Let’s take our Bibles and turn together to 1 John 4:1-6. For the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at different tests that John administers in this book that help us discern the genuineness of our faith: 1) The Obedience Test, 2) The Doctrinal Test, 3) The Love Test, and last week we looked at 4) The Holy Spirit Test. These are tests that help us determine whether or not we have saving faith. 

Well today we are going to complexify our discussion about tests by looking at a different kind of test… the spirit test, “lower-case s” spirit test. I say complexify, because we are not looking today at a test to determine the genuineness of our faith, but instead a test to determine the genuineness of the spirits that are influencing us in this world. Is it the Holy Spirit or is it a lying spirit? 

Because of this uncertainty among many Christians, John gives this command in verse 1, “Test the spirits.” 

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

And as always, this is not a command that is just randomly stated by John, it derives from its context. Last week we looked at chapter 3, verse 24, where John wrote, “And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.” So we know that we are Christians because we have the Holy Spirit abiding within us. But how do we discern the voice of the Spirit from other “spirits” that hold sway over our hearts? That’s the question that John is addressing here.

How do we discern between the “capital-S” Spirit inside of us and the other, untrustworthy “lower-case-s” spirits in our world? This is a very practical question for us. Is this the Spirit of truth or it a spirit of error? Is this the Spirit that leads us into righteousness or is it a spirit of deception? We’ve got to figure that out otherwise we’ll be moved and swayed hither and yon by “spirits,” and we’ll become spiritually exhausted.  

I remember playing baseball as a kid, and baseball is one of those sports that’s wonderful for kids to play. You learn teamwork. You learn fundamentals of eye-hand coordination. It’s really a beautiful game for youngsters, that unfortunately gets ruined sometimes by coaches and parents that take it too serious. 

Well I remember my baseball coach would bring in these “experts” to teach us to bat or pitch or whatever, and one of these “experts” pulled me aside and said, “Tony, don’t listen to anything your coach tells you about baseball. He doesn’t know anything. Listen to me. I’ll tell you what to do.” And I remember that created a lot of confusion in me as a young person. Do I listen to you, or do I listen to him? Who’s in charge, and who knows “the truth” about baseball? 

And I get the sense that a lot of Christians fall into similar quandaries. Who should I listen to? This internet preacher says this; that internet preacher says something else. This spiritual guru is saying something different entirely. And the world is telling me something else. Who should I listen to? 

 This was a real issue in the church that John was writing to. The proto-gnostics are telling them one thing, and John’s telling them something else. Who should they listen to? 

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Go ahead and write this down as a first point from our message today:

In this fallen world, Christians need to discern…

1) truth from anti-truth (4:1) 

The reality is, church, that there are very real spiritual forces in this world vying for the attention of saints and sinners both…believers and unbelievers, both. Last week I told you we are at war, and this is part of that war. And it’s a war that’s not fought on physical battlefields, but among the principalities of the air. 

Paul writes, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).

And because this war is raging, John doesn’t want you to be caught unaware or unprepared. And he doesn’t want you to be swayed by very persuasive forces in this world. So he says in 4:1, 

1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, 

This is one of the few places in the Bible where faith is a bad thing. In fact John says emphatically “Do not believe.” “Do not believe every spirit!” In his commentary on 1 John, John Stott, writes, “Unbelief (do not believe every spirit) can be as much a mark of spiritual maturity as belief. We should avoid both extremes, 1) the superstition which believes everything and 2) suspicion which believes nothing.”

1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but…

Here comes an imperative. Here comes a command from John. 

test the spirits to see whether they are from God, 

David Allen writes, “The Greek word translated ‘test’ here was commonly used in the first century for the testing of metals to see if they were unalloyed and genuine.” This is part of your duty as a Christ-follower. This is part of your combat-training in the army of the Lord. Test the spirits! 

You might say, “Why?” “Why do I have to test the spirits to see if they are from God?” Well, because look at the end of verse 1. 

… many false prophets have gone out into the world. 

In other words many sinister, spiritual forces have gone out into the world to persuade people away from the truth. So don’t be gullible, Christian. Don’t be naïve about the world that we live in. Don’t be persuaded by every nice sounding argument and interesting philosophy even if it’s cloaked in spiritual garb. There are forces in this world that are actively trying to deceive you. 

That doesn’t mean that we have to be paranoid. The opposite of gullibility isn’t paranoia! It’s wisdom. It’s discernment. So be discerning, Christian! 

When Sanja and I lived in Chicago, I worked at Soldier Field, where the Chicago Bears play. I worked as an accountant, and one of my tasks was to oversee the cash collection at the stadium. And after some games, we would collect over a million dollars cash. And it was mostly small bills, so there would be stacks and stacks of cash that we would count up and store for the bank to come collect at the end of the night. And I worked with a group of bankers, mostly women, who were quite good at counting cash. They were fast. And they could count tens of thousands of dollars in an hour. And I was struggling to just do my part. And one of the things we had to do was pull out any counterfeit bills that we found before they went to the bank. And I would marvel at how these women could find counterfeit bills. In a big stack of cash, they could find the one or two counterfeits in that stack.

How did they do that? Well it wasn’t that they had taken hours and hours of training on how to spot counterfeits. They had worked with cash their whole lives, so they knew the real thing. They knew the look of the real thing. They knew the smell of the real thing. They knew the contours and the texture of real US currency, so they could spot fakes. 

Now similarly you might say, “How do I spot deceiving spirits in this world, Tony? Should I take a class on spiritual warfare? Should I learn about cults and false religions and try to discern the false spirits in this world?” Sure, if that’s helpful. Go for it. 

But you know what’s better than that? Get to know the truth as best you can. Eat, sleep, and breathe the truth of God’s Word, and then you’ll be able to spot a counterfeit. Fall in love with truth. Cozy up as close as you can to God and his revealed Word, and then you’ll be able to spot a counterfeit. 

I remember hearing John Piper say once that he was able to spot the foolishness of higher criticism and reader response criticism and other hermeneutically errant interpretational principles in seminary and elsewhere, just because he had spent most of his young life studying the Bible. And much of that study was done under the tutelage of his mom and dad. If you know what a real diamond looks like, if you are familiar with real diamonds, you know how to spot a fake. 

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Now John’s going to give you an example of how to spot a counterfeit from his own context in verses 2-3. And it has to do with something that was a great danger in the church of the late first century AD. And we’ve talked about this already. 

John was the last living apostle of his day. All the other disciples were dead and gone. And a generation or so after Christ’s death, there were no living witnesses of Christ’s resurrection left other than John… so false teaching that Jesus wasn’t really human started to gain traction. The deity of Christ wasn’t questioned, but the humanity of Christ was questioned. 

We typically have the opposite problem in our day, i.e. the deity of Christ is questioned, not the humanity. Everyone believes that Jesus was a human being. So it’s not Jesus’s humanity that comes under fire in our day, it’s his deity. It was the opposite in John’s day. They believed in Jesus’s deity, but they didn’t believe he was fully human.

So because of this doctrinal error, John starts his book saying, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1). That right there, 1 John 1:1, was a direct assault on the proto-gnostics in John’s day who were saying, “Jesus was some kind of divine, phantom being that never really incarnated into human flesh. He just kind of floated down here, and then floated back up to heaven.” These were the false prophets promoting a false spirit in John’s day. This was the kind of stuff that John was warning his people about. He’s saying, “Don’t believe everything you hear! Test these things to see if they are genuinely from God.”

And then, very practically, look at verse 2, John gives them the test.

2 By this you know the Spirit [capital-S Spirit] of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 

“O Jesus just appeared to take on human flesh.” “O Jesus just appeared to suffer on the cross.” “O Jesus was just a phantom-being that floated from heaven to earth and back again.” NO! NO! NO! John says clearly that Jesus was fully human. In fact, he will be fully human for eternity. That is the permanent state of the second person of the Trinity. He is fully God! And fully Man!

This is what theologians refer to as the “Hypostatic Union.” Put that in your rolodex of theological terms and use it in the future. The Hypostatic Union is the union of Christ’s humanity and deity in one hypostasis (hypostasis is the Greek word for “subsistence”), or individual existence. Kevin DeYoung defines it this way, “The hypostatic union, therefore, is the technical term for the unipersonality of Christ, whereby in the incarnation the Son of God was constituted a complex person with both a human and a divine nature.” 

John affirms Jesus’s humanity in this passage. And by the way, John also affirms Jesus’s deity in this passage. Jesus here is called the Messiah, the Christ. He’s the anointed one. And John says he has “come in the flesh.” He came in the flesh, so he came from something! He came from his eternal state as the Son of God. 

John says also, He “is from God.” Everyone see that at the end of verse 2? So Christ is human, but he’s more than human. He’s fully God. He’s fully man and fully God. This is the Hypostatic Union that we affirm as Christians. 

And you might say, “Well what about those people who deny the Hypostatic Union, Pastor Tony? Should we be friends with them? Should we welcome them to our churches as brothers-in-Christ?” 

Well look at verse 3.

3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus [that is does not confess Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and is from God] is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. 

So let’s go back to the earlier question: Should we welcome antichrist thinking into our church? Should we? Should we say, “O you believe in Jesus. I believe in Jesus. I believe Jesus came in the flesh. You don’t?” “toe-may-toe… toe-mah-toe.” Is that what we should do? No! We can’t do that.

I know this is kind of sad, but when people say they believe in Jesus, you almost have to ask them a follow up question. Do they believe in the Jesus of the Bible, or do they believe in a “Jesus of your own creation”? And that predicament isn’t just a twenty first century thing, John had to deal with this.

“Ok. You say you believe in Jesus. You say you’re a Christian. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but do you believe the truth about Jesus? I don’t mean to be rude; I just need you to clarify. Because as the Bible says, ‘we need to test the spirits.’” “The Bible has given me this command, so I have to do it.” 

Write this down in your notes as #2. Christians need to discern truth from anti-truth, but they also need to discern Christ from antichrist. 

In this fallen world, Christians need to discern…

2) the Spirit of Christ from the spirit of the antichrist (4:2-3)

Now remember, the goal of this is wisdom and discernment not paranoia. So it shouldn’t shock you or terrify you that there are antichrists in this world, or more particularly the “spirit of the antichrist” in this world. We’ve talked about antichrists already in 1 John. There will be at some point in the future a world-ruling antichrist that will be terrifying and the embodiment of pure evil. But as we’ve seen already in 1 John, anti-Christs and anti-Christian doctrine have already come into our world and have been here for a long time. And the spirit of the antichrist is countered by the Holy Spirit, and we’ve got to discern between the two. 

So when you do come across “a spirit of the antichrist,” don’t freak out and head for the hills. There’s an opportunity there for dialogue and clarification. Maybe even an opportunity to share the truth with a person who’s confused and seeking. Right? 

But here’s the key. You can’t offer them the right hand of fellowship as a fellow believer. Does that make sense? You can’t do that. And elders in the church need to be vigilant—not paranoid, but vigilant—that the right doctrines and the right “spirits” (if I can use that word) are being heeded in the church. That’s part of our shepherding task.

I was listening to a podcast a while back, Al Mohler’s “The Briefing,” and Mohler mentioned that a major lobbying group with atheists, humanists and other nonbeliever member organizations has hired a Christian as its new executive director. A man named Larry Decker, a confessing Christian, is now the executive director of “The Secular Coalition for America.” But come to find out, Decker was just raised Christian. He doesn’t believe in the tenets of Christianity. He doesn’t believe the Bible. He doesn’t believe any of it, but he still retains the designation “Christian.” Mohler calls Decker “one of those kinds of Christians that doesn’t believe in Christianity.” Try to wrap your head around that nonsense. 

I think we’ve reached a point in our nation’s history that the word “Christian” is so doctrinally ambiguous that it doesn’t mean anything. Or at least, it has to be deciphered according to context. This is the world that we live in now, and genuine Christians, genuine born-again followers of Christ, can’t afford to be gullible or undiscerning. We need to be wise. And we need to “test the spirits” of our day.. 

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And as part of that, write this down as #3. 

In this fallen world, Christians need to discern…

3) orthodoxy from heterodoxy (4:4-6)

Truth/anti-truth. Christ/anti-Christ. Orthodoxy/heterodoxy.

Orthodoxy means “right belief” or “right thinking.” Heterodoxy means, “other belief” or “other thinking.” Another word for heterodoxy is heresy. Heretical doctrine taught by heretics is heresy or heterodoxy.

Now as we look to 1 John 4:4-6, here’s how John discusses these matters. What follows here in verse 4-6 are statements about “you”, “they”, and “we.” Does everyone see that in your Bibles? Just look at these verses with me. 

Verse 4 says “you.” “Little Children, you.” And by that, John is referencing true believers in the church. And he’s not being patronizing here, by calling us “little children.” He’s not being patronizing; he’s being pastoral as an elderly, loving apostle who’s concerned about his flock. 

And in verse 5 he says “they.” So there’s “you” and then there’s “they.” You are the genuine believers who have the true Holy Spirit living in you. They are the unbelievers who are promoting false spirits. And they are from the world. 

So there’s “you” and there’s “they” and then there’s “we.” Look at verse 6. Who’s the “we” of verse 6. Well the “we” are the apostles of Jesus Christ who were empowered to determine doctrine and write out the Scriptures. And John is one of those apostles. In fact, he’s the last of the apostles. And he is trustworthy whereas “they” are not. There’s “you” and then there’s “they” and then there’s “we.” And John is saying, “You trust we not they.” Everyone got it, church? “You trust we not they.”

Okay, so let’s flesh this out a little bit. Here’s how I’ll frame these last few verses. We have 1) the believers, 2) the deceivers, and 3) the receivers. You—the believers. They—the deceivers. And we—the receivers. 

You, the believers, are overcomers

They, the deceivers, are worldly

We, the receivers of sound doctrine, are trustworthy   

Let’s look a look at these one by one. First in verse 4, let’s look at the believers.

4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, 

What a wonderful statement right there! Put that on your refrigerator this week and memorize that. Put that on a sticky note for the rearview mirror of your car!

4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, 

Believers “have overcome.” Jesus said in John 16:33, “I have overcome the world.” We share in that overcoming. The word here for overcome is the Greek word νικάω, which means “to conquer; to overcome.” It is the word for victory. “If you have any article of clothing with the Nike logo on it, that word comes from this Greek word meaning ‘victory.’” Believers have victory. Believers overcome them!

Now who’s the “them” of verse 4? “Them” is the “they” of verse 5. “Them” is the false teachers influenced by false spirits trying to lead you astray. “Them” is the antichrists according to John. You might say, “Them’s fightin’ words, Pastor Tony.” That’s right! They are. John is not interested in political correctness; he’s interested in the truth, and making sure that his “Little Children” don’t get swallowed up by falsehood. He’s like a mama bear trying to protect her cubs. 

You have overcome them, he says. You are stronger than them. 

4 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. 

This is why we don’t have to be paranoid or neurotic Christians running around like Chicken Little telling everyone that the sky is falling. Yes, we are at war. Yes, there are forces in this world that want to have us. Yes, we need discernment. But!... but… “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” That might be the most important truth that you take away from this sermon today. “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” 

Therefore access that power within you. If you are a genuine Christian, then the Holy Spirit resides within you, and you don’t have to be afraid. “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. Tap into the resource that God has given you. And what’s remarkable is that this resource that God has given you is himself… the Holy Spirit who resides within you. 

“How do I do that? How do I do that, Pastor Tony? How do I tap into that resource?” Well you need to listen to the Holy Spirit. You need to pray for his guidance. You need to be attentive to his conviction, and his warnings, and his prompting in your life. And you need to know that the Holy Spirit will never convict you or prompt you or direct you to do something that is contrary to the Word of God. 

The same Holy Spirit that is in you is the same Holy Spirit who wrote this Word, this Book. True or False? “[M]en spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:21). So the Holy Spirit is going to lead you, prompt you, convict you, in ways that are consistent to His Scriptures. And if there’s uncertainty about that, or if there’s a lack of clarity about what the Bible says, or if you’re having difficulty interpreting it or applying it into your life, then pray to the Holy Spirit to bring clarity.  

Jonathan Edwards said once, “When the spirit that is at work operates against the interests of Satan’s kingdom, which lies in encouraging and establishing sin and cherishing men’s worldly lusts, this is a sure sign that it is a true and not a false spirit.” 

So if you have this impression inside of you that says, “Don’t sin. Don’t indulge your flesh in that matter. You know it leads to guilt and suffering.” You don’t have to say, “Hmmm, I wonder if that’s the Holy Spirit prompting and protecting me?” Of course it is!

Likewise if you have this impression inside of you that is condemning you, or defying God’s Word, or telling you that you are not a child of God because you are a rotten dirty sinner that God could never love. You don’t have to ask, “Hmmm, is that the Holy Spirit inside of me?” Of course it’s not!

he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Learn to be attentive to the “he” who is inside of you, the Holy Spirit. That “he” is greater than the second “he” in verse 4. That second “he” is a reference to Satan—the one that’s behind all false doctrine and false spirits. 

he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; 

Now in verse 5, the “he” becomes “they.” And this is a reference to the false teachers and antichrists that follow Satan in this world. 

5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.

Look it shouldn’t surprise us when false doctrines gain traction in this world. It shouldn’t surprise us that people pretending to be Christians make all the headlines or capture the interests of the media. Fallenness loves fallenness. pseudo-Christs and pseudo-Christianity fascinate this world because the world can’t stand the real Christ and real Christianity. 

5 They are from the world; therefore… the world listens to them.

They can’t get enough of that stuff! “We” on the other hand, says John…

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

Listens to whom? Listens to the apostles. The “us” in verse 6 is a reference to the Apostles and to John’s Apostolic authority. He’s the only one that’s still alive, but the authority of those Apostles lives on in the written Scriptures. 

We, who know God, listen to the Apostles. We listen to their sound doctrine. We listen to those who were taught and commission by Jesus Christ himself. We listen to those who were entrusted with the truth about Jesus and inscripturated those truths in his Holy Word. 

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

You might say, “Boy that sounds so prideful. That sounds so self-inflating. How can he say that so absolutely? ‘We are from God… Whoever knows God listens to us… whoever is not from God does not listen to us’? Who does this guy John think he is? How dare he? What gives him the right?” 

The story is told about Henry Augustus Rowland, professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University. He was once called as an expert witness at a trial. During cross-examination a lawyer demanded, “What are your qualifications as an expert witness in this case?”

The normally modest and retiring professor replied quietly, “I am the greatest living expert on the subject under discussion.” What arrogance! What lacking humility! What gives him the right?  

Later a friend well acquainted with Rowland’s disposition expressed surprise at the professor’s uncharacteristic answer. Rowland answered, “Well, what did you expect me to do? I was under oath. I had to tell the truth. I am the greatest living expert on the subject under discussion.”

Yes. And John has to tell the truth too. John was the greatest living expert on the subject under discussion. And he has to tell the truth. 

whoever is not from God does not listen to us 

This is not a time for false humility. There are souls at stake. And there are false teachers to combat.

whoever is not from God does not listen to us [The Apostles. The Apostolic witness to Jesus Christ]. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 

If the Spirit confirms what the Apostles wrote down in this book, trust that Spirit. Trust that impression, that prompting, if you want to call it that, in your soul. If it conflicts, don’t trust that spirit. It’s that simple. That’s how you test the spirits. That’s how you obey what is commanded here, “Test the spirits.” Don’t believe all of them. But test them to see if they are from God.

Some people might say, “Why does VBVF try so hard to be a ‘Bible’ church?” Why not teach contemporary issues and just kind of skim over the Bible as needed? Why not focus more on politics or current events? Or why not just sing praise-songs for an hour and a half and call it a day?” 

Good questions. I love singing praise songs. I try to sing them as loud as I can. I love worshipping the Lord in that way, and we’ll continue to do that at VBVF. But also we need to hear from God. And we need to heed the Apostles’ doctrine that is recorded in this Word. And we need to discern the Spirit of truth from the spirit of error. And the best way to do that is to avail ourselves of these words that were written and inspired by the Holy Spirit. And obey them! Amen? 

You know one of roles that I have here at VBVF, as an elder, as a preacher of God’s Word is to uphold sound doctrine. Not because I get a charge out of doing that… not because I like being dogmatic and advancing my argument… but because I have a protective instinct as a shepherd for this flock. I’m a mama bear for this church. I know I don’t look like one. I hope that doesn’t sound patronizing. I don’t want it to be. And I’m thankful to serve alongside other men who are fellow mama bears with me. We’re here to worship the true God of the Universe: Father, Son, Spirit. And we are here to uphold the doctrinal truths of this Book. And I’m going to do that till I’m dead. Lord-willing and if Christ doesn’t come back before I’m dead, that’s what I’ll do. 

Test the spirits. Tests the spirits, church. And by the way, if we are in the last days, and if Christ is coming back soon, 1 Timothy 4:1 says that “In later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” That’s what circulates in our world right now. So Christians need to be discerning, and Christian leaders need to be vigilant. And we all need to test the spirits and hold fast to the truths of God’s Word. 

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I’ll close with this. I heard a story once about a professor who liked to conduct the following experiment with his students. He would ask them to guess how many beans are in a jar. And on a big pad of paper, he had them write down their estimates. 100 beans? 120? 130? 

Then, next to those estimates, he tells them to write down their favorite song. And when the lists were complete, he would reveal the actual number of beans in the jar. The whole class looked over their guesses, to see which estimate was closest to being right. Then the teacher turns to the list of favorite songs. And he would ask, “Which one of these songs is closest to being right?” The students were confused, and they protested that there is no right answer to that question. A person’s favorite song is a matter of taste not fact.

The teacher then asks, “When you decide what to believe in terms of your faith, is that more like guessing the number of beans, or more like choosing your favorite song?” And always, the teacher says, from old as well as young, he gets the same answer: ‘Choosing one’s faith is more like choosing a favorite song.’” What’s your fancy? It’s all a matter of taste.

Church, this is the world we live in today. We live in a world where absolutes are treated like fairy tales, and fairy tales are treated like absolutes. And everybody loves relativism and indeterminacy. Let me say it this way, “Everyone loves to be swayed by different ‘spirits’ in this world.” 

But listen, if you choose to live your life like that being swayed by every wind of doctrine and floating

back and forth from truth and error, you will be so confused and so frustrated. And as Christians, as followers of Christ, John says, “No.” John says, “Test the spirits.” Find out what’s true… and it’s not like we don’t know how many beans are in the jar… here’s the truth in God’s Word… receive it and believe it… Find out what’s true, and then give yourself over to that entirely. And leave the confusion of this world behind you.