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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

John Shin

The Most Important Ability

For those who don't know me, my name is John Shin.

I'm currently doing my internal medicine residency at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

And last week, we had a little cold spell, And the meteorologist was saying something like, you know, in parts of the town, the wind chills can get down to negative 60.

And he's like, and folks, just so you have a point of reference, that's colder than the surface of Mars.

Last time I checked, Mars was not inhabitable.

So I appreciate the chance to visit you guys in such a time as this.

But before I dive in, I just want to stress to you and encourage to you to go out to restoration and encourage others to go as well.

You know, as I was listening to testimonies of people talking about restoration, it reminded me of my experiences there.

And when I was here as a student, I had several of my non-Adventist Christian friends tell me later on and say, you know what, that is the first time I really learned what Adventists truly believed, and it's the first time I felt like it was attractive.

And so that's not a slam to the rest of the institution, but that it's so necessary to have a targeted time where you are outreaching to the student body here in a way that's relevant to them, in a way that works around their unique schedules.

Before I begin, let's start with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, The topic I'm about to share today, I feel very inadequate to talk about.

But Lord, I pray that you will use this opportunity and use me as your mouthpiece.

I pray Lord that you will help us to rid our minds and our hearts of all the cares and concerns of the world, empty it of all the noise that's built up there over the week.

I came across a story recently, and it's about a new technology that helps to detect salmonella in food products.

And unlike conventional salmonella testing devices that take some time to come back with a result, this biosensor is a real-time technology where you scan the food product and it tells you instantly whether or not there's salmonella present.

So they tested this technology and they found that its accuracy was approaching 99%.

So it was so effective that certain large food catering services began to use this technology exclusively to screen for salmonella.

And then it happened that there was a salmonella outbreak reported in a certain area and they started tracing back the infections and they realized that it came, all the food products came from 1 food service vendor that was using the Salmonella sensing device exclusively to detect Salmonella.

And so it was a PR nightmare, both for the company and for the technology.

And as I was reading up on this story, I was wondering if I was the CEO and ask yourself, if you were the CEO of this company and you knew that you were trying to prevent salmonella outbreaks in your food products, how much of a priority would you make it to make sure that your sensor was properly functioning?

Where would that end up on your list of things to do as a CEO for that day?

You know, if your sensor that detects salmonella was malfunctioning, it wouldn't matter how much your company believed that salmonella was a bad thing to have in food, right?

It wouldn't matter how many training courses your employees went through to teach them how to effectively handle food to prevent salmonella from spreading.

You know, it wouldn't matter how much money you poured into advertising, how much effort your company put into making its food products taste good, in the end, if the sensor is not functioning, then your company has no defense against Salmonella getting into the food.

So if you were the CEO of this company, how much money would you spend to ensure that the sensor was correctly functioning?

And I think you would agree with me when I say if I was a CEO, I would spend whatever it took because if that sensor malfunctions, nothing else I do really matters, right?

And as I was thinking about this story, and I was thinking, man, how could they not check this thing, it occurred to me, Do we have such a sensor in our own lives, but instead of detecting salmonella, is it a sensor that we use to detect sin?

Do we have such a sensor that we use to discern between good and evil, right and wrong?

And it dawned on me that the Bible tells us, yes, we do.

You know, we assume that the ability to discern between right and wrong, good and evil, is something that we're all inherently born with.

And we appeal to dissents and others when we debate the issues of the day that are affecting our society, our church.

We just assume that people recognize what's right or wrong.

But the Bible tells us that this is not the case, that our sensor can be faulty.

And friends, if you had a faulty sensor, there would be no point in debating the issues of the day with air.

You know, It wouldn't make sense to engage in a lot of discussion about who's right and who's wrong regarding a certain topic until you realize that your sensor was calibrated correctly because to do so would be like starting off on a journey with a compass that doesn't point true north, right?

And as I looked around, I felt like far more attention today was spent debating various issues rather than assessing the condition of our own spiritual sensors.

And I found this to be true in my own life and it may be true in yours as well.

So let's take some time now to do a Bible study on how this spiritual censor works and how we can develop the most important ability in the world and that is the ability to discern between good and evil.

So if you have your Bibles turn with me now to Hebrews chapter 5.

My goal every time I come and talk here is to make Arden scramble to find the right setting on the mic that will pick up my still small voice.

I rehearse when I'm at home to see if I can talk any quieter.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.

But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

This is such a packed passage, but let's slowly unwrap it.

Verse 13 says, milk is for those who are unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.

So in other words, milk is for spiritual babies, right?

In order to know what a spiritual baby is, we must first see what they are not.

And in this passage, that information is found in verse 14.

In verse 14, those who by contrast are of full age have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

So the implication is that spiritual babies don't have this ability, right?

So therefore, spiritual babies are those who need to be told what is right and what is wrong.

They cannot go to the word and discern it for themselves.

So milk then must be this pre-digested truth that spiritual babies rely on.

So note that time has no bearing on this issue.

You can be a Christian from birth and still be a spiritual baby.

If you're depending on others for your knowledge of truth, you are dependent on milk.

Listening to sermons, going to conferences, these are great things, but we can't depend on others to do our thinking for us.

See, when a controversial issue comes up in the church, far too often I see people, whether consciously or unconsciously, ask themselves, what does so-and-so believe about this topic?

And based on that answer, they decide their stance on the issue based on what their role models believe.

And the danger is that if these leaders, at some point in the future, wander from the truth, they're going to take all these people with them.

Because they're incapable of discerning the truth for themselves.

And that's what Paul is getting at in Ephesians chapter 4, when he says in verses 14 and 15, that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.

But speaking the truth in love, we may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, Christ." Do you see this theme again?

That the children, the spiritual babies he's talking about are tossed back and forth by every wind of doctrine, but he's wanting us to become spiritually mature, to grow up in all things into Christ.

So I'm not saying that we shouldn't listen to others.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be taught by others, but rather that we should be like the Bereans, that when we receive this information, we should seek for ourselves to see whether or not it is true, rather than passively accepting it, just because it's coming from a source that we've grown to trust.

Spiritual babies don't have this ability to discern whether or not what they're receiving is right or wrong.

Their sensors, in other words, their spiritual sensors are malfunctioning.

So going back to Hebrews chapter 5, What then is solid food in contrast to milk?

So if milk represents the truth you receive secondhand, then solid food must represent the truth that you discern for yourself through God's power.

So then what are the characteristics of the people who can tolerate solid food?

Well in verse 14, it says that they are of full age and some other translations may translate it differently, but the Greek word here is teleos, and it means maturity, perfection, completeness, being a full age, being mature.

So what does it mean to be spiritually mature?

Well, the next part of verse 14 tells us spiritually mature people are those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

This definition of spiritual maturity is crucial to our lives and it is the most important point of my talk today.

It's the foundation of everything we're going to talk about.

So unlike spiritual babies, spiritually mature people are those who are able to properly discern between good and evil.

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The Most Important Ability

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