1 John 4:1-6—Test the Spirits
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: 1 John 4:1-6
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Welcome
Welcome
Good morning! I’m Bill Connors, senior pastor here with Eastern Hills, and I’m blessed to be here this morning as the church gathers together to worship the Lord and to reflect on His Word. I pray that this time is a blessing to you as well, but more than anything, I pray that our joining together today brings honor and glory to God, and points us to Him. I wanted to take a moment this morning and say thanks to our praise band Worship 4:24. They work really hard to be prepared to lead us in musical worship and praise each Sunday morning, and I appreciate their hearts, talents, and faithfulness.
If you’re a first-time guest this morning, whether you’re in the room or online, we’d love to have the opportunity to drop you a note and thank you for joining with the church family at Eastern Hills today. If you wouldn’t mind, would you just shoot a quick text with just the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004? You’ll get a text back with a link to our digital communication card, where you can give us just a little more information so we can pray for you and drop you a quick card thanking you for being with Eastern Hills today. If you’re here in the building and you’d rather fill out a physical card, you’ll find those in the back of the pew in front of you. Just take a minute during the service to complete that, and you can drop it in the offering plates as you leave the sanctuary at the close of service, or you can bring it down here to me when service is over, so I can meet you and thank you personally for joining us today with a gift. Either way, thanks for being with Eastern Hills this morning.
I want to warn parents whose children are still in the room or online for just a moment. The first part of my message (after we read our focal passage) this morning is going to be a little rough, perhaps even graphic. I will not camp there long, but I wanted to give you a warning.
Announcements
Announcements
AAEO ($13,015.79) Goal $17,000, taking through the rest of the month.
Easter Stuff
Good Friday Service 4/7 @ 12:15 pm, lunch afterwards with Student Ministry Mission Trip dessert auction, bring desserts by 11:45 am, let Trevor know if you’re bringing something via email trevor@ehbc.org.
Egg Hunt Saturday 4/8 @ 9 am as Joe has already mentioned
Sunrise service out front 4/9 @ 7:45 am, breakfast following
Bible study for all at 9 am
Family Worship as usual at 10:30 am, no Kids Worship during that service though.
Opening
Opening
Last week in our 1 John series, which we are calling “Letter of Life, Light, and Love,” we looked at the instruction in John’s first epistle that loving one another is the “uniform” of the Christian. The fact that we love our brothers and sisters in Christ well gives testimony to the fact that we have been saved. In the close of that section on love, John says that there is another evidence of our salvation: that we have the Holy Spirit. So in chapter 4, he takes a moment to help us consider the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. Let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read our focal passage:
1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming; even now it is already in the world. 4 You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world. Therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Anyone who knows God listens to us; anyone who is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.
PRAYER (Covenant Presbyterian Church & School in Nashville, Monarch Baptist Church & Pastor Bobby Erickson—they have several close to faith, ask for favor with MHS’s administrator, and blessing on their marriages)
I almost nixed this beginning. But I couldn’t. Again, a moment of warning before I begin. I need to tell you that I’ve struggled this week.
We are at an interesting point in the weaving of our societal fabric. We have reached the point where someone can claim to be a different gender than their biological one, and demand that they be treated as such simply because they decide that that’s what they want. Two state capitol buildings were overrun by activists this week, who sought to influence the legislators deciding on bills to ban gender reassignment medications and surgeries for minors. Kids are having their bodies permanently altered by drugs and scalpels before they even begin puberty, and somehow, some way, when six people including three children die in a school shooting in Nashville at the hands of someone who claimed to be a different gender, many including the White House are more concerned with the impact that that will have on the “trans community” than they are about the community of Nashville and the school and church that were violently invaded.
I’m not here to bash transgenderism. But here’s part of what I’m struggling with: I have actually heard some in more progressive circles say that this is a good thing, that God is behind this, and that we should be affirming, applauding, even approving of this movement out of a desire to be loving and to show how understanding and accepting Jesus is. That this is what God would have us do. I will say unequivocally that that’s a lie. You can’t change your gender, and you can’t decide to be a different sex no matter what drugs and surgeries have been created that try to say otherwise. God determined your gender and hard wired it into every single cell of your body from the moment of conception, as God fearfully and wonderfully knit you together in your mother’s womb.
