1-3 John - 1st John 4:1-3 Spirit of truth vs. the Spirit of error - part 1
1 John 4:1-3 · JD McCulley · Jul 17, 2011
1, 2 & 3 John, No. 29
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926240424619

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

Alright, well we've been in First John and I've had the privilege of jumping smack dab right in the middle of it. As you guys know, last week we started working through some challenging verses. I mean, for me to hop in and become a team teacher with Roger in the middle of some, just some real challenging content. And you know what's good about that is that I'm just extremely thankful for the church because there's an opportunity for us to continue to grow and continue to learn. And I need to just say that there's been a real yearning in my heart to take what Roger is saying and to reconsider some things. And so having done that, I'm still learning and I'm still growing and I'm still sharpening my mind. And I've taken heed to some of the things that Roger said and spent some time with Vern as well, working through these things.

And so there's just a sharpening here. And as a young teacher in the church, young in the sense of, I guess, I don't know, however you might want to see that, but young in the sense of being here early. I haven't been here very long, concept. Just being young to the study and new.

I appreciate your understanding and just willingness to to work with me as I grow as well. So I know that there's going to be a lot of sharpening with the questions that you have and I look forward to that. I just wanted to say I really appreciate Roger's study last week and it's caused me to just really go back and think what's the heart of John and Vern has also helped me with that. So that being said, the fellowship of the body is really important and I'm just so thankful that that can take place as an opportunity for teachers here.

I'm going to open up the fourth chapter of 1 John and we're going to dive right into the first three verses today. What I want to do is just read the last verse of chapter 3 to get a running start. And so somebody can just read that last verse there and that would be 1 John chapter 3 verse 24 and I'll kind of pick up with that and we'll move into the first three of chapter 4.

The one who keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in him. We know by this that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given us. So John leaves off much where we discussed last week in this idea of abiding and this idea of keeping the commands and one of the things that's really neat about John in the book of First John is that it is written to the church and it is written matter-of-factly to the audience so that they can take what John is saying and begin to immediately run with it. We're going to talk a little bit about that some of the differences with how how John writes and how Paul writes which was one of the keys to at least for this week for me to begin to understand a little bit about how John's verbiage and his way of thinking is quite different from Paul's in terms of delivery. He had a little bit of a different sense of how he did things, and so that's going to be key to understanding 1 John, and I'm going to cover that a little bit because it's something that I've been learning.

But having that theme of the Spirit, and the abiding, and the keeping of His commands, and the love that is associated with keeping commands. Immediately in the church we begin to think of keeping commands, oh no, especially in a grace-oriented church.

But that's John's exact point. If you love God, sure you're going to keep His commands. And where Paul would spend a lot of time explaining, here is your spiritual condition, here's where you've come from, these are the reasons why you would want to obey, and we'll bring this out a little bit more as we go here. John is just very matter of fact. You love him, you're going to keep his commands. Yeah? Don't you get it?

And so that kind of mentality, as we'll see in a little bit here, is quite key to understanding what John has in mind as he opens up this idea of... So John's mention of the Holy Spirit in verse 324, it really causes him to think, OK, we've got this idea of abiding. We've got this idea of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. I need to just take a minute and spend three verses, which is how long in John's breath? Maybe 15 seconds. And I need to warn him. So what we're going to do is take 15 seconds of what John said in the letter and we're going to break it down into an hour.

And we do that. It's typical for us to break the scripture down in that way. But I don't want you to lose the fact that John is pausing right in the middle of a discourse about abiding in the spirit and the love that the children of God have for him in the way that their obedience is displayed and it's public and it's seen. And the idea of the practicing of righteousness that we talked about last week is something these believers were doing. And it was because of their abiding in Christ and the fact that the Spirit was an active part of that.

But I want to warn you. There's something you need to know before we move on with this concept. And so that's where we pick up with 1 John 4, 1-3. Let's go ahead and read the first verse. Someone just read 4-1. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. First word, beloved. Who's he talking to?

Believers, we know it. We know it's believers. What is the spiritual condition of these believers? Are they walking with the Lord? Are they not walking with the Lord? Are they in fellowship? Are they out of fellowship? Do we know? We don't know. But what we do know is that he is addressing believers in order that they might remain in fellowship.

We're going to see that that's one of the things that he's trying to get to, is that he is protecting those that he's speaking to. He's wanting to protect them. And how he wants to protect them is extremely important. because we often think about protecting our understanding of the scripture in certain ways, but the way that John actually tells us to be careful to the beloved, the exact way he does it is very important, and it's actually consistent with the rest of scripture. But as Christians, and that's who he's talking to, We need to not be so naive that there are not other spirits. And that's what John's wanting to make clear.

There are other things going on aside from just what I'm telling you and the Spirit of God is revealing to you as we go through this message. There are other messages. And with those messages are associated spirits. And so that brings us to this idea, what is the spirit here?

We've got the beloved, do not believe, and we know what kind of role does belief take in the Christian faith? Did John's gospel not cover that theme just amazingly? So when he says believe, he's packing a punch. He's like, I got a whole book that talks about where we're supposed to have our belief. So when I say belief, you know, you're bringing to bear all that John has taught about how we are to believe and where our belief goes and what belief renders us as believers and how nothing else but belief brings salvation. That was John's gospel. But here he's saying, don't take that same attitude of trust and belief and place it in these other spirits.

So who are the spirits? What are the spirits? Is it a person? Is it an angelic being? Is it a spirit of fear? Wouldn't it be the fallen angels? Do you think that John is saying, don't believe every fallen angel? Just a question? I'm just thinking it through, trying to fine tune our understanding of what the spirit is here. What's that? Any of them? You think that's what John has in mind here? Vicki? Well, actually, I do kind of believe that because I think they drive the false teachers. Okay. So, angelic beings drive the false teachers, she said.

But, he's saying test to see whether they are from God. So, actually, he's talking about any spirit, any... Thoughts of contrariness? Well, not just contrariness, but because sometimes something is taught that he just wants, I guess I would go back and say he wants them to be barians, as we know, where they're checking everything against the scriptures. human spirit as a possibility, angelic spirit as a possibility, and a spirit of contrariness, as you mentioned, being fear or envy or any kind of spirit that is contrary to the thought of what John is trying to say here.

So we've got these three potential options. I think that the discussion is good here, and as we get into these next verses, I think it will start to fine-tune itself. But at this point, having just run right into the word spirit, we've at least got some options here, and let's just use the rest of the verse to start fine-tuning our understanding of it. But I think we're going to find that it does narrow down a little bit. But we've got this idea, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test them. But test them. And so, he says, test them to see if they are from, or if the spirits, if it is from God.

And so John says that there are these false spirits, and they've gone out into the world, and that's how the rest of the verse plays out there, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Is this idea of false prophets a new concept? Now remember, who is John's audience? Are they Gentiles or Jews? And are they believers or not? Okay, so they're Jewish believers. Would they be familiar with this idea of false prophets going out into the world?

And see, that's what's really neat about John. And what he's saying here is, and I would mention that there's a difference between Paul and John, and this is something that Vern really helped me understand over the course of the week. Paul is speaking to Gentiles. It's like he's speaking to babies, young two-year-old children. I've got a two-year-old.

And so when I explain what not to do. I spend a lot of time explaining, here's what's going to happen if you do it. It's going to result in a burn. Hot means this. And after you do it, you're going to have this outcome and you're going to have to go through the healing process and wear a band-aid.

He likes that part, but every other part he hates. So there's this whole discourse of what is involved with the word no. As he gets older, it turns to four or five years old, I look at him and I say no. And with that word, the whole impact of what I've had previously taught him, it comes to mind.

Do I have to say it all over again? Okay, let's sit down, let's go over, you are a human being. You do not have the ability to withstand certain heat in your skin. Your skin is susceptible to, and do I have to go through that every single time? Sometimes I don't have to say anything, I just go.

He's like, oh no. So the idea is that Paul is dealing with Gentiles who are completely confused in terms of who Yahweh is, this God, what a prophet is, what a spirit is. Their idea of the spirits was, let's wield something to get what I want. And they were completely detached from morality. I want to use the spirit to get this woman away from her husband so that I can have ownership over this desire that I have. So they would be detached completely from morality.

So what Bern was explaining to me is that Paul is so careful to explain all the hows and whens and whats and the wheres and so forth associated with whatever he was saying. It's like he was teaching a two-year-old. John, he doesn't take that position. You're Jews. You've been raised from the ground up to think about these things. When I say false prophets, you know what I'm talking about. You've talked about them all your life. You've been aware of them all your life. You're familiar with Deuteronomy and what it says about how to test a false prophet. You know this stuff, so I'm not going to go into it.

If he was speaking to Gentiles and he was Paul, he might have gone into, remember in the Old Testament when we said this and said this, here's how we detect the falsehood and the truthfulness of the Spirit. And so he'd have brought that all to bear. But John, he jumps right to the point. Do not believe every spirit, but test them, the spirit that is from God, because many false prophets have gone on to the world.

I'm not going to tell you about what they do, and how they do it, and how to test them fully. I'm going to explain a little bit concerning one issue that's really critical, John says, but this whole idea of testing, you already know. And so he just packs a really huge punch. It's like me saying no to my four-year-old and having packed all that information already there.

