As careful Christians, we must assess the information we hear about God by comparing it to God’s revealed word, so that we know whether the source is reliable.

Well, I was talking to a friend one time about spiritual matters. She was an actress alongside me in a play that I was in. And this was many years ago. And she was telling me about how she was part of the Unitarian Universalist group that was in town. If you’re not familiar, Unitarian means that God is a single entity. They chose this word to directly oppose the Trinitarian view of God as the Bible teaches. Universalist means that every view and belief about God is legitimate. There are many, many ways to know and approach God. Whatever you believe is just fine by them. And their view of Jesus was that he was greatly influenced by God and was therefore a deeply spiritual person, as we should all strive to be, but that he was not God incarnate. Now, since I knew this was where my friend was coming from, I knew our conversation on spiritual matters would not last long. Not because I was unwilling to kindly talk to her about her beliefs, but because I knew the moment that I began to steer the conversation toward any kind of true false statements about God, she would become uncomfortable and skeptical of me. You see, the only way that universalism works is if no one is wrong about any belief they hold. Okay. That’s how it works. And they have to be able to hold that belief without making a case for it, without arguing for it.

And the moment someone says, I hear you, but where do you get your information? I don’t think that’s what God is like at all. As soon as you say that, universalism crumbles, can’t stand up to scrutiny. And just as I thought, my friend made some statements about God’s love and how Jesus is the perfect example of how God loves all people without agenda, regardless of what we believe, and I simply asked her where she got her information about Jesus and she said, it’s complicated and quickly shut the whole conversation down. Now, I mentioned this brief conversation as a tiny example of a pattern that you will find in every corner of the world and throughout all of human history, all the way back to the Garden of Eden. There are plenty of people who will gladly teach you their understanding of God. Lots of people will teach you their understanding of God. Now, that’s not a bad thing. I’m doing that right now. Okay. It’s not a bad thing. Discipleship is built on sharing about God. God’s word instructs us to pass truth about God onto other people. But it is very, very important for all of us to understand that the messages we hear about the character and nature of God are not always true facts from trusted sources. There are plenty of people who would gladly share information with you about God, information that they will present as true, but may not be accurate at all.

And I feel comfortable saying that thanks to technology, this has never been a bigger problem in human history than it is right now. Okay. This is bigger than probably it’s ever been. I mean, from the Garden of Eden all the way to like 1992. Okay. You could read some misleading books, or you could listen to a misleading teacher, you could have some bad influences in your life. But as soon as the internet became a thing, everyone who has ever had something to say to you about God now has the ability to say it directly to you. Who are these people? Who knows? Right? They’re just out there. Where do they get their information? Probably from other people on the internet. Right. And it’s only gotten worse. Right now, every single one of us has a machine in our pockets that we will spend hours staring at this week, that is filled with people who will gladly tell you who God is, how life works, and what you should value. Now, I’m not anti-technology, I’m not anti-internet or anything like that. We just need to be aware that false teaching and spiritual misleading has unprecedented access to our minds and hearts. And today in our passage, John is going to teach us how to test the spirits. That’s his phrase. Test the spirits. He’s going to help us discern between true information about God and falsehood that leads us away from God.

And he’s going to do that by showing us how to listen for the spiritual source that is behind the information. As careful Christians, we must assess the information that we hear about God by comparing it to what God has revealed about himself so that we know whether the source is reliable. There’s a lot in our passage today. So let’s get started here. We’re in First John chapter four, verse one. I’m going to frame our time this morning around three questions. What does it mean to test the spirits? What do we listen for? And who do we listen to? Let’s start with that first question. What does it mean to test the spirits? Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. So you’ll remember at the end of chapter three, John said that the spirit that God has given us, the Holy Spirit’s presence within us, is the way we know that we abide. It’s the sign to know that we abide with God or that we are connected to God. So the Holy Spirit’s work in your heart that leads to conviction of your sin and trust in the in the saving power of Jesus, that is evidence of your relationship with God. And that evident relationship should lead you to confidence.

