Test the Spirits

Josh Elliott

John's Epistles • Sermon • Submitted 2 months ago • Presented 2 months ago

Discerning of Spirits

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Introduction

Illustration: You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. If we did we would certainly believe contradictions, because we hear the opposite things all the time.

1 John 4:1–6 CSB

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming; even now it is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world. Therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Anyone who knows God listens to us; anyone who is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

There have been false prophets for as long as their has the church has been around, and there will continue to be false prophets until the end comes and we inherit the new heavens and new earth. What we want to know is how to handle that fact as disciples of Jesus. How does God want us to navigate the different people who claim to be speaking on His behalf? And when we know who is speaking falsely on behalf of God how are we to handle their influence on this world?

Whereas last week we looked at the end of chapter 3 and the question seemed to be “how do we know that we are children of God?” Now the conversation shifts for the first six verses of chapter four to “how do we know they aren’t children of God?” John shifts from how we test our own discipleship to how we test the genuineness of another’s claims to teach what God teaches.

It’s important to remember that this is a test of teachers and their teachings, not of individual disciples and their relationship with Jesus. While their are certainly signs that point to markers of spiritual health, generally speaking our concern primarily is with our own spiritual health. When it comes to testing others we stick mostly to testing their ideas. In this case, John calls it “testing the spirits,” since the false prophets of John’s time claimed to be speaking truths given to them by spirits.

So what does John have to teach us about discerning false teachers as disciples of Jesus? Today we’re going to talk about three things:

Testing the Spirits

Jesus’ Identity

Conquering the World

Testing Spirits

Illustration: “Fool’s Gold,” Pyrite:

“in modern-day commercial applications, gold and pyrite are heated up to high temperatures and submerged in acid. This is effective because while fool’s gold dissolves in acid, gold does not.” - https://www.aupreciousmetals.com/blog/fools-gold-vs-real-gold-whats-the-difference

Like with gold, there are false spirits and false prophets out there. This is why John says:

1 John 4:1 CSB

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

We don’t want to be gullible Christians. The stakes are a lot higher than whether you have pyrite or gold in your hands. If you mix up gold or pyrite you’ve maybe lost money or embarrased yourself. If you mix up prophets from false prophets the eternal state of human souls is at stake. If someone teaches lies about who Jesus is, and how people can find salvation and eternal life through him, than some might be led astray and never repent and follow Jesus. As a result, they will spend eternity in hell where Jesus says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. We want to avoid that not only for ourselves but for everyone whom we can help to avoid it. That’s love after all isn’t it, seeking what’s best for people? So we seek and save the lost so that they too can know Jesus and know eternal life. John seems to feel the same way in this verse.

Remember first that the church or churches that John is writing to have experienced this first hand. They were subject to false teachers who tried to lead them astray about who Jesus was in His very essence, this group that we have talked about before called the gnostics. In the end the gnostics ended up being ousted and leaving the church, probably with a number of the church members in tow. So here after the remnants are reminded of the importance of not trusting what every teacher who claims to hear from the Spirit of God says.

And that’s why John says here to “test the spirits” in stead of “test the teachers” or “test the prophets.” God tells us in His word, the Bible, that Ephesians 6:12

Ephesians 6:12 CSB

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.

So every battle is ultimately a spiritual battle. So for John when someone claims to speak on behalf of a spirit than you aren’t testing the person you’re testing the spirit. This is why he says in the next part of the sentence that the reason they need to test the spirits is because “many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

And if these false prophets weren’t sent by God than who were they sent by? Later in this passage John identifies them as being “from the world,” meaning that they teach the same thing as the world does about who Jesus is. John also tells us later in this letter that the whole world is under the sway of the evil one, meaning the devil or satan. So when someone claims to speak for God than we evaluate them as an act of spiritual warfare, determining whether their message is from God or from the evil one.

So then we should just as John’s original readers were cautioned make a habit of “testing the spirits.” Meaning that if someone claims to speak on behalf of God we shouldn’t just take their word for it. We should do what the Bereans did in Acts 17:11

Acts 17:11 CSB

The people here were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, since they received the word with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

They heard this new gospel and considered it based on what they knew about God’s word. We should do the same, especially if an idea is new and strange. We go to God’s word and ask “is this really what God said?” John of course doesn’t just tell his readers that they should test the spirits, but also provides the test necessary.

