First John 4:1-3 The Spirit of Truth v. The Spirit of Error part I
1 John 4:1-3 · Bob Eckel · Aug 7, 2022
Letters of John (2022), No. 26
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261927598166

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So we're in 1 John 4, 1 through 3 today, and really I don't think I'm going to read a lot of scripture except the last verse of what Andrew taught last week, and we're going to turn back to that too today as we look at the text for us today. So beginning at 1 John 3, 23, and this is his commandment that we should believe on the name of his son Jesus Christ. and love one another as he gave us commandment to do so.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses of Jesus Christ has come in the flesh as of God. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. I just should point out right now, verse three, that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not in many versions, but it's implied. And we'll come back to that. All right, summary of Andrew's wonderful teaching last week. Andrew, great handout. I'm sorry I missed it in person, but wonderful teaching. Thank you.

So what is his commandment? OK, so what's his commandment from the verses we looked at, or at least the last verse? Well, I'll answer it for you. 23, right? Verse 23. Believe and obey. Believe in his name. That's the commandment. We're all set, I think. I don't think you're shared. I'm not seeing it on Zoom. Okay. Bill's come in from the bullpen. This is middle relief, okay? You're not the closer. We just shared it, Bill. They said they could see it. Yeah, it looks good now. Okay. Thanks, Bill. Okay. You'll not be needed next inning. Thank you. Yes, hang around there. Baseball. All right.

How does this occur? This, this, this commandment? Well, it's, what's the, what's this whole epistle about? Fellowship. Roger answers it correctly. This is by abiding. And you know, the interesting thing about the verses and precedents is abiding in him.

And by the way, he and us, you know, it's just not us abiding in him. It's, you know, he's fully capable of abiding in us. And that's positional truth lived out in our condition, isn't it? But we fall short because our abiding in him falls short. Right? But he abides in us fully. We're new creations in Christ Jesus. All right. And the third question of the class, how do we know we're keeping his commandments? If we love. OK, we love one another, but I think we put the emphasis on that. We're missing the point. Verse 24, we just read it. It's by the spirit that he's given us. And that really, really, this is a nice prelude to the verses we're going to be covering today. All right, thanks Andrew for a great lesson last week.

Okay, 1 John 4.1. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether of God, because many false prophets have gone out into this world, or into the world. You know, some commentators say that it shouldn't only be beloved, it's dearly beloved ones. I mean, apparently the emphasis here is on the entire body of Christ to whom John is writing. Let's return again to John 3 24 from Andrew's lesson last week and we read it this morning. Let's read it again.

Now he who keeps his commandments abides in him and he in him and by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he's given us. What's the purpose of the spirit that Christ outlined in the gospel of John? What's the purpose of the Holy Spirit? show us the things of Christ. Yeah, it's to reveal Christ in us, to ultimately comfort and do lots of other things, but it's really to magnify the new birth we have in Christ Jesus. Boy, you know, that's pretty simple. I think if we take sometimes a reductionist approach to scripture, we're maybe too narrow, but here we're not. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to increase Christ in each and every one of us. All right, good.

Believe not is an imperative. In other words, stop believing every spirit. What's the matter with you? I mean, if you're a scripturalist, Sam, Margaret and I have been off and on about this all weekend about some issues in the world system. We'll maybe come back to that. But anyway, stop believing every spirit. And if you're well founded in the word of God, the every spirit, every other spirit be able to be recognized from whence it comes. So how do we test or try the spirits whether they're of God? That's a question everyone. Verse 2. 2 and 3. Okay, Roger's jumping ahead as usual. All right, we'll enter into a little discussion first.

This is the process I think that we all need to use to examine, to prove, and scrutinize to see whether a thing is genuine or not. Now, how would we decide something's genuine or not? Absolutely. That's the only source of truth we have. You know, people are critical scripture and I was such an unbeliever, very critical scripture, because I thought people could lift a verse someplace and apply it to any situation.

And you can, unless you get saved. Then you start realizing that it all consolidates into one formal message. And it all relates to Jesus Christ. prophetically in his earthly existence and also in the church age in which we live. Spirit and spirits. I found this kind of interesting. I hope you do too. Pneuma is a very broad term and it's used repeatedly in scripture. Look at what ultimately Now I converted this to black, all of it. Nevertheless, it did not get changed. Anyway, this is the King James Version, translates as Strong G 4151 in the following manner. Let's see if I can even read all this.

