Sermon Tone Analysis
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Proverbs 14:15 (ESV)
The simple believes everything,
but the prudent gives thought to his steps.
There are some claims going around that you might find interesting.
Some people believe Stonehenge was built by aliens, the moon landing was faked, or there is no moon, it’s a hologram.
Some people believe both Avril Lavigne died young and was replaced with a body double.
And before you baby boomers laugh at them, people said the same thing about Paul McCartney back in the ‘60’s.
How about Prince Charles is a vampire?
Ultimately, these deceptions won’t make any difference in your eternal future.
Whether you believe them or not might be a matter of where you’re from.
Conspiracy theories and deceptions work because they can build on some element of truth or plausible claim.
So we should be discerning.
There are other more serious deceptions out there that sound true or plausible, but are insidious lies that have crept into the common understanding and are destroying us.
Like these:
Staying busy keeps you out of trouble.
“The Secret” You can have everything you want if you think positively and work hard enough.
“You do you.”
What you do in your private life is your own business, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
For a woman to achieve true equality and liberation, she must have the right to choose abortion for any reason.
You can be fully satisfied in this world and fully satisfied in God in the next.
You can have real relationships in the virtual world.
Each of these deceptions in some way divides your private from your public life, and your physical world from your spiritual world.
But God created us to be integrated beings having body, soul, and spirit.
The choices you make in one aspect of life will affect your well-being in every aspect.
Believing and living in these deceptions is leading many people into lives of disconnectedness, disorder, and despair.
Stress and broken relationships go up, peace and joy go down.
Not every promise of a better life should be believed.
Why do people buy into these deceptions if they lead to worse outcomes?
Why do we think we can cram our schedules full with no margin and still have lives of joy and peace?
Why do we believe the next achievement or acquisition will make us happy?
Why do we equate freedom with the ability to do whatever we want?
Why do we keep fooling ourselves to think that sins done in secret don’t hurt anyone?
Your context is everything.
It depends on your point of view.
Where you come from, your family of origin, will determine the claims you believe.
If your parents valued achievement, for example, you may equate achievement with worth.
Behind every message is a person.
People have agendas.
John uses the word “spirit”, but he means the same thing.
Messages we are fed in our culture have a spirit behind them.
What message am I believing?
Who is that message coming from?
We’ve been studying a letter from the Apostle John.
He is writing to Christians who are being promised a better life, more free, more enlightened, if they leave the whole Jesus thing behind.
John wants us to know that your best life, complete joy, communion with God and with others, comes from believing in Jesus, even when it’s hard.
God’s love is so crazy, He makes children out of sinners.
If we believe in Jesus Christ, we belong to God, and God is a good Father.
He keeps things simple.
At the end of chapter 3, John says, 1 John 3:23
More than this, God is a Father who knows how to give good gifts.
He gives us the gift of Himself.
His greatest gift is His Spirit.
And His spirit will guide us into truth and eternal life, and communion with God, and growing understanding of love.
One of the best ways the Spirit of God helps us is to discern the truth out of all the messages we are hearing in the world.
John is telling us,
Don’t Be Duped, Be Discerning
Last week, John told us, through Ross, that we are all in a growing process as God’s children.
Abiding in Christ causes the seed of God’s life to grow in me.
A major part of abiding in Christ, of believing in Christ, is listening for His voice.
There are many deceiving messages from many false prophets and teachers.
But we should not believe everything we hear.
God’s Spirit will help us be discerning.
1 John 4:1 (ESV)
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.
1 John 4:2 (ESV)
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
1 John 4:3 (ESV)
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.
John says there’s a false message out there, being preached by false messengers.
The false messengers belong to a spirit of error that is opposed to Christ.
John never labels the message so we have to piece together the deception he warns against.
The popular philosophy which was growing at the time John wrote this letter became known later as Gnosticism (“Knowledgeism”).
The teaching went something like this: the physical world is a corruption of true reality and a distraction.
Redemption is possible for your spirit as you seek knowledge from a higher being than the god who made this world.
Then you will rise above the corruption of the physical world.
Redemption in Gnosticism was a separation of your spiritual life from your physical life.
Physical = bad, must be separated from spiritual = good.
This might seem appealing to people trying to please God spiritually who struggle with sins in our bodies.
But the gospel John taught was in fact completely different.
John says the test of a message from the Spirit of God is that “every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God (verse 2).”
Why is this the key to discerning the truth?
If you believe the false prophets, you can live a disconnected life.
It doesn’t really matter what you do with your physical body, or this physical world.
It’s just a distraction anyway.
Liberation comes from knowledge.
Otherwise, do whatever you want.
This message comes from the spirit of this world.
The message of the Spirit of God is very different.
The Bible tells us that as a human being, God has made you an integrated person with body, soul, and spirit.
All three aspects are created by God and are good.
All three are working together all the time.
All three have been affected by our fall into sin.
Our sin leads to all kinds of brokenness in all aspects of our lives.
Our relationship with our planet is broken because of our sin (which is why we have environmental scientists).
Our relationships with other people and our own self-understanding are broken because of our sin (which is why we have psychologists).
And our relationship with God is broken (which is why we have Jesus Christ).
Where does wholeness come from?
The gospel is that Jesus has come to redeem us and restore us in all of our brokenness.
Why is Jesus Christ coming in the flesh the test of truth versus error?
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