but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good.Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.prove all things; hold fast that which is good;
3 sermons cite this verse
Beloved, now we are the children of God and has not yet been revealed what we shall be like, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is for everyone who has this hope purifies himself just as he is pure. How beautiful is that? Philippians 3, 20. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus, who will transform our lowly body. This is the rapture event. That it may be conformed to his glorious body according to the working by which he is able to even to subdue all things to himself. John 14. Jesus speaking. Jesus introduced the doctrine of the rapture. Here it is. Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. And if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also. …
… Instead, what? Verse 21, test all things. Hold fast to what is good. That's what he's saying. He's saying abstain from every form of evil. He's saying don't swear off fish, chew the meat, and spit the bones. That's what he's saying. So we want to be open to the reality of God moving in unexpected ways through his Holy Spirit in the church today and be poised and ready for that to happen. We do not want to become jaded. We do not want to become cynical. We do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We do not want to be at a place where we become old wineskins that God cannot pour the new wine of his Holy Spirit. So Holy Spirit, we welcome you here. We honor you here. We accept you here. Move in our lives. come and operate in our midst. We long for that to happen. And yet at the same time, we need a filter. We need a filter to pass through what is purporting to be from God and have a way to know whether it's from him or not. …
Read and pray Christian! But take care you do not read without watering your reading with your prayer. Paul may plant and Apollos may water, but God gives the increase! And even in this blessed Book, Moses may plant and David may water, but prayer must cry to God or else the increase will not come! Now in the sixth place— VI. READ AND TRY. Try what you hear. Try what you profess. Try what you read. Goldsmiths keep bottles of acid by which they test everything that is offered them for sale, to see whether it is gold or merely tinsel. And the Christian should keep God's Word near at hand and treasured in the soul, to test thereby all that he hears. "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." Many hearers believe all that is said because of the person who declares it to them. This is not according to Christ's mind! We ought to receive nothing as vital religious truth except it is sent us from above! And however much we may respect the pastor or the teacher, we must not so give up our judgment to any man as to receive his teaching merely because he chooses to utter it. Bring every form of the Truth of God that is delivered to you, though it may glitter with oratory and seem reasonable and proper, to the test of Scripture! It is very difficult, however, to get men to do this. They seem to fancy that you have sinister motives the moment you tell them so. There is a conservatism in the nature of us all with regard to our religious faith which is right enough if it were balanced by another principle. To hold fast what I know is right, but to be willing to receive or to do anything that God would teach me to receive or do is more right still. I must know what it is to which I hold fast, or else I may be injuring myself by the fixedness by which I stand to what I have learned. The woman of Samaria said, "Our fathers worshipped God in this mountain." That is the argument of numbers of persons. "Our fathers did so-and-so." This would be a capital argument supposing that our fathers were always right, but a very absurd argument supposing that they were wrong! I hope we are not like that early Saxon who asked where his father and all his ancestors had gone—and when he was told they were no doubt lost—he replied to the missionary that he would rather go where they were than become a Christian and be separated from them! …