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Test the spirits! | 1 John 4:1-6 (Mark Evans: 2-25-24)
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In 1 John chapter 4, the author encourages readers to test the spirits and discern the truth from error. He warns against believing every spirit, as there are many false prophets in the world. The test to determine if a spirit is from God is whether it confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Those who deny Jesus are not from God. Christians are called to be discerning and test teachings and movements to ensure they are genuine. The author emphasizes the importance of believing in the truth out of love for God. If you have your Bible, do make your way to the letter of 1 John as we pick up where we left off. And so, for us this morning, that means we will be in 1 John at the start of chapter 4 and we will be looking at the first six verses of 1 John chapter 4. And these are the words of the God who is light. 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. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist. What you heard was coming and now is in the world already. 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. They are from the world, therefore they speak from the world. And the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. And whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of air. With the grass withers and the flower fades, let us pray. Heavenly Father, we do praise You that by this we know the spirit of truth, the very truth that would set us, sins and slaves, free to become the children of God. And so we pray, Father, that as we hear Your Word, as we hear Christ Himself preaching to us the truth of His Word, that You would give us ears to hear, that You would give us eyes to see, that we might behold the wondrous things of Your Word and grow up into this great salvation of ours. In His name we pray, amen. Amen, you may be seated. Well, you might remember just before the newly anointed King David set out to fight against the giant Goliath, that great enemy who taunted and mocked the armies of Israel, it was Saul who encouraged David to try on his armor. Saul was probably looking at this young lad, Rudy, and let's say baby-faced, and probably thinking, will you at least put on a helmet or a breastplate? That way when Goliath whacks you into next week, you have on some protection. I can at least tell your father at your funeral, I tried my best. And you may recall what happened. David tries on Saul's armor. Maybe he tries a few moves, and then David says, Saul, I cannot wear this armor. But even further, do you remember the reason that David gives why he cannot put on Saul's armor? And David simply said, I cannot wear this armor, for I have not tested it. The armor, at least for David, had not been battle-tested, battle-approved. He never proved it in a combat situation. So David is not about to walk into the fight of his life and entrust his life to armor that he has never tested. And so, as you know, David goes out wearing the armor of God. Right? He says to Goliath, you may come at me with a sword, but I come at you in the name of the Lord of hosts. Indeed, David knew that name was the mighty fortress that he needed. Now, friends, that situation is exactly what we come to this morning in 1 John chapter 4. The Apostle John counsels you to not put on armor that you have not tested. Don't just put on the first armor that you see. No, you need to prove it first. Try it on. Test the spirits, because not every spirit is from God. Instead, we are to discern truth from error, and know that greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world, just like David did. And so, we'll walk through this short text in just two parts. We'll look at, firstly, testing the spirits, and then secondly, the triumph of Christ. Testing and then triumph, with a very simple main point, that Christians are to discern the truth out of their love for God. And so, let's remember where we left off in this letter. You can glance back at verse 23 of chapter 3, and hear John's singular command, which is that we believe in the name of Jesus Christ. And yet, having just commanded us to believe, now, today, John turns around, and he commands us to not believe something. You see right there in verse 1, do not believe every spirit. For the book of Proverbs warns against being gullible, being simple-minded. Proverbs 14 says, the simple man believes everything. And so, as Christians, we are, of course, to be marked by our belief, but that also means we're to be marked by our unbelief, our disbelief, that is, our refusal to believe certain things. It's actually a mark of Christian maturity. It's a more than fair inference from John's command to not believe every spirit that there were probably members of his church who either were or they were tempted to believe any and every teaching that claimed to be of God. We are to be wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. And, of course, you need only look at the Lord Jesus, who demonstrated this masterfully. He was so discerning that he could sift through even the thickest of religious veneers, and he could expose how a particular teaching, a particular spirit, is actually not of God at all. He could peer inside to see, no, this teaching, this spirit, is actually the spirit of the devil. As Proverbs says, a king who sits on the throne, he can winnow, he can sift through evil with his eyes. That was the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, as we become more like him, we grow in our discernment not to believe every spirit, and instead, John calls us to be testers. You see, as verse 1 continues, he commands us to test the spirits. That Greek word is often translated as to prove or to examine. Kids, I remember when I was a kid, I first stumbled upon fool's gold, fascinated by