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Intro: Stories we hear.

John has been talking about he need to love one another. To be willing to sacrifice for the others. If anyone has the world’s goods and closes his heart against them. The call to love in deed and word.

So given all this, it seems odd that John would place testing spirits and discerning in the middle of this section. Especially given that he is going to pick up on the love one another theme once again in verse 7 and connect it to loves source, God himself.

Big Idea - The call to love is also a call to be lovingly discerning.

The Reality of False Teachers

John again acknowledges that these people are beloved. He cares deeply for them. This I think is an often overlooked aspect of leadership in the church. We look for the charismatic leader, the people that seem to always say the right thing at the right time. Those that seem like they are speaking truth all the time. Or those that know the Bible really well. But do thye love you? Do they know what’s going on in your life? Do they pray for you? Are you loved by them? John loves them. We’ve seen it over and over in this letter. He yearns for them to understand the reality of the gospel. That they are now brought in to the family of God.

And his concern here is a spiritual. He wants them to not believe every spirit. In other words he wants them acknowledge the reality of false teachers. In other words, not everyone that claims to be speaking for God is sent from God.

In the early church there were quickly a swath of false teachers. This should not be surprising. False prophets were a problem for Israel as well.

Jeremiah 14:13-18 “Then I said: “Ah, Lord God, behold, the prophets say to them, ‘You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.’ ” And the Lord said to me: “The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name although I did not send them, and who say, ‘Sword and famine shall not come upon this land’: By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed. And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and sword, with none to bury them—them, their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For I will pour out their evil upon them. “You shall say to them this word: ‘Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter of my peop…”

And the source of these false prophets is Spirit of the antichrist. We’ve talked about he antichrist before.

1 John 2:22 “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.”

First thing we need to come to grips with is that teaching and the sources of those teachings are a spiritual endeavor. Now I am not trying to talk about a dualism of a Spirit Word and and Material world where one is bad and the other is good. But the reality of the world is that there are spiritual forces at play. We live in a world where they’re are things going on in the the unseen world. We as modernist and postmodernists struggle with this, but the reality is that there are spiritual forces at play. These are not just humans with poor theology. I’m not saying they are demon possess, but they could be influenced by spirits.

1 Kings 22 “For three years Syria and Israel continued without war.

So we need to be discerning. In fact the loving thing to do is to be discerning to help people who may not know to understand this reality, that not everyone who comes in the name of the Lord is really from God.

We need to sit with that reality. So all of us here need to be discerning. Meaning that as the body, we need to look out for one another. Because we are in a battle believe it or not. We hear the world will hate us, last week. But perhaps the best way to disrupt the church is not from outside of it but from within it. If you can infect the body with something that goes undetected for awhile. Let the cancer spread in the church and then when the time is right, let it rear its ugly head.

But God is warning his people and us that we need to be discerning. That we need to test the spirits.

The Need to test what is true vs. false

Are you willing to be discerning this way? I know we live in a climate where we get a little fearful thinking about saying somebody is speaking falsely, but the act of love is to proclaim what is false. To test what is true and what is false. Now if it were totally obvious then this wouldn’t be a conversation at all.

But think of someone who is cpunter fitting money. They aren’t using monoponly money and trying to pawn it off. They use something close enough to the real deal.

The test itself

This probably means more than simply stating the basic fact of the incarnation; it likely refers to rightly confessing all that was true of Jesus while he was here on earth. In other words, a Spirit-led teacher is identifiable by his consistency with the apostles’ testimony of Jesus’ earthly life in the flesh (v. 6).

So here is the test. Did Jesus Christ come in flesh? If you have that, you have the seed form of the gospel.

These false teachers and false prophets have had a hard time holding these two essential truths together. Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one. He is fully human and lived as the messiah here on earth. As our representative. Living in our place. Dying in our place. Reserrecting in our place, being glorified in our place and preparing a place for us!

The confession is that the man Jesus is himself none other than the incarnate Christ or Son, which is the doctrine Cerinthus and his disciples denied. They believed that that the Spirit of X came down around his baptism and left during the crucifixion.

The test and the gospel really boils down to who Jesus is. Is he the Christ?

Christ is not the last name of Jesus by the way. It is a kingly title. It means he is the messiah the anointed one. He was the promised in the old testament scriptures to bring God’s rule and reign upon the earth.

really can stand in our place and represent us. Divine because his work on the cross is an act of God on our behalf.

