This week in Phoenix, on Wednesday night, after I got home from AWANA, I turned on the news and there were people lined up for gas. Anybody see that? They were lined up for gas in a couple different places in Phoenix, lined up onto the street just like earlier this summer. And they were out there because they had heard that there was a pipeline break, the Kinder-Morgan pipeline had again broken and that there was going to be a gas shortage, so they were out topping off their tanks so that they would not get caught without gas. The officials of the state, Janet Napolitano was quizzed, "Is this true?" And other people of Kinder-Morgan were called, "Is this pipeline break true?" "No. It’s not true." And even though there was official word that it wasn’t true and it was a rumor, an unfounded rumor, but still people went and lined up. The next day they were on the news and they had the egg on their face and they were so embarrassed that they had been wrong. I’m not going to ask if anybody here went out and got gas. I didn’t because I just thought it sounded like a bunch of hooey to me and frankly, it was too late and my tanks were pretty full. So, I didn’t go out.
But, it isn’t always easy, is it to know what’s true and what’s false? We hear these rumors. We hear these things that are purported to be true – that JFK is still alive living on some island in Greece, that Elvis was spotted at a laundromat in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We hear these things, but we learn, don’t we, to decide who it is who’s telling us, what the source of that truth is, and we learn to decide what’s true and what’s not. It’s a little more difficult, sometimes, when a person is doing something, and something is happening, and they are purporting that it’s God at work and there are signs and wonders and there may be a stadium full of people. And we say, "Man. Is this God? Or is this man? What’s at work here?" And you then add to that confusion. In our day, there is a movement that some people are actually calling "Post-Modernism" which is that there is a broadening of truth, so that truth has become relative. "I mean, whatever is true for you is truth. And I don’t want to impose my truth on you."
There was one pastor that I read about in Christianity Today, he teaches an introduction to Christianity class for seekers and inquirers after the faith. At the beginning of the class, he shows them a jar that’s full of beans and asks each participant to guess how many beans are in the jar. Then, he asks each participant to write down the name of his or her favorite song. And then when the lists are complete, he reveals the actual number of beans in the jar, and each class participant looks over the guesses to determine which one of them is closest to being right. Then he asks the class, "Now, which one of these songs that you have chosen, which one is the closest to being right?" Well, of course the class answers that there’s no right answer to a person’s favorite song because favorite songs are simply a matter of personal taste and preference. Then the pastor asks this group of seekers, "When you decide what to believe in terms of your faith, is it more like guessing the number of beans, or choosing your favorite song?" And every time the majority of the class participants respond by saying, "It’s more like choosing your favorite song. It’s relative. The right answer is what I think is right." That’s the world we live in. And the world of the people to whom John was writing in the first century, were also living in a world where there were people who were saying, "This is true," or "This is true and not that."
And so there was that same kind of feeling that truth was something you had to discover for yourself and it really was what you made it out to be. In response to that, the apostle John writes this letter, and specifically he writes in verse 1 of chapter 4, "Don’t believe every spirit. But, in fact, test the spirits." He’s very specific here in telling us there is a test you can apply to what you hear, what is purported to be true. There is a test you can apply that will enable you to discern what is truth and what is false, because you know there really is no middle ground. There is either the Spirit of God teaching and instructing, or there is the spirit of the anti-Christ. You’ll notice in this passage, and this is typical of John – we have come to expect that now, there is no third option. There is no, "And then there’s these guys, who are talking sometimes from God and sometimes …." He doesn’t say that. It’s one or the other.
We can ask ourselves a question. In the post-modern world, many people would say, why have a test at all? Why even try to figure out what’s true and what’s not? So, that’s our first question. Why have a test at all? As I read this verse 1, there was a statement that was both implied and also specifically taught when it says, "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit. But, test the spirits to see whether they are from God." When he says that, he is saying that there needs to be a differentiation between these two spirits. And when he uses the word ’spirits’, don’t always just think of ghostly figures floating around. Spirit is that force or that person that is impelling and compelling a particular person to say things, or a particular movement to go in a particular direction, or a certain church to be what it is, or a certain group of people. It’s what is driving them. So, it’s important for us to get away from the idea that this only applies to disembodied spirits. They are disembodied spirits and there are spirits in the world, but they manifest themselves in very physical and very specific ways.
