WWUTT 432 Every Spirit that Confesses Christ?

Testing the Spirits by the Word of God

John said not to believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. Now he was talking about testing false teachers, but we also need to be careful of our own spirit when we understand the text.

This is When We Understand the Text, studying God's Word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .wutt .com, as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Reading 1 John 4:1-6 and the Spirit of the Antichrist

Thank you, Becky, and greetings everyone. We continue our study of the book of 1 John once again in chapter 4, and I'll be reading verses 1 -6. The apostle writes, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the Spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world, therefore they speak from the world and the world listens to them.

We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. John is very lovingly warning his readers against false teaching, and we know that this is a loving appeal because of the way that he begins this section, calling them beloved.

Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. In the specific context in which this warning is given, we are talking about false teachers, but I think that one of the spirits that we need to be careful not to listen to is our own, the thoughts that you will have, or the dreams that you will dream.

Do not think that that is a message that has come to you from God. The Bible tells us, Proverbs 28, 26, whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool. And it said to us in Jeremiah 17, 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it? But it's very popular to have some sort of a vision or a thought and think, oh, this came from God. This is God speaking to me. And I'm telling you, that is completely unreliable to believe that that is a message or a voice from God.

Now, I'm not telling you that you cannot rely on your thoughts at all, because how on earth would you ever function? God has given you a conscience. And if you were a Christian, you are indwelt with the Holy Spirit.

What I am saying to you is you cannot think of your thoughts or the dreams that you have as being a message from God or the voice of the Lord. God has spoken to us in the Bible. That is how we hear the voice of God.

And when it comes to making a decision, if you're asking the Lord for guidance in a particular decision, where to move, a job to take, whether or not to get married, you know, some of those kinds of decisions.

You need counselors for that. There is wisdom in many counselors also given to us in the Proverbs. So ask somebody, pray with others, seek guidance and counsel, see what doors open for you and what doors close.

But don't automatically think that a thought that pops into your head or a dream that you dream is the answer that you are looking for. They are your own thoughts and your thoughts betray you all the time.

Let me give you an example of this. A couple of years ago, we had a situation going on in our church involving a couple of young families. And it was a very dramatic kind of a time. I'd say a lot of drama that was going on.

And I was praying to the Lord, asking, very simply, I was asking God to deliver me from this. I don't want to go through this anymore. I'm tired of it. Just make it stop. But not my will, but your will be done.

I was very simply laying in bed one night. I was laying on my back, dark. My wife was already asleep. And I'm just laying there going, God, please take this away. Take this situation away from me. And so I fell asleep and I had a dream.

I had a dream about everything that was going on in the church at that time, all the drama that had just been overwhelming me. And I dreamt that that problem was resolved and it was a happy ending and everything was going to come together wonderfully and perfectly.

And I woke up from that dream still at night, still dark in the room, still laying on my back. And I remember opening my eyes and thinking, well, that would be great if it happened that way. But I did not even presume to think that even though I had just prayed and asked God for deliverance from this situation, I did not even presume to think that my dream was God's answer.

Because I knew better. I had the word of God stored up in my heart and in my mind. I know that in Hebrews chapter one, it says, long ago, in many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.

But in these last days, he's spoken to us by his son. So God communicated to the prophets through dreams and visions and all those kinds of things. But he doesn't communicate that way to us now. The Bible says he does not.

Now that doesn't mean that a thought we have does not come from the Lord or is not guided by the Lord in and his word. But it is not the voice of God. The voice of God has spoken to us through the word, through the scriptures, not in our mind and not in our dreams.

And sometimes I share these stories and somebody will write me and go, well, what happened to the story? You didn't finish the story. Needless to say, none of what I dreamed actually ended up happening.

The worst ended up happening. And it was a horrible experience. And I hate it whenever we go through those things in the church. It's not the first time it's happened and it won't be the last. But people tend to look at these kinds of situations and think, oh, it's just a difference of opinion.

Two people can't just just come to terms with one another. No, this is people turning their back on the church and severing friendships. It hurts. And I hate it. I hate going through those things. So I was really struggling with this and praying for the Lord to take it away from me.

And I had a dream about how that was going to happen. And I knew that dream didn't come from God. It was what I was thinking about as I was falling asleep. So it was it was my own thoughts in my mind that came up with that scenario that I dreamed about.

It was not God showing me here's here's how this is going to to take place or here's how this is going to happen. Now, maybe somebody can counter that with, oh, yeah, well, I had a dream and what I dreamed came true.

Fine. OK, if that causes you to give more glory to God and praise him. Amen. All right. But you have no way of showing that a dream that you dreamed actually came from God. And so, therefore, somebody needs to listen to your vision or dream that you have.