You shouldn’t be walking around worried about your life or scared of what God thinks. You shouldn’t be afraid of what’s out there in the world that might harm you. Christians are not built to shrink in fear. Okay. That confidence is rooted in the objective spiritual reality that the Holy Spirit now resides in you. But the Holy Spirit is not the only spiritual entity. We’re told throughout Scripture that there is a demonic force that inhabits our world. It’s led by Satan, our enemy. It’s filled with demons who act as soldiers in an army designed to attack God’s creation, particularly people. And this army’s goal is to try to take worship away from God and redirect it to Satan, who acts as a kind of false god for this world. God has allowed Satan, with his sovereign plan to exercise some power and influence over humanity. Now, why God allows this is a very big question, and it is beyond the scope of our passage this morning. But I will just say very briefly that in God’s plan to redeem his church and bring us all under the kingship of Christ, he uses evil for his greater purposes. God uses or allows it and uses it for his greater purposes. This is why Peter can preach in the streets of Jerusalem after the resurrection of Jesus, and they are filled with the Holy Spirit. He can stand in the streets and preach this. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. See, God used it. This is why God can allow Satan to test Job in the Old Testament, taking everything from him to prove that his faith will last. That’s why Paul can say that God gave him a messenger of Satan to harass him, to keep him from becoming conceited. Now God is not battling Satan in a war as if there equals. God has already defeated Satan. He defeated him on the cross. But God is allowing demonic forces of this world to have some influence. Because through those influences, God is bringing about the greater good of those who trust in Christ. In a whole section on the power of the Holy Spirit sustaining us through suffering, in Romans chapter eight, Paul says, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. So, when Jesus came, he defeated Satan. And he described his ministry as coming to bind the strong man and plunder his house. So Jesus came into the world to tie up Satan, to throw him into the front yard, and then to go into the house and take back all of God’s stuff, specifically us. People. Jesus says Satan will no longer have you. He’s not going to influence you anymore. Your mine.

I’m filling you with my spirit so that those evil spirits can no longer reside in you and have power over you. And that’s what’s been happening for 2000 years now. That’s what’s been happening as the gospel has spread across the world through faith in Christ, human hearts and minds are set free, and they’re filled with the Holy Spirit who unites us with God. So what we have now in the world are two types of people. Despite all of our differences in culture and location and skin color and language, there’s only one distinction that really matters. Those who are set free by Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit, and those who are in bondage to Satan and influenced by demonic spirits. And this is the context, okay? This is the context in which John this morning tells us as believers, to test the spirits. He’s telling us to remember the spiritual reality of the world around us, and recognize that Satan has been given some of this permission. Some authority to move and act. And so we have to test the spirit so that we can discern between those things that are coming from the Holy Spirit and those things that are evil. Now, what does this test look like? Okay. What do you actually do? How do you test? I mean, it sounds very Halloween, doesn’t it? You know, is there a seance involved? Is this the plot of The Exorcist.

Like those are the things that come to mind, a lot of times, when we think about spiritual engagement, right? Testing the spirits. It’s mostly Hollywood. It’s actually far more simple than that. But before I show you, let me just encourage you to avoid all the nonsense that often gets packed into phrases like test the spirits. The only instruction that we are given in Scripture anywhere for engaging with demons is to denounce them in Jesus name. That’s it. That’s the only instruction we’re given. Jesus sent out 72 missionaries, right. Into Israel. And they came back to him and they reported back. And they said, even the demons are subject to us in your name, Jesus. And Jesus said, you know what? That’s great guys. I saw Satan defeated. That was great. Saw him fall from heaven like lightning. But don’t rejoice in your authority over demons. He says, rejoice because your name is written in heaven. That’s what you should be concentrating on. We’re not told to do anything with the demonic world other than to preach the gospel, to pray for God’s power to overcome evil, and on rare occasions demand demonic presence be gone in Jesus name. So don’t be misled into what I’ll call demon hysteria that sometimes grips the parts of the church. People get all caught up in identifying demons and naming demons and marking the territory of demonic presence. None of that is in the Bible, okay? None of that is in the Bible.

It’s not instructed to us. It’s not even described to us in that terms. That’s not what testing the spirits means. Testing the spirits requires exactly two skills. Okay. Two skills. Listening carefully and weighing. That’s it. That’s the whole process for the test. Look carefully here at what John says. As soon as he tells us to test the spirits, he then warns us that many false prophets have gone out into the world. So he doesn’t say, watch out for the spirits. He says, watch out for the people. The dangerous spirits are embodied in the false prophets, just like the Holy Spirit now resides with Christians. And so to test the spirits means simply to listen to these people and weigh their messages against God’s revealed truth. Okay. And you’ll know whether a message is coming from the Holy Spirit or from a demonic spirit, based on whether it aligns with what Jesus has revealed to us and through the apostles. Right. Like John himself here, as we’re going to see in just a minute. I think it’s worth noting that even in the first century. Okay. Even in the first century, John has already seen that there are many false prophets in the world. I mean, the church just got started and all of a sudden there’s false prophets. And he’s saying there’s lots of them all over the place.

