1 John 4:1-6 Series

1 John 4:1-6

1 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.

Before we get started with this verse I just want to remind you about two verses we read last week that I think go well with verse 1 here.

1 John 3:19-20 ~ By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.

So last week, scripture told us to be careful of trusting our heart because our heart can deceive us at times and rather trust in God. Our heart is where our feelings come from correct? The heart and it's feelings at times lead us astray of the truth. Our feelings and God's truth do not always align.

What we feel though may be legitimate to us, and that is OK, but we need to be careful that those feelings do not get in the way of God's truth and our faith. How I feel has no affect on God and His perfect, righteous and holy plan for His creation. God's truth comes from what is revealed to us through scripture when understood correctly.

Jeremiah 17:9 ~ The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

We have talked before about those “feel good” churches out there. We need to be careful of them as well as those feel good people.

1 John 4:1 ~ 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.

So now God tells us in scripture to be careful of the spirits and that they need to be tested as well as our heart, and scripture is where we get the questions and answers to these tests.

2 Corinthians 13:5 ~ Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!

There is a whole lot of testing that needs to be happening in our lives in order to insure we are the Christian's we are called to be. And if when studying scripture we don't see much of ourselves in it then as we just read we have failed the test and Christ is not in us.

I can assure you that the church in Laodicea that is mentioned in Revelation three, probably thought they were doing pretty good.

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.

If you confess or another confess or a spirit confess Jesus, and I would say confesses that Jesus is lord of their life, that they are of God.

The devil is a liar as well as all his minions and followers.

In one of my discussions with someone this week, they felt that the Bible was not trustworthy and accurate. The interesting things is that they said that they are a believer. Of course I said that the only reason they know about Jesus in the first place is because of scripture.

Without scripture, whatever Jesus we conjure up in our minds is a false Jesus and the only true Jesus is the one we find in scripture.

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.

Someone will say, we shouldn't judge people. And I say, I'm not God is. What makes you right? I'm not, God is and I have just shown you that in scripture.

(6) Whoever knows God listens to us ~ But I would say that in context what that means is that they listen to us when we speak from scripture, when we speak the truth from scripture. Our personal opinion is not usually worth much.

And those who do not listen to us when we read from scripture, they are not of God. That's what God says, I'm not judging God is.