fool's gold, holding it in my hand, thinking, this is the real deal, this is really gold. My father told me, well, no, there's a couple of ways you can test to see if it's real gold. Real gold will not flake, it won't crumble. Real gold will leave a kind of a golden streak if you scrape it on a particular surface. Real gold is not magnetic like fool's gold. These were all ways to test if that gold was genuine and real, or if it was a fraud. And John summons us to the very same thing, test the spirits. That would include testing certain teachings, ideas, movements, to see, is this genuinely of God or is this a counterfeit? Now, you might ask, how can we do such a diagnostic? We read earlier the Old Testament test that you might be familiar with. That was that prophet who speaks. And if what he speaks does not come to pass, then you know he is a false prophet. Of course, today, any prophet would be a false prophet because the office of prophet is no more. That office has expired. But the warning very much does carry forward to the New Testament. First Peter puts it with very plain logic, that just as there were false prophets in the olden days, there will be false teacher in our days, in our time. And the Lord Jesus Himself said, beware, there are many false Christs who will come in My name. And so John echoes that warning in verse 1. You see right there, he says, false prophets have gone out into the world. And you can size up this threat that John says, not a few, not a couple, but many false prophets are out there. So was in John's day and so it is in our day. You can look out on Christendom and you can see those who would deny that Christ is the only way to salvation. They would teach that the Word of God is not the inspired, inerrant, perfect Word of truth. You could see those who would deny that the sexual ethics laid out in Scripture are in fact not sinful and so on and so forth. And so just as there are ways to test fool's gold, John says here is a test to discern truth from error in verses 2 and 3. By this, this test, you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses Christ has come in the flesh is from God and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. Let's just start with John's day and ask, okay, who is denying that Jesus is God in the flesh? Who would have failed to confess the Son of God incarnated? So perhaps by now as we've been studying 1 John, you can venture a guess that it was those Gnostics who would have denied this truth. Because the Gnostics taught that matter, that is physical things, things that we can touch and feel are actually to be considered evil. The physical creation is not a good thing to a Gnostic. Instead, what really mattered were so-called spiritual things. And so a Gnostic would have said, for instance, that the physical human body is evil, that we are trapped inside of this physical human body. And true freedom comes when the soul, that immaterial part of us, is freed from the body. And we still have versions of this kind of Gnosticism around today. But you can imagine, when someone like the Apostle John comes along and he proclaims not only is physical creation not evil, but good, that alone would challenge a Gnostic. But if you wanted to make a Gnostic's head explode, here comes the Apostle John to say, guess what? The Almighty God, the invisible, enthroned God who sits above the chair of Him, God who is Spirit, has come down and taken on our flesh. He has come down to be one of us, that God is as man as man gets in the person of Jesus Christ. Now, church, this is what we believe. We just confessed last week the Nicene Creed, a creed that the church has been confessing for hundreds, well over a thousand of years. It's a creed defending the very truth that John speaks of here. And you are on the hook, because I heard you confess just last week that Jesus came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit He was incarnated of the Virgin Mary and He became man. And you just have to put on your first century ears for a moment to realize what an astounding, miraculous, otherworldly claim it is to say that God, who is Spirit, has come down as man. We are perhaps so familiar with this truth, we are not nearly as amazed as we should be. Because we are confessing that everything you could say about man, except for sin, you could say about Jesus Christ, that He has the mind of a man, the body of man, the will of man, the flesh of man, that He had an appetite and emotions and feelings and pain and anguish. All that is of man is true of Jesus Christ, except for sin. And why is that absolutely necessary? Why is that vital? Well, it's just as the creed says, He did this for us, for you and for your salvation. He became man in order to save man. And the reverse is absolutely just as true, that if Christ did not become man and take of our flesh and blood, then there is no salvation. And so that's the nature of John's test. It is a Christ-centered test. It centers on the person of Christ as God incarnated. And it centers upon the work of Christ, that He has come, that He was sent by God to take away the sins of the world. And so you can put that together and you see you've got the sum and substance of true religion, the person of Christ, and the work of Christ. Matters of first importance. I think that's helpful because that also helps us in that John's test is so heavily focused upon Christ, it prevents us from becoming hyper-testers, or you might say hyper-critical. We've all known people who seem to be forever testing, searching for that perfect church, perfect preaching, perfect worship, perfect fellowship, perfect singing. You see, John's test is not that of our personal preferences, it's not that of our nuances. No, it's a test of the vitals of the Christian faith. Because the false teachers of John's day would have said, yes, Jesus was a real person. He did some