Mensa Otabil - Approve The Things That Are Excellent - Part 1 (09/26/2025)
All right, so we go into the Word of God. I am preaching this morning on the topic, «I Approve the Things That Are Excellent.» This is part one; I will do part two next week. I approve the things that are excellent, and I will begin my opening text from the book of Philippians, chapter 1, verses 9 and 10. Philippians chapter 1, verses 9 and 10, and this is what it says: «And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ.» So verse 10 is where the title of my message comes from: that you may approve the things that are excellent. It’s an exhortation that the Apostle Paul gives to the church in Philippi, and by extension, it is given to us, asking the church to abound in knowledge and in discernment so they can approve things that are excellent.
It’s quite interesting; it means that to approve things that are excellent, you need knowledge and discernment that help you to approve things. So let’s define the word «approve.» What does it mean? This is how I define the word: to examine and determine that something is acceptable, to examine, test it, and come to a conclusion that something is acceptable. It is something that can be made to abide. It is a word that is frequently used to show that something is okay or not okay. If we approve of something, it means it is okay. If we don’t approve of it, it is not okay.
There are several ways in which people determine what is okay and not okay. In Ghana, for example, we have the Ghana Standards Authority, which approves goods and services that can be put out to the public, whether they are wholesome or unwholesome. Various industries have their systems for approval, whether a hotel is being run well or a restaurant has the facilities to operate effectively, and so on. There are approval systems all over the world. Parents try to approve what is good for their children, whether they should watch TV all the time or not, or whether they should eat often or not. Parents become the approval systems. Teachers approve which questions are right and which are wrong, and sometimes students fully believe they have given the correct answer, while the teacher fully believes they are wrong. Sometimes you get a zero and wonder where the zero came from. So teachers approve; parents approve; ultimately, God is the one who approves all the things that we do in our thoughts and in our actions.
We are servants to the things we approve of. In other words, we offer service at the level we approve of. We live our lives based on the things we approve of. If a person approves of adultery, they will be more prone to committing adultery. If a person approves of drunkenness, they will accept drunkenness as proper behavior. If a person approves of filth, they will accept the filth they live in. If a person approves of inferior quality, they will produce inferior quality. In other words, whatever you approve of becomes your master, and you are the servant to the things you approve of. Your life is ruled by what you approve. What we approve of dictates what we improve. When we know what the standard of approval is, we can make efforts to change things.
So a standard of approval affects what we settle for and what we seek to make better. For example, if an inspector comes to inspect your hotel and tells you that by the standard you’re falling short, because there is an approval system, he gives you what you should do to improve, to meet the approval system. But if there is no approval system, how can you improve? What you approve of determines what you can improve in your life. If you approve of low-level things, there will be very little improvement in your life. When we approve of excellence, we produce excellence. When we approve of inferiority, we produce inferiority. But our text tells us that we must approve the things that are excellent. This also means that it’s possible to approve things that are not excellent.
In the Bible, you see that God is described in many ways, but one of the ways God is described is that He is a judge. God is a judge, and in Exodus chapter 18, verse 25, Abraham is having a conversation with God about Sodom. You know that Sodom is in trouble; their sin is great, and God wants to go and destroy Sodom. Abraham is negotiating with God, and this is what he says in verse 25, which is very interesting: «Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?» What Abraham is saying is, «God, You are the judge; You cannot mix everybody together. You cannot mix the righteous with the wicked. If You’re going to judge a nation, You have to separate the right from the wrong, the righteous from the wicked.»
So that word «judge,» as it is used in the Bible in Hebrew, means to be able to separate. So when we say that a person is a judge, it means they can separate. I suppose that is what judges do in the courtroom: they separate fact from fiction, they separate truth from falsehood, they separate what is possible from what is impossible, or what is probable from what is improbable. They have to always separate because the evidence they receive is mixed up; they have to separate, and that is what God does—He separates. That’s very important because not only does God separate things, He also charges His priests under the Old Testament to be able to separate things properly and not mix things together, because when you mix things together, you will not be able to determine what to approve of and what not to approve of.
For example, in Leviticus chapter 10, this is an instruction that God gives to the priests: «Then the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying, 'Do not drink wine or intoxicating drink, you, nor your sons with you, when you go into the tabernacle of meeting, lest you die. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations.'» Now why did He say they shouldn’t do that? Verse 10: «That you may distinguish between holy and unholy, between clean and unclean, and that you may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the Lord has spoken to them by the hand of Moses.» Why did God say they shouldn’t get drunk? He says, «So that you can distinguish.»
Now why is that so? Because in the tabernacle there were things that were holy, and everything had its right place. The showbread is there, the candlestick is here, the altar is there, and you have to make sure that you don’t mix things. God says to the priests, «When you go into the tabernacle, make sure that you are sober-minded, because if you are not able to distinguish things properly, you don’t see things properly to put them in their right place, and I will deal with you.» Now why is that important? Because God wants us to distinguish between what is noble and what is profane, what is right from what is not right. We have to be able to distinguish between what is noble and what is profane.
In the Old Testament, there is also a distinction between what is clean and what is unclean, between what is noble and what is profane. I know most of you, when you hear the word «profane,» you think of vulgar words, and yes, vulgar words are profanity. But profanity goes beyond vulgar words; it means something that insults the right standard, something that insults the right standard. So when we say that something is profane, it means it is behavior or practice that insults right thinking. It may not be a vulgar word, but that is profane. For example, it is profane for an Asante man to eat fufu with hot pepper the way a Ga man eats fufu with hot pepper. If you go to Atlanta and see a person eating fufu with hot pepper, you are saying he is profaning the fufu because that is not the right way to eat it. He must have his open abbulu or some banku to eat with the fufu; that is the right way. If he doesn’t eat it that way, he is profaning it.
Now, you may be charged with profanity because that thing is not supposed to be eaten that way. So when we say something is profane, it means you are doing something in a way that insults right thinking. God says to the priests, «When you go to My temple, you have to have the right sense of thinking so you don’t put things in the wrong place,» and that He calls profane. It is profane for us in our culture to sell food right next to the public place of convenience. Why do we say it’s profane? It insults right thinking, because the public place of convenience has all kinds of materials around it, and when you sell food there, you are insulting right thinking.
Are you following me? So when the Bible says something is profane, it doesn’t just mean vulgar language; it means that the thing insults right thinking. Unfortunately, sometimes we approve of things that insult right thinking. And so God tells the people, «Don’t drink, because anything that impairs our senses will disturb what we approve of. Anything that impairs your senses will disturb what you approve of.» Now, if you have been drunk before, you know that sometimes when you get drunk, the next day people tell you things you did that didn’t make sense to you. In your right mind, you would never have done those things, but because your judgment has been impaired, you said those things and did those things.
So God says to the children of Israel, «This is very important. Don’t impair your sense of judgment. Don’t disturb the way you decide; don’t disturb your discernment because if you do that, it will affect the things you approve of.» It is possible for people to impair their sense of judgment, sometimes not by alcohol, but familiarity can make you have impaired judgment. I will never forget this, and I’ve said this before. Years ago, we had an international conference in this church, and one of the guest speakers came with his wife. They were driving through Accra when she saw a grown man urinating in public. It was almost as if she had seen the devil; she was totally horrified because from the culture she came from, it insults right thinking. But for Ghanaians, we drive past it and don’t even notice it.
Why has our judgment been impaired? It is not alcohol; it is familiarity. In other words, you can be so familiar with the profane that you don’t see the profanity. Are you following what I’m saying? So God says we have to be careful; the things that impair us—one of them is alcohol—but that’s not the only one. Sometimes it can be the excuses we make. It can be familiarity. You’ve lived with nonsense for so long that nonsense makes sense.
So that’s the problem God had with the priests. In Ezekiel chapter 22, verse 26, this is how God judges the priests of Israel: «Her priests have violated My law and profaned My holy things; they have not distinguished between the holy and the unholy, nor have they made known the difference between the unclean and the clean; and they have hidden their eyes from My sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.» Now the problem God has is that they are not able to distinguish and differentiate. It also means that for us, at our level, when we get to a certain point where we can’t distinguish between the noble and the profane, we offend God. We do offend God, and it happens many times in our world. We see a bit of it sometimes in the church world. Titles are used without any sense of value. One moment, somebody’s an usher in a church; two weeks later he is a bishop, and we call him that confidently, knowing that just two weeks ago this guy was an usher. So he who calls himself a bishop that way will be called profane because we are not able to distinguish rightly.
You will be called profane because we are not able to make things clear. You read our newspapers; journalists call somebody who started doing something two years ago a legend. Someone whom nobody knows is called renowned. A building that needs a lot of deliverance is called ultra-modern because we have no ability to distinguish. We mix everything and everybody together, and a society that does that does not even have a standard to determine what is excellent and what is not excellent. Everything is marked correct.
It’s like a teacher who sets questions for his students and marks everybody correct, correct, correct—100%. The next person: correct, correct, correct—100%. He mixes the brilliant students with the underperforming students and gives everybody a passing mark of 100% and thinks he’s doing good. But what he’s doing is he is unable to differentiate between what is excellent and what is not excellent, which is what the Bible calls profanity. So, for example, we say things like, «It’s all the same; it’s all the same.» Have you heard that? «Whether you mix it in or pour it into it, it’s all the same.» May I please bring to your attention that they are not the same? It is only a profane, undistinguished mind that will say they are all the same, because if you talk to a good chef who is cooking, they will tell you that mixing something in the bowl and pouring it in—even the rate of the pouring—makes a difference. They are not all the same. They look the same to you because your judgment is impaired.