So what's going on in the mind of these believers? I wanted to spend a little bit of time about the concept of false prophets and what these Jews, Jewish believers, would have been bringing to the table in their understanding as John said, test them. Because there's a lot out there. So this idea of false prophets is not new to the Jewish believers.

Deuteronomy 13, 1 through 5. Can somebody turn to that and read it? And then someone else have Deuteronomy 18, 22 ready to go next. So first, we're going to read Deuteronomy 13, 1 through 5. Remember, Paul would have quoted it. He would have taken, I mean, I don't know what Paul would have done specifically, but based on his style and the way that he thinks, he would have gone back here and said, we're going to test the prophets. And this is how we used to test them in the Old Testament.

And there's a lot that still bears here. John says there's a lot that's out there, and you know what I'm talking about. Somebody read the long passage, Deuteronomy 13, 1-5, and let's get our mind in the concept of an Old Testament believer, under the law, experiencing these false prophets, magicians, performing and doing things, and then being confused like, oh my, they just did something miraculous. Do I believe what they're saying? And that's what's going on here. So someone read.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you, saying, let us go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them, you shall not listen to that to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.

For the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him, and you shall keep His commandments and listen to His voice, serve Him and cling to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery. to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.

So first, a proclaimed prophet, he predicts a sign or wonder that will take place, and second, the predicted sign or wonder comes true. Does that happen? Did it happen in the Old Testament? It did. To think that there are prophets that did not say something that was going to happen, and then it happened, and then they actually end up not being from God, was the case in the Old Testament.

So the Jewish believer in John's audience would have recalled the fact that these guys can pack a serious prophetic punch, but is that punch, am I supposed to be caught with the illusion over here and slide a hand with the message over there? And that's what the book of Deuteronomy, Moses was really warning against here, is that don't look over here and then let them slide some false teaching in while you're looking over here, That was his idea. And so, what is it that is actually at stake here? What's the most important thing, according to Moses, as far as what they should not listen to, even though these things are happening?

Yeah? Are you going to listen to the Word of God, or are you going to go after the super glitzy show? That's right. With a super glitzy show, there is always the sleight of hand of a teaching. It's the same today. I mean, we all are susceptible and have experienced it at one point in time or another.

I show you one thing, I build up something with motivational speaking, and in the background I'm sliding you false teaching. In this case, they were not doing motivational speaking, they were doing actual prophetic teaching. predictions that were coming true.

But the issue here in Deuteronomy 13, 1-5 is that though a prophecy may be fulfilled, that is not the test, but rather it is the words that matter the most. Are the words of the prophet lining up with what's already been said? If they don't, then it's a false prophet. Is it the fulfillment of prophecy coming true that matters most?

Uh-oh. That's what Moses was saying. It's what is being said that matters most. And so, what these false prophets were doing, like I said, are having you watching over here, and then sliding in that, oh, isn't this wonderful? False doctrine, and I got you while you're looking.

So the real issue at stake is not miracles and signs, but teaching. And this is important, guys. What are they teaching? Let's say you leave Holly Hills, you move on, you move out of state, you move across town, whatever. When you go and you begin to sit under teaching, you have to be careful with the sleight of hand. You have to think about what is being taught here, not what's worship like, or what's the personality of this guy like, or is this the kind of environment where I could really soak in some good teaching.

It doesn't matter. We sit under a tree, we can all look like Goofballs, it doesn't matter what we look like or what we are performing or how we're doing it matters most of all what we're saying and That's how we're to be judged. That's Paul. I'm sorry That's what Moses was saying to the Jews and turns out that's what John is going to be saying to Deuteronomy 18 22 who can read that for us?

If if what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true That is the message the Lord has not spoken Notice what this verse is not saying. Look at it one more time. It doesn't say that if a proclaimed prophet predicts something and it comes to pass, he is a true prophet of God. It doesn't say that. Actually, this is what we would refer to as a negative test.

If he predicts something and it doesn't come about, then this guy is doing what? He's fake. He's deceiving. He's deceptive. That's where we get the word false prophet. In other words, he could predict 2,000 things to come, to pass, but if just one of the predictions don't come true, what does that make him? Deceiving. False. And so we've got Nostradamus and we've got all kinds of checkout stand prophecies, grocery stand prophecies. What's the problem with that?

According to the Word of God, can they predict something that comes to pass? They can. Here's something that I had to get my mind around even more recently. Let's take the demonic realm for a moment, the fallen angelic realm. Can they plant ideas and thoughts in the minds of a person and then turn around and bring, let's say, I dreamt that there's going to be a car wreck at the corner of such and such a street tomorrow. Can an angelic fallen being bring something like that to pass under the approval of God's sovereignty? Yes. And can a person who dreamt the dream think, oh, I must tap into my dream world because there's truth there, I just dreamt something that came to pass. So that thing can take place.

Now the Bible does not spend a whole lot of time on that, so I'm not either. I recognize that it exists, but my focus is on Christ, and it is on the Word of God. I'm not going to sit around and focus on the demonic realm any more than just to acknowledge the fact that there is some sleight of hand that is taking place in the demonic realm. It exists.

You tell me you had a dream, it came to pass, okay, let's move on to the truth of God's Word, and let's start to establish a focus and beholding of Christ, because that is what's going to get you out of this thing, not me trying to uncover all the realities that you think you've had, or whether they're valid or real. Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm not going to pick apart a demonic experience as much as I'm going to go straight to the person of Christ and spend time and camping with him. Go ahead. The other side of that coin is that we shouldn't assume just because something came to pass that that's either necessarily of God or demonic. We see hundreds of things. Is there a likelihood of what we in the human realm refer to as chance? Okay. There could be a chance occurrence. There could be a, from our perspective, chance. We don't think that... Yeah, go ahead.

There's even an outlining instance in the Bible when this one archer was just taking a random shot and happened to take care of God's will at the same time. Right. I mean, you've seen a baseball hit and it flies through the air and hits a bird. Right.

Oh, it's a prophet. Whatever he says is true. The guy that fell out of the seat, he tried to catch a ball and he fell out of the stands and down somebody, I don't know if he hit or not, but it was pretty serious. He just killed him. So I mean you could say, I mean you could go That's right. There are a lot of things going on that we can't put logic to. Am I right? And so we'll recognize that that's the case. But in the context of false prophets, are there this false prophet plan of the demonic realm going? Is that happening? Is it taking place? Okay, it is.

And John says, you need to be careful. He says three verses, and that's all he says, and let's get back to the Bible. Let's get back to the concept of what it means to obey Christ. through a love for him. Okay, so that's where he's going, but two things that we take from the Old Testament, because John didn't explain this stuff, Paul might have, but John just expects you need to know these things. These are the things that are in the background. Two things.

The Old Testament test for a prophet, number one, is that they're words, it's the words that really matter. And number two, fulfilled prophecy does not mean he's a genuine prophet. He's got to have the words of God and 100% of the time fulfill prophecy to be a genuine prophet of God. I'm going to say it one more time. In order, from an Old Testament perspective, for a prophet to be true, he has to first of all have the Word of God and has to line up with everything else that's been said previously. And second of all, he can have zero fail.

So I go into all this because this Jewish background of what John was delivering is what's going on in the mind of these guys. They would have grown up thinking about this stuff. So now we're thinking about it. Now we're aware of what's going on here a little bit better.

Let's go back to what John is trying to accomplish here in these verses 1 through 3. He wants the church-age believer to have a basic handle on how to detect a false prophet. And that's the point of 1 John 4, 2-3. How do we do it today? How do we do it in the church? First I want to talk a little bit about the false prophets in the age of the church age. But let's read 1 John 4, 2 and then we'll roll right into false prophets in the church age.

By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is from God. What's going on here? By this we know the Spirit of God. What is this? We've got knowledge, we've got an acquaintance and an understanding, and of who? Who's the Spirit of God there?

Christ and His Word. Okay. The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit. Spirit of Christ. Okay. By this we know the Spirit of God. Who is the spirit that brings forth an understanding of what God has said? Holy Spirit. And who is the word? Christ. And who is the source? God. So what we've got here is, you guys have got an understanding here that John would have expected you had. See, if you didn't already have that, we would have had to say, okay, let's back up. Paul would have explained.

You know, the Source is God. In fact, there's a lot in this book about the Source, isn't there? In fact, that's one of the huge themes here. Source of the Devil, Source of God. Source of the Devil, Source of God. Children of God, Children of the Devil. Source, Source, Source, Source. Who is the Source? God is the Source. Who is the Word? Where is the message made clear and seen? John says, go read my Gospel, chapter 1. I'll tell you exactly where the Word of God is, who He is, and what He looks like, and how He came. You have a question? Is this implying then that there is no other spirit that would say that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God? That's a great question.

Short answer, I think it's going to be answered a little more clearly. When a spirit confesses what we're about to see, we haven't talked about what the confession is yet, when a spirit confesses that, the source is God. And that's what we can say from 1 John. The source is God when they confess a certain message. And I'm going to bring up the question to you in a little bit that's going to challenge you a little bit more to refine that. But that's a great question as it stands for now. Hopefully the next few minutes will answer a little bit better.

