According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): Today on According to the Scriptures, putting what we see and hear to the test.

Damian Kyle: Do not believe everything you see or everything that you hear or everything that you read concerning Jesus. There is a whole world of people out there who claim to speak for God and do not. Believe what the Bible says about him, what God says about him. Don't even believe what I say about him unless you can see it with your own eyes in the Bible passage that I am claiming to properly represent him from.

Guest (Male): Whether you're sitting in church, driving around listening to the radio, or scrolling through your newsfeed on social media, it's important to know not everything we're being fed is true. So we need to put it to the test.

Today on According to the Scriptures, Pastor Damian Kyle shows us how to test what we hear to determine if it's the spirit of truth or the spirit of error. We're in 1 John, chapter 4.

Damian Kyle: This morning, we continue our series through 1 John on Sunday morning, entitled Authentic Fellowship with God. In this section of John's letter, he makes it clear that one of the great threats to our relationship with God as Christians is false teaching, and that as a result, in a world that is absolutely jammed full of spiritual deception, we have to test every spirit for whether they are of God or not.

And while John addresses a lot, and he already has in the first three chapters of this letter, a lot of false doctrine, he really narrows his focus down to two particular specific false doctrines that he is addressing, false doctrines that were very prevalent in the early church. That's why he addresses them, but they're false doctrines that are quite prevalent even yet today.

There were some in terms of error number one. There were some that were teaching in that early church that the incarnation of Jesus into the world, taking on human flesh, being born into the world of a virgin, and this season that we celebrate right now, Jesus' birth into the world and into human history in this way, they rejected that.

And the reason that they rejected that, despite the clear teaching of the scriptures, is that they had the idea that all physical matter is bad. And so there is no way that a God would take on human flesh and enter into human history. And so they taught that Jesus did not come in human flesh. And so, again, fighting against what the scriptures teach and what the Bible teaches is true of Jesus for very good reason.

There were others that rejected Jesus' death and his resurrection, teaching that the Christ—Jesus is referred to as Jesus Christ—so they taught that the Christ was this divine influence that came from God and that rested on the man Jesus. And this Christ came upon the man Jesus at his water baptism by John the Baptist.

And then the Christ lifted off of him immediately prior to his crucifixion. And so Christ didn't actually suffer or die, and that Jesus' resurrection was not a physical one but a spiritual one. We'll see this morning that while John addresses those two doctrines—they can seem kind of obscure to us—but he addresses these two doctrines and he corrects them, these errors.

But he's really making a stand against all attempts and all endeavors to redefine Jesus away from how he is clearly presented in the scriptures. And so with the aim of inoculating us as Christians against these and other errors, he tells us in verse one, "Do not believe every spirit."

That word "every" is an interesting one because it tells us that there's more than one spirit that operates in the world that we live in. And it's true. There is the Holy Spirit who operates in the world all around us, that which happens in the world that has its origin in the Holy Spirit. There's also the human spirit, that which goes on in the world today that has its origin in fallen man. And then there's also demonic spirits that have their origin in Satan.

And all of this, of course, would be perfectly fine if all three voices were honest about which one of the three spirits they represented, but they aren't. The Holy Spirit always is, but the spirit of man and demonic spirits are not clear about the fact that when they come along and say, "Listen, I'm pretending to speak for God, but this is really something I've come up with on my own," or demons coming along and saying, "Well, really, this really doesn't have an origin in the Bible in terms of what it says about Jesus, but this is how us demons and how we like to speak of him."

The Holy Spirit, of course, is incapable of deception. And so the Bible teaches that not only will God never lie, but that he cannot lie. His character is incapable of lying. And so he has no need, he has no desire to deceive people. And not only because it would be contrary to his character, but unlike the other two spirits, he has no need to invoke anyone else in order to give his voice a greater legitimacy.

His voice is legitimate off the graph all on its own. So you never hear God coming to speak to us in any way and then trying to associate himself with some other voice in the world in order that we would give it legitimacy. But man will come along and he will bring his ideas, which do not deserve legitimacy, and he will try to attach them to the name of God and the person of God so that his or her views can have a legitimacy they don't deserve. And the devil does the same thing. And so they're deceptive related to it.

Now, in chapter three, verse 24, as we noticed last time—and remember there's no chapter or verse breaks in John's original letter—and so as he completed there that final sentence or two there in chapter three, verse 24, he mentions the Holy Spirit there that we as Christians are indwelt by God by the Holy Spirit who's been given to us as Christians at the moment of our spiritual birth.

And so the Holy Spirit, of course, is completely trustworthy. He's not beginning this correction here in chapter four, verse one because he's addressing something that comes from the Holy Spirit. He has just one verse prior commended the Holy Spirit without qualification, as well as the Holy Spirit's revelation to us through the apostles in the form of the New Testament scriptures that we have in our hands.

So John's not warning us here regarding the Holy Spirit, but he's not wanting us to believe the other two when they claim to speak for God or claim to speak concerning spiritual things. Of course, a demonic spirit is never to be believed, nor is what any mere man or human being comes up with on their own out of their own fallen intellect and imagination and then impose upon God as he's described in the Bible, and what the Apostle Paul described as profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

The problem in all of this is that if so many are falsely claiming to speak for God, to have God as the source of their claims and of their teaching, then how in the world do we recognize the Holy Spirit that we can safely trust and believe and differentiate him from the others who were plainly told not to believe? And so he tells us in verse one how we're to do that. He says we are to test the spirits whether they are of God.

Now, why in the world would John write to us as Christians—he's not writing to a pagan world, he's writing to us as Christians—why would he write to us as Christians, "Do not believe every spirit," except that we need the warning? I would guess that virtually every one of us in this room, by the time we reach adult life, that somebody has spoken these words of wisdom into our life: "Don't believe everything you hear."

And that is a great word of wisdom to have spoken into our lives, and the earlier the better. Very wise counsel, but it's even more important concerning the spiritual realm in life because the consequences there are eternal. I would guess that some of us might even remember when somebody first said that to our lives—spoke it into our lives: "Don't believe everything that you hear."

I think that if we are kind of self-aware at all, we really don't mind even as Christians being reminded of that fact. Don't believe everything that you hear, especially when we're confronted today as we are with so many lies in the public arena and privately. And I think we get a lifetime of lies spoken into our lives in the course of a single year, maybe in the course of a single month, in terms of just what the technology is capable of doing today—just the sheer amount of information that processes through our lives given modern technology and the delivery systems for those lies.

I don't believe anything I hear anymore. I just don't. I've gone Old Testament on this, and it's a New Testament truth as well: I want two eyewitnesses. So people will send me these videos or whatever on the thing, and I look at it and I say, "There's no way a cat can do that. There is no way a trapeze artist can do that," or whatever it might be. And we know there's just so much that's false out there that it behooves us to double-check on everything.

Now, when John tells us to test or to prove or examine the spirits here, the context is specifically someone claiming to speak for God, or someone claiming to teach for God, or claiming to teach about God. Sometimes you'll hear people say, especially about spiritual things or spiritual beliefs, they'll say something like, "It doesn't really matter what a person believes as long as they are sincere. Doesn't matter what anybody believes as long as they're sincere in their belief," which is complete nonsense. I mean, that is nonsense on a physical level, let alone on a spiritual level, an absolutely illogical and dangerous way to live.

It doesn't matter what side of the road you drive on as long as you're sincere in believing it doesn't make a difference. Doesn't matter whether you follow the prescribed dosage of a prescription drug you're taking as long as you're sincere in your belief that it doesn't matter. Now, sincerity is very important in life and very important on a spiritual level, but only after what we sincerely believe—this sincerity—has first been tested and found to be true. Sincerity is important, but it must be tested in order for it to be safe.

He tells us further in verse one that the reason we have to test the spirits is because—and "because" is a reason word—because many false prophets have gone out into the world. So allow me to apply this to anyone in the room today who is not yet a Christian: You've not yet trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. Do not believe everything you see or everything that you hear or everything that you read concerning Jesus. There is a whole world of people out there who claim to speak for God and do not.

Believe what the Bible says about him, what God says about him. Don't even believe what I say about him unless you can see it with your own eyes in the Bible passage that I am claiming to properly represent him from. Jesus warned in this regard. He said, "Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they're ravenous wolves. You'll know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?"

You notice there also in verse one that he uses the word "many" to describe the sheer number of these people that always exist in human history, claiming to speak for God and claiming to speak about God, but are false in that regard. And so "many" is a very alarming word in this regard. And John is basically telling us as Christians that they are everywhere and they are inescapable in life.

No Christian will navigate our Christian life, not 2,000 years ago, certainly not today, without coming across false teachers, false prophets, false things and claims being made about Jesus and on behalf of Jesus and on behalf of God the Father of the Bible. And so it's inescapable in life, and so we need to learn how to discern them.

He said and no one is to be believed simply because of their theological degrees or their theological education. Now, if you're going to teach error, if you're going to choose to misrepresent God the Father or misrepresent Jesus as he's clearly described in the scriptures, then you can no longer lean upon the authority of scripture to make your point because you've abandoned the scriptures in that regard.

So they will resort to other things in order to try and become persuasive in their false argument. And so no one is to be believed simply because of their theological education or degrees. And sometimes that can be used to intimidate or bully people into a position of not knowing what the scriptures clearly present because I don't have this degree or I don't have that degree. You remember the great kind of so-called experts in the law of Moses at the time of Jesus were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And Jesus declared to them that they were of their father the devil.

We're not to believe someone simply because of their great charismatic and forceful presence of personality and because of their smooth words. Or simply because of their claims to be inspired of God in their teaching. Just because someone says that God told them something or showed them something, we are not to believe them on that.

So we have to be careful as Christians that when somebody says, "Thus saith the Lord," or "The Lord told me," that is never the time to drop our guard in terms of about what it is they're going to say. Not only do I not lower my guard when somebody prefaces it that way—and you can preface it a lot of different ways, but now they're going to speak to me from God—I raise the standard now for how I'm going to test what it is they're about to tell me and claim that it comes from God.

Never believe anything another person says that is prefaced with "Thus saith the Lord" without testing it by the word of God. Those words don't automatically mean that what is going to be said is true. We're not to believe someone simply because they teach what they teach with tremendous passion or with tremendous conviction. There are people who adhere to Satan's lies in this world and possess a passion for those lies and a conviction regarding them that they're right, that would put the passion and the conviction of the average Christian concerning truth to shame.

And this is what we're up against. This is why trying the spirits is so important, because you can have people who are teaching error and they are not people who have stumbled into the error. They're not someone who can be readily talked out of or reasoned out of, even biblically, from the error that they have immersed themselves in. They are true believers.

They truly believe the error that they hold, and they do so with a demonic grip upon their minds and upon their lives. And they are as sincere in their beliefs, as wrong as they are, as disreputable as the origin of their beliefs, they believe them as much as they can believe in, so to speak. And so John speaks of them adhering to in verse three, the spirit of Antichrist. They're not harmless and they're dangerous to themselves and they're dangerous to others.

We're not to believe a spirit is of God even if the person can perform legitimate miracles as a confirmation and an attempt to provide a confirmation for the lie that they have told. It's important for everybody to realize, and not everybody does, that God is not the only one who performs miracles in the world at this time. Satan performs miracles as well.

He performed miracles through Pharaoh's magicians in the Book of Exodus in opposing Moses. Jesus warned that this kind of thing is going to become a worse and worse part of spiritual deception the closer and closer his return is. In Mark chapter 13, verse 22, Jesus declared, "For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. But take heed; see, I have told you all things beforehand." So he warns us to test all things.

Guest (Male): This is According to the Scriptures with our teacher and Pastor Damian Kyle. Don't believe everything you hear, see, or read. Test all things. That is the big takeaway from 1 John, chapter 4. With widespread deception in our day, these are words we need to hear and receive, and probably worth a second listen. You can do so at accordingtothescriptures.com.

If you're interested in a CD copy of today's message or the Authentic Fellowship with God series, give us a call. 209-545-5530. That's 209-545-5530. To financially support According to the Scriptures, simply log on to accordingtothescriptures.com and then click on the Support According to the Scriptures there on our homepage. And thank you very much for your partnership with us.

Well, it never grows old hearing from you, our listeners, and it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what he's doing on the radio. You can email us at atts@ccmodesto.com. Include your prayer requests as well. That's atts@ccmodesto.com. According to the Scriptures with Damian Kyle is presented by Calvary Chapel Modesto. We'll catch you back here next time when we'll get back to our series, Authentic Fellowship with God.