WWUTT 433 The Spirit of the Antichrist?

The apostles warn us to watch out for false teachers, but the good news is you have nothing to fear of false teachers, because greater is

He who is in you than he who is in the world when we understand the text. This is

When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We continue our study of the book of 1 John. This week we've been looking at chapter 4, verses 1 through 6.

The apostle writes to the churches, 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. It's only four times in the

Bible that the word Antichrist comes up, and all four of those occasions are in John's epistles.

We have three of them in the book of 1 John, and we've just come across the third appearance of that word, and then the next time

John uses it will be in 2 John 1, 7. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.

Such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist. So he says there in his second letter, same thing that he is saying here.

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, but is rather in the spirit of the Antichrist. When you think about it, it's a very harsh word to call someone

Antichrist or to refer to a teaching as being from the Antichrist. It's anti -Christ.

It is everything the opposite of what Christ teaches, of what we are to know about Christ according to what has been proclaimed to us through the gospel of the gospel of Christ.

And this is what John was presenting at the very beginning of his letter. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was made manifest to us.

That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us.

And indeed, our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ.

That's all one sentence right there. The way that John started his letter and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

So as Peter put it, we're not following cleverly invented stories, but we are listening to those who were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

And it was so important for the apostles that what they preached was the truth.

As Peter said in second Peter chapter three, verse 16, those who are ignorant and unstable will twist the scriptures to their own destruction.

So it's pretty important that we get it right. It was quite a point of emphasis among the apostles that what we hear and what we follow is the truth.

Jesus made this proclamation about himself. In John 14, six, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one gets to the father, but by me. In John chapter four, when he was talking with a Samaritan woman at the well, he said that the kind of worshipers that God was seeking will worship him in spirit and in truth.

It is not possible to worship God apart from the truth.

You can't just make up in your mind who you think God is and worship that.

You're worshiping an idol. You're worshiping a God of your own making if you're not worshiping the

God of the Bible. So it's not enough for a person to just attend church and worship someone that they call

Jesus. They have to know the Christ of the Bible. We talked a little bit about that yesterday.

You are not allowed to pick and choose the parts of God that you like or even decide, you know,

I don't really need the Bible that much. I kind of get the gist of it, so I don't think I really need to read it.

Not allowed to do that. You are commanded to know God and that your knowing

God is what authenticates your worship. Your worship is real. The more you know

God, the better a worshiper that you become because we are to worship God in spirit and in truth. And the only way you know

God is according to his word, the Bible. It's what we have written down in the scriptures, the very word of God.

If you want to know the mind of God, read the Bible. And so this is how we offer up authentic worship when we worship the way that God has told us to worship him.

And so John is presenting that here to his readers as well. Those who confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God because they're confessing something that is actually true to the ministry of Christ.

You're not allowed to make up what you want to make up about Christ. If it is against the gospel message of Christ, it's anti Christ.

It is heresy. It leads a person to hell rather than leading them to the saving grace of Christ.

Jesus came in the flesh. It's an important doctrine for us to understand that Jesus is

God who left his throne in heaven and took on the form of a man.

And in that likeness became a servant. He emptied himself and took on the form of a servant and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God is highly exalted him, raised him up from the grave, seated him at his right hand and has given him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father that in a in a nutshell.

Actually, I expounded on that a little bit is Philippians chapter two, verses five through eleven.

And so the the Christ of the Bible is the Christ we are to worship. And we are to understand every aspect about him as presented by the apostles who were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

Not the Gnostics who believed that the that God was kind of revealing this new esoteric knowledge that we could just kind of grab from the air, so to speak.

Or if we imagine it, then it must have come from God. So we don't need the word. We don't need the prophets and the apostles.

God is still revealing new things to us. No, no, because the worshippers God is seeking must worship him in spirit and in truth.

The two things are not separate from one another. You can't just have the spiritual stuff.

It has to be grounded in the truth. And God has chosen to reveal his truth through his prophets and his apostles who have given us the

Bible. The prophets wrote the Old Testament. Apostles wrote the New Testament. And so what we know about God has been revealed to them and has been given to us through these words that we read.

It is important for us to understand Christ as the apostles said that he was not who we want him to be, not who we think, oh, the spirit is saying something in my mind.

This must be who God is. But according to the scriptures. Every spirit that does not confess

Jesus is not from God at at the church that I pastor for Southern Baptist Church in Junction City.

Every Tuesday, we welcome the high school students over and feed them lunch and give them the word of God.

There's two lunch periods. So we serve food to lunch periods on Tuesday. And yesterday was the last lunch period for this school year for the 2016 -17 school year.