If you are wrestling with gender dysphoria, turn to Jesus in faith and trust Him because He made you, and He loves you, and He has good plans for you. And get help to address the feelings that you’re having. Your feelings aren’t telling you the truth. And if I were to stand up here and affirm your feelings that would be the least loving thing that I could do. But I do love you, and so I’m doing the most loving thing I can by telling you the truth: you’re being deceived if you think that changing your gender is the answer to your problems. And if you think that transgenderism is of God, you’re being deceived by your heart, by the transgender movement, by the media, and even by the government, but all of that deception has something else, something more sinister, behind it.
Make no mistake. There is a spirit at work in the world, and that spirit is in direct opposition to the plans, desire, and work of God by His Spirit in the lives of those who belong to Him through faith in Jesus. You might think that I’m being political. I promise you that that is not my intent. I’m being very much biblical. This is the picture of the spirit of the age that I could not get out of my head all week, one that because of the similarities between us, I could see a reflection of our city, our school, our church in. One that because of the sheer volume of the noise surrounding this topic this week, I could not escape. But my message is not about transgenderism. My message this morning is about seeing clearly the difference between the spirits behind the things that we claim to be true, the arguments we stand on, and the way we see God, society, one another, and even ourselves.
OK… The graphic part should be over now.
So what are we called to do? We are called to test the spirits.
1) Test the spirits
1) Test the spirits
Our focal passage today paints a clear picture of the contrast between the Spirit of God and the spirit of the antichrist; the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception; the Spirit from God and the spirit from the world. John’s argument is bookended, a literary device called an inclusion. Let’s look first at the bookends:
1 John 4:1–2a (CSB)
1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you know the Spirit of God:
1 John 4:6b (CSB)
6b This is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.
Notice how these two statements frame the argument that John makes in between them. This is a good thing to notice as you read the Scriptures.
So then this prompts the question: What are the “spirits”?
The “spirits” in are evidenced by testimony that comes from people that claims to speak the truth about what God says. In short, they are prophecies. Their testimony is either true or it is false. Both are fed by either the Spirit of truth or the spirit of deception. We are not to simply take something at face value because someone claims that it is “from God,” or that “God said this or that.”
John Stott has a good reminder for us here:
“Neither Christian believing nor Christian loving is to be indiscriminate. In particular, Christian faith is not to be mistaken for credulity. True faith examines its object before reposing confidence in it.”
—John Stott, The Letters of John
In fact, we are given two commands in verse 1: “do not believe” and “test” the spirits, or prophecies, that we hear, in order to see if those things match up with the truth. We are commanded to not entrust ourselves to every message we hear, and to examine each one in order to prove its veracity. In short, John tells us not to believe everyone who says that they speak for God.
This doesn’t mean that we’re suppose to ignore all prophecies, however… just that we’re not supposed to irresponsibly believe every prophecy we hear, but make sure they are from God. Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians:
20 Don’t despise prophecies, 21 but test all things. Hold on to what is good.
In the book of Deuteronomy, a couple of tests were given to address if someone claimed to speak for God:
1 “If a prophet or someone who has dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you, 2 and that sign or wonder he has promised you comes about, but he says, ‘Let’s follow other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let’s worship them,’ 3 do not listen to that prophet’s words or to that dreamer. For the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. 4 You must follow the Lord your God and fear him. You must keep his commands and listen to him; you must worship him and remain faithful to him.
So if a person claimed to be a prophet, even if he had the sign or vision that he had predicted come true, if he spoke against following Yahweh, then he was a false prophet and was not to be listened to.
Furthermore, if a prophet said that he was predicting something in the name of the Lord, and that thing didn’t come true, then obviously he was not speaking for God when he prophesied.
21 You may say to yourself, ‘How can we recognize a message the Lord has not spoken?’ 22 When a prophet speaks in the Lord’s name, and the message does not come true or is not fulfilled, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.
