Life in the Son (1 John 5.1-12)

Introduction

There’s a church leader in Bournemouth called Tim Matthews whose grandfather Albert served his country in D-Day. He got a finger shot off but he survived the war.

His job was to drive a truck as part of a convoy to resupply the front line with munitions, food, fuel and so on.

He would often tell stories from that conflict, including one about arriving in a village, shortly after the Normandy landings.

They had received intelligence that the village had most probably been booby trapped by the enemy in retreat and the mines had not yet been cleared. There was no viable alternative route and the front line had to be resupplied urgently, so the convoy just had to risk driving through the village.

The Commanding Officer approached Albert in the cab of his truck and said, “Albert, you’re a Christian, aren’t you?” He replied that he was.

So, the CO said, “Well, since you know where you’re going when you die, you can drive an empty truck through the village, and the rest of the convoy will follow your tyre tracks. If you get blown up, well, we’ll know to take a different route!”

There are times when you might actually wish you weren’t a Christian after all! And that might be one of them. But Albert gave a salute, said “Yes, sir,” bowed his head in prayer, then started the engine, got into gear - and set off. He drove straight through the middle of the village without incident.

That is what you call a testimony. It’s an interesting story that encourages faith and inspires confidence. Albert’s faith was not merely academic or theoretical. The man was ready for sudden death, because he was convinced from his prior experience of God that Jesus is Lord, heaven is real, and this life is not all there is.

Born of God to Overcome the World

Our reading from 1 John 5 today has quite a lot to say about testimony in v6-12 and we’ll come to that a bit later.

But that story from June or July 1944 serves also to shed some light on what John writes in v1-5. Let’s read it again:

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

That man Albert Matthews knew beyond any doubt he was a child of God. And his faith certainly overcame the world!

But how did Albert know he was a child of God? How would you know? Some people talk about God being the Father of us all. It’s a very old-fashioned way of saying it, but when I was growing up people talked about ‘the brotherhood of man’, meaning the whole human race as children of one God.

But the Bible never says that at all, and this letter, 1 John, is where God tells us most clearly that humanity is not made up of one family, but of two. As we’ve seen, John is very black and white. Ultimately, the truth is that there are children of God and children of the world - and there is nothing in between. Which family are you in? 

Furthermore, the Bible says not just that there are two families; it tells us that they don’t tend to get on that well. They never have done, and they never will do.

If you think I’m being melodramatic, just go on any secular forum online and begin your comments with the words, “As a Christian who believes the Bible, I think…” and get ready for a deluge of abuse. Children of the world are often antagonistic towards children of God.

Well, what makes all the difference between being a child of God and a child of the world? The answer in a word is “faith.”

By faith, you instantly become a loved, deeply-loved, child of God. Any parent will tell you about the overpowering emotion that fills the heart the moment one of their children is born, or even when a mother discovers she’s expecting.

But God’s love for you as your heavenly Father far exceeds that of human parents for their own offspring. Romans 5.5 says, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” God… so loves you.

The moment you put your faith in Jesus Christ, v1 says you were born of God and v12 says you received eternal life.

John’s not talking about a vague kind of faith or woolly spirituality. John doesn’t say, “everyone who believes that there is some kind of god or inner light, however you like to define it.” It’s not about belief in UFOs, or ghosts, or horoscopes or mindfulness. Who can say they are a child of God? Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God (v1).

It’s about Jesus, but it’s more than thinking that Jesus was a nice man, who did good to all and was a great moral teacher. Thinking that doesn’t make you a child of God.

It’s believing that Jesus is the Christ. Notice the tense of the verb. We say Shakespeare was, Queen Victoria was. But Christians don’t say “Jesus was Lord.” Faith says, Jesus is Lord, he is the Christ because he is alive.

“The Christ” says John: not a christ. Not one of several paths up the same mountain. Not one of many roads to God. Jesus is the Christ. It means “the anointed one”, the chosen one, the special one.  

It means the only one who can save me from the eternal spiritual ruin my sin is leading me to. Nobody else can do this for me.

The moment you become a Christian, you get a new heavenly Father. He’s better than any dad on earth will ever be. But, more than that, you find you’ve been adopted into a big family.

You’ve got a whole bunch of brothers and sisters you hadn’t thought about as well. Lots of them. Take a look around you. Big ones, little ones, young ones, old ones, ones you like, ones you like a bit less - but they are family.

