The Spirit of God Points to Christ

Introduction

Good morning, everyone. It’s great to see you all again and worship and share God’s Word with you all. Our text today is 1stJohn 4:1-6 if you will all please go ahead and turn your bible to there. Also, I want to draw your attention to something, that is (if you haven’t gotten one already) we have this month’s pastor’s notes/newsletter up here. If you haven’t gotten one, please come up and grab one after service.

You know, I want to share something with you all this week, because I want to give glory to God in this situation and testify to His greatness and the importance of relationship and fellowship with Him. I’ve already shared with you all a little bit about how I do sermon prep each week, and if you want to know more, I’d be happy to talk to you about it. This week though, something was different. On Tuesday I began putting together my manuscript and ran into a sort of writer’s block. So, I stopped for a little while and did some personal devotional time. It hit me during this, that I had substituted sermon preparation time with personal devotional time for two and then almost 3 days in a row. No wonder I felt so spiritually dry and unwilling to go on. I wasn’t keeping myself deep in the vine as we talked about last week. I then remembered how I always intend on large portion of my sermon prep time to be in prayer and personal reflection about it. So, if I spend 15-25 hours on sermon prep, something like 3-5 hours is always intended to be in prayer and personal meditation on it. I hadn’t done that at this point, I realized that I needed to repent and enter a quite time myself with God. So, I found myself immediately in my personal devotion time, which took me at Acts 13 and prayed for a while. Once I did this, wouldn’t you believe that God opened my heart and mind and then the words flowed. When we seek to be deep in the vine of our redeemer and savior Jesus Christ the Righteous, He works in us. He is the source of our spiritual life and through prayer we plead with Him to show Himself to us and He grants what we are seeking to us if it is good for us, meaning that it is in His will for our lives. Just like the scripture we quoted last week, Jesus said to His disciples, Until now you have not asked for anything in My Name, ask and you shall receive and your joy may be complete.

When stepping back and thinking about these things, about sermon prep and prayer, we have to ask ourselves. What are these about? Well, it should be what, and is, what God wants us to do to ourselves and the world, to point to Christ. To share Him with others and show what He does and did and will continue to do for us. This is of course, all empowered by the Holy Spirit, who’s ministry is to point people to Christ. This is our main idea and sermon title today, that, The Spirit of God points to Christ.

Scripture

Now, if you will all please rise for the reading of God’s word today, which is 1stJohn 4:1-6. We have only done this twice before, but if you will please turn your attention to the screen above me, on the screen will be the text…. Please read along out loud with me as I read it. When I am done, I will finish with “this is the word of the Lord” and you will respond with “thanks be to God.” Before we begin though, let’s pray. Father, we come before your in admiration and adoration today. You are the mighty God who saves, the mighty God who sees us and knows us. Thank you for this, and we thank you for the privilege of worshiping You today here in this place. Father, as we are about to read your word together, we surrender to You. Help us to put anything aside that would keep or distract us from hearing Your word today. Keep our hearts, our ears, our eyes all attuned to it. Father, help me share Your word, I am just a man but Your Word is so great….. As we hear this word, help us keep it, but not just for the sake of keeping to ourselves, but for the sake of applying to our lives and sharing it with others. It’s in these things that I ask and in Jesus Christ’s Holy and Precious name that I pray. 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 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. 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 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. This is the word of the Lord (thanks be to God), thank you, please be seated.

Context

You will recall how this letter was written to the churches that the Apostle John had spent time in, today scholarship believes that this letter was written especially to the church at Ephesus and surrounding areas, these churches were frequently enduring false teachings that confused the brethren and led many astray from the path of righteousness. John, loving these people (and the world for that matter) so much, as his savior commanded him, wrote this letter to correct and lead the people back to path of worship of The True God and not one that is caught up in mysticism, secret knowledge, and denied the divinity of Christ as the enemies of the true church, the Gnostics, were doing at this time.

In last week’s sermon we touched on several ideas that countered what the Gnostics were teaching. These were that Christ is Greater, that He is greater and more reassuring than anything that seeks to separate us from Him. We spoke about how Christ changes us, that when we come into faith, He changes in such a way that we cannot turn back from it and molds and shapes every thought and action that we have. We spoke this simple truth, one that Gnostics didn’t believe and taught against, that Christ is God. That we are to believe in the name of God the Son, Christ Jesus and love one another as is Jesus’ commands to us. We spoke at how once we accept Christ, once we become a Christian, that Christ abides in us, that we enter a union with him but that we must seek to nurture this union by fulfilling the moment by moment needs of believers to live in repentance, love God and People, and preach the gospel to ourselves and others. All of this is under the main idea, Abiding in Christ means Christ Abides in You.