So it is possible to have a whole nation’s judgment impaired. «Mix it in, pour it in—it’s the same.» It is not the same! Go and talk to the top chefs of the world; they would tell you that the way you stir it—whether backward or forward—makes a difference. The minute you use that set stirring—whether it is the first minute or one minute and five seconds later—makes a difference. The temperature at which you cook it makes a difference. Don’t tell me all baking is the same, all ovens are the same. They are not the same; temperatures differ.
It is a profane mind that is not able to tell the differences. For some people, all green is green and all blue is blue. But green can have various variations. We can have olive green, army green, lime, sage, teal, jade, emerald, and spring green, which is the one I use for my pop—spring green. Don’t say he just uses green; it is spring green, and I choose spring green every time because I know the difference between spring green and army green.
If you don’t know the difference the last time I said, «Do it for me,» you choose the wrong green. All green is not green. All blue is not blue. We have sky blue, we have ocean blue, we have lapis, we have navy, we have sapphire, turquoise—we could also say sometimes indigo, which used to be my favorite blue when I was a designer—and many more. Don’t say it’s all blue, because when your mind cannot tell a difference, your level of excellence will be started.
People say things like, «It doesn’t matter.» It matters! Part of our challenge sometimes also is that we don’t have clear words for things we want to see. We don’t have clear words. The Akan dictionary has about 20,000 words; that’s a lot. The Oxford dictionary of English has 200,000 words; that makes a lot of difference. As a matter of fact, the Korean language has more words than any other language—over a million. That is why the power of description is important.
All right, Genesis chapter 1, verses 2 to 5: «The earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light, ' and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.»
There are seven steps I want you to take note of, and I’m going to run you through seven important things that are happening in this passage, which all have to do with how you are able to certify something, approve of something, and which affects our excellence.
The first thing I want you to note is what was happening in the world at the time from the beginning. The Bible says there was darkness. This was the standard or the state of the world; this had been its norm for a very long time. This normal, darkness, is the prevailing condition. The earth is without form, and darkness is upon the face of the deep.
So this is the existing condition. All right, now this condition is normal, but God wants to change it. He wants to change the normal because this normal is not a good normal.
So number two, we see what God said should happen: «Let there be light.» Though darkness is the prevailing condition, God wants to change it into something else, and to do that, He speaks the new thing into existence. It’s very important that when we want to change a situation, we have to start expressing what we want.
So if you say, for example, «I don’t like this filth,» that’s easy, but what do you want? God didn’t say, «I don’t like the darkness; I hate the darkness; I detest the darkness.» Instead, He spoke the expected result, His intention: «Let there be light.» Somebody has said, «Don’t curse the darkness; just speak the light. Don’t complain about the darkness; just speak what you want. What do you want? What kind of Ghana do we want? What kind of church do we want? What kind of family do we want? What kind of light do we want?»
The prevailing condition is darkness; what God wants is, «Let there be light.» Then we see what actually happened. It’s one thing to say, «Let there be,» and another thing for that thing to happen. The Bible says there was light. God didn’t just daydream; He said it, and it was. It actually happened!
It would be like saying Accra is going to be the most beautiful city in Ghana, in Africa—"Let there be light,"—but it didn’t happen… and that is not a political statement. «Let there be light,» and actually it happened! Can you imagine the next verse says, «God said, 'Let there be light, ' and there was darkness.» I wonder what kind of God this is when you say one thing and the opposite is happening?
«Let there be light,» and actually it happened! So when you say things, they must actually happen. I’m losing weight, and there was not that year. You said, «I’m going this year; I’m slim; I’m going to lose weight.» Then you added a few more pounds! All right, so what is happening in the world? What God said should happen; what actually happened; what God saw. God saw the light!
In other words, it was evident. It didn’t just happen in His head; it was out there, and He saw it. He looked at what had happened; He paid attention to what had happened.
Number five, and this is very important, is what God thought of what had happened. God saw the light, and it was good—approval, quality control. Did what had happened meet God’s standard? Yes! He sighed, and said, «This is what I had in mind; it was good.»
Number six is very important: what God did to what had happened. He divided the light from the darkness; He separated them. Now what you would notice from the passage is that the light did not take away the darkness forever. So light was happening; darkness was also happening. God saw the light; that it was good.