Jesus’ Identity

Illustration: Did you know that Jesus’ name was a pretty common name at the time? That’s why in Scripture they called him Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus so much that it eventually was used almost like a last name. What matters about Jesus isn’t His name itself, though it does have a significant meaning that God saves, but who Jesus is. His idenity. And in the first century when you referred to someone’s “name” often their identity as a whole was implied.

1 John 4:2–3 CSB

This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming; even now it is already in the world.

There’s a reason that John specifies a particular test that we should use when evaluating prophets. He knows what we all know inside, that if we were left to create our own test of who speaks truth than we would just go with whoever sounds best to us. We would follow our feelings and follow after teachers who tell us what we want to hear. That’s not the type of disciples that Jesus is calling. Jesus is calling disciples who follow after Him, and only after those teachers who teach accurately who Jesus is and what His will is for our lives.

So what’s the specific test that John gives for discerning between false prophets and those who really speak according to the spirit? What they teach about Jesus’ Identity. Here John’s specific issue is whether or not they acknowledge the fact that Jesus came in the flesh. This is probably in reaction as we talked about before to a group called the Gnostics. Among other things one of their teachings was that Jesus either only appeared to be a human being, or that the human Jesus was just inhabited by the Holy Spirit until His death and the resurrected Jesus was only spirit. So John has this heresy in mind and disqualifies them outright as speaking on behalf of God. But more are included when you consider John’s condition for those who are from God. That they confess Jesus Christ. Not specifically that He came in the flesh, but they confess Jesus Christ as a whole. Keep in mind that elsewhere in this letter John has said that those who deny that Jesus is the Messiah aren’t true disciples of Jesus, and those that deny that He is God aren’t speaking the truth. So he’s narrowing in on this one issue here, but broadly speaking the whole letter is concerned with the entire identity, or as the Greeks would say “name” of Jesus.

Anyone who teaches lies about who Jesus is then, according to John, is listening to the spirit of the antichrist. Remember we’ve talked about the antichrists before. While some connect John’s talk of an individual known as “the antichrist” with other predictions about an individual opponent of Jesus that would come at the end times, John’s main concern seems to be with the group of people in his present time who were against Jesus and teaching false things about who he was.

All this concern about accurately teaching who Jesus is reminds us of just how important it is to understand His identity. This is why some of the earliest and biggest meetings in the church were about the nature of the relationship between Jesus’ human and divine natures. It matters who Jesus is, because it effects the meaning of the gospel. If Jesus didn’t really come in the flesh, than how can we really say that He died for our sins and therefore saved us from them? How can we say that He in any meaningful sense was resurrected from the dead if He never had a physical body? And Paul explains that we are all fools to be pitied if the resurrection didn’t really happen!

So we should be dilligent students of Scripture, and know Jesus well. Maybe better than we know ourselves. We should make it our top priority to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus is God, and surely truly loving Him must mean really knowing Him as He is, not as some imagined person He really isn’t.

Conquering the World

Illustration: The board game risk?

1 John 4:4–6 CSB

You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world. Therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Anyone who knows God listens to us; anyone who is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

As disciples of Jesus in a way we’re sort of operating like agents dropped behind enemy lines. Except that we all started out on the side of the world, but now that our allegiance has become to the Kingdom of God, that sets us at odds with the world, which scripture says in its very nature hates God. Now keep in mind when we talk about our opposition to the world we’re speaking in generalities, and that the phrase the world represents the forces opposed to God’s kingdom. So we’re not supposed to view our friends and neighbors who don’t follow Jesus as our enemies, yet we know that the world and culture in general is opposed to us. So we need to know how to operate in this space according to God’s will.

So John having just explained the opposition that they face knows that they might very well be discouraged by the situation. Especially given that they had to endure these false teachers leading people astray and possibly even leading to a church split. They might be feeling overwhelmed and wondering why it seems like so many people are listening to these false prophets that seem to be teaching things so obviously contrary to the truth off the gospel. Perhaps knowing this is why John then turns to immediately reassuring them in the face of their opposition.