In our Christian way of life, we sometimes can kind of use the statement “God said,” this or that as a trump card. How is someone supposed to respond to that? “Well, if God said it....” Let me be clear about this: If you say it, you better mean it. If you claim to be speaking for God, and you’re actually not, then you’re violating the third of the Ten Commandments:
7 Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God, because the Lord will not leave anyone unpunished who misuses his name.
We are told to test the spirits in order to see if they are from God because “many false prophets have gone out into the world.” There are people who claim to speak for God, but in reality, they don’t. Unfortunately, the reason we are given this instruction isn’t just because the false prophets are “out there,” but because they are also “in here.” Church, we are not “of” the world, but we are “in” the world. And this means that some of the world will be in our midst. If “many” false prophets have gone out into the world, then those false prophets will also attempt to infiltrate the church as well.
Jesus spoke a word of warning to His disciples about this in the Sermon on the Mount:
15 “Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves.
And Peter wrote that there will certainly be false teachers among the church, those who would deceive and distract the people of God:
1 There were indeed false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on themselves.
We must be aware that false prophets will attempt to deceive us. We are not to listen to them, but to the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of God (v. 2a), the Spirit of truth (v. 6b). In speaking about the Holy Spirit in John 14, Jesus said:
17 He is the Spirit of truth. The world is unable to receive him because it doesn’t see him or know him. But you do know him, because he remains with you and will be in you.
26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.
It is the Spirit’s job to teach us what is right and to remind us of what Jesus has said. If we are filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), living by the Spirit and keeping in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25), we will be much more difficult to deceive and lead astray.
So to answer a quick question that may have arisen in your mind: Can we be saved and yet deceived by a lying spirit? Yes. I know that I have been deceived by someone claiming to speak for God, and I’ve been deceived by someone claiming to want to hear about Jesus. Because we want to believe the best in people, we can fall into these kinds of schemes. This is why Jesus said:
16 “Look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.
But even with this admonition, we can get stuff wrong, even if we are have been saved and regenerated. This is why we’re given a couple of tests to use to examine the claims someone makes:
2) Test #1: It’s all about Jesus.
2) Test #1: It’s all about Jesus.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how disliked Christians are right now in society. I believe that most of the reason that this is the case is that we claim that there is only one way to be saved, and therefore only one way to truly live: through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. However, following Jesus means something about how you live after that. And that’s where the rub comes. The world doesn’t want to accept the idea that there is just one right way, one correct path, one ultimate reality and truth.
In his work The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Lesslie Newbigin wrote this:
“The gospel is news of what has happened. The problem of communicating it in a pluralist society is that it simply disappears into the undifferentiated ocean of information. It represents one opinion among millions of others. It cannot be “the truth,” since in a pluralist society truth is not one but many. It may be “true for you,” but it cannot be true for everyone. To claim that it is true for everyone is simply arrogance. It is permitted as one opinion among many.”
—Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
This is the problem. For the longest time, people were willing to let us have our Gospel of Jesus Christ as long as it didn’t infringe upon their lives. But the Gospel is supposed to infringe. Either Jesus is who He said He is, or He’s not. There is no middle ground. And whether or not you get this right determines whether you get nearly everything else right or wrong. This is why the first way to test the spirits is to see what the prophet claims about Jesus Christ:
2 This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
The test is all about Jesus: His incarnation, His identity, His humanity, and whether or not the prophet has an orthodox confession about Jesus.
The incarnation is vital to the message of the Gospel. The doctrine of the incarnation says that God the Son took on human flesh for real, not an illusion of it, and lived on the earth as the man Jesus of Nazareth, both fully God and fully human at the same time.
14 The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
So this test is that the Spirit of God tells the truth about Jesus, glorifying Him because the Spirit always glorifies Jesus, according to Jesus’ own words in John 16:14. But it’s not as simple as saying right things. The word “confesses” is broader than that. It’s kind of how we use the term often today: that when someone confesses, they are saying they’re guilty of a crime. A confession is a declaration of fact, a profession of ongoing allegiance to a particular position, of basing your life on what you are declaring.
