Be Careful What You Eat - The Goat - The Character of Creatures

This is a chapter from the book The Character of Creatures: What the Animal Kingdom Teaches Us About God and His Word.

Be Careful What You Eat –The Goat

Goats are notorious for trying to eat everything. While they can often tell that something is not food after they have tasted it, they have been known to eat hats, coats, hair, small electronics, and even cans. Be careful if you get close to a hungry goat, there is no telling what he will try to eat!

The goat’s appetite illustrates:

If someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. ~ 2 Corinthians 11:4

Discussion:

1.      How do you know the difference between food and fabric? When you were a baby did you try to eat fabric? The book of Hebrews tells us that our “powers of discernment [are] trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14). How can you tell what is true and what is false? How can you use the Bible in discernment?

2.     How can people get Jesus so wrong? At least they get his name right, but they describe all sorts of things about him that he would never say or do. Do you know anyone who is believing in another Jesus than the true Son of God described by the Bible?

3.     What can happen if you eat something that is bad for you? You could get a stomachache, or have to go to the hospital, or worse! If we are not careful about what sorts of things we feed our soul with, the consequences could be horrible!

Discernment is not knowing the difference between right and wrong. It is knowing the difference between right and almost right. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon