Discerning The Source Series

Today, we come to the 4th sermon in our Walking with Jesus series. As we read through the book of 1 John, we see that God is not only preparing us for what we need for the present but also for the future.

1 John 4:1-21

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. 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.

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

In this chapter, we can see that John was talking about two things:

? Discerning the Source of Spirituality

? Discerning the Source of Love

Discerning the Source of Spirituality

In verse 1, John wrote,

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.

John is saying there are and will be a lot of deep fakes in the world. Not everything that claims to be spiritual is genuinely spiritual. Not every definition of love is accurate, not accurate according to the One and only true God who is love. The big question is how will we be able to distinguish between what’s real and what’s fake? How do we know if something is from God or not?

Just this last week, scammers created two fake Instagram accounts copying my Instagram page and pictures. I began to get messages from my friends asking me if I created a new account. A few friends realized right away that it was fake because they said, “this doesn’t sound like you.” So what did I do? I went on Facebook to warn my friends about these scammers and within seconds I received a lot of messages from concerned scammers who really wanted to help me deal with these other scammers by ensuring my information was safe. I went on to warn people privately and some admitted to falling for it.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of deep fakes in the world of Christianity. John was not just writing to the leaders of the church but the whole Christian community to warn them about false prophets who were in a sense the “deepfakes” of that time. Like deepfakes today, these false prophets included truth in what they were teaching, but created out-of-context, partial truths in order to deceive people for their own advantage. These people sounded credible and looked the part with such subtle differences that people didn’t discern truth from almost-truths.