And as dear Donna Levin loved to say, every time she stood here, family can get messy but we still love each other because that’s what families do.

Sometimes people say to me, “Why can’t I be a Christian without going to church? I don’t really like church.” The Apostle John would say, (v1), “Everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.”

When Holly Falcus was born just before Christmas, I loved her the moment I saw her. Much more than I would love some baby I saw on the bus – because I know and love her mum and dad, Lucy and Matt. They’re friends.

What we really think about God deep down is exposed by what we think about his family, the church.

Someone might say, “Well, I love my brothers and sisters in Christ. I get a lovely warm glow whenever I walk into church and see them.”

And that’s great. To be honest, that’s how I feel when I’m with you. Well, most of the time… No, I’ll miss you when I go. But John says, “It’s got to be a bit more than feelings and nice words. It involves action - obedience to God’s commands.”

According to the Cinnamon Trust, local churches and ministries delivered 220,000 social action projects serving up to 48 million people in the UK last year. Real love is practical, not sentimental.

“This is love for God: to obey his commands” (v2-3).

The Lord’s Prayer begins with obedience – “your will be done.” Not my will, not Auntie Mabel’s or Uncle Tom Cobbley’s but, as I live my life today, may your will be done, Father.

The Ten Commandments are quite easy to understand; five are about loving God, and five are about loving others. In fact, Jesus whittled ten down to just two. Just two simple instructions, really. Love God with all your heart, mind soul and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. That’s it.

But there’s another sense in which God’s commands are not onerous or heavy.

If you’ve ever been madly in love with someone, you think about them all the time, you spend ages combing your hair and putting on your make up, you can’t wait to see them, they make you laugh, you just love being with them…

Well, imagine the Ten Commandments being given to you by someone you are deeply in love with. You will have no other girlfriend/boyfriend but me. Not a problem. You will not turn my name into a swear word. Why would I? I keep writing your name on paper with little hearts all around it! You will spend one day in seven with me. Only one in seven! Can’t I spend more?

That’s why John says here that obeying God’s commands is not a drag if you love him.

“This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith” says John in v4. Mike Pilavachi from Soul Survivor likes to say, “Don't tell God how big the problem is; tell the problem how big God is.” Everyone born of God overcomes the world.

At New Wine two years ago, there was an amazing testimony from a North Korean Christian who escaped to the West. In their secret church, they had to sing worship songs in a whisper so as not to be overheard. Her husband was discovered and killed for being a follower of Jesus. Before she fled the country, she shared her faith at immense personal risk.

She wrote out by hand the whole Bible as an encouragement. She wept as she recited Psalm 23 from memory. It's a capital offence to own a Bible in North Korea, so they bury their Bibles in the garden and dig them up in the middle of the night to read them.

She said, "In that horrible place the Lord was in my heart, and my heart was at peace. I saw the worst of humanity but the best of Jesus Christ. While I was tortured, I heard God’s voice and remembered the suffering of Christ.”

There’s what John means when he says “everyone born of God overcomes the world.”

Three Witnesses

I said earlier that I’d get to the bit about testimonies. In v6-12, John speaks about three witnesses, each with a testimony about Jesus. This is another of those bits in 1 John where you have to work hard. It’s one of the most obscure bits in the New Testament, and I’m not going to give you all the various opinions. I’m just going to tell you what I think.

If you were not present at an event, you are dependent on those who were and what they tell you. None of us were around when Jesus walked on Earth so we rely on witnesses and testimony.

If you’ve ever been to a law court, or watched courtroom dramas like Perry Mason and Judge Judy, you know that a case will often turn on the testimony supplied by witnesses questioned under oath. Their evidence; what they saw, what they heard, often determines the outcome of the case.

These verses are a bit like a case before a judge and jury. And the counsel for the prosecution is arguing that our faith is little more than fantasy. It’s just a feeling based on nothing.

What is the basis of our faith? John was Jesus’ best friend and closest companion; he ate with him, he saw him sweat, he leaned against him and heard his beating heart. He says here that our faith in Jesus is based on valid and verifiable facts.

It is based on a real life – Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary. We sing in The Creed song “I believe in Christ the Son, in the virgin birth, suffered and crucified, descended into darkness, but rose in glorious life.

