A Call for Discernment

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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You can also find us on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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Please enjoy the following sermon. This afternoon we are in 1

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John chapter 4 and verses 1 through 6. But before we go there, I want to turn you to a different place in Scripture first.

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I want to take you to Ephesians chapter 5, no sorry, Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 12.

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Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 12. As you turn there,

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I'll mention this. I intend to speak to you today on the theme of discernment.

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Discernment. As Christian men and women, there are many skills that we need in order to persevere in the truth and to please our

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Lord. But perhaps few are as desperately needed as this skill that we call discernment.

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Few competencies are more relevant to the Christian. And I'm going to provide you here with a biblical definition of discernment.

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Few competencies are more relevant than the ability to distinguish between good and evil, to see things clearly in the world around us as they actually are, and then to make sound judgments with biblical wisdom.

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To possess the world is to look at the world around us and to differentiate truth from error.

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It is to know God, it is to know God's word, and it is to know how to wield this knowledge so that we can chart a course through this world that is both safe for us and that brings glory to God.

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And yet, when it comes to discernment, there are few competencies that are as neglected or as uncultivated as this.

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And as a result, we can look around us and see that many Christians today do not know how to interact with many of the most important issues of our time.

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Many cannot discern when blatant and deadly errors are promoted in plain sight, whether it is in contemporary

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Christian music or in media or in books or even in churches.

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And what's more, few Christians, I believe, professing Christians at least, can intelligently discern when a wolf in sheep's clothing comes into their midst and subtly teaches falsehoods that undermine the most basic tenets of the

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Christian faith. If we were to summarize the state of the modern evangelical church, we could say that we live in an age of pervasive biblical illiteracy where discernment is at best an afterthought.

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And yet, when we look at this passage before us in Hebrews, what we see is that this tendency is not something that is either new or limited to our generation.

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You might be surprised to find that as the inspired author of this book writes to his audience, he is speaking to them on this theme of discernment and they are not all that different from the world around us.

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In Hebrews chapter 5 and verse 12, this is what we read. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.

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You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.

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But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

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That sounds familiar, doesn't it? The author of Hebrews bemoans the fact that these Christians should have been much further ahead than where they were.

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But alas, they were spiritual babes in Christ, always sipping at milk, perpetually unskilled in God's word.

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While I could go on and on about how tragic that is, both in that time period and in ours, instead

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I want to focus on some of the positive elements that this writer of Hebrews brings out.

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While many of us are inclined to this kind of immaturity, I don't know about you,

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I feel that I am inclined to a certain level of sluggishness and slothfulness and desiring my own comfort and whatever it may be, though this might be our inclination in some part at least.

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Also, what I see Hebrews saying is that it is possible to grow up.

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It is possible, brothers and sisters in Christ, to move on to solid foods, to become skilled in the words of righteousness, to train our discernment, to refine it more and more and more by constant practice so that we can be mature in our use of these powers.

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It's even possible to belong in a church, to exist in a church where not just one or two or three or five people are able to teach, but dozens of people are able to teach because they are mature in Christ.

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You see, I believe that many of us, even many of us in this church, are inclined to think that discernment is a black or white issue.

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That it's something that is either switched on or switched off.

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It exists in the binary. That you either have discernment or you don't have discernment.

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And usually we're inclined to think that our discernment switch is in the on position.

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But that's not a biblically accurate depiction of discernment. Rather, discernment is something that we can either grow in, increase in, in measures through diligence, or conversely, to grow dull in through negligence.

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It's not a switch, but it's a continuum. And our powers of discernment are something that you and I are always either sharpening or dulling.

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We can improve, we can grow, we can expand, or we can fade. We can pursue, brothers and sisters,

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I believe, greater and greater and greater degrees of discernment, of maturity in the

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Christian life. That we don't reach our spiritual peak at 15 years or 20 years as a

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Christian, but if God should grant us 50 years or 60 years or more to live with Him, that we will increase through diligence in our maturity, in our discernment.

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And as we turn now to 1st John chapter 4, what I think the thesis of John's teaching here, of this section of his letter is this.

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That we must, that we must, we must, we must seek to grow in our discernment.

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That we must seek to make it our own in greater and greater measure.

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That discernment is not a luxury item in the Christian life, but it is a necessary skill that we must possess and be growing in if we are to persevere in the truth to the very end.

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So, we were in Hebrews 5. I've had us turn to 1st John chapter 4.

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We're going to look at verses 1 through 6 today. And I want to introduce you to the first point that we're going to look at.

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1st John shows us the need for discernment. The need. In verse 1, this is what we read.

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Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

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For many false prophets have gone out into the world. As John begins chapter 4, he's on the same track that he was in in chapter 3.

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You might recall a few weeks ago, we spoke about loving one another in truth.

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Last week, when we got to the next section, we discerned that the text was about knowing that we are of the truth.

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So, loving in truth. Knowing that we are of the truth. And now, he wants to ensure that we persevere in believing the truth.

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We're still on this truth track in John's letter. And John's words in verse 1 seem to convey that there had been a shortage of discernment in some of these churches.

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It appears that John's audience were ready to accept all kinds of teaching, even false teaching, when it came to them.

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If they came to them in the name of Christ. And that is why I think there was so much division and confusion in those churches.

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In many ways, it's the same familiar scene that we are used to seeing today. Or that Peter saw in his day.

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Or the author of Hebrews. Or now, in John's letters as well. For millennia now, our enemies have been seeking to deceive the church by promoting lies and then slapping the label

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Christian onto it. This is a deception that is as old as the church itself.

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But sadly, still many Christians today have not yet caught on. But John tells us, do not believe every spirit.

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Or do not believe, we could say it this way, every person simply because they claim to be from God.

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Here, John insists that we must exercise a kind of healthy skepticism when we encounter someone who claims that they are teaching the truth.

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We must not be foolish or naive so as to believe anyone who calls themselves pastor, or any author, or music artist, or influencer, or whatever else they may be.

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Merely because they claim the name of Christ. But we must subject each one to careful scrutiny to see if they are of the truth.

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And here John adds, not just the presence of imposters, but the origins of this falsehood when he writes, do not believe every spirit.

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Just because we have, for those of us who are in Christ, the spirit of God abiding in us, that's what

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John was writing about in chapter 3 and verse 24, if you look one verse ahead of our chapter today, this does not mean that everyone else has this same spirit of God in them.

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But there are other spirits out in the world right now that have nothing to do with God's spirit, but instead stand in opposition to him.

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And here John is telling us that behind every false teacher and every false prophet, or at least behind every false teaching, there is a lying spirit.

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Do not believe every spirit, he writes. Sometimes we see false teachers in the world, if you're like me

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I know that some of us have talked about this before, and we see those false teachers out in the world that are so ridiculous in their teaching, and so foolish even in their behavior, that we almost kind of laugh at it when we look together.

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And we ask ourselves, how can anyone take seriously, let alone follow someone like Benny Hinn as he swings his jacket, or Joel Osteen with his wolf in sheep's clothing smile, or Stephen Furtick, or one of these individuals, how do people even take them seriously?

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How could this be? It's not because of what we can see, but it's because of what we can't see.

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Behind them there are, this is what John is saying, evil and malevolent spirits that are always working to deceive those who are following them and their false teaching.

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As I was studying this passage, I thought to myself, I don't think I can ever laugh at that again. That here there are people being led astray, not merely by foolish men, but by evil spirits, by demons themselves.

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Some of you might ask, and this is something that is certainly relevant to our situation, how could anyone come to Christ and to taste and see that the

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Lord is good? To be with Christ's people and to sing God's praises, to belong to a healthy and we hope growing in health church, to sit under the preaching of the gospel week by week, and then to depart and to seek out something as obviously false as Roman Catholicism, or Mormonism, or Eastern Orthodoxy.

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It is because behind every one of these counterfeits, behind every one of these false teachers, there is a power at work that is more potent and vile and monstrous than you and I imagine.

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Even when we imagine it, it's more than we imagine. It is not a false claim. It is a false spirit.

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It is not just innocent confusion. It's not a well -meaning mistake. It is demonic deception of the worst kind.

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And when we see false teaching in all of its various forms, it is a visible demonstration of the activity of Satan in the world.

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When we hear people who say that they are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

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Saints and they have a message for you, I'm not overstating it when

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I say they are coming to you with the message of demons. When someone comes to you and they say that they are from the

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Church of God World Mission Society, and they want to tell you about God the Mother, no, they want to tell you about demonic teaching.

