively they are more discerning than we. Look at their logic: what they've experienced and lived through they place before them to teach them. The sufferings of the past become the lessons of the future. We've known this, but often we haven't practiced it. They look at the future as lying behind them because it is entirely unknown; it's something that follows rather than precedes them.

Cicero, a Roman orator and politician who lived before Christ, said: "I am persuaded that my friends who have departed this life have not ceased to exist. In reality only their present condition can be called life. I adopt this faith not only because logic demands it but also because my respect for the most noble and distinguished philosophers bids me do so. I consider this world a place for nature but never foreordained to be my home forever. My departure from this world I never deem as an expulsion from my dwelling place but rather as the departure from my hotel." Even a pre-Christian era Roman knew that death doesn't end all.

There was a king whose officers, in the midst of battle, decided to go and take food that was desperately needed from some homes in the area. When they came back with it, the king asked, "Did you pay them for what you took?" They said, "No, the king doesn't have to pay." He said, "Go back and pay them for everything that you took." A king who arbitrarily takes things from people is hated, but a ruler who pays for everything he needs and that people are willing to give up, is the one who is loved. Anyone who uses his power to take away, is abusing his power.

"I will never forget my first experience in hospital work," said Chief Surgeon Millar of the Central Emergency Hospital in San Francisco. "There was an undergraduate nurse in the detention ward, and we had a very violent case-a man in the worst stage of delirium tremens. I was awakened in the middle of the night by the head nurse who requested me to come at once to the patient. When I got there I found him raving and very violent, with the new nurse scared out of her wits." Then the doctor said, "Why did you let him go so far? I left you some medicine to give him as soon as he got delirious." "Yes, doctor," the nurse replied, "but you told me to give that to him if he saw any more snakes, but this time he was seeing blue dogs with pink tails."

“That your love may abound … in all judgment [discernment].” Philippians 1:9

Lack of discernment often accounts for the failure of those in the pew to realize the full import of unsound teaching from the pulpit.

A brilliant modernistic preacher, who had pleased his audience with flowery oratory and beautiful perorations, as he discoursed glibly of the importance of breadth of view and the danger of bigoted opinions, was bidding farewell to his congregation as he was about to leave them for a new parish. One of his young men approached him and said, “Pastor, I am so sorry we are losing you. Before you came I was one who did not care for God, man, or the devil, but through your delightful sermons, I have learned to love them all!” This is mere sentimentality — not discerning love.

A gentleman was once seated opposite to Coleridge at dinner, with a magnificent forehead and a very fine and venerable bald head. The eyes of this patriarch were scintillating, apparently, with the fires of genius, and the whole bearing of the man was suggestive of immense capacity, laboriously suppressed. "Ah!" thought Coleridge, "if he would but speak, what grand things we would hear! what 'large utterances,' worthy of the early dramatists! what poetry, and eloquence, and truth, and thought!" Suddenly the gentleman who could boast of a venerable head, and a great talent for silence, spoke; the oracle delivered its burdening message, and to this effect: "Hand me them dumplins! Them's the jockeys for me."

A man in this country knew everybody. Name what celebrity you could, Palmerston, Guizot, Arago, Landseer, Livingstone, Marie — no matter. "Oh, yes! I know him very well, indeed." At last, a provoked cynic asked, "Did you happen to know the Siamese Twins?" The omniscient but conscientious speaker at once replied, "Well, one of them I knew exceedingly well; but I am not quite sure whether I ever happened to meet the other."

A countryman who was riding with an unknown traveller over a dangerous plain, said, "This place is infamous for robbery; but for my own part, though often riding over it early and late, I never saw any thing worse than myself."—"In good time," replied the other; and then demanded his purse, and robbed him.

When Guttenberg, the first printer, was working in his cell in the Monastery of St. Abersgot, he tells us that he heard two voices address him. The one had him desist; told him the power his invention would put into the hands of bad men to propagate their wickedness; told him how men would profane the art he had created, and how posterity would have cause to curse the man who gave it to the world. So impressed was Guttenberg with what he heard, that he took a hammer, and broke to pieces the types he had so laboriously put together. His work of destruction was only stayed by another voice, sweet and musical, that fell on his ear, telling him to go on and rejoice in his work; that all good might be made the cause of evil; but that God would bless the right in the end. So to all of us still come those voices that came to Guttenberg.

Ignorant. Hans Priem was admitted into paradise on the express condition that he was not to indulge a habit he had acquired of censuring and criticising whatever came under his notice. He saw two angels carrying a beam crossways, and knocking it against every object they met; but said nothing. He next saw two other angels drawing water from a fountain, and pouring it into a cask which had holes in the bottom; but still held his peace. At many other things of the same kind he also suppressed his laughter and his remarks, apprehending that he might otherwise be expelled from the place. At last, he saw a cart stuck fast in the wire, with one pair of horses yoked into it before, and another pair behind, and the carter urging both simultaneously forward. It was more than Hans could do to refrain from criticising it; and the consequence was, that he was seized by two angels, and turned to the door. Before it closed behind him, however, he looked back, and perceived that the horses were winged, and had succeeded in drawing the cart out of the mud into the air; nor can there be any doubt, that, in the other cases of the beam and the cask, there were equally good reasons for what was done. Gotthold.

To be able to read is a great advantage; but this advantage may be sadly abused: to read a good book may be a blessing; but a good book may be read with a bad purpose. Tom Paine was a reader, and he read the best of books, the Bible; but he read it to scoff at it and revile it; and thus, being an infidel himself, tainted the minds of thousands with infidelity. To be able to write is a great advantage; but this talent may be made a curse. Dr. Dodd is a melancholy instance of this; for he wrote his name in the commission of forgery, for which crime he suffered an ignominious death. G. Moynige.

There is an ancient emblem which represents a "thoughtful thoughtless man offering straw to a dog, and a bone to an ass."

"Look, papa!" cried a child, "at the berries I have found." As his little girl said it, she showed her father her basket half full of them. He asked, "Have you eaten any of them, my child?"—"No, papa."—"Not one?"—"No, papa; not one."—"Thank God!" he murmured. "Give them to me," he said: "I must fling them all away!"—"Fling away my pretty black berries, that I took so long to find?"—"Yes, dear child: they are poison." There were tears in her eyes; but she gave them up: and he dug a deep hole in the garden, and buried them. "Why, what are they?" she asked. When he answered, he said, "They are the berries of the deadly eight-shade."

There is an old story of a Frenchman, who persuaded some Missouri Indians to exchange fur for gunpowder, representing that they could obtain a fine crop by sowing it. The Indians prepared a field, and sowed the powder, and set a guard to watch it. As it did not come up, they saw that they had been deceived. Some time after, the partner of the deceiver visited these Indians with a large stock of goods, for the purpose of trade. The Indians each took such things as pleased him till all were gone. The Frenchman went to the head chief, and demanded redress. The chief assured him that full justice should be done as soon as the harvest of gunpowder should be gathered. This was poor consolation for his loss, but such a rebuke as his partner's perfidy deserved.

When the Edward Irving mania raged, a man calling himself an "Angel of the Church," proceeded from Bristol to Bath, on a special mission to William Jay. The grave, thinking old man, was in his study, and when the "Angel," a man with a dismal countenance, a white cravat, and rusty black trousers, appeared, Mr. Jay asked him his business. "I am the Angel of the Church," said the man. "What church?" asked Mr. Jay. "The Irvingite church at Bristol," replied the angel. "Take off your coat," said Mr. Jay. The angel took off his coat, and Mr. Jay quietly rubbed his shoulder blades. "What are you doing?" asked the angel. "Looking for your wings," was the cool answer of William Jay.