How can you be sure that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God? There are three witnesses.

Firstly, water. There is a place just north of the Dead Sea, east of Jericho, on the River Jordan, called Qasr el Yahud, where John the Baptist did his baptizing. You can go there and see where it took place. It really happened.  

And at Jesus’ baptism, the heavens opened and God said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Crowds saw it. That’s the first testimony, near the start of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

Secondly, blood. The second testimony is near the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry. “Jesus ‘came by water and blood... he did not come by water only, but by water and blood” says John in v6. In other words, he didn’t just come to live like us as the Son of Man, he came to die for us as the Son of God.

He sweated blood under the exceptional anxiety and distress of just thinking about it. John was there, and saw it. He endured a flogging, a crown of thorns, nails in his hands and feet, a spear in his side; he was marred, Isaiah says, beyond human likeness. He was like butchered meat. John actually watched blood trickle down Jesus’ body and drip on the ground.

John’s testimony would have been impressive in itself but he says in v9 it is a testimony of God which is greater. And there was a heavenly testimony, five days before the cross. John 12.28 says that a voice came from heaven where God said, “I have glorified my name and I will glorify it again.”

The crowd that was there heard it, some said it thundered, and Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine.” In other words, it was a testimony.

Thirdly, the Spirit. The Holy Spirit witnesses to our inner self. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth and he always speaks the truth.

When someone becomes a child of God, they often say, “I just know in my heart, I just know I have eternal life.” We may doubt it at times afterwards, but when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, he gives you an inner assurance that you are loved and belong to him; Jesus is real.

At All Saints’ we think it’s important to make room for people to be prayed for, every week. We encourage everyone to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Have you ever asked God to fill you to overflowing with the Spirit? You really should.

For many people this is a key experience in their spiritual journey where God strengthens their faith and confirms it as real.

Most of us would tend to accept the testimony of three witnesses saying the same thing in court. Why would we not accept these three testimonies about Jesus?

If we rejected it, we’d be calling God a false witness – in fact, John says exactly that in v10. Whoever does not believe God [who spoke from heaven twice about his Son] is basically calling him a liar.

Ending

I want to end with my testimony. I grew up in a quite formal, traditional church. I was baptized as a baby, went to a primary school run by nuns, took my first communion at 7, got confirmed at 10, went to confession once a month and went to secondary school run by monks … the whole kit and kaboodle.

I knew a lot about Jesus, but I didn’t know Jesus, not personally. About the age of 11 or 12, I drifted from church and I didn’t miss it. I didn’t love God’s family because I didn’t really love God. Exactly what 1 John says.

But something supernatural happened to me when I was 17. It was life-changing. There was emotion. There were tears. There was joy.

I started to like being around Christians. I was passionate to know more. I bought a Bible and read it. I became uncomfortable about some things in my life – my dishonesty, my bad language, my attitude towards the opposite sex…

I don’t know what I would have become if hadn’t become a Christian. I dread to think. But something happened and it changed the course of my life forever. That’s my testimony.

To close; v12; “Whoever has the Son has life.” It’s not just when you die. Heaven starts here.

If you don’t call Jesus the Christ, you are not yet a child of God and you don’t have eternal life. But you can put that right today. You can do it now. Why put it off?

If that’s you, ask someone to pray with you before you leave to be born of God. And I think you will look back at 23 February 2020 as the most beautiful day of your life.

Let’s stand …

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 23 February 2020

Calling: Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1.1-10)

Introduction

Shortly before my selection conference for ordained ministry in the Church of England I was given a brief pep talk with Bishop Henry Scriven. I had actually done quite a lot in Christian leadership before that point, but Bishop Henry cautioned against even mentioning it.

“They’re not interested in your triumphs and achievements,” he said. “They just want to hear how unworthy you feel and that you know you are being called.”

Last week, we saw how God called Gideon. Next week, we’ll see how he called Paul. Today it’s Jeremiah. All three were reluctant. And all three had a difficult time of it – but none more so than Jeremiah. All three were highly unlikely candidates to be used by God.

It’s been said before, but Jacob was a cheat, James and John had a temper, Miriam was a gossip, Martha was a worrier, Paul was a fanatic, Gideon was insecure, Noah got drunk, Jonah ran away from God, David was an adulterer and murderer, Thomas was a doubter, Elijah was depressive, Moses stuttered badly, Zacchaeus was short and Lazarus was dead.