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When we are interacting with false teachers and their followers, we are interacting with people who Paul tells us in 2

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Timothy 2 .26, have been ensnared by the devil, having been captured by him to do his will.

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Can't you see that we are not living, brothers and sisters, though we go about our days, day by day, under the blue sky, enjoying many of God's common graces, that we are not living in an amusement park, but we are, in fact, living in a spiritual battleground of sorts.

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And one of the most sophisticated weapons that is deployed against us is this.

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It is falsehood. And every single day, a new barrage of these rockets of falsehood are sent out against us.

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Sometimes, if you have watched the news and watched the nation of Israel with their, what do they call it, the iron dome, as the rockets come in and they blow up.

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That is what is happening all around us, all the time, when it comes to false teaching, deceit, and the lies of our enemy.

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And John says at the end of verse 1 that many false prophets have gone out into the world. Our Lord Jesus told us the same in Matthew 24 and verse 11 when he said, and many false prophets will arise.

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That part we already know, but this is even more surprising. Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.

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That there is a great need for discernment because we are not just battling against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the unseen world.

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And these are always coming at us, one by one by one, in myriad form.

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And though we might feel like we have an iron dome, still many will be led astray.

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Still many of those rockets will hit their targets. This implies that we are not up against a small band of rebel prophets, but a multitude that have been sent out into the world.

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So that I can confidently say that all of us have at some time interacted with some of these kinds of false teachers.

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Paul could even say to the elders of the church in Ephesus that many false teachers would arise like fierce wolves even from among them within their church.

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Have you ever considered that even in our church there will come times, not times singular, but there will come times when we will have to contend against false teachers in our midst.

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That people will come to, and if possible, lead astray the elect.

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Because there are many out there and sadly many, our Lord tells us, will be led astray.

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This is why John tells us that we must test the spirits to see whether they are from God. This word test is an interesting one.

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It's actually a metallurgy term that one would use to describe the testing of the purity of metals.

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It involves the critical examination of its subject until it determines that it is genuine.

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This is our call to discernment. Many Christians today think that to have faith is to believe everything that comes in the name of Christ.

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I remember being a new believer reading 1 Corinthians 13 and reading, love believes all things.

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And I thought, well how do I love those people around me and believe all things? Maybe I need to give them the benefit of the doubt.

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No. We must be discriminating. We must be discerning.

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We must be selective. Let me tell you the mark of Christian maturity is not believing everything that you hear.

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In the words of John Stott, he says sometimes the mark of spiritual maturity is unbelief.

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What he means by that is not unbelief in the truth, but disbelieving what is false.

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It is to do what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5, test everything and hold fast to that which is true.

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And I put the question to you, do you see the need for discernment in the world today?

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Is there a need? Of course there is. And I'll follow up with this, what are you doing about it?

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Are you preparing yourself? Are you equipping yourself to test everything, to test every spirit?

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We must work at this, in the words of Hebrews, by constant practice until we are achieving greater and greater degrees of mastery in our discernment.

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In the words of Charles Spurgeon, he said this, discernment is not merely knowing the difference between right and wrong.

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Here he's correcting or sharpening the definition I gave you earlier, but he says it is knowing the difference between right and almost right.

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The fraction of degrees. If I can lean on one of my experiences, just to challenge you with an example for a moment.

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I want to give you an example of what this might look like. Some of you might know that before I was in pastoral ministry,

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I'm going to have to get used to saying that, before I was in the social work world,

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I worked in law enforcement. And I interacted with men who made it their life's goal, in all seriousness, who made it their life's goal.

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Their professional goal in their life was this, to sharpen their sense of discernment to the point that they were able to discern between truth and error with the exactness of a razor's edge on a surface.

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One of my sergeants, who the last time I checked, is now a homicide detective. He had the ability,

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I watched him in a back alley once, behind the Grand Hotel downtown, listening to a person, logically dissecting their words as they're talking, and then me, going along, believing the person's story.

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It sounds legit. One by one, detecting and then calling out the lies and inconsistencies that I didn't even notice.

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It was fascinating to watch him, but he didn't hold a candle to those men whose job it was to conduct polygraph examinations, lie detector tests.

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I've done two polygraph examinations in my time, and it's a whole new level of discernment.

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There they monitor your blood pressure, they monitor your breathing, they have pads under your feet to determine if you're putting pressure on your feet, because sometimes people put tacks in their shoes to try to fool the test.

