Assaying a Sermon

 

Somewhere around 1380 BC,  King Burraburiash of Babylon wrote a letter to the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhophis IV about a shipment of gold they received. Burraburiash thought the delivery was suspect and had his people put the gold in the fire to test it and three quarters melted away. They were apparently swindled with counterfeit gold. This is the first recorded account of fire assaying. The ancient process is still used today for analyzing and determining the ratio of precious metal in ore. Though today, the King of Babylon would have just taken a sample of the shipment, rather than putting the whole shipment in the crucible, the principle is still the same. Fire assaying (to over simplify it) is putting the precious metal in a crucible at around 2,000 degrees to separate the precious metals from the slag. As soon as people started minting coins, bad guys started making forgeries. Then everyone had to test their money. You might think you have an ounce of gold but instead have a gold plated chunk of lead.

That's the idea Paul had when he said, "prove all things," in 1 Thessalonians 5:21. It's not just coins that are counterfeited. Since the fall, as long as there has been truth to declare, there have been counterfeiters trying to make a profit on the cheap. Put all things you hear to the test to see if what someone is telling you is the truth or a lie. You have to be aware and on guard. Unfortunately, you can’t believe everything you hear. If a preacher got behind the pulpit, opened his Bible then began to tell Christians to follow the example of Jeroboam and make a golden calf and place it just before the door of the building so the members can bow and give thanks to Baal before coming to Sunday school, I suspect that wouldn’t fly. That’s a counterfeit, but not a very good one. A good counterfeit looks and feels the same as the original copy. The dangerous false preacher is the one who has a message that is 99% truth but adds 1% of false gospel, which turns out to be no gospel at all.

That’s why you have to “prove” all things. Separate the precious from the slag. Don’t believe every word you hear, especially when someone tells you they have a word from God. We put everything to the test by the Bible (Romans 12:1-2) to compare what people are saying God said by what the Bible says. The false teachers in Galatia were right in the doctrine of the church, baptism, sin, and many other truths. They preached that salvation was by grace, through faith in Jesus. But they added one thing –  you also had to be circumcised. So in a sermon of 5,000 words, 4,950 could have been right on the money, until they added that one work to the gospel, which made the whole a damnable heresy. Be careful out there, prove all things.