And so I presented them with John 3. I said, you know, if you've attended church in any kind of capacity, surely you've heard a preacher or a youth leader preach from John chapter three, where Jesus said, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son and whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he is not believed in the name of the only son of God.

One of the things that I warn these high schoolers about on this last presentation of the gospel that I was able to give to them before they headed out to whatever it is that they're going to do for the summer.

One of the things that I warn them about is that it's very common in the church today to teach something that is called inclusivism.

Now, they're not going to call it that. You're not going to hear a preacher say, I'm going to teach you about inclusivism unless he's warning you about it.

But inclusivism is basically that you can be saved as long as you believe in something. It doesn't matter what you believe in, just as long as you have faith, just as long as you believe.

But that's not what the Bible says. Very specifically here, it's saying that in order to be saved, in order to be rescued from hell and delivered into the eternal kingdom of God, you must know

Jesus Christ, the son of God, believe on his name and do the things that Jesus did.

John 3, 36, he who has the son has life. He who does not obey the son shall not see life.

But the wrath of God remains on him. We obey God because we've been transformed by the spirit of God.

We show that we are in his righteousness when we practice the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

And how is it that we know what it is that Christ has commanded us to do by reading his word? It all comes back to the

Bible and our faith is grounded upon this, upon the truth, objective truth, absolute truth, which are redundant terms because all truth is objective.

It is fixed outside of you and nothing that you feel about it or your opinions do not change or affect the truth.

So everything that is true is true for everybody and your opinions don't change it.

It's also absolute. It is always going to be. It has been true before you were born.

It will be true after you die. The truth is the truth and it is

God who is truth. Jesus said, John 17, 17, sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth. We grow in holiness by the word of God. I've heard

John MacArthur say that your maturity as a Christian is not dependent upon how long you've been a

Christian. It's not about how many years you've been a Christian. It's about how much truth you've been exposed to.

And then I would add to that how much of that truth you've actually stored up in your heart and are living according to that is the mark of maturity in the life of a

Christian, not how long you've been a Christian, but the truth that you know and have applied and are living.

That's the maturity in a Christian. So you could have a person who's been a Christian 20 or 30 years, but they still sound like a baby

Christian whenever you talk theology with them. Whereas you got another person who just became on fire the moment that they got saved and anywhere from three to five years after they became a

Christian, they're ready to stand before a congregation and be a preacher. So and that's maturity right there.

We mature according to the word of truth. Paul talks about this also in Ephesians chapter four, verses 11 through 16.

God gave the apostles and prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ from whom the whole body join and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Memorize that a long time ago because it's like a theme passage for us as as the church as my church,

First Southern Baptist Church. It's the second passage that's mentioned in our constitution.

The first is the Great Commission, Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20. And then next is

Ephesians chapter four, verses 11 through 16. It's a theme for us as a church that we would grow in maturity and we grow in maturity according to the teaching of the word of God.

So anything that is in line with God's word is of Christ and everything that is contrary to that word is of the

Antichrist. Everything that would lead a person to Christ is of God and everything that drives a person away from the truth of Christ and his ministry is of the

Antichrist. Even a doctrine of believing that Jesus is

God in the flesh, truly God and truly man, even that doctrine is essential to say that Jesus was anything other than that, that he was a spirit that looked like a man or that he was a figment of the disciples imagination.

And it's just as long as we have this concept of a guy who taught some good moral lessons and we abide by those things, that's enough.

OK, no, that's Antichrist. Anything that is contrary to the truth of Jesus Christ, who is

God in the flesh, who became, he became the son of man.

He is the son of God and the son of man, meaning that he is the perfect man and he is verily

God and only the son of man and son of God can be the mediator that bridges the gap between man and God that had been separated by our sin.

Only Christ bridges that gap because he is God in the flesh.

He became the perfect sacrifice and shed his perfect blood. Ours was tainted by our sin.

Only he could do it. And only he has provided that atonement and made us right with God.

So you cannot make Jesus into your own thing. It would be a different Jesus. And then the blood that he shed would be a different atonement.

And then we would be dead in our sins and we would not have been reconciled to God. It must be the

Christ of the Bible. And when we speak about that Christ, we show with our words that what we believe is from God and not from ourselves.

So all our faith must be grounded in the word. The Antichrist has come.

And so many Antichrists have gone out into the world and is in the world already.

John says, little children, verse four, you are from God and have overcome them.

OK, this this is once again a very endearing address, just as he started this section by calling the

Christians beloved. So calling them again, little children in verse four is another one of those reminders that they are from God.