But we have the Spirit of God. By this we know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses, that brings forth a verbal presentation of a certain message, that what specifically? What's the message? What's the confession that the Spirit needs to make here in order to be of God? The Gospel. Specifically, what does the end of verse 2 say? That Jesus came in the flesh and is from God. That Jesus came in the flesh and is from God.

So, there's a lot going on here. And again, John expects that you already understand what's going on. He expects that you've got all this back teaching. And I think Dr. Eccle talks a lot about how you can't just run right into 1 John without having spent some time in the more teaching epistles of Paul about what is this Jesus Christ coming in the flesh concept. There's a whole doctrine. that we build on just that one verse, or that one part of a verse.

The incarnation, Jesus coming in the flesh. Are there those that don't believe that? And that's his point. There is a message that's contrary to the Spirit of God that denied the fact that Jesus came in the flesh. Why is that important? John expects that you know it. He doesn't even explain why it's important. You already know this stuff. You should know this stuff by now. First John is not a milk book, you know, mother's milk book. It is a meat and taters, we say. It's meat and taters, okay? This is stuff, and it's not hard in the sense of what what the truth that he's communicating. It's hard in the sense that there's a lot in the background that you already need to know in order to make sense of it.

It's like if you were in a Bible teaching program, I teach 1 John towards the end. So that you had, when I said, Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, it's from God. You would have all these doctrines, the incarnation and so forth in the back of your mind. So that you said, well of course, and to deny it means to break and tear apart the entire gospel message. Can a person come to know the Lord without believing this?

No. Okay. It's a pretty big deal. So what these guys, these false prophets were doing was denying one point, just one small point. We can say that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh from God. Boom. I'll alter that and what happens to the whole salvation possibility of their message. It's gone. Everything else that you've heard from them can be great, so to speak.

But if they revise this one point, John says, you better beware. That's not from God. The same is true today for us, and I'll explain that a little bit more in a bit. But I want you to notice here that the same thing that we read in Deuteronomy 18 about how to test a false prophet is the same instance of testing here in the book of First John.

Is it what they're doing or is it what they're saying? Test them by their, is it their behavior? I was thinking about if I were to test somebody's message by their behavior, how would that look? I would venture to say that for the most part, a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness's behavior is not that radically different from a believer's. In fact, they would seem to be a little bit more zealous, and committed, and spiritual, and right, and polite, and right. Wouldn't they be? I mean, they're so nice that they might as well be right.

And that's what John says, don't go there. Your testing is based on a comparing of content to what God has already previously revealed. I don't care if they're awesome and they want to take care of your kids every weekend. I mean, your neighbors, and they're just wonderful. The truth is, if they proclaim something different on this point, they're altogether false.

And you know, there's record of John the Apostle not even associating himself, being in the same building as these people. He says he would leave. It just detested him that much. I could see John doing that because he doesn't make a big punch about anything. He's just like, matter of fact, of course I don't spend time with you. This is false prophet. You're teaching something that is leading people right into the gates of the lake of fire. And that's serious to me. And I'm not going to have anything to do with it. Does John feel that way? Yeah, go ahead. He doesn't isolate himself from influencing others for the Lord. That's right. When the pressure becomes great enough where they say, where do you stand? I'm out of here, folks. That's right.

He makes us stand. And what he doesn't do, and what we should not do, is we shouldn't retreat from a false prophet. without making clear the Word of God, but there should be nothing beyond that. Now, this brings up in your mind evangelism and opening the door to opportunities. John says be careful. You do that, you be careful. Because there's a warning, a three-verse warning, that I'm wanting you to be aware of. How are you doing? Good. What about your own witnesses?

Not fully. Not in the fullness of what we're talking... I know as far as... I think they have different explanations of who he was. He's a brother of Satan or whatever. But I thought they do believe that Christ came in the flesh and was resurrected. But it's not that I am... What's that? But he's not the I Am. I mean, he's not God. It's not God. He's another God.

So Christ coming in from flesh for them is not a big deal. This brings up a really good point. Let's take this and just run with it for a minute. Let's not worry about all the reasons that we know why Mormonism is false. Let's just determine, based on this, Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and is from God. Who is John mean by God? Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh.

Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh.

Yah Yeah, to clarify, it's not saying that Jesus is from God, it's saying the message that Jesus came in the flesh is from God. So the message is sourced in God. But beyond that, are there revised forms of Christianity that ultimately end up being false that would claim that Jesus came in the flesh? Yes. Okay, is that one statement sourced in God, then? If a person were to come in here and say, I'm not evangelical Christianity, but I do believe that Jesus came in the flesh. With that information right there, we'd say, well, then that statement in and of itself is sourced in God.

But your very next word is likely not. And what do you have to do? Do we have other information in the New Testament how to continue to test and understand the message? We do. But John's point is specifically the incarnation aspect, which knocks out a ton of false belief. Does it knock out all of it?