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They monitor your sweat gland activity, they listen for the slightest strain in your voice.

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At the beginning of the polygraph examination, both times they had me tell, as part of a test really to strike fear into your heart, they have you tell one lie in the midst of a series of truths.

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Both times, both tests, both lies, they determined without hesitancy.

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I remember sitting there thinking, though I was wrong, I don't think this is true, I felt like they could look into the deepest recesses of my soul, and so I must tell them everything.

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I can assure you, our need for discernment, our skills of discernment, must be greater than this still.

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We're not up against people applying for the police service, or even people who are involved in terrible crimes, but we are up against a devil who is a roaring lion, ready to devour.

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He disguises himself as an angel of light, and like Peter, he is seeking to sift you like wheat, if possible.

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And we need to see that we have a great need for discernment, and because we have a great need for discernment, we cannot be slouches.

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We should not content ourselves to have even the discernment of the average Christian around us, or to be like this when we're out in the wilderness and we encounter a bear,

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I don't have to be faster than the bear, I just have to be faster than the person next to me. That doesn't work in the world of discernment.

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You need to have discernment better than the most skilled police investigator in the world, even beyond that, because there is a great need.

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But then John doesn't just show us the need, he gives us, this is the second point I want to put before us, the benchmark for discernment.

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He writes in verses 2 and 3, the benchmark. By this you know the spirit of God.

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Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come into the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess

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Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and is now in the world already.

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We've already heard John speak on this theme in some detail in chapter 2, and what John is doing here is he is establishing a doctrinal test to determine who is of God and who is of not, and who is not.

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And this is an interesting passage to keep in mind whenever we encounter people who tell us that doctrine is of little importance.

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I believe in Jesus, is that not enough? I need no other creed than that, that I have the gospel.

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I've read the gospel of Matthew five times. I've read the Bible twice, you know. I don't need to read it again and again and again.

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John here is not addressing just a basic principle, like whether or not

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Jesus is the Messiah, but he's addressing the metaphysical reality of Christ's incarnation.

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It is a very narrow aspect of Christian doctrine, but with huge implications.

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And as John lays out this benchmark, he's addressing very specific falsehoods that were being promoted by the secessionists.

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Those are the ones who had left the church. As we've heard in past weeks, these people had been hoodwinked by an early form of Gnosticism.

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And while we've already looked at what Gnostics believe to some extent, it's to our advantage to go and to look some more.

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This will help you to better understand the book of Colossians or the book of 1 Corinthians, certainly all of Paul's letters, even to understand the ethos in which much of the

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New Testament was written in, especially the latter epistles. If I were to use one word to describe

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Gnosticism, it would be the word dualism. And I believe this is a good word because it aptly describes the

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Gnostics' binary view of the created world. For Gnostics, the spiritual realm was everything.

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We've already heard about this, haven't we? It was where God dwelt in unapproachable light.

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It was where everything good resided and it was where everything that is ultimately good was going to end up.

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And at the same time, on the other side of that dualistic framework, the Gnostics held that everything that was made of matter was evil and it was to be despised and rejected.

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They believed that matter was created, in their own words, by what they called the demiurge, a subordinate being under God that created matter, that created man, and that kept man imprisoned in his material existence.

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And the Gnostic view of salvation was very different from the one that we find in the Bible. Rather than believing that God took on human flesh and went to the cross to save us, the

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Gnostics held that a divine redeemer, for those who are of the Christian persuasion,

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Jesus in this case, a divine redeemer descended from heaven in disguise, disguised as a man, to not redeem, not to save us from our sins, but to liberate us from the material realm.

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They claimed that he may have appeared to be a man, but that could never be because matter is evil.

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So instead, in disguise, he came to awaken a divine spark within each person, this remaining fragment of God's transcendence that is dormant in every man.

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And through this knowledge, or this gnosis, as it's called in Greek, from which we get the word

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Gnostic, through this gnosis, one may escape the material world and enter the spiritual world.

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Now as John is writing to this audience, and as he's speaking about those who have gone out, they went out from us because they were not of us, those people were beginning to believe aspects of this teaching.

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Now of course, there is nothing at all that is Christian about this system of belief. Nevertheless, this was the heresy that was taking hold in John's day.

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And what made this heresy so dangerous was this. So often, when you and I interact with error in the world, we interact with those who come against us with a competing ideology.