God works with some pretty unpromising raw material sometimes. If ever you needed proof that God doesn't wait ‘till you’re all sorted before calling you - there it is.

Jeremiah had no training and no experience. He would have probably been in his late teens or early twenties.

Background

The first three verses place Jeremiah’s call in a particular time and location.

After King Solomon died, about 350 years earlier, two men staked rival claims for the throne and it led to a civil war.

In the end, the nation split in two. 10 of the 12 tribes to the north kept the name “Israel.” The two remaining tribes to the south called themselves “Judah” after the larger of the two.

Israel in the north had 19 kings and the Bible says that every one of them, without exception, did evil in the eyes of the Lord. That northern kingdom was eventually conquered in 722 BC and its population was carried off into exile, leaving just Judah.

Jeremiah lived in Anathoth in Judah, but just inside the border, so he grew up looking across at a land that had been laid waste after centuries of rebellion against God.

It must have been a bit like living in South Korea, near the demilitarised zone, standing on a hilltop and seeing the wretched place North Korea became.

What about the kings in the southern kingdom of Judah? Most of them were evil as well, but they did have some good ones.

And Jeremiah was called during the reign of Judah’s very last good king, Josiah. He brought in some much-needed reforms, but the people followed only half-heartedly.

In fact, Jeremiah’s first recorded sermon (in chapter 2) was in the streets of Jerusalem, before a hostile crowd. He had been banned from religious buildings, because the establishment didn’t like what he said.

God never has been - and never will be - confined to ecclesiastical buildings. If the church closes its doors to him, he just raises up prophetic people to speak his word somewhere else.

Jesus spoke more in the open air than he ever did in so-called holy places.

Well, the next major king after Josiah was Jehoiakim. And things went from superficially good to openly bad.

Jeremiah had been saying in the name of the Lord for decades that a great power would come from the north and flatten little Judah. He painstakingly wrote down his warnings from God for King Jehoiakim to read. The king took a penknife to the entire scroll and threw it on the fire.

Why was Jeremiah so pilloried and rejected? The answer is that people just wanted him to say something nice.

They didn’t want to hear that there was a train coming as they played on the railway line. They wanted to be told that there wasn’t a train coming because that sounds nicer.

Jeremiah. Nobody encouraged or backed him. The priests attacked him. The king snubbed him. The nation told him to stop being unpatriotic.

No wonder he looks so thoroughly fed up in Rembrandt’s picture of him. 

Put yourself in Jeremiah’s shoes; go through life, week after week, month after month, year after year with everyone putting their fingers to their ears as soon as you open your mouth.

Nobody listened. He became a laughing stock and an object of mockery.

Worse; he survived several attempts on his life. A priest had him beaten and put in the stocks for a day. He was arrested and thrown in a cistern and left for dead.

Calling

So, if you were God, who would you pick to speak boldly to an overwhelmingly hostile, antagonistic, unsympathetic public?

I’d go for someone hard, some fearsome colossus of a leader, built like a tank, with a booming voice. Someone with attitude…

Who does God choose? Someone a bit like Pike from Dad’s Army... “You stupid boy…” God calls a shy, diffident youth, full of excuses. Jeremiah portrays himself as lightweight, tongue-tied, inexperienced.

But God chooses Jeremiah not for what he is but for the one hidden quality he knows Jeremiah will really need. The Book of Jeremiah goes on to show he had it in spades – resilience.

Winston Churchill once said, “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”

That’s Jeremiah. He never gave up. He felt like it – most days. But he kept going. How did he endure even when he fell into utter despair? His resilience was down to one thing: he knew God had called him.

God chose and called you to belong to Christ. It was a settled decision made before time began, before the foundation of the world. By faith, you are God’s precious child. God’s call is not a matter of performance, it is a matter of position!

God called Jeremiah before he was born or even conceived. Which should carry a lot of weight when we think about abortion.

People often point to exceptional and tragic circumstances, but incest and rape account for only 1.5% of all terminations.

The truth is that 98.5% of terminations were for other reasons and abortion was the biggest single cause of human death worldwide in 2019. The former US President Ronald Reagan once said, “I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.”

Of course, we must be compassionate, kind, slow to judge and quick to help. We should show how we can be forgiven and how God can bring restoration and healing.