No. Question? Yeah. It seems to me that the word Christ is the key word here, because it's a title, it's not a surname. Messiah. And I've talked to people that say, sure, I believe in Jesus, and God sent him, and he was a prophet, and yadda yadda. to pin them down and do they truly believe that he is the one God chose, the anointed person to do what he came to do?

This is very important. This is very important because this will help us sharpen our understanding of the test itself. Jesus Christ, Messiah, anointed one, the promise delivered, the one that came to deliver Israel from, at this point in time, it goes beyond Israel and it goes on to the Gentiles to save the world from the sins. John makes that clear in 3.16 of his Gospel. So it packs a huge punch, one word. Would they have understood Messiah? Christ is the Greek rendering of that. That's a really, really good point. I appreciate you bringing that up. Because that brings the test to a whole other level.

Should I believe that Jesus came in the flesh, and that that message is from God? No. It's Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Promised Deliverer. Go back to Genesis 3, when that One that was promised to come and crush the head of Satan. Is it that same guy, or is this just some really divine being?

So let's move on. I appreciate you saying that. It's not just discerning. But witnesses and Mormons, they would say that he was the anointed one, the Christ. They would say that, right? With Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness, what they say is not the problem, it's what they mean. There's always a different meaning associated with everything that they say.

The word grace means something different and they'll openly proclaim it. They'll openly proclaim the divinity of Christ, but divinity is something totally different. It's not a triune person of the Godhead, it is one of many gods in which they are working up a ladder to accomplish in and of themselves. So what Jesus is doing here is something that is quite possible even for themselves in different ways, as far as achieving divinity. And so, the divinity of Christ is something that is downplayed tremendously in a Mormon understanding.

They use a different dictionary, basically. Yeah, they use the same words, but everything means something different. It's very difficult to talk. It's like trying to nail jello to the wall. It's just tough stuff. Bible. So if you go to Scripture, they don't know much about Scripture. They're always going to different books.

So we have Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and is from God, and this test is based on not what they're doing, not what the false prophets are doing, how wonderful the behavior works, but defining the statement and what it means. And I'll take that additional aspect of what I'm trying to say here. It's not just what they say, but what they're meaning by what they're saying. And that's assumed. John doesn't go into this long test and define it in the way that we are here. Here's what it is. You know, this is what we've believed.

I've spent a whole book talking about the divinity of Christ and who He is, that He came from God in the flesh while remaining fully God. And this is what He did, and this is why He did it. I've already said all that. Now I'm saying if they don't believe that He came in the flesh, don't forget what I've already said in my gospel, then they're not from God. They're not sourced in God. Okay?

So these revisionists are referred to in the next verse as the antichrists, as we're about to see. But what John is having in mind here is this idea of revising a message, and that's what was taking place in this age. There was a revision to this concept.

And these revisionists were very openly stating that Jesus and Christ were two different beings. You have the spiritual being the Christ and the human being the Jesus. And that's taken and been revised a thousand times over to day two. We've got to split them up. It can't be one and the same like the incarnation and the hypostatic union and all the doctrines that we begin to unveil in terms of how Christ is both God and man. It's too difficult. Revise it, separate it, split it up, one's divine, one's human, and we'll just go with that.

And this is some of the things that were going on and were beginning to enter the church even as early as John, as early as this book was written. So if your confession was that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, then it finds its source in where? And remember, that statement packs a punch from all that he's taught prior to this. And that's one of the things, and I think this is really important because we can't separate what John is saying here as this one little principle that exists outside of the rest of Scripture. There's a lot else going on in 1 John.

2 John, 3 John, and then the entire New Testament epistles related to the church. So we can't isolate this one instance and say, this is all that we need to do in order to detect a false spirit. It's just what was specific to this point in time, and it happens to relate quite a lot to today. I'm going to go into one of those in a few minutes if we can. Let's move forward. We've got a few minutes to wrap this one up.

1 John 4.3. Someone read it.

And every spirit that does not confess Jesus 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. So in the prior verse he says, if they do this, then it's from God, but if they don't do that, where is it from? Well, it's not from God. If they don't confess this, What is the confession here? That Jesus Christ came in the flesh. If they don't say that out loud to a point of making it clear that that's where they stand on that matter, then they're not sourced in God. So, let's just isolate 1 John for a second, which is not a good principle, but let's do it just for the sake of clarity.

If we were to go and begin to try to understand a person's view of the scripture, and we ask them this one question, That potentially could save us a ton of time in terms of where they're coming from. I mean, go visit a church. I have one question for you. You have one for me, too. Well, I'm just going to say that I think Gail's point, and that you are building on here, that it has to be clearly Jesus is Christ. That's right. It is so important. Because a lot of people will say, oh yeah, Jesus came from God. But they leave off the important part. that he is the Christ, he is the Messiah, he is the Savior.