So, John says, "Don’t believe." There’s two imperatives that he uses here in the Greek. "Do not believe," is one imperative. In other words, don’t get sucked in. "Don’t just automatically get sucked in. But, instead of being sucked in, I want you to test. I want you to see if what you are looking at is the genuine article." And this word that is used here, the Greek word that is translated ’test’ is a metallurgical word. It’s one that you would take, for instance, some ore that was allegedly contained gold, and people assayed. They do this process where they figure out the purity, the amount of gold, the percentage of gold in that ore. They go through this process to see if, in fact, they are looking at gold or they are looking at iron pyrite. You may have seen, if you watch an old western movie, somebody will flip a guy a twenty dollar gold piece. And what does he do with it? He bites it. Why does he bite it? Because gold is rather a soft element and you will be able to dent it. If it was iron pyrite, well go chew on a pipe and you’ll see how much good your teeth do on that. So, he’s testing it. These are the imperatives. Don’t believe everything, but test.
The question is why. Why should I test? And here it is in the rest of that verse, "because many false prophets have gone out into the world." Brothers and sisters, here’s the reality of the situation we cannot afford to overlook. As soon as Jesus Christ showed up in the world, as soon as Jesus Christ was incarnated, Satan automatically put up opposition – substitutes, counterfeits. That’s his nature. Whatever God does, Satan does the opposite. He puts out an opposition to it. So, when God gives law, Satan sends up a spirit of antinomy – to be against the law. When God sends love, Satan will send hate. When God sent Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God comes into the world, then Satan will automatically stir up a spirit of anti-Christ. There’s always going to be ???? Wherever there is light, there will be darkness. Wherever there is truth, there will be error. Wherever there is life, there will be death. It is the way the world works. And, specifically, as we have embraced Christ and have become a part of the family of God, Satan’s forces will be targeted on us to fool us and to take us away from a dependence on Christ alone and begin to tempt us with other things that may look like Christ and may look godly, but they’re not. We are the greatest danger to Satan. ??? He knows he can’t beat God, but who he can beat is the people of God. It’s just like, instead of attacking a family’s father, you attack the kids. That’s exactly what our enemy is doing. And he does it by substitution, by counterfeits, by things that look like the Spirit of God, but are not.
Years ago I had a friend in this church. Years ago, back when we were in the school. And I spent hours and hours and hours with this guy. He had a lot of problems, and frankly, I had a lot of time. So, he would come over to my office and we would talk and talk and talk. And I would guess that there were weeks that we spent 15 hours. And he came to the church, he and his wife, and they were involved. And he was just a great guy, but there were some other people in the church who also got involved in this same group. This group of people in another part of the valley who had a church that was called "The Church in the City." And whenever a church calls itself, "The Church," you know it’s a little bit nerve wracking. And so, these people, as a group they not only went to this church, but they moved to the other part of the valley to go specifically to this church. And, along with this little group, went this friend of mine who I had spent so much time with. And off they went to find the truth that wasn’t at Chandler Evangelical Free Church, it was at this other church. So much so, that they ???? so powerful that they had to pick up their stuff and move to another town. Well, years later all of the families who had done that came back to me one by one and said, "You now what? It was a cult. It was a cult." And for a while, a lot of the families came back to our church before they moved up to Oregon, not for another church, but for a job. You know it happens. It happens. Christian people, and these people were believers, and yet of the group of people that went there, one of them has not reconnected with a church, has really gone really kind of over the edge.
I remember when I was in high school, there were some young people. A friend of mine who went to my high school with me, a Christian high school, and said, "Oh, there’s this church. You’ve got to come to it! It’s up in this other suburb of Chicago." And it was a very exciting church, and it was kind of one of the beginning churches in what we now call the charismatic movement. You went to that church and the worship was exciting and contemporary, and people were speaking in tongues and it just was a very, very different place to go. I went to this church, I think, twice. And I remember going, my Dad said to me, "Well, Jon, when you go just make sure you test the spirits and see if they believe Jesus Christ came in the flesh." Well, I don’t remember testing the spirits. But, I only did go twice. And I decided after the second time, there was something fishy about it. I didn’t know what it was, but there was something about it. And years later I heard that that whole church went off into eastern mysticism. And away they went. So, there are people out there and there are movements out there that look good. They’re very popular, perhaps, and there’s excitement and there’s enthusiasm, but sometimes when you dig down you find out that that’s what they have is excitement and enthusiasm and a people movement, but not a God movement. We see that on TV, don’t we? We see healings. We see excitement. We see creative teachings. I heard just the other week on TV that Satan was the physical father of Cain. Wow. ???? Hebrew??? Okay. We’re confronted with these things all the time. Flip through the channels, you see them and say, "Well, what’s going on here?" Is there any way to tell what is of God and what is not?