Sammy and I have been going to college visits lately to figure out where he wants to go. And we were walking through one big campus. You know, it’s in a downtown setting. So the campus in the city are kind of intermingled together. And we were passing a bunch of church buildings, and it was sad for me to keep saying over and over again, well, you’re not going to want to go there. Oh you’re not, you want to avoid that place. You don’t want to go. You’re not going to want to go. I know that looks like a church. You’re not going to want to go to that place because there’s so many denominations that have abandoned the authority of Scripture so long ago, right? That they don’t even they don’t even teach the Bible. What did they teach in there? Whatever they want, wherever the wind of culture drives them, whatever tickles the ears of the people, that’s what they teach. False prophets, false teaching, errant theology, mishandling of the Bible. It is everywhere throughout our world, and churches have not been exempt to that. So I want to just talk to you young people, some of you getting ready to maybe head out into the world. Let me just tell you something. You need to, you gotta get ready to pick a church, right? Please, please remember that not everything that calls itself a church is a church. Okay? Just because that’s what the sign says doesn’t mean that’s what’s happening in there.

Use the people you know here at Calvary to help you find a good church in the place that you’re going to so that you can find a true church community that you can trust. What do we listen for? Okay. What do we listen for to determine whether we are hearing from the Holy Spirit or not? Well, that’s our next question. By this, you know, the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. You know, I love it when the Bible tells me how to know something very clearly, very plainly. And here’s is what it says here. Here’s how you discern between the Spirit of God and the spirit that is Antichrist or against Christ. You listen. You listen to the message. Does it align and support and accurately explain the gospel, or does it change and undermine the gospel? Does it match up with God’s plan of redemption? Or is it offering you another plan of redemption? Notice how John says that each of these spirits points back to Jesus. You see that? Each spirit offers a message about who Jesus is. One says, Jesus Christ entered our world in the flesh.

Meaning he became a human being. The other spirit does not confess Jesus, which in this context would mean that Jesus was not fully human or that he didn’t come into the world at all. Now, I probably don’t have to tell you that if Jesus didn’t come into the world at all, then there is no plan of redemption. There’s not one. There wouldn’t even be Christianity. It would be very hard to explain our presence here this morning if there was no historical Jesus. But more likely, more likely what’s happening here is that the group that left John’s church was teaching that Jesus was not fully human and only appeared to be so. Now it’s very hard for us to know why they would teach this, because we don’t have their argument. We don’t have their explanation of things. That movement didn’t last at all. But if Jesus was not fully human, then he cannot be a substitute sacrifice for our sins. And then the entire gospel is undermined if Jesus wasn’t fully a man. Because the cross makes no sense. In fact, he wouldn’t be able to die on it. The resurrection would then not be a miracle at all. And there is no offer of forgiveness to us from God if our sins haven’t been paid for by Jesus. What’s left, if you remove his humanness, what’s left of the gospel? Nothing, really. You know, sometimes I hear people say that doctrine doesn’t matter.

You ever hear that before? People go, oh, you know, we don’t want to get all caught up in doctrine. Doctrine doesn’t matter. Only love matters. That itself, by the way, would be a doctrine. But that aside. Right. They say they don’t like doctrine, right? I don’t hear that very much around Calvary here because we’re a pretty astute church. But in some Christian circles, that’s the vibe. I’d say that doctrine is pretty close to the only thing that matters. It’s pretty close. What can we say about God without sound doctrine? Nothing, really. We can’t. Every piece of scripture illuminates some aspect of God that is vital for us to understand God’s nature and his character and his plan. This is why the church leaders got together in the year 451. Okay. 451 they got together to form the Council of Chalcedon, and they searched the scriptures carefully to figure out the best way to describe Jesus. And what they came up with, based on what Scripture says, is that Jesus had two natures. He was fully God and he was fully human. They determined Jesus is, quote, perfect both in deity and in humanness. This selfsame one is also actually God and actually man. Again, this isn’t just something they decided. They didn’t come together and go, hey, how do we want to talk about Jesus? They got together and said, what do the scriptures say? And how can we best encapsulate what Scripture describes Jesus to be? And while that is mysterious in one way that Jesus would have two natures, it’s revealing in another way. We can more fully understand how God can take our place with Jesus two natures. Without losing his deity, he added humanity, making him the only one who can both receive death and conquer death. Anyone who would come to us saying that Jesus is not fully human destroys Christianity. It nullifies the gospel. But now you might be thinking, but Kyle, I don’t know anybody today who struggles with this view of Jesus. You’d be right. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anybody who struggled with this view of Jesus. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered the heresy of Monophysitism. That’s a fun word, right? Write it down. Work it into a sentence later this week. Monophysitism. That’s right. It’s the belief that Jesus only had one divine nature that’s not big on TikTok. There’s not, I don’t recall any Monophysitism influencers out there ravaging the consciences of Christians everywhere. Right. But what John says here can be applied more broadly because it’s not just about this one heretical teaching. It’s a principle. He’s giving us a principle. See, what we have to do is we have to ask, what are the confessions about Christ today that undermine the gospel and indicate that the message doesn’t come from the Holy Spirit? What are we dealing with today? And it’s interesting to me that the popular heresy of our day is actually the opposite of John’s day.