Because, like Gail said earlier, he was a prophet, he was a good man, and they just do not believe who he is. I went to a church, yeah really, and I couldn't believe I grew up Episcopalian and it was an Episcopal church and I thought, sure, sure, this will work. I went to a Bible study and we were studying this book and they asked the question, by whom did Mary get pregnant and hide her pregnancy and I'm like, whoa! You know, they actually believed that probably someone got Mary pregnant and Joseph married her.

Okay, so question. I know that's kind of funny, but in this case, let's just take what we just learned. Christ. Okay, you brought up Christ. Can Mary's child, in the instance of that story, be the Christ? No. False doctrine, right? False teaching. Based on the test alone that we have here. He's not from God. If you don't read Luke, you're out of luck.

So we've got this confession that Jesus Christ is coming in the flesh, is not from God, and I don't want to overemphasize, or I do want to overemphasize what was mentioned here, is that all that is associated with the term, or the title, Messiah, is related here.

Which gives us a ton more clarity. So, another question? Yeah, doesn't the word Christ also have in it the thought or truth that God is the one who has designated him to do this. He's the promised deliverer, Genesis 3, verse 15. That's God's decision. It's not random. No, he didn't claim that title on his own.

He was assigned specifically those actions that the Messiah had been told of all throughout the Old Testament from Genesis all the way through to this point in time. Everything that was associated with the teaching of the Messiah was from God and was, I mean, God the Son took that role from the Father and carried it out to its fulfillment. Yeah, and doesn't that, isn't that really the only way we could come back to somebody like a friend of ours who thinks we're very arrogant to tell people they're going to go to hell if they don't believe in Jesus. Isn't that the only thing we can tell people like that is that God is the one who has designated him, not me? Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you don't like the story? At the end of the day, and I don't say this flippantly, it's not my story.

I am an ambassador. Paul tells us that we're to be an ambassador. An ambassador means that the message is not sourced in me. I don't revise it like what's happening here. I don't change it. I carry it through and I tell you what it is. If you don't like it, I'm sorry. You're going to have to take it up with the source. Now, I don't want to say, don't ask me questions.

Just go to God or go to the Bible or go to the church. I mean, we're also told in 1 Peter to be ready to give a defense. So we should be prepared to handle the objections that are faced, us, out there with our friends and family and unbelievers, but at the same time, don't take it personal. If your person is getting in the way, then you're going to have to take a little bit of a step back and say, wait a minute, their problem should not be with me, it should be with the message of the scripture.

It shouldn't be with me. Now, they may not like you, fine. I mean, you can't change that. There are people that didn't like Paul, and John, and Peter, and so forth. People don't like you, fine. But, ultimately, they should not be saying, I don't like the way you say this or that.

Okay, well then, I'll write it down and you can read it, and then you won't hear me say it, and you still have to take issue with the message. You know what I'm saying? The best way to defuse something like that is just say, well, let's look at scripture and see what it says. It's disconnecting it, even though you're not disconnected from scripture, but it's disconnecting that source from your source, what they perceive as your source. Right. Yeah, we have to get away from the idea that I'm sharing my opinion.

I'm sharing something that's been proclaimed, and it's a totality of thought. It's not just this one little thing, and I want you to believe that. It is a totality of understanding that all works together, flies in sync with one another, and you start taking little pieces out, and the whole thing domino effects apart. God's revelation works together. It's a unit.

There are more important aspects in regards to salvation that we need to get to, so we don't go into certain teachings in the Old Testament when we're concerned about someone's salvation. But, are they important? And do they relate to a person's understanding of God and His character, who He is, what He's done? Absolutely. Is it important? Is it a unit of thought? Does it explain God? Yes. And it helps us understand it. Hopefully that kind of deals a little bit with what you're saying there. The way that we do things has to be balanced with walking with the Lord and expressing fruits of the Spirit and so forth, and so that also comes into play.

But to deny or refuse to confess this truth means that this spirit is of the Antichrist. And we didn't get to deal with that, so you get to deal with it next week. I'm just kidding. Let's just really quickly, we've got five minutes, I'm going to try to get this Antichrist concept out.

Now John has already, his audience would have already been aware of the book of 2 Thessalonians. And they would have been able to further refine, in fact he mentions Antichrist previously in this book, but they would have they would have likely been able to understand that the Antichrist himself as a person is coming in the Tribulation period.