Look at verse 2, "This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God." Isn’t that nice? Isn’t it nice how John does that? He just says, "Now, here’s how it happens." And he’s done that over and over again in this book. It’s a very practical book. This is how you can tell if a person is speaking by the Spirit of God. "Every spirit that recognizes that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit who does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God." Wow. Pretty simple. That word ’acknowledge’ means ’the recognition of the identity of a person and the commitment to that person.’ It doesn’t just say, "He can say, ’Jesus Christ came in the flesh,’" but that he acknowledges it, that is that he recognizes that it’s true and he has made a personal commitment to it. I’ll give you an example. Do you think Al Gore believes that George Bush is the President of the United States? If not, he’s lost it. He’s lost more than the election. Do you think he has a personal commitment to George Bush as the President of the United States? I’m not so sure about that. I don’t think Howard Dean does. He may believe that George Bush is the President, but I don’t know that he has a personal commitment to that man. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be running hard against him. So, there is this acknowledgement is more than just being able to say it. They believe it and their life is committed to this fact.
You’ll notice what it says specifically. It doesn’t say, "who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." That’s not the test. The test is that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. In other words, the doctrine that is central here to the ability to discern from one spirit to another, is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Now, we have come up, over the years, with a lot of phrases to use to describe the coming of Christ. We say He was born as a baby. Well, He was born as a baby. But, that doesn’t really cut it, does it? Because Jesus Christ was much more than born as a baby because we were all born as a baby. And He didn’t even become a man, though He did become a man. It just isn’t enough. But, that Jesus Christ - Jesus being His human name, Christ being the designation of His deity (the Sent One, the Anointed One) – He is the one who came in the flesh. And that implies something, doesn’t it? It implies that He was before. I mean, we didn’t come into the world. We were born into the world. We didn’t exist, except in the mind of God, before that. But Jesus did. And so, when Jesus came and when it says, "has come in the flesh." The tense there is important. He came in the past. John talks about this in John 1, "The Word became flesh." That’s the best way to describe the incarnation. "The Word [of God] became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." We sang that in a song. "He left His Father’s throne above." The incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Only the person who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God will acknowledge the fact, will say, "Yes, I believe it and I’m committed to it." The spirit of anti-Christ, verse 3, will not. "Every spirit who does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the anti-Christ which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world." See, the incarnation is not just some arcane, old theological debate that old professors like to talk about. This is ???? If Jesus Christ did not come in the flesh, we’re all in trouble. So, let’s ask ourselves this question. Why is it so critical? Why is the incarnation so critical that John makes it really the primo doctrinal test in this book of tests? Why is it so critical?
The whole gospel hinges on the truth of the incarnation that God the Son became flesh. It means that He did not just appear to be a man, as some early heretics used to describe it, that He only looked like a human being. He only seemed like a human being. He wasn’t really a human being. That He was fully God and appeared to be a man. Or that He indwelt the body of a human being. He chose someone and took over a human body. No. He became flesh. He did not just appear. But, without losing His divine nature, He took upon Himself (Now, listen to this. This is important. This is something I learned just this week.), He took upon Himself permanent humanness. Jesus didn’t become a man, or take on flesh, come out here, live, die, rise again, go back up to heaven and lay His humanity aside. He still is and always will be fully God and fully man. That’s exciting. That means we have a real representative in heaven who knows what it’s like to be a human being, and the existence that He experiences in heaven is a pattern for the experience that we will have.
My favorite theologian is a man named Wayne ????? and if you ever want to borrow a good theology text, I will let you borrow that one, or you can buy your own. It’s a real big one, but he answers all the questions. And, most of them in my humble opinion, he’s right. But, he asks the question, "Why was it necessary for Jesus Christ to become fully human?" What’s at stake here? One thing at stake is representative obedience. Every human being has blown it. And he and every human being since have blown it and not been able to keep obedience to God, until Jesus Christ. And as fully man, He was able to be obedient, even to death on a cross. The substitutionary sacrifice. It was required. Not for God to die, but for man to die. And Jesus Christ, because He was fully human, took upon Himself our sin and He could die in our place because He was fully human.