Moving on though, on the issue of this week’s text. I once again challenge you notice a pattern of writing that John has been using and continues to use. That is, he has a negative statement then a positive statement and this pattern continues sentence to sentence in this section. Then if you look even closer, the negative statements tend to have to deal with deceivers, with warnings to watch out for them as our sin nature inclines ourselves to hearing them and the positive statements have to do with nature and character of God. Watch for these kinds of patterns in your own personal bible study and devotional time. You would be amazed what you can learn when you watch out for patterns by the penmen of any book of the bible. Also keep in mind, that staring in chapter 3 and continuing through the rest of this letter, John is speaking in relation to our (mankind’s) relationship with God whereas chapters 1 and 2 were often in relation to other believers. You will also notice, that many of John’s main points keep coming up over and over again in this letter, as you all know, if something is repeated in the Bible then it means it’s really important and the author wants you to really zero in and understand this. As such, you will keep hearing some similar thoughts as we continue. So, with those things in mind lets dive into this week’s text.

Message

Our first point and next slide is, God is Truth

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.

Here again, John is warning us against false teaching and false spirit. Stott comments on this verse that, The present tense of the command do not believe every spirit(1) suggests that John’s readers were tending to accept uncritically all teaching which claimed to be inspired.[1]” To help with confusion here, you will notice that in your version of the Bible it most likely does not capitalize the word “spirit or spirits” which rightly denotes that we are not talking about the Holy Spirit itself (note that not all bible translation do this but many do), but rather we are talking at what is the rational or the vital principle behind the teaching.

Again, much like we do today, these brethren were enduring false teaching that did not match the words of scripture. John here is appealing to them (and to you as well) to check for yourselves if is a person’s teaching is true. Make sure what is being taught is the truth, otherwise God is not in it as God is truth and as we said in an earlier verse (1 John 1:5) that, “5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

In God is only the truth, if there is even a hint of lie then it isn’t from Him. Peter warned the church against false teachers and prophets as well. He gives an account of this in 2 Peter 2 which reads, “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. 3 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” Since they are not following, pursuing, or sharing the truth, punishment awaits them. What is this truth thought? It is that Christ came to the earth to redeem us from sin and was crucified to pay for our sins. (Which by the way we all have. They can be big, like murder. Or they can be small like thinking badly of someone else.) That all who confess Him as Lord and Savior will be forgiven, all we have to do is turn from our sin and believe and trust in His name.

A second point, God is Jesus

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

Here it is right here, John tells us what separates our faith from others, even that of the Jews. That is, that Christ (God the Son) came to the earth and is both fully divine and fully human (an impossibility to anyone but God). He is the messiah, the redeemer, the savior. No one or nothing else is, though many things and people want to be. It needs to be said though, as just saying, “Jesus is Lord” is something many can say but less will mean that (To quote Wiserbe), “To confess that “Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh” involves much more than simply to identify Christ. The demons did this (Mark 1:24) but it did not save them. True confession involves personal faith in Christ—in who He is and what He has done. A confession is not a mere intellectual “theological statement” that you recite; it is a personal witness from your heart of what Christ has done for you.”[2]Confessing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and is from God is a personal experience for everyone.

John then goes on, making sure that the issue is clear, there is no middle room for interpretation. He says, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist.” John is saying that every teaching, every teacher, every person that does not confess Jesus as God is from the spirit of antichrist. It doesn’t seem here that John is meaning THE ANTICHRIST that is mentioned in revelation. Rather, John means that that the teaching/teacher does not follow Christ. Meaning, not for Christ. As in, for Satan. As in, is opposed is Christ, meaning is against God. This person or teacher or what-have-you who does not confess that Jesus is of and from and is God is antichrist. This person had a different spiritual father, Satan who stands opposed to our Father, The Father God.

My brethren… do not seek to follow any teaching that is against God. I’ve said it many times, I’ll say it again. It is all around us, it is subtle, it is in many places. It is in many places that we don’t even expect it to be. Guess what, even just like with John’s audience it creeps into places that we thought were safe. John even says it in this verse. Antichrist is coming, is here, and will keep coming. Antichrist is the spirit of the world who stands starkly opposed to all things of the kingdom of God and will do anything it can to deceive and take people on the wrong trail. Because Satan wants the glory for himself. This isn’t his glory though, this is GOD’s glory, he (Satan) will lose. Until then, beloved persevere and take the teachings that John is sharing here in mind when you approach anything. If you find yourself in this wrong place, then your God is warmly calling you back to him through repentance and faith, trust in Him and He will forgive you.

Another point is God is greater

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.

Yes…. Yes yes yes. Oh Yes. God is greater. Rest assured, if you are of Christ, if He is within you (because God’s Holy Spirit Lives in you and pulls and directs you) to overcome any of the evil in this world, whether it be from worldly or other worldly origins. God is Greater than Satan. He is greater than anti-Christ. He (God) will not and cannot be overcome. If you ever find yourself worried and in doubt, just look to the end of the bible which tells of the end of this world. Guess what happens *spoilers* God wins. He Wins big time. Satan, his army, his antichrist is cast aside and destroyed. God reigns in the new heavens and earth, and all the redeemed of history will be there to worship and fellowship with for eternity.

