How many of you really take what the news says at face value? I don’t know about you but I don’t trust the news people any further than I can throw them. Something always seems fishy to me about how they report certain events and how they twist the angle of the news to suit their purpose. If they want to support one candidate and not another, they can do so by tweaking how they report the campaigns. If they want you to believe someone is guilty, they will play them off as a scapegoat and criminalize them regardless of the truth and validity of the evidence. I still wonder whether Timothy McVeigh actually bombed the Murrah building in Oklahoma City or not because every news story criminalized him without provocation. They had no proof and yet he was already guilty. Now, I don’t want to become a conspiracy theorist but humans in general have been given the capability of doubting and questioning for a reason. God didn’t want us to just accept everything thrown at us like ignorant fools. He gave us minds to use them.
Do you realize it’s ok to ask why? It’s ok to ask why something happens. Gideon questioned God several times before he followed him. Gideon asked God to make a piece of fleece wet and the ground dry and then he had God do the opposite. Gideon questioned and God did not destroy him. God actually encourages us to analyze and study why and how the world around us works. Look at the wisdom of Solomon. Solomon told the sluggard (lazy person) that they should observe the ant and see how hard working it is. God gave Solomon wisdom and yet I wonder if that wisdom stems from analyzing the world around him. Solomon looked at every day items, animals, etc and brought out God’s wonderful design from them. God encourages us to study our world and come to our own conclusions because He is sure that we will find Him in the end. If we can question the news and the world around us, shouldn’t we also question the “religious” teachings we get. If you listen to Christian radio, you can hear all kinds of teachings about everything from sins to the end of time. New books are published daily on the subjects contained within the Bible.
Today, in the book of 1 John, we get a warning and encouragement. He warns us that many have turned away from God and now they teach false ideas. They have given up God for their own twisted ways of thinking and living. Turn to chapter 4 of the book of 1 John and we will cover just the first 6 verses. John tells these Christians that they have some spiritual testing to undergo. John will not always be there to help them and watch them and so they need to take some instruction on how to handle this information. We, today, are pounded by massive amounts of information each and every day. We must know how to handle ourselves in the midst of so many “religious” views. You must learn to handle spiritual tests. You can’t always come to me or the elders. We won’t always be around to answer. John outlines four ideas we should know before we handle the test. 1) we have a built in tutor, 2) a very disturbing enemy, 3) a simple struggle, 4) and finally that the results will be very obvious. Fellowship with Christ means we have to be discerning. Not everyone who says they speak about Christ, really do. You must learn to be ready. Let’s look at how.
A Built in Tutor (3:24b)
“We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.”
Fellowship means sharing life and part of that life belongs to the Holy Spirit. John tells the Christians that they can know that Christ lives with them because Christ gave the Holy Spirit to them. Christ promised His disciples that once he had died and sat down at God’s right hand in heaven that he would send someone else in His place to help mankind. Jesus says that he will send a helper in at least four locations in Scripture such as John 14:16 which says, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever.” John 14:26 identifies this helper as the Holy Spirit: “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” This helper, the Holy Spirit, is called a seal of our salvation. If anyone has the Holy Spirit, they are a part of God’s kingdom. A person receives the Holy Spirit when they are baptized according to Acts 2:38. There are two types of receptions of the Holy Spirit: 1) which includes miraculous gifts and 2) which only means that the Holy Spirit lives in us. The first form has passed away but even today we receive the Holy Spirit when baptized. We cannot go through everything about the Holy Spirit but this should give you a good base. The Holy Spirit was sent by God to live in us and help us live more holy lives.
Humans naturally have the ability to smell out things which aren’t on the level. Our own innate abilities tell us some things are just not what they should be. Have you ever seen a television evangelist, especially one like Benny Hinn. This guys “ministry” makes between 89 and 100 million dollars a year. He owns a million dollar house, two brand new Mercedes, and has his own private jet. He stays in hotels that cost ten-thousand dollars a day. He claims miracle healings that never occur. Anyone can tell this guy is a major fake. The money is bad enough but there is more of a problem. The Holy Spirit definitely let’s you know that he is not only taking money but he is also destroys live. My stomach churns at how much he destroys each and every day. His evil destroys lives by taking away real hope in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit opens up areas of concern that just weren’t there before. The Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins and gives us peace in troubled times. We have a test we must face but we have a built in tutor to help us all the way.
A Troubling Enemy (4:1)
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
We also have a very troubling and disturbing enemy. Naturally, mankind can’t just accept everything that comes at us but where it is coming from personally bugs me. “Many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Where did these false prophets come from if they have gone into the world? They came from the church and now their views have been twisted and corrupted. They have taken the Jesus of Christianity and turned him into someone else. They have removed Christ from Christianity and yet still claim to be Christian. Benny Hinn is a very good example of ruining the name of Christ from the “inside.” Who knows if he has ever been a real Christian but we do know that he is corrupting the name of Christ now by lying and claiming to serve Christ. John tells these Christians not to trust just anyone and to test them by checking their focus on God. Hinn won’t answer for his financial records nor will he answer for the validity of the “miracles” he performed. If you test him, you will find that he is very much false.