So what confession will be made by the one who is speaking by the Spirit of God?
First, the Spirit of God affirms the humanity of Jesus. Because of how we do names today, we see “Jesus” as Messiah’s “first name,” and “Christ” as His “last name.” But instead, Jesus is simply His human name, a transliteration of the name “Joshua,” which means “Yahweh saves.” This points to the fact that Jesus is fully human. Paul said in Philippians 2:
7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.
Second, the Spirit of God affirms the deity of Jesus. The term “Christ” is His divine office and title, as the term literally means “Messiah.” The Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, came to serve humanity by giving His life to rescue us from sin, shame, and death.
In what we will look at next week, John wrote about this confession in a similar way:
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God.
And finally, the Spirit of God affirms that Jesus Christ “has come in the flesh.” This statement is made as a permanent thing: Jesus came once as a man and remains a man on behalf of humanity forever.
So the Spirit of God testifies to the truth about Jesus’s incarnation: that He is fully man, and fully God, and He has actually come in the flesh.
And remember that throughout this letter, John has said that what a person does gives evidence about what they actually believe. So this confession also should have the expected shift of life that would be seen in one who holds to it.
John then gives us the negative test:
3 but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming; even now it is already in the world.
The phrase, “does not confess Jesus” is shorthand for the entirety of the confession we just referred to about the incarnation. John is more clear on this in 2 John 7:
7 Many deceivers have gone out into the world; they do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.
So just as I said that if you get Jesus right, you’ll get nearly everything else right, the inverse is also true: Get Jesus wrong, and you’ll get nearly everything else wrong, because if you get Jesus wrong, then you gut the Gospel, and it ceases to be Good News. It’s no longer the Gospel at all:
3 But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be seduced from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if a person comes and preaches another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit, which you had not received, or a different gospel, which you had not accepted, you put up with it splendidly!
8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! 9 As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him!
This is not the Spirit of God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which Trevor preached on a couple of weeks ago—those who stand against the teaching about Jesus. John had already warned them about antichrists and THE antichrist back in chapter 2:
18 Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. By this we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. However, they went out so that it might be made clear that none of them belongs to us.
THE antichrist is coming, and in fact, must come at some point before God wraps up time. But the “spirit” or influence of the antichrist is already and constantly here, and in fact, it had infiltrated the church that John was writing to, because some of them (those who had been in the church) “went out from” the church and into the world.
The spirit of antichrist rises up against the truth of the Gospel, and attempts to deny, discredit, or distort the truth of Jesus Christ. Why? So that people will not believe in what Jesus has done, and trust Him for their salvation. This brings us to our second test:
3) Test #2: Listening & Believing
3) Test #2: Listening & Believing
The second test that John gives us to determine the difference between the Spirit of God and the spirit of deception is the test of listening and believing. The reality is that those who truly belong to Jesus Christ can never be separated from Him, regardless of what the world might throw at us. The best the world and the devil can do is distract us, damage us, and try to convince us of things that simply are not true. But if we will cling to the truth of Scripture, listening to the Word and the voice of God through the Spirit, then we will overcome through God’s power, and not our own. Those who listen to and respond to the Gospel message in faith are not only saved, but John says that we are conquerors by the work of the Spirit living within us.
4 You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
If we are in Christ, then we are “from God.” Throughout this letter, we’ve seen what it means for us to remain in or abide in Jesus. If we abide in Christ, trusting in Him for our salvation, it’s evidence that we belong to Him. And John says that the believers “have conquered” those who have the spirit of the antichrist. This is that we have defeated them in the past through being united with Christ by faith, and we continue to conquer them by remaining in Jesus. We listen to the Spirit speak by His Word, believe and abide in that truth, and through that God gives us the victory, as John wrote in chapter 2 of this epistle:
14 I have written to you, children, because you have come to know the Father. I have written to you, fathers, because you have come to know the one who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, God’s word remains in you, and you have conquered the evil one.
