Verse of The Day For Friday, Februray 20, 2009

"Test everything. Hold on to the good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21 NIV).

Again, Paul is addressing Christians at Thessalonica, and he is admonishing them not to believe everything they are being taught because of false teachers who have infiltrated the Body of Christ like cancer cells. Instead, we are to test, try, prove what is being taught by means of the Word of God just as the noble Boreans did as recorded at Acts 17:11. The Greek word translated as "prove" in the KJV and as "test" in the NIV and others is "dokimazo and means to examine, try to out, test, regard as worthwhile, scrutinize (to see whether a thing be genuine or not), as metals and is an old metallurgical term for testing the purity of metals.

We are to try, test, prove, examine everything we are taught with the pure standard of the Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and reject everything that does not line up with it and cling to the good (sound, wholesome) doctrine that does line up with God's Word. The phrase "hold on to the good" is translated from the Greek katechete ho kalou. Kathechete is from the Greek katecho which means to "continue belief" (implying appropriate action), "possess" and "control" (restrain continuously) and "occupy," and the word "the" is translated from the Greek definite article "ho" thus emphasizing THE good. "Good" is translated from "kalou" which is from kalos which means "good, advantageous, fitting, important."

Hence we are to test, try, prove and deem whether worthwhile those things we are being taught, and we do this by examining them with the light of God's inspired, written Word, rejecting those things that do not line up while clinging to, continuing to believe, and possess (make the Truth our own) and keeping the Truth inside us, not allowing it to slip away so that we would not embrace false teaching. If we allow the Truth to slip away, we become susceptible to accepting false teaching and replacing the Truth with it.

Pastor Jack Howell
"Some bring God's curse on them by marking off part of the Bible, calling it erroneous, uninspired, less than the very Word of God." - Dr. John R. Rice

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God to salvation to every one that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." (Romans 1:16)

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