Test the Spirits (1 John 4:1-6)

Prayer and Introduction to 1 John 4

All right. We're going to be in the book of 1 John. We're starting chapter 4 today. So before we get started, let's just go to the Lord with a word of prayer. Father, we just thank you so much that we live in such a beautiful part of the country, that we can just look around and see your beauty and all of creation.

Just the way you've crafted everything together just speaks to your magnificence and glory. Thank you that we can come into a place today in the church to be able to open up your word and to fellowship with the saints and just to be about your business and learning the things that we can about you and helping us to live our lives in a more glorifying way each and every day.

Just pray that you'll give me wisdom, that you'll open the hearts of the saints that are listening, that we would be able to take your word and apply it into our own lives and to take it out into the world which is filled with darkness and to be the lights that they need to see and that we would be able to share the gospel with them and be able to see people saved.

We just commit it to you now in Jesus' name. Amen. We're going to be looking at chapter 4 verses 1 through 6 today. So that's going to be our text. And if you're there, we'll just go ahead and read it right now.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because 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, of which you have heard that it is coming and now is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.

They are from the world, therefore they speak as from the world, and the world hears them. We are from God. The one who knows God hears us. The one who is not from God does not hear us. For this we know, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

The Church as the Defender of Truth

That's our text for the day. We're going to be working our way, and you've seen we've been working our way through 1 John, and I don't know if you've gotten the idea like I have, that there's a threat that's going on to the churches in Asia Minor.

We've been talking about that. We've been talking about the Gnostic false teaching that has been entering into the church, and these false believers have been doing their level best to draw away true believers from the church, and that the truth is under attack.

We've seen that. John is placing a great emphasis on knowing truth from error in this book. It's been comforting to kind of go through it to see as a believer, here's what one truly looks like, and here's one that is a false convert.

It's good to see that. That's the question we're going to be answering today, though, is this one question. What is the truth? Knowing truth from error. How do we know that? That's what we're going to be talking about.

To understand the apostates, one needs to know the real Jesus. They must have the Spirit living inside of them. Not the Spirit of Antichrist, but the Holy Spirit. That's how we know. Paul told the Corinthian church that he didn't come to them with superiority of word or of wisdom, but the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

That's a good verse. Came with the Spirit in power. And there are two kinds of spirits in the world. You see it. You see the Spirit of God, and you see the Spirit of the devil. Those are the two spirits.

Spirit of Antichrist and the Holy Spirit. We see that in the world today. There just isn't any other options. No other spirits. Spirit of Antichrist is at war with the Holy Spirit. If you haven't realized that by now, that we're in a spiritual war, then you probably haven't been paying attention.

Because we are definitely in a battle. You may not feel that as much here in this church, because I think we are very blessed to have a strong doctrinal church, that we have a place that we can come and be safe, and be hearing the Word of God at all times.

It's very comforting. But if you step out the walls of this church, and you go out into the real world out there, it's very difficult to find good churches. People are looking constantly. They're always asking, Hey, where can I go to find a good church in my area?

And it's very difficult to do that. And when you think of the church, I think of this in 1 Timothy. Paul said this, that the church is the pillar and support of the truth. It's the pillar and support of the truth.

A pillar holds things up. It supports a building, is what it does. And the church is what supports the truth. And since the church is made up of individual believers, it is you and I coming into a building that upholds the truth in the church.

That's what we do. The church guards and defends the truth against any and every attack. That's what we do. But that's not what we're seeing across the world today. That's for sure. We're seeing a watered down version of churches all over the place.

It's almost like they have failed to realize that we're up against a very formidable enemy that we can't take for granted. The enemy is the devil. And I'm not sure if the church gives him full credit for how very creative and cunning our enemy really is.

He's very cunning and he's very shrewd at undermining the truth of the gospel. In many ways, I think the church at large has let the proverbial camel of false teaching, the nose into the tent. And it's just disrupted everything.