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They come and they say, I'm going to hold this over and against yours in competition.

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But what the Gnostics were doing is this. They weren't competing with Christianity.

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They were saying, no, no, no. We are true Christianity. What you have, that is not the truth.

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You're outside of the church. What we possess is the truth. For this reason, a number of historians have called

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Gnosticism one of the most dangerous heresies in the history of the church.

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Who knows how many died in their sins, having been taught, perhaps from childhood, by their parents.

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Perhaps by men or women who claimed to be preachers and teachers and disciplers.

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That Jesus, He did not come into the world to bear our sins in His body on the tree.

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He didn't have a body. But instead, He came in disguise to enliven in us a divine spark and to rescue us from this material world.

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And now think for a moment. Those who were deceived by these false spirits now exist in spirit form.

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They got that much, but not in the presence of God, but separated from God in a place of eternal torment until they are eventually cast into hell where the worm will never die and the fire is never quenched.

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Why? Was it because they didn't believe in God? They would be the first ones to tell you that they believed in God.

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Was it because they didn't believe in Jesus? No, no, no. They believed in Jesus.

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Then how? How can one say that they believe in God, that they even believe in Christ, and yet still be cast out?

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For John to say, they are not of us because this is the grave problem.

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They believed in the wrong Jesus. They believed in a Jesus who is not the

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Christ of the Bible. They believed in the Jesus of docetism, as it's often called.

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A Savior who only appeared to be a man. It's for my Greek students, doceo, to seem, to suppose, or to think.

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A Redeemer who we supposed to be a man, He seemed to be a man, but He was not.

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And this is why we must have the powers of our discernment trained. Because if we get

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Jesus wrong, if we confess the wrong Jesus, as John would put it, it is the difference between life and death, heaven and hell, between the

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Spirit of God and between the Spirit of the Antichrist, which we have heard is coming and John tells us is now already here.

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In this circumstance, John makes Christ the benchmark. We must believe what the

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Bible says about Christ, no more and no less. We must know all that there is to know about His nature, about His humanity, about His deity, about His suffering, about His death.

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We must not accept anything or anyone who would seek to teach us anything that is not clearly taught in Scripture about Him.

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We are engaged in a war for our minds and we cannot be those who are always waiting for the arrival of the

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Antichrist when John tells us He's already here, seeking to deceive even you about who

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Christ is. What we believe about Christ actually matters.

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Not just the big, grand details, but the nuance.

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He didn't just appear to be a man, He was a man. There is no room for ambivalence.

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There is no room for imprecision or fuzziness. Perhaps some of you are old enough to remember a time when we would watch

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TV with bunny ears. Bunny ears on the top of the TV, usually there was a little holder that you'd set them in and plug it into the back of the television.

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And this was before, of course, the time of fiber optic cables that ran into your

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TV and streamed high -definition or high -tech Wi -Fi routers on the other side of the room. But a distant tower would broadcast signal.

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Ethan, doesn't this sound strange? A distant tower broadcasting signal. You would put up your rabbit ears and if the

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TV was fuzzy, you would adjust the rabbit ears until it was just right. And it was really frustrating on those days when it was only clear when you held the rabbit ears and then you would let go and it would get fuzzy.

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Yeah, some of you are familiar. Okay, we're connecting here. And there were times when you would adjust the rabbit ears, everything would be just right, and then it would glitch.

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And sometimes the only thing that could fix that was on the side of the TV. You smarten it up and it carries on.

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Most of modern evangelicalism does not have a high -definition view of Christ.

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They are working with a fuzzy analog view of Christ. They have satisfied themselves with, let's call it, the old technology, the primitive view.

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God, in His Word, has not given us a fuzzy view of Christ. But He has given us a clarion, a crystal view of Him, a certainty.

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And we must go to the book. We must go to God's Word. We must go to this place where we find this clarion certainty.

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And we must find and believe and confess this Christ and this

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Christ only. Every Christian must believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that Christ is the promised

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Messiah, the offspring of the woman who came to crush the serpent's head.

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At the same time, we must confess that Jesus is the only begotten

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Son, the Son of man and the Son of God. We must confess that Jesus Christ is

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Immanuel, God with us, meaning that He is God of God, light of lights,

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God of very God, very God, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

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We must confess that He is our faithful high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses.