But to speak out on this today is to guarantee the kind of hostility that Jeremiah became accustomed to all his life.

He lived in similar times to ours actually; his nation, like ours, was increasingly antagonistic towards expressions of faith. More and more people wrote God off as irrelevant to their lives.

At first, people just thought that Jeremiah was a bit eccentric. But, as he kept speaking out, they began to find him annoying. And finally, when he refused to stop, he was silenced and attacked for being offensive.

But God says, “Don’t focus on yourself and your limitations. And don’t be afraid.” Literally, “Don’t be afraid of their faces.”

Everyone wants to be liked. No one takes pleasure in rejection. Jeremiah’s call was to a lifetime of disappointment. His message went unheeded and the nation fell to the Babylonians as he had warned over and over again.

God didn’t promise him glowing success. But he did promise that his presence would go with him. “I am with you.”

Ending

As I close, Jeremiah went down, in the end, as one of the Old Testament greats. So much of his life points to Jesus:

·         Both were appointed before they were conceived

·         Both were called before they reached adulthood

·         Both were accused of madness

·         Both prophesied the fall of Jerusalem

·         Both wept over Jerusalem for that reason

·         Both were mocked publicly

·         Both were conspired against to be killed

·         Both were declared "worthy of death" by corrupt priests

In fact, when Jesus said to his disciples “Who do people say I am?” they replied, “Some say, Jeremiah...”

***

Such are the quirks of providence that today is the day I set in June last year to tell you that I believe God is calling me… to move on. It is a decision Kathie and I started to prayerfully consider 15 months ago, but when we made our decision in June, we agreed with Bishop Paul to stay one more year.

I will leave my post here as Vicar on 7 June and my last Sunday at Saint Mary’s will be 24 May. I will have had the honour of serving you for exactly 12 years – and I’ve always done my very best.

After I leave, I will take a brief sabbatical, where I will try and discern what God is calling me to next. At the present time, my plans are open ended.

There will be plenty of time before then to say more, but I just wanted you to know and to ask for your prayers, as I will pray for you.

I hope you’ll understand that I need to announce this today at All Saints’ as well, so I’ll make my way there after the Peace.

God bless you all.

Sermon preached at Saint Mary's Long Newton, 16 February 2020

Test the Spirits (1 John 4.1-6)

Introduction

In 1967, the Beatles sang “Let me take you down, ‘cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields… nothing is real.” I don’t think anyone actually believed that nothing was real when they listened to that song.

But now, over half a century later, it honestly is hard to know what is real and what is not. Since the rise of spin in the 1990s, people have become so accustomed to unflattering news getting framed in a better light that many of us kind of disconnect altogether.

In this last decade new words and phrases have had to be added to the dictionary to describe the sense that nothing is real. Expressions like post truth, fake news and alternative facts.

At the same time, we now have computer animation that looks so lifelike and Photoshop images that look so authentic that we can’t be sure that what we look at is fact or fiction.

We live in an age of disinformation and urban legends. I’ll let you in on a secret; not everything you hear in adverts is true. There is no lager for sale that genuinely refreshes parts of you that other beers cannot reach.

Not everything you read on the Internet is true either. Tesco are not in fact giving away £50 vouchers to the first 1,000 suckers who help their advert go viral on Facebook.

As someone has said, social media is basically the village idiot promoted to town crier! Someone somewhere makes something up and types it on Twitter, or puts a nice picture on Instagram, or uploads a video on YouTube - and it before the end of the day it has gained significant cultural traction. By the end of the week, everyone has seen it and many believe it.

But none of this is new. We tend to think that this is a 21st Century phenomenon. It isn’t; it’s just got new tools. George Orwell in the 1940s wrote about doublethink and newspeak. That was a decade of unparalleled propaganda and indoctrination.  

In the spiritual realm too, there have always been strange ideas, crackpot beliefs, erroneous doctrines, bizarre opinions, dangerous ideologies and downright lies…

Some of them are easy to spot. About ten years ago, for example, there rose to prominence a travelling preacher who claimed his messages about financial prosperity were directly revealed to him by an angel called Emma.

This man had a focus on healing services but this was with a difference! Because he routinely assaulted cancer patients, kickboxing them as he prayed for them. In the middle of one tent evangelism campaign, he deserted his wife and ran off with a young female staff member.