To them, they weren't sure when that was. Neither are we. We just know that it wasn't then. Because we have the back view available to us. But again, what this is referring to is the sourced issue. The message of the Antichrist was already in the world at that time. And it contained this one truth. So you want to know what the Antichrist is going to teach? Here's one of the things that they're going to teach. He's going to teach. And those that are sourced out of him will also take this position. Question?

Could you say that the message of the Antichrist really began with the Fall? So it's been in the world since the Fall, because it was, oh, you won't surely die. Well, before the Fall. The message itself has been the same from the beginning. It just takes on a little bit more as time moves on and God has revealed more. But it's ultimately a denial of God himself and a desire to be God. I mean, and that's where Satan began and that's where man began. Surely you'd be like God. And that desire itself leads to the ultimate tribulation event that deals with that whole problem. There's some movements today that are in the same camp as what the revisionists here in the Book of 1 John were dealing with.

And you as a believer, John is telling us today, be careful to understand what the message is, not what they're doing, not how they're behaving, not what their works look like, but what are they saying in regards to this person of Jesus. And so as he takes three verses to warn these guys, I think in the same sense today, we have to start putting our doctrinal glasses on and we have to start bringing what we know of the New Testament and of the Scripture to what people say. Don't let it just run its course and forget to To be careful, as John would say. Watch out for the source of where a person's statements are coming.

Today, contemplative spirituality. This idea that we can become one with God, and Jesus was one of those people, one of those humans that became, ultimately through meditation and so forth, one with God. This finds its source in the spirit of the Antichrist. And it's a Roman Catholic and Buddhist syncretism of mysticism. I just want to say it. It makes me sound smart. Syncretism means mixing. Mysticism is exactly what the Buddhists and the Roman Catholics did to introduce our church, not our specific Church Holly Hills, but the Christian Church, to contemplative spirituality.

And it's taking things by storm. Go type it in to Google. Type in contemplative spirituality Denver. See what happens. Go ahead. Yeah, as far as, we talked about the witnesses in the of Mormons, and it seemed like they'd fail on the point of Christ not Well, I mentioned the Roman Catholics in regards to their syncretism of Buddhism and their introduction of contemplatives. They're moving on too. The Roman Catholics are not staying there. They're moving on into a different sect too.

But they believe the criteria. They meet the criteria. criteria in this verse, right? They meet the criteria of that verse, I would say. Okay. So, if you were to sit in a Roman Catholic Church and they were to say, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, came in the flesh, then that statement and that breath would be sourced in God. But listen for the next one. because it may not be sourced in God. And just because we have this one test that John was dealing with with his audience, doesn't mean that we don't have the rest of New Testament doctrine that we are to sift through people's points. So we have this one test, and it was very important at that particular time, and it's still important today, because it's the one thing that breaks the entire Gospel message down with one word. You know, not flesh, or two, I guess.

And to your point, it eliminates a lot of false features. It does. Yeah, it's almost like the big machete sword. It hacks off 90% of what's going on and then you got this little bitty smaller knife that has to dissect all the false teachings at smaller points or more difficult to discover points.

We still have a new testmate though. would seem, according to this scripture, that they are saved. But this is not the gospel message, though. You're saying this isn't sufficient to be saved? I thought this is exactly what it said. No. What it's saying is the messages of God. Right. This is not the gospel. To believe that Jesus came in the flesh does not lead to salvation.

So what I'm saying Which is a pretty small, well... It's a piece of a larger message, but it's a piece that really cuts to the chase, is what John's saying. So, just to clear my head up... Let's clear it up. Clean access? No, I'm just kidding. What's up? The salvation thing, you're saying you believe, of course, that Jesus is God, and that he died on the cross to save our sins. That's the salvation. Yes. The message of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection.

1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15. And Paul breaks it down. John says you already know it. He doesn't go into it. I spend the gospel of John going into it, is what he would have. Go read my gospel So anyway, thank you guys for letting me kind of work through that. I Don't have I didn't have notes in PowerPoint. Hopefully I'll be able to refine my presentation a little bit as I go on but Thanks Roger for letting me kind of come in and jump midstream into this good questions I feel like I've been sharpened.

So let's just close in a word of prayer and Father, we're just so thankful that you've made yourself clear, that we don't have to sift through mysticism and misunderstanding and lack of clarity. You are clear, and you are intentional, and your Word is made available. And we just thank you for the privilege that we have in this day and age to freely and openly read it. and spend time with those who have spent more time with it so that we can each grow in our understanding and be sharpened. We thank you that your Holy Spirit is working actively to take these truths and to grow us in the application of them. I pray that we would be sensitive to you as you lead us and as you guide us into the time of fellowship here today and as we leave and scatter and begin to Just bring your word and your life to the world that we live in. We thank you for it. It's your name we pray. Amen.