fine things. But He is not the Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. They had their own version of Jesus. And instead of the Word of God, they leaned heavily on their own personal dreams, their own personal visions, and their own personal enlightened knowledge. And so, too, you can look out on the world today, can't you? And you can find multiple Jesuses to choose from. You may have heard or seen the somewhat popular He Gets Us commercials as one example, wherein Jesus is presented as this hyper-inclusive servant whose sole job is just to affirm the sins of our culture. It's a fine instance of just what John warns against, that rather than us conforming to Christ, we attempt to conform Christ to us. Rather than us in His image, we want to make Christ after our image. And that brings us back to John's test. And you can see why this is no trifling matter to John. This is not a neutral area. No, you see, instead, to not confess Jesus is from God, then as verse 3 says, this is the spirit of anti-Christ. It doesn't matter how much religious, sentimental, Christian language is lathered on. No system of teaching or doctrine that denies Christ in His eternal deity or His historic humanity can be tolerated. The person and work of Christ is absolutely central to the Apostle's message. And as we know, whenever the gospel is on the move, you can pretty much set your watch to it, that it will be met by an opposing force. And so, as John says in verse 3, you heard this spirit of anti-Christ was coming, but guess what, he says, this spirit is now in the world already. The spirit of anti-Christ has already come, moving at a kind of viral-like speed. We're reminded John's view of the anti-Christ is not so much a specific person, as if we're to be looking at Hitler or Vladimir Putin and say, yes, that is the anti-Christ. Now, you see here, it's this satanic spirit that craftily opposes true religion by lies and deception, all aimed at the very heart of the gospel and who Jesus Christ is and was. And so, we've seen this formidable foe, right, this ominous threat, and John pulls no punches. And as always, he will have us confront this bleak reality that the spirit of anti-Christ is successfully sowing these seeds of subversion. And if we stop the sermon right here, this might seem like a call to doomsdayism, right? Circle the wagons and let's abandon all hope because here comes the spirit of anti-Christ. But you need to see in our second section, John's tone shifts, and you can hear it right away in verse 4. He addresses the church as, quote, little children. And John's, of course, not patronizing us by calling us little children. That was an address the Lord Jesus would often use to His disciples and speaks to the care, the protection, the love that our God has for His children. I mean, you just imagine as they're starting to grow nervous, maybe even frightened at the news of this spirit of anti-Christ looming large, as if John now says, little children, relax, remember who you are, remember who your Father is, remember who you are in Jesus Christ. Indeed, it's in these moments that we forget who our heavenly Father is. That's just where John goes next in verse 4, as if to say, little children, do not forget you are from God. And then he says something quite startling, as if to say, because you are from God, you have overcome them. As the expression goes, know thy enemy. And John has done this fine job of saying, here is your enemy, this deception that's at work in the world at large. But now, John declares this good news, saying, you have overcome them. Notice John is not saying, we shall overcome them, we will overcome them in some distant, far-off day in the future. No, he says, already, at this present moment, you have overcome them. Yes, anti-Christ is at work. You have overcome. Yes, false teaching abounds. You have overcome. Yes, there are deniers and deceivers. You have overcome. Now, that feels very good to say, but how is that true? I remember from my time coaching baseball, every now and then you'd have a volunteer scorekeeper running the scoreboard, who perhaps did not know the game of baseball that well, because I'd look upon the scoreboard and I'd think, that's not right. Either that's not the right score, not the right strikes, not the right balls, that might not even be the right inning. You know, something is off on the scoreboard. And John's church may well have wondered the same thing, you know, John, are you sure you're keeping the right score? If falsehood abounds, how have we already overcome? And indeed, you might ask the very same thing. You look out upon our world, upon our backwards culture, and perhaps you too would say, I don't think John is keeping the right score. Maybe the old man has been carried away with a kind of cockeyed optimism. Indeed, that word, Greek word for overcome, is that Greek word, Nike, that word for victory. So they might ask, John, how can you plant a flag of victory while this battle rages on? Well, a couple of ways. Firstly, they have overcome simply by not believing these lies, by holding fast to the good confession that Jesus Christ is come from God, and He takes away the sins of the world. Secondly, He tells us the reason why He can sound this trumpet of victory in verse 4. See it there. He says, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. Sometimes in the fog of war, it's helpful to clarify things with cold, hard math. And John does that here with this divine math equation. Now, kids, you can make a greater than sign with your hand. Remember, in my days, they used to call us the alligator mouth, mouth, mouth, when they were teaching math. You could hold up that sign and say, greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world. It's that simple. That is the math. That brings about an obvious question. Well, OK, who is this who is in us? Who is this