And I think we have to know our enemy. And we have to know truth. But how do we know truth? How do we know if something is from God or not? That's the question we're going to be answering today. We're in a spiritual war and war dictates that we need to know our enemy.

I quote J .C. Ryle on this.

Quote,.

It was the devil who brought sin into the world at the beginning. This is he who vexed Job, deceived David and gave Peter a heavy fall. This is he whom the Bible calls a murderer, a liar and a roaring lion.

This is he whose enmity to our souls never slumbers and never sleeps. This is he who for nearly 6 ,000 years has been working at one work to ruin men and women and draw them to hell. This is he whose cunning and subtlety passed man's understanding and who often appears an angel of light.

Unquote. Think about that for a minute. Satan went after the son of man, tempting him three times. If you are the son of God, command these stones become bread. If you are the son of God, throw yourself down.

All these things I will give you if you fall down and worship me. This is the pride of Satan. That if he's willing to confront the son of man, how much more willing and able is he going to come after the church and he's going to come after the saints in the church.

If he goes after the son of man, he's coming for us as well. We can never lose sight of this truth. He can never be underestimated because he's very shrewd. He always comes in an angel of light. It's very appealing on the outside.

You see, sin is always attractive from the outside. But once you get inside, that's the trouble. Then you find out the truth of it all and you realize that it leads to destruction. So the purpose of today's lessons, I want to talk to you about testing the spirits.

Testing the spirits. How do you know if what you hear and read are really from God? How do you know what to look for? It's very important. In verse one, the first thing we do is we proceed with caution.

Look at it. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world. John is speaking in his pastoral tone here.

Beloved, beloved.

I think it's because pastors like John truly do care about their flock. He looks at them as children and people that he's going to take care of. And I think that's the sign of a good pastor is that they're always looking to protect the flock because it's necessary.

We know how important it is to warn the sheep of coming danger. And that's what I feel like John's doing here. And it's a reminder in this book, as I've been going through it, that we need to examine all things.

As 1 Thessalonians tells us, we are to examine all things, hold fast to that which is good. We're supposed to really look into it to make sure what is being said is true or not. Examine all things is the mandate and hold fast to that which is good.

To examine the teaching of those coming in the name of Jesus to determine if they are truly from God. That's what the idea is, is to examine it. We're told do not believe every spirit. The Greek construct here on do not believe is literally stop believing every spirit.

Stop believing every spirit, which means some had fallen into the false teaching of the Gnostics. That's why you can understand why John is urging them to don't believe every spirit, to test them. Because some were actually being led astray already.

You've heard the saying, don't believe everything you hear. This is especially true when it comes to biblical truth. We can't believe everything that we hear, everything that we read. We have to examine it.

We have to look at it to make sure it is of the truth. And it says, don't believe every spirit. How do you believe a spirit? How do you believe a spirit? I mean, can't see one. What is a spirit? The Greek word translated spirit is pneuma from the Greek verb, and it's to breathe or to blow.

The basic meaning is, which is a wind, the movement of air. The idea is don't be blown away by every wind of doctrine. Now that wind in that verse is the different meaning, but you get the idea. Don't be blown away by every wind of doctrine.

So it's that breath that coming out of a person. So the breath comes out of a person. It is what they are saying. It's what they're saying. To believe a spirit is equal to believing their teaching. That's what it is.

You look at me, you don't see my spirit, but you see the spirit from which I'm teaching from. This is what the idea is. We're not talking about a demon or some other spirit being here. That's not the idea.

We're talking about every person that is speaking has a spirit behind them. They either have the spirit of the Antichrist or they have the spirit of God speaking through them. That's how we can look at that.

I read a book one time called Amusing Ourselves to Death, and it was about how you could know the worldview of the producers of movies.

Right?

You could know by just watching the movie, you could see and understand the worldview of the producer. And that's the idea here. You could watch the movie. You can understand the spirit of the producer that is producing that movie behind those images.