When this gets denied, the gospel the good news is denied.

Notice John does not focus on the finer points of doctrine. But this key point because this is the foundation for everything else. Who is Jesus?

And you have to have an answer to that question.

What would an example be of this antiChrist spirit?

It is those who do not confess Jesus. But wait a minute? There are a lot of people who confess Jesus. Remember the whole book of what John is talking about. Are they confessing the Jesus Christ proclaimed in the Scripture.

The gospel is that Jesus the king: preexisted as God the Son, was sent by the Father, took on human flesh in fulfillment of God’s promises to David, died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, was buried, was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, appeared to many witnesses, is enthroned at the right hand of God as the ruling Christ, has sent the Holy Spirit to his people to effect his rule, and will come again as final judge to rule.

Any deviation from this and you have no gospel. IMy desire for you is to become so familiar with this that when you hear other deviation, you can spot it right away.

Piano tuning illustration:

Can you spot the difference?

The second test is the audience

This seems odd to us but part of the test is who is listening? The message from someone who is against Christ, maybe not in an overt way, but more subtle will gain a hearing. This is exactly what John is saying. So he is saying look at these two things. What are they saying and who is listening? In other words, just because people of notorKaty or fame find a certain religious person helpful does not validate their message. Just because a celebrity, actor or actress, musician, politician go to church x with pastor y does not mean they are preaching Jesus Christ. In fact, God’s word is saying here is that we should expect that those who are not truly preaching Christ, teaching Christ, will attract a crowd. No doubt about it.

I am not saying that churches can’t be big. That pastor’s can’t be well known. That those who are of the world can’t be in church. What I’m saying is size and crowd does not validate the message. Just because a church is going gang busters does not mean they are preaching Jesus Christ. It might even cause us to question the message.

My Sheep Here my Voice

God’s people know His message. John here transitions to point out that we…the Apostles, the people God gave to build the church with their foundational message which is recordead here in the final third of your bible. If you are in Christ, if you are born of God, if you a Christian you will listen. That does not mean that if you disagree with my on a secondary issue like baptism, that I am not from God. It is those who being to question who Jesus Christ is. And those that deny the Scriptures being the Word of God.

1 John 4:5–6 (TNTC 1-3 Jn): No private believer could presume to say: ‘whoever knows God agrees with me; only those who are not from God disagree with me.

But God built his church on the founation on the apostles and prophets. Ephesians 2.

So loving discernment means that we listen to the Scriptures and most importantly what they tell us about Jesus Christ.

Those found in Christ have overcome

Any time we talk about spiritual warfare, or Satan, or false prophets, or antichrist, a tremble of terror runs through us. We think of horror movies where Satan is virtually all-powerful, where demons are relentless and blood-thirsty and surprising, the stuff of nightmares. That is not John’s point in bringing all this up. John is not telling us ghost stories to scare us. There are evil spirits, the spirit of antichrist, in the world. There are false prophets, and they may even appear to succeed for a time. Yet John is perfectly confident, bold in his certainty about the outcome of this war. They are from the world, and the world listens to them, but even if they gain the whole world, we have nothing to fear. We are from God, and because of that we have overcome them. Not only that: we are from God, and the triumphant One is “in” us. We are confident of overcoming the world, of beating the world and all its spirits and all its terrors, because of the one who is among us as the body of Christ, the one who is in each of us who is a member of that body. Don’t be afraid of false teachers. Don’t get anxious. There is no doubt about the outcome of this war of spirits. False prophets and false teachers speak from and to the world, but Christians have overcome the world, because the Spirit who is in them is greater than the spirit who is in the world.

Conclusion

Know Christ…become so atuned to him that when you hear something off-key you can spot it right away.

Teach the test…the loving thing to do is not let someone walk into a busy street and not see the car bearing down on them. But to love lovinfly correct them. Is it awkward. Yes. Is it uncomforatblae yes. Might you offend someone. Maybe. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s claim that anyone who brings a message of prophetic condemnation must first love those to whom he prophesies. In the same way, if we are trying to correct one another, root it in love.

Above all though, no this. A culture that teaches against the church, or even a false teaching within the church cannot ultimately be successful because 1 John 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.”