We are to test them, so how is this a test we have to take? You will face this stuff over and over again. It cannot be avoided. If you listen to the Christian radio station, you will hear a mix of different messages from many different people; some ministers, some musicians, some just the radio announcers. Do they really speak the truth? Are they really Christ focused? I keep hearing “commercials” for a church in Quincy that advertises fun and games for kids and they even give away Nintendo Wiis. Is that really Christ or is it entertainment? What about Rick Warren? He is on the radio a lot. He is super-famous for writing the Purpose Driven Life. Should we really trust Him? I will say that He does have some good insight but he has some very dangerous practices. He picks and chooses Bible verses from 20+ different versions of the Bible just to get the meaning he wants. That is dangerous. You can make the Bible say many things that it actually does not by misquoting and haphazardly using it. We have a very troubling enemy indeed because the enemy stems from inside the Church.
A Simple Struggle (4:2-3)
“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 Christ is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming and now it is already in the world.”
Now we get to the real test itself. We have a very simple struggle to be honest. Anyone can tell whether a person is from God by seeing if they will confess that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Some of the false teachers when John wrote this letter started saying that Jesus didn’t come as a physical human being. If Christ didn’t come as a physical being, he couldn’t have died on the cross, atoned for mankind’s sins, nor could He have risen again. That is why John gave them this specific test criterion. They would know the difference between the truth and these liars by their confession of Christ as a physical being. If they did not confess Christ as a physical being, they were not to be listened to. This isn’t just a, “Yeah, I believe in Jesus” statement. The idea behind confession is that of a passionate conviction about who Christ is. When they confessed Christ, they were speaking of a deep conviction in their heart, not about some knowledge in their head. The person (spirit) that does not confess Christ has an attitude of the anti-Christ. Any attitude that is against Christ is the anti-Christ.
Now, I never said the struggle was easy but I did say it was simple. This problem is very easy to understand. This is the core of the tests we will have to fight time and time again throughout our lifetimes. We will face many people who claim to know Jesus but really only tried to get “fire insurance.” We will face many who chose to start with Christ but have now left Him and bitterly speak against Him. We aren’t to listen to their misunderstood biblical references and volatile speech. Plenty of people claim Christ in today’s world, how do we tell the difference? Our criteria might be quite a bit different because tons of people claim to be Christian and many still say they believe in Jesus but do they? They must speak from conviction about Christ. That one criteria is probably the best but others can be shown. Do they live like they talk? That is a really good criteria. You cannot call yourself a Christian and not read your bible. You cannot call yourself a Christian and not obey God’s laws in scriptures. You would have to read it to know them by the way. You cannot continually disobey God and have fellowship with Him. You cannot have fellowship with God’s enemies (false prophets) and have fellowship with Him. This is your test; who will you listen to?
An Obvious Result (4:4-6)
One last thing before we go; you have a good tutor for these tests, a diabolical enemy, and a simple test but you should know that the results are very obvious. Listen to 1 John 4:4-6 which speaks of who we associate with and listen to. “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” Christians are from God and through Christ they have already overcome the evils of the world including all the false teachers, prophets, etc. The God who lives in the Christian is much more powerful and effective than the lies the world has. Yet it becomes obvious who they side with because they will listen to one and not the other. If they continued to listen to the apostles and do what they say, they will be a part of God but if they listen to the world and the false prophets, they will be a part of the devil and his lies. Read the last part of verse six one more time. “By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” By who they listened to, everyone would know who they sided with, God or the devil.
Here it is: the test results. Who do you listen to? Do you scrutinize and question what they say? Many of you listen to me gab each and every week but do you analyze what I say and check to make sure I am not deceiving you? I have done and will do my very best not to ever deceive you but who says I cannot be wrong about what a text means. Yes I spend time studying but I could still miss something. You have to be careful. I hope I have gained your trust by speaking from the Bible about real life issues but that doesn’t change the fact that you have to be careful of who you listen to. You cannot listen to the lies of the devil and still be a part of God’s fellowship. You life makes it obvious who you listen to; how you act toward others, your lackadaisical attitude towards your faith, your “I’ve got fire-proof insurance” attitude, your choice about what you buy and what you watch, and many others.
We all have tests to take at times. The media around us pummels us with all kinds of messages that we don’t need to hear or obey. The worst kinds and the most deceiving come from inside the church or by people who claim to be from the church. Many evils have been done in the name of the church which angers me greatly. I will not always be here to flash warning signs about the evils of false religion and neither will your elders. You will need to prepare for the tests yourself. You have the greatest tutor you could ever have in the Helper, the Holy Spirit. With this tutor you can smell out the falsities and lies of those claiming to be “of God.” Remember above all that your test results play out every day and we can all see it; especially me. I personally can see it in the questions you ask and in the changes in your behavior. I am not the only one. God knows far beyond me and he wants nothing more than for you to live in the truth.
