FAKE NEWS & KNOWING WHAT IS TRUE
Earlier this year the Macquarie Dictionary declared ‘fake news’ to be the word of the year. It’s an interesting commentary on society! So is the runner-up – mainsplain (but I think that’s fake news). Sometimes fake news is deliberately deceptive, but the word is also used when someone doesn’t agree with news that goes against their ideology.
The problem is, it’s really hard to refute fake news because you can usually find some piece of information on the internet that agrees with you. At the risk of igniting a war, COVID vaccinations are a prime example. I shared on Facebook how I was having second thoughts about getting a shot and an acquaintance suggested I shouldn’t believe the official sources and do my own research. In other words, go find some outlier who agrees with me. (By the way, I had second thoughts about my second thoughts and am booked in for the vaccination.) That thinking usually goes along with deep conspiracy theories that, by their nature, are almost impossible to debunk.
How can we possibly know what’s true?
It applies to religion, as well. In fact, that’s even worse because we’re often dealing with spiritual and historical claims that are virtually impossible to prove or disprove.
SCRIPTURE: HOW DO WE KNOW WE’RE IN GOD’S FAMILY?
FAKE NEWS IN GALATIA
Paul was dealing with fake news that had hit the churches in the Roman province of Galatia. They’d been infiltrated by a sect that we now call Judaisers, that claimed that because the Gentiles weren’t circumcised, they were outside of God’s covenant with Abraham and thus they were not his spiritual descendants and not part of the family of faith.
ABRAHAM & CIRCUMCISION
Way back near the beginning of the Bible, God had promised Abraham that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him, and then he gave him the sign of circumcision as a covenant. So, the Judaisers figured that for the Gentiles to reject circumcision was to reject the blessing and covenant of Abraham.
Paul had strong words to say about this, but fake news is very resilient and so mounted a number of arguments.
ABRAHAM & FAITH
One of his arguments was in v.6, where he says it was Abraham’s faith that was credited to him as righteousness, not circumcision.
Read Genesis 15.1-6.
Elsewhere Paul notes that it wasn’t until later (ch.17) that Abraham was given the covenant of circumcision. And it’s even earlier than this, in Genesis 12.3, that God promises Abraham that all the nations will be blessed through him. (The order was promise, faith credited as righteousness, then circumcision.)
So, Abraham’s righteousness before God wasn’t based on circumcision, it was based on faith. It’s not those who are circumcised but those who have faith that are like Abraham.
That was a good biblical argument, but Paul needed more evidence to convince the Galatians and he appealed to their experience of God.
YOU FOOLISH GALATIANS
What really exasperated Paul was that the Galatians knew God had accepted them on the basis of faith because he was so evidently at work among them. In fact, what they were doing so went against the evidence that he called them fools and sarcastically suggested they must be under a magic spell.
“How could you be so stupid!?”
THE HOLY SPIRIT WAS EVIDENT
In the New Testament, wherever we see the gospel preached we often see signs and wonders accompanying. This was Jesus’ way, and this was the Apostles ministry also. So, when Paul and Barnabas visited Galatia, it was natural that miracles were a part of their proclamation. We have one of those on record in Acts.
Read Acts 14.8-11.
And it seems that this work of the Spirit was not just something that had happened in the past. He asks in v.5, “Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you…?” (present tense.)
The tangible presence of the Spirit of God was at work among them, and this was all the evidence they needed that the gospel of grace that they had believed was true, and that the teachings of the Judaising faction were… fake news.
POINT: THE HOLY SPIRIT CONFIRMS THE GOSPEL
In a world of fake news, it’s harder and harder to know the truth. Whether it’s claims that all religions lead to truth or science has disproven truth. Whether it’s claims that I’m in error because I don’t believe a particular doctrine or not. How can I know the truth?
Anyone who knows me know that I am passionate about having a solid intellectual footing for our faith. But the intellect is not enough. Elsewhere, Paul said that the gospel is not about arguments but about power.
THE EXPERIENCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
So, although he argues from Scripture, Paul also challenged the Galatians to consider their experience. Not just their feelings, but the power of God at work among them. They saw God do some pretty big miracles and had some significant experiences.
Paul’s point is that he hadn’t moved among them because of the Law, but because of faith! His seal of approval was already on them, so how could they think need to add something?
Beyond miracles, Paul implies that the Spirit had come to the Galatians in an observable way. He doesn’t really outline what that looked like, but it was evidently clear enough to serve as evidence of God’s favour.
I think we can assume that the sorts of things he wrote to the Corinthian churches about spiritual gifts and manifestations were a part of the Galatian experience.
But later on, in chapter 5.22-24 we also read about the fruit of the Spirit and the transformation that came when someone went from living by the flesh to living by the Spirit. People felt different, and they lived different. This what Paul meant when he said in 2.20, I no longer live but Christ lives through me.
More than one person has become convinced of the truth of the gospel because a loved one’s life was changed. An alcoholic was delivered from the bottle, an angry husband became gentle…
WHO IS THE HOLY SPIRIT?
The Holy Spirit is God
Let me back up a bit because there might be some here today asking, “the Holy who?” Christians believe in one God, but we believe from the Bible that God manifests himself in three distinct but unified persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It’s actually really hard to express what we mean because there’s an element of mystery about God, as you’d expect, and language runs out. In any case, we call this the doctrine of the Trinity. For our purposes, the Holy Spirit is God, one with the Father and the Son but distinct from them, as they are from each other.
The Holy Spirit is Personal
And he’s certainly not an impersonal force – he is God. So when we talk about the Holy Spirit moving in or among us, we’re not talking about some kind of divine magical energy. We’re talking about God himself being in us and with us, like he was with us when Jesus walked the earth. Only closer, because he’s spirit. When we say the Spirit is at work we can equally say God is at work, because the Holy Spirit is God. When we talk about gospel transformation the Holy Spirit is at work in a life.
MY STORY
For myself, I’d grown up with Christianity, but it was very much an intellectual faith. I believed the Bible and I would have said I had the Holy Spirit because the Bible said so, but he was really outside my experience. I carried a lot of guilt and self-condemnation around. I found prayer really difficult. When I got married, if Andrea was playing worship music, I’d insist she turn it off because I couldn’t stand the stuff.
Then one night I had an experience of the Holy Spirit, and everything changed. Where I’d lived with guilt and condemnation, I now had a real sense of peace and joy. In fact, it felt like for the first time I knew what Peter meant when he wrote in 1Peter 1.8, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy.”
I couldn’t stop praying and I started turning on those worship songs. My wife will tell you I’m still far from perfect, but I’m not claiming to be perfect, I’m just claiming to be changed.
Does that prove that the gospel is true? Well, a sceptic might not be convinced but, when I read the Bible, I see my experience in there and I reckon, for me, yep. My experience of God confirms the truth of the gospel.
APPLICATION: WHAT STOPS US EXPERIENCING GOD?
I know many of you have stories of gospel transformation through the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. When someone asks you how you know Jesus is real, you say, like the old hymn… “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.” You may not be able to point to an earth-shaking moment when it happened, but it’s real, none-the-less.
But maybe you’re here today and you don’t have a story like that. You’ve never seen a miracle (I haven’t either, by the way, not a certifiable one) and you don’t really get what all this love, joy and peace stuff is about. Maybe you don’t even claim to be a Christian and the whole thing sounds like nonsense. But based on my own experience, I’ll bet there’s more than one person here who has made a commitment to Jesus, but your experience doesn’t stack up to what’s written in the advertisement.
EXPERIENCE VS SALVATION
Now, I want to make clear that I’m not talking about anyone’s salvation here today, and I’m not talking about your commitment to Christ. I’m not even talking about whether you have the Holy Spirit – if you’re in Christ you have the Spirit. I’m talking about your experience and what you might feel is a lack of power or effectiveness in your life. You might be able to say, “Jesus loves me this I know because the Bible tells me so,” as an act of faith. But you can’t say with confidence, “He lives within my heart” as a testimony of your experience.
I wish I could give you three easy steps to receiving this power, but everyone is different, and God is personal and sovereign, not a force we can wield at will.
WHAT HINDERED MY EXPERIENCE
For me, I think, there were two issues holding back.
My Wound
One was the death of my dad. I didn’t realise until I dealt with it that I had buried a lot of grief for a long time after the death of my father. He died young in an accident. I guess this created a faith issue: I subconsciously blamed God so how could I trust him? It was actually soon after I dealt with that grief that God powerfully touched me.
My Mind
The other was the stumbling block of my mind. This is a real issue in our age, as it was in Paul’s. In Corinthians 2 he wrote to the churches in the city of Corinth in Greece, with its proud history of philosophy,
Read 1 Corinthians 2.12-16
If you’re a more reason-based kind of person you might struggle a bit more with mystery and emotion. I certainly did, and I still do. Allowing the Holy Spirit to tangibly work in me meant giving up a certain amount of control and letting things happen that didn’t make sense. Again, it comes down to faith – can I trust this God enough to give him control? Can I trust him enough to work through my broken humanity?
INVITATION
God is a real and personal God, and he wants us to have a real and personal experience of him.
So, what’s your experience of him? What’s your experience of gospel transformation? (Which is another way of saying, what’s your testimony?) It might not be spectacular, but what difference has Jesus made in your life, through the Holy Spirit? Why don’t you share that with someone after the service!?
But if you’re not so sure you even have a testimony like that, can I encourage you to think about why not? Because God wants you to know him not just as a doctrine or a church service, but as an experiential relationship. What stops you from receiving that? Is it a hurt issue? Is it a trust issue? Is it simply that you haven’t asked the Holy Spirit to change you like that?
This isn’t about having some fruit-loopy experience. It’s about knowing the love, joy, peace and power of the Saviour. And it’s about being confident and sure of the truth of the gospel.
