Test and Rest

Introduction

Test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

What are “the spirits?”

English Standard Version Chapter 4

4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God

English Standard Version Chapter 4

4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

First things first, what does John mean when he says, “spirits?” In the Bible, a person’s spirit is the source of their insight, feelings, will, desire. It’s a person’s activating force. A clean and concise way of thinking about it is that a person’s spirit is their inner life. So in , Paul will say that he serves God with his spirit, meaning he serves God with his thoughts, feelings, desires, his inner life. So this is what John means by “spirit,” a person’s inner life.

24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.

English Standard Version Chapter 3

24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.

English Standard Version Chapter 3

24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.

Test the Spirits

4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2

Test the Spirits

First, in the biblical worldview there are invisible beings in creation

We also see in Scripture, that a person’s spirit can be influenced. So in , Paul will say that the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. As believers, our inner life, our activating force is influenced by God’s Spirit to convince us at our core that we are his children. So our spirit can be influenced by other forces or beings, for good such as the Holy Spirit, or as we see in this passage, for evil by harmful forces and beings.

And then he goes right into, but don’t believe every spirit, because some who claim to be speaking by the Holy Spirit are faking it!

4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2

Prophets and teachers would claim that their messages came from the influence of divine beings. The Old Testament prophets like Ezekiel would say that the Spirit of the LORD came upon him and gave him a word for the nation of Israel. Similarly, in John’s context, there were teachers and self-proclaimed prophets who were evidently claiming to be speaking under the influence of the Spirit of God.

So this is

So that is certainly part of what John means here by spirit, but it’s not the full story. The spirit in those days, as it is sometimes used now as well, is a way of talking about the source of a person’s insight, feeling, and will. It refers to the inner life of a person. Paul says Romans that he serves God with his spirit - meaning with his thoughts, feelings, desires, will - his inner life. And this is also what John is talking about here when he says that we should not believe every spirit.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 3:24–4:2.

And so John issues a warning: do not believe every spirit - meaning, do not give credence or accept as trustworthy every teaching you hear whether from within you or from others. We must be more discerning than that as Christians.

We can’t give credence/accept every teaching, thought, feeling, or impulse.

This warning to not believe every spirit is very timely for us today. For starters, we are still dealing with the same problem that John’s readers were facing - false teachers continue to claim to speak on behalf of God. But now we have the ability for those teachers to write books, and internet articles, and host podcasts, and book conferences, and appear on TV. It is easier to get a platform and gain a wider audience today than it was in the first century. So as followers of Jesus, we need to take John’s message to heart that we cannot believe, which is to say, give credence or accept as true, every teaching or thought that we encounter and hear.

But I think in many ways the front line of this struggle has shifted in last few decades. There has been a massive rise in the importance we as a society give to our inner lives, or as John would call it, our personal spirits. In today’s world, we are told that our inner thoughts, feelings, and desires are trustworthy and will reliably lead us towards good things.

One of the speakers at the conference that Rachel and I attended this past week was speaking about the rampant individualism that we face in our society, and he insightfully noted that we don’t talk much of hope anymore, we prefer to talk about dreams. What is a dream? It’s our ideal life that flows out of our personal goals, feelings, and desires. Dreams flow out of our inner lives.

But a fundamental belief of the Christian faith is that our dreams are not trustworthy because our spirits are not reliable! We cannot accept every teaching we hear, nor can we accept every thought, feeling, or impulse that arises from within us.

Why? Because they may not be from God. They may not have as their source and origin the goodness of God.

And so John urges us to test them. To examine the spirits: the teachings we hear and the impulses that arise from within.

What measure do we use to discern which “spirits” we accept?

And what is the yardstick that we use to measure these teachings, thoughts, and desires? John couldn’t be more clear!

English Standard Version Chapter 4

2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

What measure do we use to discern which “spirit” we accept? The measure is whether that teaching, thought, desire, or impulse acknowledges that Jesus has come in the flesh to renew and restore all things as King - which is to say, if the teaching or thought acknowledges and aligns with the gospel - the good news that Jesus is reigning as King of creation - then it can be trusted as coming from God and therefore lead us toward our good.

But if the teaching or thought does not acknowledge that Jesus has come to renew and restore all things as King, than it is not from God and should be rejected.

That is our measuring stick. That’s the discernment process. What thoughts, teachings, feelings and impulses do we give credence to as Christians? Only those that lead us deeper into the gospel of Jesus - that Jesus as come to renew and restore all things as King.

Life as a follower of Jesus means examining every “spirit” against the gospel story.

So life as a follower of Jesus means testing and examining every thing we hear and feel against the gospel story.

Some examples:

1) A common “spirit” that we encounter teaches us that we’ve got to get what’s ours. We feel that the world is a place of scarcity, and if we don’t go out and get enough [fill in the blank], we’re doomed. Therefore, we’ve got to look out for ourselves first and foremost. We hear a lot of this sort of spirit today, and we hear it from those who have a lot and those who have very little.

Does

Now, we need to test this spirit to see whether it is from God, and therefore whether we should accept it or not. Does it acknowledge that Jesus has come to renew and restore all things as King? Does it align with the good news of Jesus? No! We are not on our own in this world if we are in Christ. We are deeply and profoundly loved by God who as Jesus says, “longs to give us his kingdom.” And Jesus has brought his Kingdom to us, and his kingdom does not operate on scarcity, but on the generous abundance of the Father who has not even spared his own Son for us. So we reject this spirit. It is not from God.

There are countless examples we could look at from teachings that we hear to the voices we hear in our own spirits, but the process is the same: following Jesus means testing even our own impulses and feelings, not immediately accepting them as good and right, but measuring them against the gospel of Jesus to see whether they should be accepted and pursued or rejected.

A pastor of mine used the image of a bicycle wheel to give image to the Christian life. A bicycle wheel is composed of all these spokes that flow our of a single point, and everything revolves around that center point. For the Christian, that center point is the gospel: that Jesus has come to renew and restore all things as King. And every teaching, thought, feeling, and impulse that we accept are only those that flow out of that reality.

Each week we say the Nicene Creed immediately following the sermon. We do it for two reasons. First, so that you can test what I say in the sermon. If I ever say anything that goes against the story of the gospel that is outlined in the Creed, you’ll know it! But also because that Creed is the center of our wheel. It’s our point of reference for everything we face throughout our week. It’s the yardstick we use to measure of these spirits that come our way and that rise up from within. We have to keep coming back to it.

Life as a follower of Jesus means testing

TRANSITION: This should not overwhelm or make us anxious, because John gives us reason for optimism.

Now, the idea of testing every single teaching or desire or thought that comes your way may sound terrible and overwhelming, and sadly a lot of sermons would stop there. Test every Spirit, let’s pray. But even as your Pastor, thinking through the kind of toll that that would have on a person’s psyche, my psyche, always trying to get the right spirit in the right file - I mean even the terminology of testing has some people having flashbacks of high school exams.

But this should not overwhelm us, because John pivots in this next verse and gives us reason for optimism and confidence.

Rest in the victory of Jesus over the darkness of the world.

John’s readers had not been fooled by the false teachers.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them,

In the struggle against the false teachers and false spirits in the world that seek to lure his flock from Jesus, John declares victory. His readers have not been fooled by the false teachers. They have kept the gospel of Jesus at the center. They’ve filtered the spirits from within and from without through the measuring stick of the gospel. They have overcome them. They’ve prevailed, John says. He’s speaking as if the struggle is over, which obviously it isn’t, since he’s still urging them to test the spirits. So why all the confidence?

They did not cling to the gospel by their own strength and efforts.

Well, we know that his confidence is not grounded in them and their abilities.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5

It isn’t that his readers are super intelligent or really moral or know the order of the books of the Bible. John doesn’t declare victory in view of anything they’ve accomplished. The struggle isn’t over because they’re really really good at examining their own thoughts and impulses.

They had overcome the false teachings by the

They came out on top because of Christ’s work within them by his Spirit.

John is confident that they will not be lured away from the gospel because of the Holy Spirit’s work within them, and his powerful presence guarantees that they will arrive at the destination to which he calls them. John knows that the spiritual security of his readers depends ultimately upon God’s work within them by his Spirit.

There is no power in the world greater than the power of God that is working within you.

And this is the most remarkable thing. This is something we all need to tattoo on our brains and sear on our hearts: there is no power in the world that is able to delay or destroy the work of God in you. He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

No matter what you are struggling through right now, no matter how dire the circumstances may seem, no matter how strong sin’s hold may be, no matter the doubts you may have, there is no power in the world that is able to delay or destroy the work of God in you. Jesus does not lose a single lamb of his flock. Listen to how Paul puts it in :

Whatever you are struggling through: be it a

English Standard Version Chapter 8

If God is for us, who can be against us?

English Standard Version Chapter 8

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

English Standard Version Chapter 8

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is through him who loves us, through Jesus and his Spirit that we are more than conquerors of these things.

Therefore, we can have confidence that we will also be victorious in our struggle.

And so John urges us to test the teachings and feelings and desires, yes, we should test, but we also must rest in the victory that is ours in Jesus. We’ve got to rest in the certainty that the Spirit is working within us and alongside us to steer us onward toward Christ. When we give into the temptation, when we’re duped by some false spirit, we are not defeated. We repent, we learn, and we trust in the grace of Jesus.

Remember, Christ is the victorious one - and his victory becomes ours when we rest in him.

The life of the believer is marked by testing and resting, but know this: the resting always comes first. If you’ve not experienced the love that God has for you and the life that Jesus has bought for you with his death and resurrection, than you’ll have very little interest in maintaining the gospel as your point of reference and as the center of your life.

You need to first find your rest in Jesus. And there is no greater place to rest your weary soul than at his feet.

Conclusion