The Spirit 111 times. The Holy Ghost 89 times. The Spirit of God 13 times. The Spirit of the Lord 5 times. My Spirit 3 times. spirit of truth three times, spirit of Christ two times, the human spirit 49 times, evil spirits 47 times, spirit, what's that next one, spirit, general, 26 times, what's next, spirit, just spirit eight times, and Jesus' spirit six times, and Christ's own ghost, or Holy Ghost, I mean, I just gave you that just to give you an idea, this term has to be applied in context.

By the way, the human spirit is something that relates to our spirit, right? Body, soul and spirit, that's the way we're created. So just to give you an idea that here, spirit and spirits uses the same term of spirit. So the spirit can be the Holy Spirit, Or it could be any of these other spirits of flesh or the world system that operates.

Everybody's thoughts about that, any thoughts? Alright, no thoughts. Well Bob, it seems like in the context of 1 John, he's concerned about the people coming along that are giving a false message. So his focus is on, if they don't If they don't claim Christ, then there's a problem with that spirit. So in this context, it seems like it's more the naysayers of his day, or whatever.

It's interesting, as you get near the end of the New Testament, both Peter and John talk a lot about this. It's kind of interesting, you kind of almost close the Word of God, and of course, Jude deals with the truth, and then you go into Revelation. So we end the New Testament with all this idea of false teachers, false prophets, etc. Alright, so why is this a concern? Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Bob? Yes, Roy? It took me a while to put this together and thinking it, I apologize.

The work of the Holy Spirit, we say, is to reveal Christ, right? In John we're taught that. And in 1 John, I've noticed that What he did in revealing our Lord was twofold. We've already covered one in chapter one, verse five, that God is a light. It's specifically stated, and if we walk in the light, then we're part of him because he is in us, revealing himself. In this chapter, the other half of what the Holy Spirit says about God is in verse eight. It says God is love in His essence. And if we don't love one another as He has loved us, then we're not in Him, we're not part of Him, because His life is what radiates His light and His love.

Isn't that something? That's how the Holy Spirit here puts that together for us. Right and that was covered I think last week by under loving one another of course that loved one another. How's everybody doing at that? I mean the point there is we have in the ability of flesh not to love anybody in any way close to how Christ loves us. So that's the whole new life of loving one another. It's a new nature. Spiritually. So why should we be testing the spirits?

Very simply because scripture says because many false prophets have gone out into the world and we're going to dissect this down here a little bit. These false prophets, by the way, perfect tense, have already gone out. And I guess the question I might ask everyone here is, are these really prophets in that sense?

Or foretellers? And or whatever, what are their messages? Well, whatever it is, it's false. Right, and remember prophets is a term that can be, you know, interpret teachers or give people with, you know, self-sayings and everything like that. So a prophet is not necessarily someone here who's predicting the future. These are people who have false messages and these are sourced in evil spirits, are they not?

All right, second Peter 2.1, this verse is perfect I think for this. But there were also false prophets or teachers among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. Now sometimes, again, when we taught 1 and 2 Peter here, there's a lot of charades going on within the body of Christ. So we can't be deceived. because they could exist within us. I think in Holly Hills that's less likely. But in a big church, they could be all over the place. Who knows? I think particularly in mainline churches where today's world system is so emphasized.

We'll come back to that. I promise. So back to the question, on what basis do we test or try the spirits? We've kind of answered that already, haven't we? Well, that's difficult. If you don't, if you're not, go into the Word. I mean, the Word is knowing what's going to test those false pockets. Well, and going to the Word is not selecting a verse that fits the circumstances. And I mean, we use verses to complement what we're teaching here. But we're not talking about a verse that ultimately is not perfectly applied to the circumstances. It's the whole Word of God. And again, I love Paul saying, rightly dividing the Word of truth. Right? So, yes, go ahead.

You know, false prophets a lot of times won't say that they deny Jesus Christ. What they don't say is a lot of times more important than what they do say. They can say the right things, but if they will not say that Jesus Christ is Lord, then you've got to question them. really very well said keep that thought in mind we're coming back to that I can promise you. So Constable really who quotes Westcott says that the test of the presence of the divine spirit meaning the holy spirit is the confession of the incarnation or more exactly of the incarnate savior the gospel centers in a person and not in any truth even the greatest about the person. So that's what Westcott said that Constable is quoting. All right, 2 John 1, 7.