He refers to them again by one of his favorite terms of endearment, “little children,” and then reassure them that they have already conquered their adversaries. That’s past tense. It’s already done. The victory is ours already in Christ. That’s the main point of these verses, reassurance that as disciples of Jesus we are already on the winning side of this conflict.

Why? Why are we winning? Not because of us. Not because we’re so bright, or so kind, or so strong. We have conquered them “because greater is He who is in [us] than he who is in the world.” It’s God’s victory. How can we expect any less if we believe what John said at the end of Chapter three, namely that the very Spirit of God has been given to us. 1 John 3:24

1 John 3:24 CSB

The one who keeps his commands remains in him, and he in him. And the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit he has given us.

He has given us the Spirit. That’s why we win. So then the next question is, if we’ve already won than why does it so often feel as though we are losing? Why are so many in the world unconvinced or even opposed to the message of the gospel? Why do these false teachers successfully lead so many others astray?

John says it’s because they are from the world. Why wouldn’t the world like their message? They are telling them what they want to hear. Besides, we shouldn’t be surprised when another path is more popular than the one Jesus leads us down. Jesus Himself said it this way in Matthew 7:13-14

Matthew 7:13–14 CSB

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.

So we should expect the number of the true disciples of Jesus to be small. The fact that in recent history there was such an explosion of Christianity should be the crazy unexpected part. The fact that belief in Jesus is on the decline should be viewed as a return to the status quo. Even before Jesus the Old Testament frequently talked about the idea of a righteous remnant within Israel. The path has always been narrow and it always will be. We really shouldn’t expect anything different.

But Jesus also said in John 10:25-28

John 10:25–28 CSB

“I did tell you and you don’t believe,” Jesus answered them. “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify about me. But you don’t believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.

This sounds really similar to what John is saying in here about the world listening to them and those who belong to God listening to us. Remember that we aren’t the ones who save people, or really make people disiciples. It’s God who does the calling, the Holy Spirit that truly brings people to Him. Those who don’t listen to the gospel are the ones who are not His sheep metaphorically speaking.

Knowing these things changes the way that we view evangelism, or in other words making disciples, or in other words telling people the good news about Jesus’ death and resurrection. It should give us confidence because we know that we have already won the spiritual battle. God has defeated the evil one so we don’t need to go out in fear of being defeated by a spiritual enemy. Yet it should also give us a perspective of viewing making disciples as God’s work that we participate in. This should help us overcome the fear of rejection that sometimes comes with presenting the truth to others. There has to come a time when if you’ve done your part and shared the good news that you let go and let other people make their own decision about whether they will follow Jesus. A sort of parallel to the idea of “shaking the dust off your feet,” which is what Jesus told the disciples to do when they left a town that didn’t accept their message.

Conclusion

So what they have we learned from the apostle John today, and from the Holy Spirit who inspired him? Well we talked about the importance of discernment when it comes to those who claim to be from God, why it’s important to “test the spirits” so to speak. We learned why the greatest test of the spirits is what they say about the identity of Jesus, and why the identity of Jesus is so important. And finally we were reassured in the face of what looks like the success of the messages of false prophets that God has overcome the world and that those who belong to Him will hear the message and truly listen. Let’s reread the passage with those things in mind this morning.

1 John 4:1–6 CSB

When Jesus was living and serving others before the crucifixion there was a time when He sent out His disciples in pairs. It seems in retrospect like a sort of test-run for what they would be doing after the resurrection, which is imitating their master and calling people to repent because the Kingdom had come. When Jesus sent them out He advised them in Matthew 10:16

Matthew 10:16 CSB

“Look, I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.

I believe that Jesus’ advice is just as relevant for us today as the current disciples of Jesus. We need to be shrewd as serpents in carefully evaluating the messages that we hear and in avoiding unnecessary trouble, yet not liars lest we lose our dove like innocence. Knowing ultimately that the mission we have been sent on is God’s mission, and He will see it done.