These Gnostics are blowing winds of false doctrine into the church. That's what's happening. And we're not supposed to believe them. We're supposed to examine and understand. And in fact, he says in the second half of that verse, we're supposed to test the spirits.

We're supposed to test them. You test because you want to prove something. You ever take a test out there? I mean, I have. I took a test one time from the Border Patrol. I was going to be a Border Patrol.

Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking. But anyway, it was the hardest test I ever took. But what you do in a test is you are proving your knowledge. You're proving whether what you know is accurate compared to the standard.

And you want to make sure it's genuine when you test something out. This term testing was often used in the metallurgy to test the purity of metals, to test and see if they were pure or not. Impurities cause problems for them when you bend them and craft them together.

You're not to believe every spirit. So there are more than one out there. It says don't believe every spirit. It means there's more than one. You look across the land and you can probably sit there and go, yep, yep, yep.

There's many of them out there. And we're not to believe every so-called pastor or teacher who claims to be a messenger of God. We're supposed to test because it says what? Many false prophets have gone out into the world.

That's what it says. Many false prophets have gone out into the world. So where are they? They're in many of the churches across this land. You can go through and look and look at websites. You can listen to podcasts.

You can hear all these things, but they're definitely in the churches. Before I worked here, I worked in the payment processing world and used to go to conferences all the time for churches and ministries.

Well, you want to know where many of the false prophets are? Yeah, they're in these conferences. They're speakers. You can tell what spirit they have because the whole conference is dedicated to this.

So it's kind of sad to see. They're everywhere on social media. You can see that all over, posting everything. Everybody's free now to express everything. See that? They're on TV. They're on radio. You ever listen to Christian radio nowadays?

I do just to keep track of the false teaching, but it's all over the place. Sadly, they're in our colleges and seminaries all over the place. Unfortunately, through a lot of the false teaching of the emergent church, spiritual formation, all these kinds of walking labyrinths and these kinds of things.

They're in our books for sure. They're in our music, Christian music, Christian artists. You can see it everywhere. And speaking of books, I think of a few things that have come across these days that we need to be able to test.

This is just an example. Remember when the purpose-driven life came out? It took the church by storm, didn't it? It's one area where you kind of go, hmm, maybe we should test that against the Scriptures and see what's happening because when it came out in 2002, through the years after that, it's been translated into 137 languages and sold more than 50 million copies in all kinds of different formats.

They are definitely in our books, and it's something we have to test and know. They're in complete church movements, denominations, charismatic movement. We know about that, right, from Justin. I mean, you think Kenneth Copeland, Furtick, Robert Morris, Benny Hinn, all of these Word of Faith charismatics.

There's supposedly 644 million of them worldwide. There's a need for us to know how to look at what the truth is so we can see whether they are teaching from God or from the Antichrist spirit. And one of the things that came up in February was the Asbury Revival.

Did you ever hear anything about that? It was through, in February, it was through Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. And, you know, it was attended by, they said, some 15 ,000 people, but overall impact, it brought in 50 ,000 to 70 ,000 visitors, representing over 200 academic institutions through multiple countries.

It was like this supposed phenomenon of God that was working in this church, or in this university, I should say. And, you know, some of the headlines of that said this, from an Asbury professor, we're witnessing a surprising work of God.

Well, that's the question. Is it really a work of God or not? And how can we look at this? An article from Patheo said, sensing the presence of God, sensing the presence of God, that's what we're doing.

Baptist News writes, something wonderful and of God is happening at Asbury. Asbury, church historian believes. TikTok, my favorite. Just kidding, just kidding. TikTok, God is moving. He is working. Okay.

These are some of the comments that you see out there is about these revivals. And you could probably go back to all the revivals and look and see, are they really from God or not? And so all of these examples at face value seem like they're saying that God is at work.

I mean, how could a book with so much reach be wrong? How could a charismatic movement with so many people be wrong? How could a revival that just shows so many good things be wrong? That's the things that we got to investigate.