The importance of engaging the Word of God cannot be overstated here. We are to have a constant intake of Scripture in order to develop and strengthen our faith, because the Spirit will not speak that which is contrary to the Word, and by the Word we will be able to confirm whether or not it is the Spirit of God or a different spirit who is speaking to us.
Paul warned Timothy of the truth of the days to come in 1 Timothy 4, and told him that the Word would nourish the believers:
1 Now the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will depart from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons, 2 through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared. 3 They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods that God created to be received with gratitude by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 since it is sanctified by the word of God and by prayer. 6 If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished by the words of the faith and the good teaching that you have followed.
Through the Word we understand what is false and can cling to the truth by the Spirit. And greater is He (the Holy Spirit) who is in us than he (the spirit of the antichrist) who is in the world. The spirit of antichrist is ultimately the influence of Satan. For the moment, he has a certain amount of dominion here, even though God is still in control and on the throne. Satan is the ruler of the “world:” the corrupt system that stands in opposition to the truth of God. But his rule is neither complete nor permanent:
31 Now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
30 I will not talk with you much longer, because the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me.
8 When he comes, he will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment: 9 About sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; 11 and about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.
So those who speak what is false are those who speak with the spirit of antichrist, under the control of the devil. John says that this is why the world receives them: they speak exactly what the world wants to hear. This is why the logic of the moral system of the world tends toward degradation: because once you get on a slippery slope, you almost can’t help but slide.
5 They are from the world. Therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them.
The ones with the spirit of the antichrist look like the world, believe what the world believes, and speaks what the world speaks. And the world then readily accepts their message, while rejecting the message about Christ. This is why we are going to be hated more and more, Christian. When we stand on the truth, the world will not tolerate it, because it doesn’t match their desires:
3 For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear.
Instead, they will long to hear whatever it is that the devil has to say through his mouthpieces, the false prophets, the spirit of deception, the antichrists:
43 Why don’t you understand what I say? Because you cannot listen to my word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. 46 Who among you can convict me of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? 47 The one who is from God listens to God’s words. This is why you don’t listen, because you are not from God.”
But we need not fear. Remember what John said about the Spirit of the Lord being greater than the spirit of antichrist. Daniel Akin summarized the fact of our hope beautifully in his commentary on this passage:
“The Greater Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is in you, and He is greater than he who is in the world. Is the world strong? Yes, but our God is infinitely stronger! Are false prophets wise? Yes, but our God is infinitely wiser! Is Satan great? Yes, but our God is infinitely greater! And this One who is infinitely stronger, wiser, and greater now and forever ‘is in you!’”
—Daniel Akin, Exalting Jesus in 1, 2, 3 John
We can know what the spirit of the antichrist is: it’s shown in those who reject the Gospel, those who reject the Word of God, those who resist the truth.
1 John 4:6a (CSB)
6 We are from God. Anyone who knows God listens to us; anyone who is not from God does not listen to us.
Closing/Application: Who are you listening to?
Closing/Application: Who are you listening to?
Who are you listening to? What are you believing? Does it match up with the Word of God? If so, then you walk in life, in light, and in love by the Spirit of God living within you. If you are listening to and believing the lies that the world tells, then according to Scripture, you’re on a path that leads to destruction.
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. 14 How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.
Yes, the Bible says that there is just one way to be saved: that you believe the Gospel. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took on our humanity so that He could die for all of us to pay for our sins—the ways that we rebel against God. We could never have paid the price to save ourselves, even though we owe it. And Jesus never owed that price because of His sinlessness, which is why only He could pay it. He died in your place and mine so we could be forgiven. But then He overcame the grave by rising again, and lives eternally. There is no other way to be saved. Believe that Jesus died for you and rose again. Turn from your sin and surrender to Him in faith. Then you will have new life now, and life eternal with Him, as well as the indwelling of His Spirit in your heart to help you walk with Him by faith.
If this is you this morning, please let us know.
Joining the church
Prayer needs
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading (Jer 25)
Pastor’s Study (Eph. 2:18-19 tonight)
Prayer Meeting (5:45 Weds)
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
3 Therefore I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus is cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is Lord. Go and declare that in the Spirit today.