There's no way of proving that, that it came from God. And the scriptures say that those things are unreliable. We cannot depend upon those visions or those dreams. We need to follow what is given to us in the word of God.

So your own spirit is one of those spirits that you must be careful of. You must test according to the word of God. For there are many false prophets that have gone out into the world. There are demonic spirits out there that are going to attempt to sway or woo your thoughts.

You have your own sinful nature that is still within you. Now, it's it's been suppressed by the Holy Spirit that dwells in you. But that sinful nature is still there trying to get out. So that very nature is going to try to lead you astray with some of the thoughts that you might have or the dreams that you will dream.

Test the spirits. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. So then we come into verse two. By this you know the spirit of God. So now John gives us a test. How can we know among all these false prophets that are out there?

How can we know which one is actually telling the truth and which one is giving us a lie? Well, he says, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

It's the spirit of the Antichrist, those who will deny that Jesus came in the flesh. Now, John was not specifically addressing Gnosticism when he wrote this letter. And that's a common explanation for the book of First John.

We talked about this when we did our introduction to First John a couple of months ago, however long ago that was, that it's very common to say that the book of First John was written as a response to Gnosticism.

Well, probably not. I mean, John's objective very clearly is that he just wanted to rejoice in God. And he wanted to encourage the believers in understanding how they can know that they are saved. God wants us to know that we are in his love and we are secure for all eternity, sealed by the Holy Spirit.

And so through his apostle, John, writing to the churches to affirm for them how they can know that they are truly saved. And also how they can test the spirits to be sure that these people are not from God.

They are from the Antichrist. And so here's one of those tests that he provides. So there was not a Gnosticism that John was responding to. Gnosticism was not a prevalent belief or teaching at that particular time.

It would come about several decades later, kind of reached a more popular following in the second century, which would have been after John had died. So there were probably glimpses of Gnostic beliefs during this particular time, but Gnosticism as a whole, as like a belief system or a group of followers, did not have the organization in John's day that it would have a century later.

So he's probably responding to something that would eventually become kind of an aspect of Gnosticism, but at this particular time had not become like an organized teaching. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

So so a Gnostic teaching would have been that Jesus didn't actually come in the flesh. God did not come in the flesh. He merely appeared as a man, but he himself was not born into the flesh. OK, that would be an example of such a this kind of Gnostic teaching, this kind of esoteric knowledge that has been revealed to us.

Oh, God didn't really come in the flesh. He just appeared as a man. So therefore, when he died on the cross, he did not actually suffer as a man. He just appeared to suffer. John is saying that's heresy.

If a person is teaching that, then they are of the Antichrist. Can you think of any groups today that might be teaching something similar? The Jehovah's Witnesses who teach that Jesus was a perfect, sinless man, but he was only a man and he became the Christ after he was baptized.

God poured his spirit into him. So this wasn't God come in the flesh. It was Jesus as a man who then gets referred to as the son of God after he was baptized. So then Jesus was crucified. Well, the Jehovah's Witnesses don't teach that he was crucified.

They teach that he was nailed to a stake. So the cross is a pagan symbol that was became talked about in Christendom after Christianity became apostate, basically. So Jesus wasn't crucified, according to the Jehovah's Witnesses.

He was hung on a stake. Then he was buried in a tomb and God disintegrated his body and it just poof, just disappeared. So then God recreated Jesus. So he didn't rise from the grave and come out of the tomb.

He was just reformed outside the tomb. So this would, again, go along with that heresy because Jesus is no longer a risen human being. He is he's just reformed into something else. Oh, and according to the Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus is the archangel Michael.

So anyway, but Jesus was truly man and truly God. He was God come in the flesh. He died in the flesh. He rose again in the flesh. He is still truly God and truly man. When Paul in first Timothy chapter two says there is one mediator between God and man, and that is the man, Christ Jesus.

So as he is interceding for us in heaven, he's still truly God and truly man. And anybody who says otherwise has the spirit of the antichrist. So this is the test that John is giving to his readers. By this you know the spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

Testing the Confession of Christ and the True Jesus of the Bible

Now this is not a test that exists in a vacuum. So it's like, hey, if you want to find out if a person is a false teacher or a true teacher, all you have to do is test them according to this. Do they believe that Jesus is God who came in the flesh?

Do they believe that? Okay, they do. Then they're not a false teacher. That's not how this test works. And I've had people use it this way. As a matter of fact, there was a man who, from what I could tell, was a Christian.

And he approached me when I was warning about Mormon beliefs and Mormon teachings that they do not follow the true Christ of the Bible. And he overheard me talking about this and he approached me and he said, do you believe that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh?

