“And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?” (Matt. 16:3).
Jesus teaches us an important lesson from this passage. Men are to use their common sense. It is one of the important features God put in man when He created him. The Pharisees and Sadducees did not lose their rationality, but were setting it aside to test or offend Jesus. This led them to be craftier and wicked than truthful and righteous. Man can sense each time period or situation by the atmosphere it presents. The power to discern is there in all men to judge what is appropriate, beneficial, effective, peaceable and harmless. This means they can discern between truth and error, especially when they are spoken to about the heavenly scheme. When they do reject it, it is merely because they wanted to. So, let us note some important applications from Christ’s words that we through common sense continue to become wise for God.
- Do not set aside the sense of rationality for convenience sake. It imprisons us to sin.
- To be able to discern the atmospheric changes and not that of our inner man, to say the least, is pitiable.
- To hide our emotions to reject the evidence at hand candidly speaks of the perforated state of our mind.
- Relationships are lost or broken when common sense is not put to practice.
- By setting aside rationality we deliberately cause friction between people.
- Foolishness is the fruit of unsoundness, which effectively damages our position among men.
- To nurture common sense is to seek higher wisdom that is above knowledge.
- By exercising common sense we can see there is God.
- Allowing common sense to work in us helps discern our weaknesses and sins.
- Then soundness instructs us to seek Christ for ways to overcome them.
- Shunning common sense causes prevalence of irrational gospel and Christ defaming doctrine among the churches.
- Furthermore, unemployed common sense leads to pride.
- When one does not see Christ from His working nature and His desire for mankind, they are devoid of common sense.