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Why? Because He came in the flesh. He was tempted in all things as we are, and yet we confess that He was without sin.

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We believe and confess that He was made, as it says in God's Word, like us in every respect and partook in flesh and blood that through death

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He might destroy the one who has power over death, that is the devil. We must confess that He loved us and gave

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Himself for us, that He became accursed of God on that cross to pay the penalty for our sin in His own body.

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We must confess that God made this

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Jesus Christ, whom we crucify, both Lord and Christ.

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He was buried in our stead, and yet, just as He said, He was raised on the third day in bodily form.

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And we must now come to this Lord and this Christ in humble repentance and faith in Him, not just for what

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He has done for us, but because of who He is. If we are ever going to be a discerning people,

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Jesus Christ must become the crown jewel of our discernment, the height of the height.

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As Matthew Henry says, He is, or this is, the sum of revealed religion. It is this, it is the doctrine concerning Christ, His person and office.

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Can't you see that the whole of Christianity stands or falls based on what we do with Christ?

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And yet this spirit of antichrist is already in the world seeking to shake our knowledge of Him.

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And if you're putting yourself out there, you will experience it. I have had conversations with people who belong to us, who have grabbed my conception of Christ and tried to shake it.

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We must believe what God's word says alone. Now, we've looked at the need for discernment.

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We've looked at the benchmark for discernment. Lastly, let's look at the means for discernment.

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Verses four through six, we read this, Little children, you are from God and have overcome them.

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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.

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We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us.

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Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

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The means for discernment. As John concludes his thoughts on this theme, this is really, it comes to us, it comes to John's readers with a tone of comfort.

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He explains here as well the means by which the child of God, these dear children, are to exercise discernment and overcome false prophets.

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We will, dear saints, not we may, but if we are in Christ, we will overcome.

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You'll see me say in a second, we have overcome by the indwelling spirit of God and by listening to God's word.

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In verse four, John makes a heartening statement. Little children, there's that expression of endearment again, my beloved children, you are from God and have overcome them.

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For the one who believes in and confesses the Jesus Christ of Scripture, not of Gnosticism, not of liberalism, not of any other ism, but for those who believe and confess

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Christ as Savior and Lord, you are no longer of the world.

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You're no longer from the world, but you are from God and you belong to him.

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You are his and he will protect you. How do

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I know this? Am I just making an assumption? Because look what he says next.

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This is for my fellow language nerds. You have overcome them and you have overcome them.

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It's the perfect active indicative. What does that mean for those of us who didn't pay attention in English class?

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It's a verb that depicts actions that have already been brought to completion in the past.

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It is complete. It is finished. And yet the effects of this action are still ongoing in the present.

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We're still feeling it. This means that we may feel like we are always in the heat of the battle, that we are always having to overcome one hurdle after another.

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It feels like it is never going to end, and yet it has already been brought to completion.

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As we have sung in recent weeks, yes, the battle is fierce, but the victory is won.

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God shall supply all that I need. Because we have, because we have one who is greater than the world living in us, every one of us who are in Christ, we have overcome.

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And who do we have dwelling in us but even the Spirit of God himself?

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If you are going to discern truth from error, if you are going to persevere to the end, there's some of you, you want to be wise to the world's schemes.

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If you want to be wise to the world's schemes, if you want to overcome, it is because you have the

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Spirit of the living God living inside of you, and he will hold you fast. If you do not have the

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Spirit of God in you, nothing will avail. You will be blown and tossed and manhandled by almost every error that comes your way.

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You might think you are strong. You are not. But if you come to Christ, weak and empty and needy and sin -sick, not only does

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Christ save you, but he puts his Spirit in you, and you are able to stand firm in the midst of the fiercest gales that the devil can put your way.

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One brother said that we must remain alert but not afraid. So if I have been talking about discernment and I have struck fear in your heart, be comforted in this.

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If you are in Christ, you must be alert but not afraid. Jesus taught his disciples in John 16 .33,

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I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation.

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But take heart, I have overcome the world. And just as Christ has overcome the world, so we shall who have the

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Spirit of Christ in us. And John points out that those who are from God not only have the

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Spirit, but what else? In verses 5 and 6, those who are from God listen to the

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Word of God. Now you might say, that's not what the text says.

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Let's look again. Verse 5. They are from the world, therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.