For many deceivers have gone out into the world who did not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. We're going to come back to this because I think there's a little bit of interpretation issue that we need to return to. I'm going to leave that on hold right now. But these other spirits are manifested in the world system and this is cosmos and these are all antichrists. So, Just ponder where the cosmos or world system is right now, but in fact always has been, by the way.

Right. It's just more obvious today. The curtains have been opened up. When we grew up, they were closed, and we thought, well, it's not too bad. But now, But, you know, to go scripturally, Roger, the sin nature is there from the garden, right? It's just, it was covered up more. It was just not so obvious. Things like homosexuality and gender identity and all these kinds of things.

No, the internet, which now, it's in your face every single day. What did you say to me at breakfast this morning about God's presence in this world, sister? Fox News did a survey, Family Do Not Insist. God, belief in God, is at the lowest level in our history.

Because, you know, it's so evident. When Bob and I come down, you know, all these leagues, sports leagues for kids, they're all full of kids and families. And on Sundays, they never used to have meals until 1 o'clock. When I coached baseball, all the games on Sunday were afternoon. And that's just an indicator. And now there are games that, we see them coming down at Kitzling and 285. Anyway.

That just goes right into, families are not, young families are not going to church. Well, God was in the schools, right? I mean, we can discuss prayer in schools, left and right. I'm not quite sure that prayer needs to be in schools. But all that aside, you were exposed to that, weren't you, growing up? And he was respected. Yes, that's right. I think that's a good point, Bonnie. Yeah.

I did a monthly magazine with the Samaritan's Vinci's co-ops that I'm in, and they were saying that now there's been a couple of generations of kids who've been raised without without God in that, you know, they're not exposed to that. Like they used to, you know, even if parents weren't believers, it's just not in the culture that they're exposed to as much as it used to be. And our generation was a bit transitional in that, and then our sons and daughters were even more so. And today, basically, God is a lost item for most, and not all of us.

A couple of verses here, 1 John 4, 5, Therefore they speak as of the world and the world hears them. You're ultimately being influenced by just homosexuality as a way of life. Here we love them in Christ. I mean, think of us, we're all saved by grace. But it's just a world system kind of entity that that type of behavior is condoned.

You can't watch a sporting event. I mean, pretty much it's anything. I work out every day downstairs with TV. My workout is a bit limited now. This morning, the feature on SportsCenter was a homosexual football player and all heís been through. I changed the channel to watch the womenís ACC womenís football championship. Thatís an aside here.

Matthew 7.15, ìBeware of false prophets who come to you in sheepís clothing.î Out inwardly, they are rabid as wolves. I mean, we always quote that. That's in the Gospel of Matthew, but it applies. The principles of God don't change, and this is a principle of God. All right, let's go on to verse 2.

By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. But you know here, this is not fact. This is experiential. We've all experienced the Spirit of God working in our lives, haven't we? This is just something, gee, I know the Spirit of God is there. You know, you study scripture, it says it's there, but no, we're experiencing this. We get to know the Lord Jesus Christ because of the revelation that the Holy Spirit has given us. And the second part of this verse is every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is of the flesh, has come in the flesh, is of God.

What's confess mean? It means to declare openly, to speak out freely, and here to agree with scripture is what it means. That's what confess biblically is best translated as. So the truth is taken for granted as established. We're encouraged to confess it. That is in his teaching to profess it openly.

And a couple of verses here, 1 Corinthians 12, Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. And the Romans passage, which we all have memorized and many of us have, that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you'll be saved. So this idea of confession, we often are not given the opportunity to confess verbally. But Caroline's life or Jim's life is really a confession of scripture and where you're founded. And as Hal said, I've said this 15 times in this class, you may be the only Bible people ever read.

So I mean, that's neat. All right. Has, best interpreted, is come. Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come or is come in the flesh. This is a perfect participle. It's come and it continues to come. Something we can interpret literally in terms of today. What's necessary for us to correctly interpret this verse and why is this important? Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. What's lacking here? I'm not being critical of scripture because I think we interpret this correctly. But what's lacking here? Thank you. I think Caroline's had her hammer out and hit the nail in the head.