person that John speaks of? And as much as John speaks of Christ in the flesh, John also speaks of the Spirit in our hearts. John is hereby proclaiming the promised poured out Holy Spirit, power from on high, the Spirit of the risen, resurrected, ascended Christ, as if to say, yes, the Spirit of Antichrist is at work. But this Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, the very same Spirit that rose Christ from the dead, is not just at work, but is so far greater beyond all comparison to any and every false spirit. As for our purposes, what we need to see is that this Holy Spirit is indwelling us, that we receive the very same Spirit of the resurrected, ascended Christ. Now what does that have to do with victory? Well, hopefully you're saying, what does that not have to do with victory? Because our Lord Jesus rose triumphantly over the grave, conquering sin and Satan and death, triumphing over the principalities and powers, putting them to open shame as the ascended King of kings. Just remember, John himself, he was right there in that upper room, just hours before the death of his rabbi, his friend, his teacher. He can probably still remember that moment when Jesus looked into his eyes, and with eyes filled with love, he said, John, don't worry, don't be afraid. I will send another helper. I will send another comforter. In fact, John, I can look at you and I can tell you, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. And so, church, you must know, the Lord Jesus says the very same thing to you, to His people. And so we're right to say and right to see, that is how John can say, greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. We can be no more conquered than Christ Himself can be conquered. That is our great confidence. And we must live in that truth because John reminds us that just as Satan is not a one-trick demon, he is not a one-man army. In verse 5, he says, they, that is this multitude, this plurality, is of the world and therefore speak from the world and then he says, the world listens to them. You can tell a lot by what a person listens to. One of our features nowadays, you can hop on Spotify or a similar service and you can browse someone else's playlist, what they like to listen to, what songs do they prefer and you start to get an idea, oh, this is that person's taste. Well here, John says, here's the world's playlist. Here's what the world wants to hear and likes to listen to, namely, the sweet, seductive sounds of the kingdom of man, the album of Antichrist put on repeat. I realize that might sound alarmist to some people, but this explains why falsehood can spread so far, so wide, so quickly. For what does the world want to hear? Scripture answers. The world wants to hear itself. The world wants to hear its own voice going out and coming back again in a kind of echo chamber. The world wants to be affirmed in its desires of the flesh. And so whenever you ponder things like, why does the prosperity gospel have such rapid success? Why does liberalism gain such popularity? Why do movements like LGBTQ seem to spread like wildfire? But one answer, verse 5, they speak from the world and the world says, that sounds good. Let's hear a little bit more. But we need to see that is ironically good news for the Christian. And that is actually a call for endurance because one of the things about falsehood is that it cannot and does not endure. Proverbs 12 says, truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is for a moment. The Tower of Babel may look so impressive for just a moment, but it will soon topple. And so no doubt, the lies of the age will always enjoy a meteoric rise in popularity. Again, this is what the world has itching ears to hear. It's just for a passing moment and then it's on to the next lie, it's on to the next falsehood. But truth endures forever. As we say every Lord's Day, the grass may wither, but this word, the word of God endures forever. And so our call is very simple. It is to endure, it is to hold fast, it is to stand firm. The world listens to them, but we listen to Christ and we get to hear, is that the voice of my Good Shepherd speaking to us, speaking to me. The way that so often happens, of course, is in the context of the local church. As Paul says, faith comes from hearing, hearing the word of Christ. This is why we hold to the conviction that the Lord's Day worship is one of the primary means, the primary ways that God speaks to His people to nourish us, to build us up in the faith. And that's just what comes next in our final verse, verse 6. Like those who are of the world, John says, we are from God. Therefore, whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. And by this, we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Now, notice, it's kind of curious. John does not say that Christians are to listen to Christ. Obviously, John would not disagree with that. But you see, he makes a different point in this verse. You see, the emphasis in verse 6, he says, whoever is of God listens to us. And if you don't listen to us, then you're not from God. Now, that sounds a tinge arrogant, doesn't it? Right? Would it not be better to just say, listen to Christ? Why take the risk of interjecting a mere man and say, listen to the lips of a mere mortal, or else you're not from God? Now, that is a bold claim if there ever was one. We need to see John is actually being faithfully humble here. John's just being a faithful apostle. He's obeying the very commands of Christ. When Christ commissioned His apostles saying, go out into this world and declare My truth. And He commissioned them saying, I have all authority in heaven and upon earth, and by My name and under My authority, you go declare the gospel to the entire creation. And friends, that is our great privilege, that is our great mission as a local church, that here in the year of our Lord, 