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Who is the they in this passage? They are those who are the false prophets of verse 1.

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They are those who come with the Spirit of the Antichrist. They are those who are the false teachers.

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And then when we look at verse 6, we are from God, whoever knows

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God listens to us. Does this mean that every Christian is bound by the

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Spirit of God to listen to another Christian? I can tell you I've been preaching long enough to know that that's just not true.

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That the mere sound of my voice does not compel another Christian to listen to me because I am in Christ and you are in Christ.

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Perhaps I wish so at times, but it's not the case. Then what is the

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Apostle John saying? The we who are from God, the us that the people of God are listening to, are the apostles.

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They are the writers, here in this case, the writer of sacred scripture.

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It is the authoritative word of the apostles. One Puritan said, the world loves its own.

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It will listen to its own. But for those who are in Christ, we listen to our own.

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And who is it that's speaking? But it is God who is speaking through his people in his word.

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Verse 6 does not mean that we will just listen to anyone, but we will listen to God. Paul taught this himself in 1

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Thessalonians 2 .13, where he said, and we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really was, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.

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If we are to grow up in maturity, we must have the spirit of God in us.

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We must seek to a greater and greater degree the power of that spirit within us, as our brother

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Paul Washer would say, a greater manifestation of that spirit. We're not talking about ecstatic utterances and barking like dogs.

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We're talking about the spirit of God being more and more sensitive and perceptible to what it is doing, to what he is doing, to what he is saying.

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And for to grow up into maturity, we must grow in our knowledge of God's word as well. God has given us the power through his spirit, and now we need to fill our souls with the raw material, his word.

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The call to discern is a call to take up our Bibles and read, to study, to show ourselves approved.

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And I know that all of you have heard now countless times about the value of having an acquaintance, a relationship, reading and studying and knowing

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God's word. But you and I both know that we are not there yet.

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And so we need to hear it again, that God would stir up in us such a love for his word that we would have difficulty reading almost any other book.

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We would be so busy. You know me, I love books. I'm the first one to tell you,

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I hope that you love God's word so much that you say to yourself, I don't even have time to read those other books.

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That we would be consumed with an appetite to hear from God in his word.

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Oh, that God would give us an appetite that we see even in one teenage girl from the 18th century.

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My daughter and I were watching a video this week. I had never heard her story before. And we watched just a brief 11 minute clip on YouTube that you can check out.

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A young girl named Mary Jones. I don't know if anyone knows the story of Mary Jones.

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She lived in the late 1700s. Her parents were

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Calvinistic Methodists. They grew up or they lived in Wales. Her dad was a weaver and her mother was a homemaker.

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And the whole family was illiterate. They could not read. And one day

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Mary took an interest in the Bible. This is a good reason why a preacher should have a

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Bible in the pulpit and not just an iPad. Or a phone.

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But a Bible. She would watch the preacher read from the Bible and listen intently.

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And she developed a dream in her heart that she wanted to have a copy of God's own word for herself.

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But there was a problem. She could not read. Now, as God's providence would have it, they opened a school in her town.

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And at the earliest opportunity she enrolled herself in school so that one day she could learn how to read the

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Bible. But there was another problem. They had a poor family.

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Their family didn't own a copy of the Bible. And they did not have enough money for a Bible. Children, imagine that for a moment.

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That your parents, they don't even have a Bible. They can't buy you a Bible. The only time you can hear

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God's word is when you go to meet with the Lord's people on Sunday. And so what she started doing was carrying and helping seniors in her village move things for small amounts of money.

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She ended up buying some chickens and then sold the eggs. And would you know it, she worked moving furniture and selling eggs for six years.

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There was one year where her father became ill and lost his income. She lost a whole year of her income to provide for the family during that time from her chickens.

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And then when her father was able to return back to work, she started saving again. And when she was 16 years of age, she had enough money to buy a

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Bible. And she heard that there was a town 42 kilometers away where there was a preacher in one of the churches who sold

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Bibles. And so she left on her way to pick up a copy of God's word. But because her family was poor and she didn't want to wear out her shoes, she took her shoes off and then crossed the rugged

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Welsh terrain in her bare feet for 42 kilometers. It sounds absurd almost.

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42 kilometers to get a copy of God's word. When she arrived there, they said, we sold all of our available copies.

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We have only a few left and they're reserved for other people who have already spoken for them.