Wasn't Christ a good teacher? How many people call Christ a good teacher? Did he came in the flesh? Well, I guess if you really interpret the verse as John meant it, he came in the first, the incarnate Christ is who came in the flesh, right? This is the son of God who's fully God and fully man. So that's the way we need to interpret it, but if you just look at this verse, he came in the flesh, the people that claim he was a great teacher said, yeah, okay, he came in the flesh. The other thing, was it enough for him to just come in the flesh? No, it wasn't.

1 Timothy 3, 16, and without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed in, bleeped in the world, bleeped on in the world, and received up in glory. That's more than just showing up in the flesh, doesn't it?

And then Galatians 221, Margaret's, one of her favorite verses, I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. Right? I mean, we all think of Galatians 220, but in fact, if he just came and died and wasn't resurrected, That death was worthless. So I'm not being critical of John's scripture, but I think he implied that coming in the flesh was the Son of God that came in the flesh.

And he knew this well, just to make sure we interpret this in the way it was really stated to be believed. Other thoughts about this? Got a quiet group here today. When you read the Gospel of John, you get all that information. So obviously he was, you know, he knew it, he just didn't put it in reverse.

Yeah, Bob, you know, in the book that we passed around from Duluth, by Roxer, he points out that John sort of had, in 1 John, a more shorthand, if you will. He didn't elaborate completely. He knew, like Wayne said, he knew his readers knew that he died.

He made the point about, for the false prophet thing, I gather. So he, someone said John, 1 John has a shorthand without all the details in there. It does seem that way. There's very terse statements in 1 John. And this is one of the cases where he should say his death too, but he didn't. So he assumed that they knew it apparently. Well, he expects that he's talking to a knowledgeable after, I mean, with all that he's been through and all that people have read or been taught, he figures they know all that other stuff.

Somebody turn to John 1.14, please. And I think this reflects what Roger just said. Whoever gets it, read it, please.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory. Glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. That clearly states the Incarnation, doesn't it? So the fact that He just came in the flesh, we can rightly divide the Word of Truth by saying there's other scripture that points that He just didn't show up in the flesh. I mean, he did sharpen the flesh. From what we're saying, this is...he left the...Philippians 2, right? He left this throne and became human for a time.

I think you're going to get to the last little phrase, is of God, actually. That actually clarifies it a little bit more, too. Let's go to the last verse. And every spirit that does not confess is not of God. By the way, it says in some texts that he also came in the flesh again there. Oh, okay. How many people have that in their texts? He came in the flesh. My King James has it. And the interlinear, well, the interlinear I use is really the one on Blue Letter Bible. And sometimes I need to go to the original interlinear.

Anyway, and every spirit that does not confess, and by the way, it's implied that the confession is he came in the flesh. is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. That's kind of a contradiction. You heard it was coming. By the way, he's already here, this spirit of the Antichrist. Notice every spirit that does not confess. And by the way, I just mentioned this, that Jesus Christ has come into place is implied and is in some translations, but not all. How many people have it in their translations? Morganize out him to King James. Yeah, Carolyn does too. All right.

You know, it implies that these other spirits, other than the Holy Spirit, are meant to destroy, to set aside, or do away with. And I think these three verbs, I thought, really applied to the purpose of these other spirits. They're to destroy the truth of the Word of God, they're to set it aside and make it irrelevant, or, you know, ultimately say it doesn't really exist. And a lot of people who criticize Scripture say that they don't believe, you know, much of anything that's really written there.

And this is the spirit of the Antichrist which you emphatic ye again beloved ye have heard was coming and is now already in the world. So you know this spirit was present then. These spirits, I should have put, are present then, are present today, and are present tomorrow. So these have been here a long time. And just think of the garden, right? Then think of Abel and Cain, which we covered here about a month ago, in terms of Cain's being influenced by an evil spirit. So, question that I think we maybe ought to spend a little time on here. How does this spirit of Antichrist mislead? And by the way, I put this spirit as a singular, but there are multiple spirits that are the Antichrist.

It's sort of what Jim was talking about earlier. They just say just enough to make people think that they know who Christ is, but it's what they don't say. They never totally tell you the truth. They don't know. They may know. They don't give you enough truth to make you think that their teaching is really good. Right. But what they don't say is more important than what they do say. But partial truths are very dangerous. They are. Yeah. They're more dangerous than false truths. Yeah. Somebody have a comment?