And I said, yes, of course I do. And so he says to the Mormons that I was speaking with, do you believe that Jesus has come in the flesh? And they say, yes, of course we do. And then he says, well, then according to what is said here in first John chapter four, we are brothers and there's no reason for us to cause this division or say you're a Christian and you're not.

So then my attention had to turn from the Mormons that I was witnessing to, to this man and say, no, you're, you're taking this passage out of context and that particular test does not exist in a vacuum.

And I said to him earlier in first John chapter two, verse 22, it says, who is the liar? But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ, this is the antichrist. He who denies the father and the son. So a person who denies the Trinity of God, that God is father, son, and Holy Spirit, three persons, one God, the Bible says would be an antichrist.

So there's another test that John gives there. So this one test does not exist in a vacuum and as long as they're able to confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, then therefore he, he must be a Christian for verse three says every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

So I had to say to this man, which Jesus do they believe? Would you, would you agree with me that not everybody who confesses Christ is actually confessing the right Christ? I mean, they could, they could apply that name to anything or any sort of vision or concept of God.

And he said, well, yeah. I said, you know, if I made up my own version of Christ, as long as I said that version came in the flesh, would I be worshiping the right God? And he said, well, no, I guess not.

And I said, well, see, that's the problem with Mormonism and the Jehovah's witnesses. They've made up their own Jesus and ascribe that name to him, but it is not the Jesus Christ of the Bible. So once again, that, that test doesn't exist in a vacuum when it comes to whoever does not confess Jesus is not from God.

We're talking specifically about the Jesus of the Bible, not just some spirit that somebody came up with and slap the name Jesus on him. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

The Meaning of Antichrist and the Need to Test Everything

Now, John is the only one who uses the word antichrist and he only uses it in his letters. It's not in the book of Revelation. So this is the only place that we'll, we'll find the word antichrist used.

And then when Paul talks about the man of lawlessness or, you know, Jesus talks about the abomination that causes desolation in Matthew chapter 24, those references, we will ascribe antichrist too. And I don't think that's incorrect, but when it comes to that particular term, it's John who uses the word and it's, it's in his letters is where he uses it.

And we will ascribe that to the antichrist. And that's where our obsession will be. And so when something false comes along, we'll be going, well, that can't possibly be antichrist because the antichrist hasn't come yet.

We're not seeing the mark of the beast thrown around and all this kind of stuff. And if that's our focus, then we've missed the point. We've missed the warning that John has given many anti-Christ, many anti-Christ have gone out into the world, many false prophets.

And so we must test every spirit. Not everybody who claims to be from God is from God. And there's this false understanding that the devil is not capable of uttering the name Jesus Christ. It's like the curse on a demon somehow that he can't say that name.

And so if it comes from somebody that they are confessing in the name of the Lord Christ, well, that can't possibly be the, the devil or a demon that that person must really be from God because a demon would never even be able to utter the power of the name of Christ.

No, Paul says in second Corinthians chapter 12, that even the devil himself disguises himself as an angel of light. And so of course he's going to use the name of God. He will use it blasphemously, not praising or worshiping the true God, but using it to mislead people to lie, to misguide.

This is why we need the truth of God's word. And to use this against everything that would try to present itself as truth. We tested according to the word of God. We're being good Bereans. We're being even better Bereans than the Bereans were.

In Acts chapter 17, when Paul was preaching in Berea, it says the Bereans went to the scriptures to test the words that the apostle Paul spoke to them to see whether or not they were truly from the Lord.

That means they were going to the old Testament scriptures to see if this Christ that Paul was talking about was truly the Christ that was prophesied about in the Bible. And the Bereans are praised for their testing the words, even of the apostle Paul.

And we need to do the same. There is not anything in this world that is beyond being tested. For even Paul said to the Thessalonians, test everything, hold fast to what is good, abhor what is evil. So let us heed that instruction and follow it according to the word of God, which is the truth that has been given to us to show us God through his son, Jesus Christ.

Let us pray. Our wonderful God and Savior, I pray that you would deliver us from the schemes of wicked and evil men. Those who try to present themselves as heralds or messengers from the Lord, the Joel Osteen's and the Benny Hinn's and the Paula White's and Joyce Meyer's of the world that claim to be from God, but they are in the spirit of the Antichrist.

Protect us from false teaching by showing us your word, leading us in this truth, storing it up in our hearts and our minds so we will know how to test everything and hold fast to what is good, abhorring what is evil.

Thank you for showing us the truth, the way in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, who rescued us from sin and death and delivered us into his righteousness and help us to be all the more diligent and steadfast according to his word.

In the name of Jesus we pray, amen.

Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .utt .com.