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And there on the doorstep, she wept knowing that she had saved all this amount that she had crossed this great distance to have a copy of the

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Bible. And the preacher that was selling the Bibles looked down at her and he said this. He said, Mary, dry your eyes.

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You may buy one of the Bibles I have left. He sold someone else's Bible. Anyone who has sacrificed as much as you have cannot be turned away.

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What a condemnation of our casual attitude towards scripture. There are people, brothers and sisters today, that would probably die to have a copy of the

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Bible at home. How many do we have at home?

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And yet, do you think that if you were to diligently study your

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Bible year after year, God will turn you away from growing in maturity, increasing in your usefulness to God, and sharpening your discernment?

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I want to encourage you, dear saints, that if you are to grow in your maturity, you must take up and read your

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Bibles. Some of you, you've been reading five minutes a day. I challenge you, tomorrow, read 10 and carry on.

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Some of you, you have made it your aim and your practice for the last number of years to read your Bible once a year.

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I'm going to challenge you, read your Bible twice next year. Have the attitude of George Mueller.

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George Mueller is a fascinating man for many reasons, but one thing always amazes me. In the first 60 years of his life, he read his

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Bible 100 times. In the second 20 years of his life, he read his

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Bible another 100 times. And he estimated that 100 of those 200 times, he read

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God's Word on his knees as he accompanied his reading with prayer.

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For those of you who have been reading once a year, join me and let's read it twice. Let's read it three times.

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A friend of mine just read the Bible in 90 days. Meditate upon Scripture. Memorize Scripture.

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Study the Bible. You don't know how to study the Bible? I can tell you, I'm free. Let's go and I'll teach you how to study the

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Bible. We'll get in the text and we'll learn. We'll learn about God. We'll learn about Christ. We'll see this clarion picture that the

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Scriptures give us concerning Christ. Study theology. Systematically go through bibliology.

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How do we know that this is the Word of God? What does it mean that this is the Word of God? Study soteriology.

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How it is that the Lord saves us. Theology proper. Christology. Pneumatology. Ecclesiology.

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Eschatology. Be so that you can be one of the people in our church who in 10 years someone can come to you and say, this is my eschatological position and this is why.

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Study in the school of Christ and build such a buttress in your life against error that no one will ever lead you astray and so far as or so long as you are there no one will lead anyone astray around you.

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Study to counsel and encourage. Apply it.

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It is a loss. It is all a loss if we study it and we never apply it. So live it.

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I'm reluctant to say I have a vision. Usually it sounds kooky. But I have a desire.

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I have a dream. I have a longing. I have a goal. That in 25 years, if the

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Lord wills, that he should give this church 25 years. That in 25 years I pray that all of you are still here and more.

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That we would have little boys and girls. People that at that age will be young enough to be our grandchildren running around at our knees.

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That we'll have young families and middle -aged families and then old gray hairs like us.

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And because we have studied God's Word.

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Because we have Bibles that are stained by the grease from our hands with our chicken scratch all through it.

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Because we have studied to become wise and mature and discerning in God's Word.

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We will be able to be those ones who can give godly advice to our grandchildren.

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So that people can come to us and that we can be, not because of us, but because of God and his grace and his

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Word. A fountain of wise and discerning counsel that we can exhort and admonish and encourage one another as we get old and are confronted with all the trials that accompany old age.

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So that we can meet together on the Lord's Day to worship. And then we can meet together through the week as we bury one another with the same confidence that we have today,

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I hope and trust. With the same confidence that we have in Christ.

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That we can meet as the church buries me and rejoice in Christ our

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Savior and reflect not on my faithfulness but on his. Brothers and sisters, my desire is not that we would be always learning.

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Always being taught but never learning. Always sipping. My mother tells a story of a boy that she grew up with where he would ride his bike down the street with a bottle hanging out of his mouth.

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He was nine or ten years old drinking milk out of a bottle. That we would not be that kind of Christian.

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That we would be Christians who move on to solid food. Who are not just being taught but who are teaching by God's grace.

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Some of us will grow in that direction and may the

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Lord enable us to train our powers of discernment by constant practice to distinguish evil from good, good from evil.

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That we would reach mature manhood to the fullness of the stature of Christ. Let's pray together.

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Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church. If you would like to keep up with us you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church or our

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Instagram at Grace Church y -e -g all one word. Finally you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca.