Episode 622: TLP 622: Biblical Families, Part 10 | the Necessity of Discernment

It's possible they're all wrong, but they can't all be right. Does God want three different people reading the same passages and coming to three different conclusions about what it means?

No. Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids.

Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth Love Parent Podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

God the preeminence in their parenting. It's good to be meeting with you again. Of course, if this is your first time with us, please be sure to start at session 613 for part one of this family devotional.

Otherwise, I'm glad to have you joining me as we step through the book of 1 John to better understand what it takes to have a biblical family.

As always, today's session comes with free notes, a transcript, life work assignments, and links to related resources.

But you already knew that, so let's get started. So far in our study, we've learned that God is the groundwork of a biblical family.

We start becoming a true biblical family when everyone in our family is a born -again believer.

You're not a biblical family because you have saved parents or you're trying to keep the Ten Commandments.

To be a Christian family means that everyone in your family has to be a Christian, and to have a biblical family means that everyone in your family needs to be submitting to the

Bible. And that obviously begins with salvation. Then we learned about the necessity of sanctification, whereby we're transformed into the image of Christ.

This requires that we stop hating and start loving as we should. Then John showed us who our real enemies are, the most dangerous of which is our own sinful flesh.

But he also promised that God would be our shelter in difficulty and that we have a future hope that motivates and empowers our lives.

Then John wrapped back around to the battle we fight every day on this earth, the battle against our sinful flesh.

And then, as John will over and over again, he dips back into a discussion about love, and we learned how our family needs to be defined by the consequences of love if we're to truly be a biblical family.

Well, today John is going to unpack another exceptionally important characteristic of a biblical family, discernment.

But before we read the passage together, I really hope you've accomplished your life work this week. And I want to get a little nosy.

Dad and mom, if you have children participating in these devotionals, but they aren't doing their life work, why is that?

Are you providing the necessary leadership, accountability, and reproof for them? Are they receiving consequences for not doing their life work?

We have plenty of resources that will help you better learn how to biblically parent your kids when they don't do what they need to do to obey.

I'll link some of those for you in the description of this episode so you have access to them. But my point is this, if I'm going to love you,

I need to keep you all accountable just like you need to keep your kids accountable. The fact that your kids might not be submitting to the expectations is a call for you to get involved in Christ -honoring ways.

And that's why this podcast exists. We want to equip you to do that. Of course, if you are the ones not doing the life work, that puts your kids in a really awful place.

If they're not doing their life work and you're not doing yours, honestly, it's completely appropriate for them to wonder why you're even going through the motions of listening to the sessions.

If they are doing their life work, but you're not, then the message you're sending your kids is that it's important for them, but it's not important for you, which of course is a lie and they know that.

And that's really poor leadership and probably a very good reason your family isn't a growing biblical family. Now, if any of these scenarios are true in your family,

I get how uncomfortable this particular conversation may be at the moment, but listen, if I didn't say anything, it would be because I hate you, but I don't hate you.

I love you. I want God's best for your family, and that's why I'm saying what I'm saying. And as always, there is hope.

All any of us need to do is submit to God's commands. We need to live in the light as He is in the light.

Love God, love others, and we need to do so for God's glory and His power, and we can all change.

Of course, your family may be sitting there with your life work all ready to go, and I appreciate your patience if that's the case.

This is important stuff, so I'm glad we're being reminded how really important it is. All right, let's read 1

John 4, 1 through 6. 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 it 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. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

In all the time we've been meeting, have you asked yourself whether or not you should be listening to what

I'm saying? Am I Aaron Brewster being faithful to the Bible? Have you asked yourself whether or not

I'm a false teacher? Is it possible I'm telling you things about God, the Bible, and His expectations for you that aren't true?

And how can you know? Well, that's what we're going to discuss today. Number one, what is discernment?

To discern can refer to simply detecting with the eyes, identifying something, or coming to know or recognize something mentally.

It also refers to seeing or understanding the differences in things, and that is almost always what the

Bible is communicating when it talks about discernment. Psalm 94 .8 states, Powerfully discern you senseless among the people, and when will you have insight, you fools?

In Psalm 19 .12, David asks, Who can discern his errors? Hosea 14 .9

reads, Whoever is wise, so let him discern these things. Whoever is discerning, let him know them.

For the ways of Yahweh are right, and the righteous will walk in them, but transgressors will stumble in them.

And Hebrews 5 .14 tells us, Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern both good and evil.

Can you tell the difference between good and evil, between light and dark, between truth and lies?

That's one of the reasons John wrote this letter, precisely so that our biblical families would be able to discern such things.

Here John is telling us not to believe every spirit, but that we should instead test the spirits to discern which are from God.

But what is he talking about exactly? Number two, how do biblical families discern?

Letter A, what is a spirit? The word spirit is used all throughout the Bible. Whether in the

Hebrew or Greek, the original word actually carried the denotation of breath or air. It most often refers to the immaterial part of who we are.

When you have a body and a spirit, you are a soul. Your spirit is the part of you that will live on for all eternity.

Of course, God will give you a new body when he glorifies you, but that's a discussion for another time. The word spirit is also used to refer to spirits that don't have bodies, mainly angels, which may be fallen or serving

God, and the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead. In this passage, John is actually referring to evil spirits and then later to the

Holy Spirit. Earlier in our study, we talked about three enemies, the devil, the world, and the flesh.

We talked briefly about how the devil and his fallen angels or spirits can force unbelievers to believe and do things.

And we talked about how the world system can influence us believers with the devil's ideas and their own sinful hearts.

Generally speaking, when someone from John's time period came out with new religious information, they claimed to have gotten it right from God or an angel or spirit.

For example, in Jeremiah 29, 8 -9, we find that some prophets were claiming to be speaking for God, but the text says,

For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, Do not let your prophets who are in the midst and your diviners deceive you.

I do not listen to your dreams which you dream, for they prophesy a lie to you in my name.

I have not sent them. declares Yahweh. Now, in case you don't know, Yahweh is God's covenantal name.

Now, in 1 Corinthians 12, 8, while listing various spiritual gifts, Paul includes the distinguishing of spirits.

This is the discernment we're discussing in this passage. So, letter B, what is it to test or discern a spirit?

To test a spirit, or anyone else for that matter, is simply to compare what is being said to the truth of God's word.

John warns that there are many false prophets like we read about in Jeremiah. A modern example of this is people who say things like,

I had a vision, I have a message from God, or I have a word from the Lord, or the

Lord told me such and such. We need to be discerning in times like this.

We shouldn't just accept what they say because they claim to be speaking from God. I did a whole series on false parents, which is based off the numerous passages in the

Bible that warn us about false prophets and false teachers. It happens every single day, all day across the entire world.

People say things and claim that it's truth, but is it? In fact, people are right now saying and teaching and singing and producing things that aren't true and a biblical family absolutely needs to test those claims by comparing it to what the

Bible says. So, number three, how do biblical families know what's true?

You've probably all heard that in order to find a counterfeit bill, a dollar bill, you don't need to study counterfeits so much as you need to study the truth.

You look at a bunch of real dollar bills and then when the fake one comes in, it stands out and it's obvious to you.

So how do we know what's true? Like I already pointed out, we use the Bible for this, but I have to admit that the process is a little more in -depth than it might seem.

We'll start with a simple example. In verse 2, John says that 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. That was the necessary test of the day. Jesus was crucified because the

Jews didn't believe He was the promised Messiah, the Son of God. That's what the word Christ means,

Messiah. It's the Greek word for this anointed one. And there are many today who claim that Jesus wasn't really a man, wasn't really

God, didn't exist or a bunch of other heretical claims. But we need to be careful that we don't reduce

John's teaching in this passage to make it say something it doesn't mean. Let's say that someone says that Jesus is

God. They say those words, Jesus is God. They make that claim very easily. In fact, they go on to say that He came in the flesh and is the

Messiah. They may even say that He died and raised again to save the world from their sins. But they also then teach that abortion isn't a sin, that a person can change their biological sex and that homosexuality is okay.

Are we to believe those statements are true simply because the person who made them claims to believe in Jesus? And this is where this discernment is going to require more from us.

The first century believers were generally okay as long as the person with the message truly believed that Jesus was

God. But even then, Paul's letters make it clear that there were groups who were preaching lies about circumcision, eating meat offered to idols, and hanging out with Gentiles.

Paul even had to confront Peter about his poor choices regarding how he was treating the Gentiles. So, how were the first century

Christians to know it was okay to eat meat offered to idols? Well, by God's grace, he inspired the biblical authors to write all the truth we would need.

In 2 Peter 1 .3, we know that God's divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the full knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence.

That full knowledge that gives us everything we need for life and godliness comes from the Bible. But we have to know our

Bibles. It's not good enough just to own one. We need to know what the Bible says about murder, sexuality, worship, the sufficiency of Scripture, love, and the countless other necessary doctrines and truths presented in it.

If we don't know what the Bible says about an issue, and a pastor or a trusted

Christian leader makes a claim, it's too easy for us to just follow right along with their claim.

But John is commanding here that we absolutely need to test these truth claims. We need to open our

Bibles to understand what God really said on the subject. Now, there's one more level that makes this discerning challenging.

Even among genuinely born -again believers, there are various ways of interpreting the Scriptures that leads them to different conclusions on issues.

Some people view the Bible as being more symbolic, others take it at face value. The example

I like to use is end -time theories. Some born -again believers call themselves pre -millennialists, others post -millennialists, and still others are amillennialists.

For this discussion right here, it doesn't really matter what those words mean. The reality is that all three of them are talking about something very different.

So which is right? Well, it's possible they're all wrong. But they can't all be right.

Does God want three different people reading the same passages and coming to three different conclusions about what it means? No, He doesn't.

The Lord tells us that our words need to mean only what they mean. Therefore, we need to pursue understanding the

Scriptures the way God intended them to be understood. All of this to say, we need to study hermeneutics in order to be discerning.

Hermeneutics is a fancy term for how we interpret the Bible. We need to understand whether or not the person handling the

Scriptures is approaching their interpretation in a postmodern way, an allegorical way, a natural way, or any other way people can approach the

Scripture. We see that discernment is a three -fold process. Anyone who contradicts the truth claims in the

Bible is an antichrist. When we encounter claims and we don't know what the

Bible says about it, we must study them before believing them. 3. We must also study biblical interpretation.

We need to be aware of how others and we are to interpret the Scriptures. And we need to recognize that this is just a big deal.

God says powerful things about the people who misrepresent Him. We're told to ignore them. We're told to stop hanging around them.

In Matthew 18 .6, Mark 9 .42, and Luke 17 .2, Jesus says that if someone causes one of his children to stumble, it would be better for them to have a giant rock tied around their necks and to be thrown into the sea instead of continuing to lead people astray.

This should affect us in two ways. First, we should all be passionate to make sure the person claiming to speak truth is actually communicating what

God wants communicated from His Word. Secondly, we should also be more careful ourselves about the truth claims we make.

If we can't back it up from Scripture with a proper hermeneutic, then we shouldn't be holding it so closely or communicating it so dogmatically.

How many of us parents have led our children astray because we weren't careful with truth? And all this needs to be applied to me and this podcast.

I make a lot of claims. I had one person say that I communicate with a lot of periods. What they meant was that I speak a lot of declarative and imperative sentences.

I hope you don't take what I say simply because I say it. This is why I try, without making these sessions too long, to show other passages of Scripture that support the truth we're studying.

Now I do want to end today on a point of hope. Number four, does God help us know the truth?

And the answer is an abundant yes. We don't have to have a dream. We don't have to get a word from God. He's given us

His full, complete, and sufficient Word. But John also says to all the Christians out there, 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 and the one who is not from God does not hear us.

From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Once again, John is setting out a clear indicator by which a person can know if they're born again.

If you believe that Jesus is God, that's a great start. But if that's true, then you also believe that you need to be justified through salvation.

And if that's true, then you also believe that you need to be sanctified by being transformed into the image of Christ and growing in your spiritual maturity.

And if that's true, then you know you need to be studying the Bible so you can access and understand the truth that will help you grow.

This is what it is to confess something, to confess that Jesus is God, is to believe and agree with what

God said, everything He said about Jesus and His expectations for us. And all born -again believers have the

Holy Spirit indwelling and illuminating them. Illumination has the idea of turning on a light.

The Bible says that unbelievers are blind. They may be able to physically read the Bible, but they are incapable of truly spiritually understanding it without the

Spirit's help. If we're born again, we have the promise of God that the Holy Spirit will illumine our minds to the truth of the

Word when we diligently pursue knowing, understanding, and believing it. In Ephesians 1, 17 -18, we read that the

God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation and the full knowledge of Him, so that you, the eyes of your heart having been enlightened, will know what is the hope of His calling.

2 Corinthians 4, 6 tells us, For God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, is the one who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2, 14 -16 explains, A natural man does not accept the depths of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually examined.

But he who is spiritual examines all things, yet he himself is examined by one for who has known the mind of the

Lord, that he will direct him. But we have the mind of Christ. This should encourage us greatly.

Yes, there are lots of liars. Yes, it's easy to believe something that's not true because a quote -unquote trustworthy person said it, but God has given us

His Word, the ability to study it, and the supernatural power to understand it. Now, like we observed before, this doesn't mean that we can't be wrong or make mistakes, and it doesn't mean that we don't need teachers helping us learn and mature in our thinking and interpretation of the

Bible. But it should give us hope that God is not what the deists claim, a superpower who set the world spinning and then walked away.

No, He is a promise -making, personal God who communicates Himself. So with all of that learned today, let's re -read 1

John 4, 1 -6. 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 it 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. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

All right, here's your very important, super valuable life work for this week. I hope you'll all be doing. 1. Meditate on 1

John 4, 7 -14 at least two times this week. 2. Ask God to help you better understand biblical truth as He intended it to be understood.

3. Practice discernment this week. When you encounter a claim that is not biblical, refute it.

When you hear something you can't prove from the Scriptures, see what the Bible says about it. Also, share at least one of these instances and interactions with the rest of your family.

By the time we meet again next week, each of you should have at least one example of how you were discerning this week and tested the spirits to see if they were from God.

And as always, please share this devotional with everyone in your life and feel free to email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com

or leave us a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894 if you have any questions or need personalized biblical counsel.

And then I'll see you back next week when we'll talk a little bit more about love. We've seen the importance of love and the consequences of love, and now

John is going to show us the ultimate purpose of love. See you then. Truth.

Love. Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship God through your parenting.

So join us next time as we study God's word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness. And remember that TLP is a listener -supported ministry.