You have been adopted into the family of God. You're from God. You have nothing to fear of the Antichrist.

You have nothing to fear of false teaching your safety and your security is in the word of God.

It's in the testimony of those men who were with Jesus, saw the miracles, heard the things that he proclaimed and have since proclaimed it to us.

Little children, you're from God. You've overcome them. You have nothing to fear of anyone worldly or anyone speaking the false doctrine of Satan, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

That, of course, would be the devil. He who is in you is the spirit of God, God himself dwelling within you.

He who is in the world is the devil. And one of the other subtext of that statement is he's going to be destroyed with the world.

This world is transient. It is here for a moment and then it's gone and the devil is going to be vanquished with it.

But we who are indwelt with the eternal God will live forever with him.

That's the beautiful contrast that is being given there in verse four. He who is in you is eternal.

So you likewise will live forever. The person who is in the world is temporary and they are going to be wiped out with the world and with the devil and his angels.

Verse five, they are from the world. Therefore, they speak from the world and the world listens to them.

Why is it that the worldly preachers like Joel Osteen, who promises health and wealth,

Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, even Rick Warren to a certain degree?

Why is it that these preachers are the ones that the world is listening to?

Why is it that they have the throngs and the masses of people following after them? Because they're of the world.

They say the things that people in the world like to hear. Rick Warren is not telling you to turn from your sin and he's not articulating what those sins are and follow

Jesus Christ and be saved. He's taking stories from the book of Daniel and turning it into a diet plan.

Everybody wants to be healthy, right? Joel Osteen is not sharing the gospel. He's telling you to be the best person that you know to be that God created you to be.

And Benny Hinn is also not sharing the gospel. He's promising you a miraculous healing that he can't actually deliver.

And people love this stuff because these teachers are satisfying their itching ears.

It's what they want to hear. And so they follow after those false teachers.

They are of the Antichrist. They are not from God because what they proclaim is not from the truth of God.

They might hit the right notes every once in a while. But when you break down the message that it is that they're actually sharing, there's so much that they deny that is fundamental to the true worship of God through his son,

Jesus Christ. They're from the world. Therefore, they speak from the world and the world listens to them.

Verse six. 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. I had a man come to my home recently and stood in my driveway and was talking to me about why he and his wife weren't going to attend our church anymore.

And one of the things that he said to me was that he thought I was one of the best preachers of doctrine and truth that he has ever heard.

And I said, but, and he goes, no, no, no, there's no, but I'm saying that.

And I said, no, there is a but because you're not coming back. If you truly believe that what

I am telling you is the truth, you will stay. But because you don't think that you actually need that, you're going to leave and you're going to go somewhere else.

And I've not pastored for terribly long. I was ordained in 2010 and I've only been a senior pastor for less than five years, but I've still been a preacher for long enough that I've learned that when it comes time that I encounter these individuals who are turning their back on the church and walking away,

I don't take it personally because it's not me. It doesn't have to do with me.

I don't have any guilt of conscience of having done anything wrong because I have preached the full counsel of God.

There's nothing that I hold back. And so when a person is turning around and walking away, what they're turning their back on is the word of God.

And that's what grieves me. Not that they've not, not that they've slapped me in the face in any way, big deal, but that they're turning their back on the word of God.

That's what really rips my heart out. Doesn't get any easier. I know that there's still going to be occasions of this.

As long as I'm standing in the pulpit and preaching the word of God, there's going to be people that will not want to hear it because they're of the world instead of, of God.

Those who are of the children of God, whose hearts have been transformed by the Holy Spirit of God will hear the voice of the good shepherd and they will follow it.

And so I encourage you, listener, turn from sin and follow in the truth of Jesus Christ.

Lord, we thank you for this lesson, however hard it is for us to hear it. It penetrates through bone and marrow, this double edged sword of the word of God cutting to the heart.

And God, I pray that it cuts us to the heart so that we, we see our sin in light of the holiness of God and realize that we need, we need forgiveness.

And it is offered through Jesus Christ, his sacrifice on the cross and his resurrection from the grave.

I pray that what we invest our hearts and our minds in is the truth, not what we want it to be, but what you have said it is.

Keep us faithful to the word of God and help us not to be swayed by any of these false teachers, but to lovingly call others away from the false teaching of this world and into the truth of Jesus Christ.

I pray that we would be able to do this with, with patience and with endurance, with the same patience that you displayed to us.

Though we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Thank you in the name of Jesus.

Amen. Tomorrow we'll pick up on an