The message of our culture is to humanize Jesus and remove his deity. Like my Unitarian friend. The popular way to treat Jesus today is to remove his deity and to turn him into a kind of heightened spiritual man. He’s an example for us to look to, but not a god to be worshiped. Some build on this by, on this sort of human Jesus, by saying that Jesus only showed us a particular way to God, but not the exclusive way to know God. And this has been a very popular way of seeing Jesus in our culture for a pretty long time. This has been preached from many sources who claim to be authoritative in our culture. I know it’s been a few decades now, but Oprah Winfrey has been saying that there are many paths to whoever we call God for a long time. And I know she doesn’t have quite as big a voice today, but they’re there. Her spirituality has spawned hundreds of copycats all throughout media. There are lots of people who speak this way. See, if Jesus is just a man, then he doesn’t have anything more to offer than any other man. And then this allows me, in my mind, to have any view of Jesus I like, without any consequences for how I see him.

And that’s the preferred spirituality of our culture, isn’t it? To have my own beliefs, my own way of thinking, but without any consequences. When we hear messages like this church, we must listen and weigh carefully what we hear against what God has revealed. Because demonic spiritual presence perpetuating errors through false prophets is still a tactic that Satan uses today. He’s used it since the garden. And as I said earlier, it’s never been a more effective strategy in our culture. So who do we listen to? Who do we listen to? This is our final question. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world. Therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Well, I know that I’ve set up a pretty scary scenario here this morning. Demonic spirits influencing false teachers who broadcast misleading messages about God could be a recipe for fearful Christians shrinking into isolation, getting away from the world as much as we can. In some parts of the church, that’s exactly what they do. If you grew up with a lot of very strict boundaries and tight controls on what you were allowed to see and hear, your family probably erred on the side of isolation from the world.

But the Bible doesn’t tell us to retreat or to isolate. It tells us to engage with the world around us boldly for Christ. So how do we do that without falling prey to false teachers who are peddling an errant gospel? We do that by making sure that we listen to the right sources, and that we do it so well that when the time comes to discern truth from error, we are ready to do that. First of all, first of all, John says, remember. Remember the God who is in you by his indwelling Holy Spirit is greater than the demonic world around you. If God has transformed you in Christ, you are his. He owns you. He has you. You should watch out for false teaching, but you don’t need to fear it. Okay, God has equipped each one of us with everything we need to discern truth from error. Everything we need. The gospel hasn’t changed, okay? The message of the gospel has not changed. So when someone presents us with a gospel that seems to have changed, we’ll know that we’re looking at a counterfeit, because the Holy Spirit will make that clear to us in that moment. I love how John starts this section. Little children, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. Stick with the Holy Spirit. Remember the gospel you were taught.

And relax. Relax. No one is taking you from God because you belong to him. Okay, now, from that relaxed position, what do we do? Well, first, here’s what the false teachers will sound like. He says they are from the world. They speak from the world, and the world listens to them. The world, the word world here is short for ungodly false spirituality that John is warning us against. And, and what we know is that false information about God is usually widely palatable. Okay. People like it. People want it. If I hear a way of describing God that is very popular and is accepted by the masses, I’m on my guard for false teaching. I am. Because somewhere, somewhere in that very, very popular view of God, the one that calls the gospel, that calls me to come and die for the sake of Christ, the one that demands my soul allegiance to Jesus. Somewhere that gospel has been shaved and manipulated into something that is less than biblical, because those who speak from the world, John says, appeal to the world. The world wants a God that caters to their desires. So if the message about God aligns with worldly values, even if it sounds like someone used a little bit of Bible to kind of pepper it in there and make it sound a little bit Christian, right? I’m asking questions if I hear that. That’s the negative on who to listen to.

Okay. Be on guard for that sort of false gospel. But here’s the positive. Here’s who we should listen to. John says we are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. Now, there could not be a more arrogant statement on the surface, right? Can you imagine a more arrogant statement than this? If I said this, if I said, you know, people who follow God, listen to me. You’d rightly find a different church, right? It’s like no one could just boldly state this. But remember, we have to remember as we read that, that John is an apostle. He’s an apostle. He was given the authority by Jesus to establish the church. Church recognized apostolic authorship as one of the criteria for the inspired scriptures, just like the prophets of the Old Testament. That’s why the writings of the apostles make up our New Testament. So when John says, listen to us, and if you follow God, you will listen to us. He’s not just being arrogant. He doesn’t think he’s the most important person. And he’s not saying that he has a superior gospel. He’s saying he has the gospel that came from Jesus, and he was given authority to share this. For the for the church today, we have the same instruction. Okay. The source of our authority has not changed from this, this first century, the way we listen to John and the other apostles and the prophets who were filled with the spirit today, is to read their spirit inspired writings.

In Second Peter, the apostle Peter wrote, no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man. But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. He’s not saying that no prophecy is ever produced by the will of man. He knows there’s false prophets out there. He knows that people make stuff up all the time. He’s well aware of that. He’s saying no prophecy of Scripture was produced that way. Now Peter spends most of that letter warning against false prophecy and errant gospels, just like John is doing here in our passage today. And the instruction is exactly the same. If you want to avoid the lies, you have to know and remember the truth of God’s Holy Spirit-inspired Scripture and church. That’s why we study the Bible so much here. That’s why we look at it so carefully. It’s why we’re always together, looking at it so often. It’s not just because we want to know what God has said. It’s so we know lies when we hear them. It’s so that we can hear the falsehood that presents itself as truth, the foolishness that that acts like wisdom, the demonic that masquerades as the Holy Spirit. There is truth from the Holy Spirit that God wants us to walk in, so that we don’t fall prey to the errors that hurt and mislead us.

And I want to encourage us, as a church this morning, to be much more discerning than we usually are. I think we’re a pretty discerning church, but I want to encourage you to be more discerning. And I’m talking about the church in general now here. I don’t think the American church in general is as discerning as it ought to be. And I say that because of the large amounts of popular level books and podcasts and online personalities that find an audience in the evangelical church. And it seems like every year there’s something that everyone is reading that turns out to be subtly heretical. You know, and we’re like, oh boy, now we got to deal with that. We as a whole church can help discern in some ways, but we can’t assess everything. Usually the only things that we can address as a whole church are the things that rise to really mass appeal. But we can’t watch every YouTube video together. Okay, I don’t got time for that. We can’t do that. Your pastors can’t analyze the lyrics of every song or talk through every piece of advice or every comment you ever receive from someone who claims to be a spiritual person. So what we need then is for every follower of Jesus at Calvary to be discerning about the spirit of error that we know to be out there.

We know what John is saying is true. So we are aware of the things that are out there, the Antichrist spirit that works through false messages and false gospels. We know that that is happening. And so I want to encourage us church, to take seriously what John is saying here. Be on your guard. If something doesn’t sound biblical to you, it probably isn’t. If your spidey sense is tingling a little bit and you’re thinking, that doesn’t sound quite right, it’s probably not quite right. If something sounds like a new twist on the Bible, something that no one has ever discovered and now this guy is taking us in a new direction. Remember? I just want to remind you that the youngest book of the Bible is 2000 years old. Okay, we’ve had it for a little time at this point. People have studied this book really, really carefully. We stand on the shoulders of giants who have carefully studied the word. So some guys new prophetic take is not the Holy Spirit. It’s a spirit, just not the Spirit of God. And study the word church. Study it, read it, work through it with trusted sources, meditate on it. Pray it back to God. As you’re reading, pray it back to God. Know it inside and out so that when the false teaching comes, it’ll be obvious to you and you can engage it with truth as we are called to. Would you pray with me?

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