He becomes, then, a true mediator between God and man. He really does speak to both worlds and for both beings, God and man. He fulfills God’s original plan for man, which was to rule over creation, to be the caretaker, to be the steward of creation. He exists to be an example and a pattern for us. If you want to know how to live the Christian life, someone’s done it and His name is Jesus Christ. And we have His life written out for us in the Word of God, so that we might know how it is that we should live. And He lived by principles, didn’t He? There are principles that guided His life. The principles of obedience to the Father and love. He is a pattern for our new bodies. We know what we’re going to be like. And Jesus, even after He rose from the dead, walked around in that new body and we know what it was like. And the Bible says, "We will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is." We are not going to become gods when we get to heaven. That’s a false doctrine that the Mormons teach, that we will become gods. We will become human beings in the real sense of the word, completely free from sin, and completely human in ourselves.
And He also, because He is fully human, He is able to sympathize with us and with our state and with our condition. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is the very center of the gospel message. It shows us our helplessness. If we could do it ourselves, why send outside help? If you can fix it yourself, why do you have to call in a specialist? You fix it yourself. Well, there are times in our life when we understand that we can’t fix it ourselves. Sickness. Cancer. Blown valve. "I need somebody else to help me." In this state the whole human race needed someone outside the human race to become part of the human race in order to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. It shows God’s love and grace in sending a powerful Savior. We were in need. Okay. But, if the human race was in need, if the human race was all drowning and none of us had a boat, we needed someone to come alongside with a boat and save us. And God is that. He had Noah build an ark as a foreshadowing of Him, God, sending Jesus to be our Savior. To save us from God’s judgment and from our own foolishness.
It is such a powerful plan, the gospel, that it has utterly defeated the plan of Satan which was to keep human beings in bondage to sin. And so, here’s what happens when we acknowledge that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. It is to acknowledge the wisdom and the awesome power of God and His redemptive plan. And that’s something that Satan cannot do. Satan cannot say, "Wow! What a great plan. I think I’ll buy into it." It’s from God. And because it’s from God, Satan cannot, it is his nature to oppose God. He cannot say, "That’s a great plan." ????? maybe say, "Man, what a great plan." Does he believe it? Sure. Does he believe that Jesus Christ came in the flesh? Absolutely. Does he buy into all that’s into it? Absolutely. He knows he’s toast, but he can’t bring himself to admit it. He can’t say, "Yes. God’s plan was manifested in the sending of His Son to become a man and to take upon Himself the sins of the world." He can’t do it. And neither can anyone who is enlivened by him. ???????????? killed by him and is manifesting that death in the way he lives. To do, to admit, to acknowledge that Jesus Christ came in the flesh would be to bow before the revealed greatness of God. Not gonna happen. Not gonna happen until God Himself forces Satan to his knees, at the end of time when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????, but he has to.
Satan will have to admit that he’s been lying all this time and that God is the source of all truth. And all this time that Satan has been telling us, "You can do it. You can pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. You can solve your own problems." It will be demonstrated that he was lying. Doctrines of faith given to us by God through apostles like John, like Peter, like Paul, like James are life itself. They aren’t just old truth. They are truth that changes our lives. Satan can’t acknowledge it, but we can. We can. Get a load of that a little bit. We can acknowledge, we can confess, our children can confess that Jesus Christ is the Word who became flesh. He is the very focus of the gospel. We can do that. That sets us apart, that means that something dramatic has taken place. That is what John talks about in verse 4-6. "You, dear children, are from God and have overcome." ’Overcome’ that’s a very interesting word. It’s the Greek word for victory. ’Nike.’ ???? Yeah. Those guys who invented that shoe up in Portland, Oregon years ago. Made in the Orient I think, but invented in Portland, Oregon wanted to use a word that would be a victorious word and they chose "Nike."