2024, we are simply entering into this to bear witness to the very same apostolic message that will endure to the end of the age. So indeed, if you're here this morning and not a Christian, as you hear these expressions, truth and air, ask yourself what Pilate asked himself. What is truth? That's something that every person will ask themselves at some time. What is truth? And you need to hear that Scripture says that truth is, first of all, personal. The truth is actually found, not so much in a proposition, but in a person, the person of Jesus Christ, that He Himself is the very truth. He is the truth and the only truth that can and will set you free. Should you come to Him by repenting of your sins and casting yourself upon Him in simple, childlike faith, and He will have you as a son or as a daughter. And Christian to us, it begs the question, do you test the spirits? Do you listen to the Word of God to discern truth from the voice of air? I had a co-worker who I had gotten to know fairly well, who opened up to me one day that he was seeking to divorce his wife. And this friend was, in every way, professing, I would have said, a zealous Christian. So I, of course, was very shocked, very saddened by this news, and so I just asked him, okay, on what grounds are you divorcing your wife? Is this desertion? Is this adultery? Seeking some kind of biblical reason. He said, something to the effect of, Mark, after much prayer, after much wrestling with God, I just know that this is the right thing. I just feel it. God has given me a peace about it. Of course, my heart sank. And you see, he failed to test the spirits. The voice inside of his own head, the voice in his heart was louder than the clear Word of God. And he believed the lie that the Spirit of God can work contrary to the Word of God. And that is to tear asunder what God has joined. It is always both Word and Spirit, Spirit and Word. And by that, and that alone, we can know truth from error as the Spirit leads us. And so, we've heard that good news this morning, greater is He who is in us than He who is in the world. And so, let's lay up three great uses in our hearts of this wonderful portion of Scripture. Let's consider the test of love, keyword love. Because some commentators get to this section of 1 John and they don't know what to do with this. Because prior to this section, it's all about love. And after this section, it's all about love. You just glance at verse 7, actually, for next week. Right there, John says, let us love one another. And so, commentators are somewhat confused. What does all this testing the Spirit stuff have to do with love? We need to see to test the Spirit is a way to love one another. Discernment is loving. Love is discerning. This is just what Adam and Eve failed to do in testing that Spirit of air in the serpent. And so, what happened? They failed to love one another and they failed to love God. Testing is a virtuous act. Every parent knows this, right? I have discernment. Parents say it. Say it to other children. I don't think that's the best place for you to go. I don't think that's a good friend for you to have. A good book to read. No, I'm not going to place you under this particular secular teaching and so on and so forth. And so, here, such testing is a form of love that prevents us from falling into deadly airs for how easily are we blinded by our emotions, our feelings, whatever the flavor of the month might be. And so, it's this loving discernment that can sift through truth from air. That's an encouragement to, of course, pastors, elders, but we could simply add heads of households as well to protect your family from airs that would otherwise creep in. So, test of love. Secondly, the training of love. Maybe you hear John's command to test the spirits and you might think, I have failed to even be a tester. I haven't even passed the test to be a tester. I'm not all that discerning. In fact, I am somewhat naive and gullible. I'm not good at testing the spirits. Well, friend, the good news is this is a trained wisdom. Our powers of discernment can improve and sharpen and mature. We just read it from Hebrews 5 earlier. We can have our powers of discernment trained from constant practice to sift through good and evil. And so, you ought to be encouraged. The more you practice, the more diligent you are, the more you train yourself from godliness, you will grow in your ability to sift truth from air. So, testing, training, lastly, team efforts. I think it's worthwhile to note, every single time that John uses the word you in this section, that is the plural form you. As Texans, we say y'all. Even when John says, greater is he who is in you, you there actually means us. We collectively. John's not so much speaking to individuals, he's speaking to the covenant community. The people of God. And he says, you all, we all have overcome. And we know why. Because Christ, our head, he is the one who has overcome the world. And as the victorious king, he comes before the father. And he does not appear there alone, but he comes before the father and he says, father, here I am, with the children that you gave me. I have not lost a single one of them. So it falls to us, let us grow up into the greatness of this salvation. Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly father, we do praise you that you have given us Christ as our one and only head. Indeed, he has overcome the world. We praise you how this is so, that he said, not my will be done, but thine. And to the point of death and death on a cross. We praise you, though, that death did not keep him down, that he poured out his spirit upon the church such that we could truly know and discern truth from error. Such a truth that would set us free and glorify you as the God who is in himself the truth. We pray this in Jesus' name and amen.
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