And part of the reason why is because you know that these things are going to happen in the future. There's going to be the next revival. There's going to be the next great book that takes us by storm.

And we have to follow all these things. And, you know, but how do we test the spirit? It is in the present tense in this verse that we're to be always testing the spirits. Always testing the spirits. Every moment of every day, we're to be testing the spirits.

How do we do that? That's the question. First test, is Christ magnified? First test, is Christ magnified? Look at verse 2 and 3. 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 of which you have heard that it is coming. And now it is already in the world. You test the spirit by looking at what they say about Jesus.

That's how you test. The acid test here, and I believe this is addressing like head-on the Gnostic false teaching that was coming into the church, is did Jesus come in the flesh? Believers should not struggle with this test.

But the false teachers sure do. Because at every turn, they don't want to listen to Christ. And they don't want to really acknowledge that he came in the flesh. And I want to draw your attention to something here.

Just in this verse, right? Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Confess that Jesus has come in the flesh. It's that simple. You have to believe that what John wrote in his gospel is absolute truth.

In the gospel, remember that? Verse 1, in the beginning was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God. And then you track down to verse 14. And what does it say? And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

There's no mistake about that. He's not just a man like the world wants to say he is. He is the radiance of God's glory. He is the exact representation of his being. That's amazing to me. To believe anything less means you have the spirit of Antichrist working in you.

That's what we see with the Gnostic teachers. And many throughout the world today. Is that they don't want to acknowledge that Christ came in the flesh. And I think that this verse, it hits at the very heart of why John opened his letter the way that he did.

In this particular book, those first few verses of chapter 1 says what? What we beheld and touched with our hands actually physically touched him. John leaned his head on the breast of Christ. He was real.

The life of Christ was manifested in the flesh. That's amazing. And the word there, it says confesses that Jesus Christ in verse 2 and verse 3. Confession. It means to say the same thing. That's what that word means.

Confession. If you confess that Christ came in the flesh, you're saying the same thing as the scriptures do. That's what confession means. When you say the same thing as Jesus himself. Then you can be sure that you know God.

When we say the same things as Jesus, we can all agree. And if you don't say he came physically, then what are we saying? We're saying that the virgin birth was of no consequence. That's what we're saying if we don't believe he came in the flesh.

We're saying that the death on the cross means nothing. That's what we're saying. You don't believe he came in the flesh? Then what's the point of the cross? He said destroy this body and in three days I will raise it up again.

You don't believe in the resurrection? You don't believe in a physical body? You don't believe that he has the power over death? The reason Jesus came in the flesh and blood? What do you say in some of these verses we've looked at in John?

That he came to destroy the works of the devil. We learned that in 1 John 3, 5. If you say he didn't come in the flesh, it negates all of this. And that's an important concept that we have to keep in mind.

Is that his deity. The way he came. The reason why he came. To free us from our own sin. To bring us close to God. It matters how you look at Christ and how you magnify him. So when you go to test the spirits, that's one of the ways that you look at it.

How do they treat Christ? Not just, yeah, I believe in God. Because a lot of people say that. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. But when you start to dig down deeper, a lot of times you find it's they don't really believe in the deity of Christ.

That he actually came in physical bodily form. And that he was God. Here's the reality. False spirits do not confess the same thing as we do. They don't confess the same thing as we do. Mormons don't.

Jehovah's Witnesses don't. You see that. Muslims don't. They have a different Jesus. Catholics don't. They'll say, oh yeah, we believe in Jesus.

Right?

The Catholics, they say, yeah, we believe in him. But why are we pulling Christ off the cross every week for mass and representing him in an unbloody fashion again? Why are we doing that? He paid the price one time for sins.

And he sat down at the right hand of God. Why are we pulling him down again? Luke 12, 8 says, That's what we do. We confess Christ. You can know the Holy Spirit and the mind of God by confessing Jesus Christ has come in bodily form.

That's the key here in this passage. Has Christ a real and tangible physical body? Because if not, he cannot be your Savior. Have to believe that. The implications of rejecting Christ, what are they? Especially as humanity.

It lowers him to something less than God. That's what it does. Just a mere man who did great things. He's not God. It diminishes his deity. And it also diminishes his sacrifice on the cross, coming to save sinners.

It's of no worth. And that's the devil. That's what the devil's after. To remove the cross. It's always been about that, right? Divert people away from the cross. Divert Christ from even going to the cross.

Remove the cross and people believe in the wrong Jesus. That's what happens. And that's the goal of the devil. Test number two. I should ask. Is there any questions? I always forget that. I keep going and then I forget.

Is there anything that I've said so far you want to talk about? No, there's a new Bible out there called the pirate Bible. I am not aware who wrote that. AI wrote it. I guess that makes sense now, right?

It's already out for sale. And I'm sure it's distorting the truth like no other. Gotcha.

Right.

Yeah, so that's a good point, right? Like there's all kinds of these things coming up with AI and, you know, you have a new Bible. This speaks to what we're talking about today. How do you test that? How do you test that book?

You bring it against the true scriptures, the one that's written by God himself and not some artificial intelligence, and you look at it to see whether it's true or not.

Yeah. Right. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nathanael made a good point there that the Jehovah's Witness Bible does translate John 1, 1. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a God rather than God. And so her point is, you know, we also need to test the translations through the lens of scripture as well to make sure that they are accurate and true.

And, you know, it's just our duty to do that. It's part of how we examine things.

Anything else? All right.

Evidence of the Holy Spirit in the Life of a Believer

Test number two. Do they have evidence of faith? Verses four and five. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them because greater is he who is in you than he who is in.

The world.

They are from the world, therefore they speak as from the world, and the world hears them. Little children here, technia is used figuratively as a term of affection. He reminds them that they have overcome the spirits that are teaching falsely.

True believers, remember, have passed out of death into life. The spirit produces in us a new confidence, and it provides our strength and security. There needs to be evidence of that in a person's life.

As 1 Corinthians 2 .12 says this, now we have received not the spirit of the world. We don't have the antichrist spirit living in us. One that doesn't know the scriptures.

No,.

That's not what Paul's saying here. He's saying, but the spirit who is from God so that we may know the depths graciously given to us by God.

No,.

We have the Holy Spirit inside of us, and it is teaching us graciously. It says the depths given to us by God. That's amazing to me. That the same spirit, same person that raised Christ from the dead lives inside of you.

Man,.

That just kind of blows my mind. When you think about it without the spirit of God, there will be no evidence in your life. If you don't have the Holy Spirit, you only have the antichrist spirit. So you can only speak from your father, the devil.

Those are the things that you're going to do. It's not going to be the things that Christ has for us. And you cannot overcome the spirit of the world without the spirit of God in.

You.

There would be no power to do it. No ability to do it. And here's the reason why. First Corinthians two 14, but a natural man does not accept the depths of the spirit of God. A natural man, someone that is unregenerate, cannot understand the truth that we know.

Because the natural man just can't understand it. This is what is being said here for their foolishness to him. The scriptures are foolishness and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

That's the difference. When we have the spirit of God, you know, the spirit of God,.

You know,.

The scriptures. If you have the other spirit, you can't know them. A natural man, one without the spirit has no regard for scripture. They make no sense to the unregenerate spirit. Filled believer examines all things to make sure they line up with the word of God.

As first Corinthians says, but he is spiritual examines all things that that's us. Those who are spiritual, we examine all things to make sure they are accurate.

You know,.

The spirit of the world, because the God of truth lives in you, not by some sheer strength or, or will of God, but by the spirit, these spirits are who teach you, excuse me, these spirits who are teaching that Jesus did not come in the flesh or of the.

World.

They have the antichrist spirit. You can see the spirit of antichrist all over the world. Nothing was more evident of that.

Um,.

After watching the essential church, because you can see the antichrist spirit at many levels of government today, you can see it.

It, uh,.

Was very well done movie. And it just highlighted the fact that we face a very real,.

Uh,.

Threat in the church. And always have been right from the very beginning. You see the threat is even way back here. How is it any different today?

It's,.

It's been the same and it's coming also from those in,.

In,.

Inside the church. You see the clip from Andy standy and the essential church.

You know,.

One thing that he does, it drives me crazy.

Come here, come closer, come, come closer.

He'll hear what I'm saying. And then he destroys the church.

Okay.

And so the threats typically come from inside the church and we have to be aware of it and look for it. And that's, that's the point of it all in these tests, because the world listens to the antichrist spirit.

They, they listen to the popular preachers and teachers of the day. They flock to them. They have mega churches because they tickle the ears of the listeners. And for us, we're not supposed to go down that road.

We're supposed to be testing these spirits. And I think we should be praising godly men that are examples like MacArthur and James Coates and Tim Stevens who were in the movie. And as examples of standing up in the face of adversity and knowing how to divide scripture as they were doing it, because as you see that, it's amazing to me that the wisdom that MacArthur had to discern all that, how does he know that?

How does he do that? He does it because he's got many, many years of study in the word of God and he knows how to dissect it, discern it. And it's something that is amazing to me and is a great example.

And we should be praising people like that. Test number three in verse six. Is there a focus on knowing scripture? Verse six, we are from God. The one who knows God hears us. The one who is not from God does not hear us.

From this we know the spirit of truth and error. The emphasis is on hearing in this passage. The one who knows hears us. We need to know our Bibles. We need to know what it says. The reason why, as I said earlier, these kinds of threats to the church have been coming for a long time.

Jude four, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed. Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ.

Way back then, denying the Lord Jesus Christ, trying to say that Christ didn't come in the flesh. It happens the same from there all the way to today. And I think the devil likes nothing more than to come into biblically sound churches and corrupt them from the inside out.

He loves nothing more than to do that. They come in the name of Jesus. They're unassuming. They know the lingo. But we must always be on guard because Matthew says for false Christ and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders.

So as to deceive, if possible, even the elect, even us, even the ones that do know Jesus. And this is why I say we need to understand our enemy is so cunning, so devious, so alluring that it could possibly lead us astray.

Not permanently, but I'm saying could cause us to doubt. I want to draw your attention to something in this verse. Notice the language difference in this verse from previous verses. In one, verse one of this verse, it says, beloved.

Verse two, by this you know. By this you know. Verse three, this is the spirit of Antichrist, which you have heard. Verse four, you are from God. Verse five, they are from God. Now in verse six, it's different.

John switches the pronouns from you, they, to we and us. Why the shift? He has been addressing the church, which is the you and them, the false teachers or the spirit of Antichrist. I guess he could be talking about John and part of the church here is possible, but it seems more plausible that John is speaking about himself and the other apostles.

That's significant because Christ gave the apostles their authority to be an apostle. Remember the qualifications. They had to have seen the risen Lord. They had to have been chosen by Christ personally, not some new apostolic reformation apostle where you can go in and,.

You know,.

Fill out an application and you can buy an apostle ship. That's not the kind of apostle we're talking about here. We're talking about an authentic apostle. And remember that John is the last apostle alive.

So he's saying that he's carrying some weight. The one who knows God, here's us. Here's the apostles. If you don't listen to a true apostle, who are you going to listen to? Acts 2 42 says, and they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.

The apostles got their teaching from Christ himself. But you may be asking yourself, well, we don't have any apostles alive today. How can I be believing in them? Look at the scriptures. They wrote the new Testament.

That's our authority. When he says we and us, it's the authority of the apostles that he's talking about. And the last little thing I'll say is just in verse, the end of verse six is, knowing the spirit of truth.

Cause it says by this, we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. When you know scripture, it becomes much easier to know truth from error. And we have the spirit of truth. We have the true spirit, the Holy spirit living in us, guiding us into all truth.