Just one of the things that in John's day, when he wrote this, we have the Jewish non-believers of Jesus Christ going around and saying what Paul is teaching, what John is teaching is wrong. The Messiah hasn't come yet. Jesus Christ is not one. And the Jewish nation particularly, right? Right. Now, a great deal of that is deception. Don't get me wrong.

But at the same time, they rejected our Savior. They rejected God. But they couldn't deny that he came in the flesh. Of course where he came from would be their disbelief, right? Or the purpose of his coming. Or that God came in the flesh already, the promised one. Right.

I'm going to open the door a little bit further and see if we can discuss this in more detail. So how does the spirit or spirits of antichrist mislead from outward and obvious evil? We can all, even the world system identifies obvious evil, murder and rape. I mean, just go on and on. That's obvious, right? But to modernism and world system political misguidance, to law itself. I mean, the courtrooms today, you know, what's crime anymore?

And how about even the self-righteousness? I mean, in a sense, isn't that the spirit of the Antichrist? People that think they're doing really well. Why do I need God for his savior? And, you know, the other thing that kind of comes up is our own flesh really is in spirit of the Antichrist. I mean, we're saved. Christ doesn't look at us that way. You know, we've been made his righteousness because of him. So there's no condemnation in us. Isn't that great? But, you know, the flesh, in a sense, that's self-righteousness. Anything the flesh takes credit for, right?

Be on guard. Because this anti-Christ spirit or spirits comes in a wide variety of ways. And we need to be tuned in. Amen. All denying the truth of the incarnate and resurrected Jesus Christ and the comfort of the Holy Spirit is ultimately the Antichrist. And as we're going to be covering here in a few weeks, I'll bounce that one in here. We are of God. He who knows God hears us. And he who is not of God does not hear us.

By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error, the title of today's lesson. Thank you, Roger. So that's in verse six to come yet, but I'm not sure who's teaching that. I haven't looked ahead. But anyway, that's today's lesson. We can talk further. We can say good morning to everyone. Thank you. Well, you know, it focuses, you know, as most, all focuses on who Christ is. That's the name of the game, you know.

Denying Christ in any aspect of who he is, you got a problem. Deny he's God, you deny he came in the flesh, you deny he rose again. Deny any of that and you have a problem. And men do that in various ways. They just deny him entirely and say, well, it's, you know, I don't believe in any of that.

But Roger, to extend that, I think, you know, the church itself, as we call it the church today, is really... Well, they aren't doing their job. I mean, when we think of kind of the mainline Protestant church, I don't think this kind of teaching exists there.

I mean, I grew up in that. That's my own problem, not getting saved there, but I never thought I heard a personal gospel. But anyway, all that aside. And actually we had an experience with our niece. We went to a church and she was attending and her parents attended too. And this is like 15 years ago.

And she says, well you won't need your Bible. Don't bring your Bible. And we didn't need our Bible because they talked about how what a loving church they were. So they had testimonies from people walking up on the stage. It was done in like a big auditorium, people, oh, this is such a wonderful, loving church. And that was their message for that Sunday. Well, it's all social stuff. It is, absolutely. It's all social stuff and big hugs and grins and, you know, we're such a wonderful church. I don't even think the Lord's name was mentioned once. I don't think the Lord's name was mentioned once. I don't even know.

So you actually witnessed this? Oh yeah, we saw, yeah, yeah. She said, you know, and we went, and we had our Bibles with us, and she said, well, you won't need your Bibles. How long ago is this? Maybe even 20, 15, 20 years ago. It's been a long time. So things were different. What's new under the sun.

I want to look at how the world thinks of the Christian being the head of the Christian church is the Pope. Look what he says all the time. What they're doing. That's what the world thinks the Christian message is. How pathetic is that? Just think of newspaper headlines on Easter Sunday. It's all about the Pope. The Catholic Church is all that's represented there.

And we know well that within the Roman Catholic Church, there can be individuals who are saved. Unfortunately, law has become dominant in their lives based on papal theocracy, if you want to call it that. But anyway, the Word of God is our source of truth. It's Spirit-led to rightly discern that truth and live it out in our lives.

Jim, could you please close us in prayer? Thank you. Father, we thank you so much. that you have shown us the truth through your word. I thank you so much for this church that we study your word to know you better. We ask that you would continue this message in our service today. We just thank you for your blessing. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.