That may seem so far away though. Just know this, God will win. Know this too, if you are enduring some kind of evil right now, as believers know that you will continue to go through this. You will continue to experience spiritual warfare. You though, will have victory if you rely on Jesus. Take this time of difficulty and trial too and keep your eyes open. It is very likely that God is trying to teach you something about Him and something about yourself to you. Seek Him in all things that you do…. You know, this verse reminds me of the 2nd chorus of a Christian song that was very popular and came out about 12 years ago or so. This is Chris Tomlin’s Our God (is Greater). This part of Chorus says, “And if Our God is for us, then who could ever stop us? And if our God is with us, then want can stand against?” This of course is a reference to Romans 8:31. Yes yes, God is greater than he who is living in the world (satan) and God will overcome it all. You can overcome it all, all through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Righteous.

The next point is God is heard.

5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

To be more precise, God is heard by believers. Here, verse 5 starts with the word “they” meaning the false teachers, the anti-Christ and to John’s audience in particular at the time, it was the gnostic leaders/teachers/and followers. The message they speak is so attractive, that it is easy for them to have many many followers. You may all know of certain preachers that are commonly on TV who are caught up with promises of people being directly healed, or large works of God (that never seem to manifest themselves) or promises of wealth to the people who follow their teaching and donate to their ministry. Then, conspicuously this “pastor” as they sometimes falsely call themselves have great big mansions, yachts, and jets and don’t ever seem to give to any charity except those that they have direct dealings with. Why do people fall for this?

It’s because these fake teachers are giving the world, the people of the world who are focused on the kingdom of earth and not the kingdom of heaven, they are saying they will give them what they want. Let me tell you, God doesn’t care about your net worth, he cares about your heart and your eternal soul. Specifically, if it is attuned to Him, seeks to give Him glory in all things, and points others to Christ. The fake teachers tease and tickle the ears but never deliver, because they are not from God. They are from Satan who only has the eyes to destroy the truth and lift up all those that seek to destroy the truth themselves, mercilessly squeezing everything they can out of this person. Even their soul.

Our God though, is rich in mercy. Ephesians 2:4-10 tells us about God, “4 But[c] God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Everyone who trusts in God, hears His words, and follows Him. Everyone who does not, seeks to follow the world. So, beloved, do not be surprised when we see people who are not believers act like it. They have a different father, their goals and wants are different than ours. Their father seeks to deceive and is in fact the father of deceit and lies. We though, we called few, have been called to more. We have been called, selected by God, to be a son or daughter to Him. We have been called to the table. We know (to some degree) the plans. We know what is coming. We know the truth, that Jesus Christ is Lord and that before Him in the future, EVERY SINGLE knee will bow to Him and confess what we already know that is He Lord and that salvation is only found through Him. Beloved, put aside anything in your life that keeps you from rejoicing in this, that we get to participate in the Kingdom of Heaven because God is so great and loves even lowly and vile sinners such as ourselves.

Conclusion

Faith family, keep these truths deep in your heart. Make them move you into action. Jesus Christ is God. He forgave you, me us, from our sins and nothing else matters. Nothing else, except for doing the work of God’s glorious kingdom. A kingdom that only our Holy and Perfect God can rule, but a kingdom that God has chosen us to participate in. What a great God. What a wonderful savior. Thank you Lord.

To others in the room today, perhaps you are unconvinced or maybe you are a little confused. Maybe Christ isn’t your king just yet. To you friend, I want to share the most wonderful news in the world. This is that God created the world perfect and good. Then through the deception of the devil and man’s desire to be great like God Himself, sin entered the world. This sin continued and continues even to today and exists in every person and separates us from God. God though, being rich in mercy and love for us, provided the way to be restored to fellowship with Him. This was through His own work, the death of Jesus Christ, who paid the penalty for our sin. Through Jesus’ death and trust in Him we can and do receive salvation. We can and do no longer stand condemned through God and will not endure the judgement that is to come. And yes, it is to come, even most worldly scholars and philosophers believe that some kind of ultimate judgement for justice’s sake is coming. We know this to be the judgment and justice of God. If you are ready, accept this and take the free gift of Jesus’ Christ’s payment for the penalty of your sin.

Let’s conclude. If you would like to talk more about this, or even just need prayer. During our last song together, I will be up here for you. Won’t you come? I love you all. Let’s pray. Father God, thank you for who You are and what you have done for us. You are a forgiving and loving father, who sees us and knows the desires of our hearts. Father, make our hearts desires yours. Teach and mold and shape us in a way that keeps our eyes ever on You and searching for You and Your will on all things. Take these words that You have shared with us today and make them change us. Help us keep them for ourselves and then go out and share them with others that your kingdom can be furthered in our communities, in our lives, in those around us, and in ourselves. It’s in these things that I ask and in Jesus Christ’s holy and precious name that I pray. Amen.

[1]Stott, John R. W. The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary. InterVarsity Press, 1988, p. 152. [2]Wiersbe, Warren W. The Bible Exposition Commentary. Victor Books, 1996, p. 499.