In order for light and darkness not to remain in the same space, and be seen as the same thing, He separated the light from the darkness. He separated them! Separation helps us to determine what we approve of and what we don’t approve of.
And then the seventh thing that we see that God did is what God called what had happened. He called the light «Day,» and the darkness He called «Night.» He had a name and a label for those two conditions. Light is now called «Day,» and darkness is now called «Night.» He put the right labels on it.
He doesn’t call a new artist a legend. He doesn’t call an ordinary building «Ultra-Modern.» Sometimes, even in the church, somebody just starts a church; he has two confused people in the church, and they are calling him «Papa!» My papa! Then, someone who has done great work for over 40 years we also call him «Baba!» So, who is this one? Is he light? The other is darkness, but we call both «Papa!» Why? Because we don’t know the difference!
We are not able to differentiate. We want everybody to be the same. After all, we are all human beings; we are all equal! Yes, we are created equal, but our achievements are not equal. Don’t call somebody who achieved 100 the same way you call somebody who achieved 5. When you do that, it is as if your judgment has been impaired.
And God wants us to approve of things that are excellent. In other words, if it is not excellent, don’t call it excellent to encourage the person. If it’s cheap, tell them it’s cheap so they can improve. You know, because sometimes in this country, I see somebody has made a car with milk tin, and he’s pushing it. They say this young man has invented a car! Somebody makes a helicopter supposedly with some mismatched components, and I think it’s just standing, going round and round; the rotor is spinning around, right? It’s not going anywhere; it can’t fly. But we say, «Yes, this is the best!»
It’s good to encourage people, but don’t lower the standard to encourage people. Raise the standard, and tell the people, «You can improve to get to this level!» Excellence must be set apart from ordinariness because I’m going to tell you this: Much of what we produce in this country is below standard.
I’m not saying this to put us down; I’m saying it for us to know that we have to improve. Much of what we do, I’m telling you, go to another country, and you’ll find an expert here is not even at the lowest level. But we keep praising ourselves, patting each other on the back, and we have used the wrong words to describe things.
Somebody starts doing something, and we call him «This is a new whatever,» and we give him superlatives. Can you look at what he’s doing? It is miserable! There is hope in it; there is a future; there’s potential. But let the person know that what he has done has potential; it has promise, but it hasn’t arrived.
When you tell people their work is rubbish, they feel offended. «Yeah, but I gave you my best!» So what? It still doesn’t meet that standard. The standard is excellence! It is here, while you are trying to find your level down below, and you have potential; you have promise; you can be excellent, but you are not!
We must have the confidence to label things right. God called the darkness; He says, «You were there before the light came, but you are dark.» And the light came second. It is day! He labeled them differently! All right, when you read through the book of Genesis further, you’ll see that God has levels of approval—three that we see in Genesis. It doesn’t mean that it is all that He has, but three.
In the book of Genesis 1, the first level is the acceptable, as we just read in Genesis 1:4: «It is good.» God saw the light that it was good. God invited the light from the darkness.
So there is a good that is repeated in verse 10, in verse 12, in verse 18, in verse 21, and in verse 25. Good! Then He has a standard above this; it is the excellent. It is in Genesis chapter 1, verse 31: «God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good.»
So good is not the same as very good. The same God put different levels of mark on what He has done. He Himself has done: one level is good; one level is very good. Then there’s another level of God—the unacceptable. Genesis chapter 2, verse 18: «And God said, 'It is not good that man should be alone.'» So the same God has good, very good, and not good.
So it simply means that sometimes, even from one source, we can have good, very good, and not good. And this is God, the big boss Himself: good, very good, not good. So, if somebody says it’s not good, it doesn’t mean He would not do anything about it. God says, «It is not good, but I will fix it! It is not good for the man to be alone, so I’m going to fix that not good.»
Acknowledging that it is not good helps you to fix it, but if you call not good very good, you will not help the person improve. I told you at the beginning of this series about a musician I know of who traveled from Ghana to America to go and change America. When he was in Ghana, he was a major guitarist known, but when he got to America, he went to do cleaning and all sorts of things.
He didn’t play music here—he came to see me and said, «What happened? Say, Pastor, I couldn’t play because the guitar I was playing here—those high school people, the secondary school people—were playing more than me.» He didn’t do one recording; he just cling-cling-cling and came back. It broke his confidence!
The sad thing is that when he came back, he stopped music. He realized his very good was not good. That happens when a country blows your head big, and then you go to another country, and they punch a hole in your head. When you return, your confidence is broken.
But if your people had already told you «not good,» then when he went to America, he would have gone to improve. But he went there to impress and realized it wasn’t good!
When somebody tells you «not good,» don’t get offended; it means you now have a basis to fix it and to make it better! I’m going to continue next week.