It is proof, the fact that we believe in Jesus, that we have put ourselves in the hands of Jesus, that we have entrusted ourselves into the person of Jesus means that we have been rescued from the deceptive trap of Satan and are now indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. We have been freed from pursuing the foolish lies that make up the world’s system. "You have overcome, then because the One who is in you [that is God, the Holy Spirit of God] is greater than the one who is in the world." We were trapped. We were chained. "Long my imprisoned spirit lay fastbound in sin and nature’s night." But our own spiritual Chuck Norris, came and singlehandedly freed us. "My chains fell off. My heart was free." That’s amazing. The fact that you believe in Jesus Christ this morning is a miracle. And you and I are victors over the most powerful force in the world next to God, that is Satan. But the thing is, next to God Satan is a firecracker compared to a nuclear explosion. "Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world." And the world is the human race in rebellion against God. You see the world around us is just a sham. It’s a sham. Satan has trapped people into believing that they can successfully defy God, ignore Him and sneer at His laws, reject His gospel of Grace, turn away from His Son, and suffer no consequences. That’s the lie of Satan. "You can ignore God. If He exists at all, He’s insignificant. Blow Him off. Do whatever you want to." That’s a lie. We have been freed from that lie. We have gained victory over that lie. And now we manifest this change in our lives.
People who are still in chains are, John calls them in verse 5, "from the world." They are from the world. That would be the spirits and those who are indwelt and chained by those spirits, they speak from a worldly viewpoint. A viewpoint that says, "I don’t care about God. I don’t care what He says. I’m going to go ahead and live my life the way I choose to live it. And if you don’t like that, too bad. If God doesn’t like it, who cares?" They are from the world and they listen to each other, don’t they? There’s nothing that’s so interesting to a person of the world than the ruminations and wisdom of another person trapped in the same thing, people sitting in the dungeon together discussing how great it is to be there and what they can do to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
But, how about us? "We," it says in verse 6, "are from God. And whoever knows God listens to us." Who is that we and who is that us that John is referring to? Well, it’s the apostles. "We [And he’s been saying this from the very beginning of this book. That ’we’ are the apostles. Those who lived with Christ. Those who have been taught by Christ. And those who are now giving you the truth from, what was forming, the Bible the Word of God.] are from God." "And if you are from God, you’ll find yourself listening to us. You’ll find yourself listening to other people and saying, ’Something doesn’t sound right. Something sounds like it’s from the world. Even though they are enthusiastic and even though there’s thousands of people there and even though it sounds good in some ways, still there’s something there that doesn’t quite mesh. Let’s ask. Let’s see what they think about Jesus Christ, not just that they use His Word or are honorable, are pretty good guys, but that He was the Word of God and came in the flesh.’"
The world can be trusted to parade before us tricks and images and enthusiasm and lies that look like the truth. But, here’s the good news. We have been free from following the world. We don’t have to follow the world. We don’t have to just suck up those lies. We don’t have to be dragged along by the image and made to think that it’s good because it costs more than this other one or because it’s got a different name. We’ve been freed. We get to see the truth underneath it. Now, there’s no two ways about it. Sometimes, and many times, the life we live and how we live in this world doesn’t look very victorious, does it? Sometimes everybody else has the big buildings. Everybody else has all the money. Everybody else has all the people following them. Everybody else is not sitting in jail or ??? happened to John, sitting in exile or as with the other apostles in prison or head on the chopping block or hung upside down like Peter. Doesn’t look very victorious does it? You say, "Man, where is the victory here?’’ Well, the victory is here. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is God who came in the flesh? If you believe that, you’re the winner. No matter what else is going on in your life, you are a victory because of that one truth. We have found what the Bible calls the Pearl of Great Price and His name is the Lord Jesus Christ. As we look at Him and acknowledge Him, that the dog and pony show that the world trots out begins to be revealed in all of its shabbiness and its emptiness. John is telling us what is real and telling these people in the first century church, who are watching their church probably dwindle as people left to follow the Gnostics or the ???gnostics or the people who were ??? into something else and thinking, "Man, what’s wrong with us?" And John says, "Are you grabbing hold of the apostolic doctrine. If you do, then you’re good. You’re a winner. You’re victorious. ????"
Don’t go looking for something not of Jesus. And if you’ve not acknowledged Him yet for who He is, don’t go any further. He said it Himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Me." Either what He said was real and true or He’s not a nice guy, He’s a liar. We believe and we know that Jesus Christ is God who took on flesh, died for us, lives for us, and someday we will be with Him forever.