Hopefully, I don’t need to explain in painstaking detail why you would be wise to avoid that kind of thing. If I say, “don’t fall for that!” I take it you don’t need a six-week course understand why…

But most false teachers and charlatans are much more subtle than that. Jesus said, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”

In other words, you can’t tell just by their appearance that they mean you harm. They’re so likeable, so caring, so nice. They’re smooth-talking. They say, “I have new, progressive ideas that are so much better than the old outdated ideas.” They even selectively quote bits of the Bible sometimes.  

What are the chances that you and I could be taken in and led astray? How can we tell the difference between true and false? That’s what 1 John 4.1-6 is about and it shows that false teaching, like an aggressive cancer, has been a danger to the church since the beginning.

Don’t Believe Everything (v1)

Let’s start with v1. “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

John starts by, once again, calling his church “dear friends” Other versions translate that, “Beloved.” That’s the foundation; God loves you.

With each of our 4 children, there were times when Kathie and I weren’t 100% enthusiastic about a new friend they made, or delighted by a new craze they got into.

If you have children, you invest a lot of energy in keeping them away from trouble and out of harm’s way. You want them to appreciate and adopt good values; to be understanding and discerning. That’s what God wants for us, his loved children.

When we lived in France, there was a time when there were… possibly millions of fake 10 Franc pieces in circulation. They looked a bit like our £1 coins and they were everywhere. At first, you couldn’t really tell the difference. To the untrained eye, they looked identical to the real thing. The only way you found out you had fake money was because the counterfeit coins got rejected by vending machines every time.

But after a while, if you looked really carefully, you could see that the imitations were ever so slightly less shiny than the real ones. Then, if you moved your thumb over them, they felt a tiny bit different, the fake coins felt smoother. In the end, shopkeepers started to spot them and refuse them. And they quickly disappeared from circulation.

People didn’t take every 10 Franc coin they were offered just because it was two-tone shiny metal and the right size. They learned to look at it and feel it carefully before they accepted it.

And here, John says, “Don’t believe everything you hear just because it sounds spiritual.” Don’t go “Ooh, wow tell me more,” just because someone says, “God told me…”

How many of us would train our children to open the door to whoever knocks on it, welcome them inside, let them move in and start to dictate what colour they want the living room? That’s what we do when we accept without a second thought new, unfamiliar, slightly strange-sounding spiritual ideas.

“Test it” John says. “Check it out. Don’t be naive. Weigh it up. Don’t be taken in by the hype.

Jesus was never gullible; John 2.24 says, “Jesus knew what was in people’s hearts, and he would not entrust himself to anyone.”

And just because something is supernatural, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s from God. It could be demonic. When evil spirits shouted out, “I know who you are, Jesus of Nazareth; the holy one of God!” I would agree with every word they said, but Jesus told them to be quiet.

The Jesus Test (v2-3)

So, don’t be easy prey. But how can you tell if a prophetic word or an unfamiliar teaching or a strange lyric in a new worship song is right or not?

Elsewhere in Scripture, there’s the Bible test. In 2 Timothy 1.13, Paul says, “What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you.”

He’s saying, “Does this new teaching match up with what God has said for all time in the Bible?” If it doesn’t, ignore it.

Sometimes people say to me, “Oh, if only God would speak to me…” Honestly, if you really want to hear God speak to you, just read the Bible out loud. That’s the best place to start.

Already in 1 John 2.9 we’re had the love for the church test. “If anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness.”

So someone goes round saying, “I’ve been enlightened, I have divine inspiration, healing powers, I hear from God, listen to what I say, blah, blah, blah…” but constantly seem to be criticising and undermining godly leadership and never stop bringing condemnation to the Body of Christ... they’re not from God.

The most important test is what they say about Jesus – v2: “This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”

Most religions, cults and philosophies say that Jesus was fully human, but not divine. They say, he was flesh and blood, but no more. Some, very few, but there were more of them in John’s day, say that Jesus is God but never really became one of us. He just seemed human.

John says here that the acid test is what they say about Jesus. Jesus Christ came in the flesh. In other words, he existed before his birth at Bethlehem. “This is why I came…” he said. “Before Abraham was, I am” he said. He was sent here from heaven. He is fully God… in flesh and blood.

He is fully God, and fully man.

Schrödinger's cat, according to quantum theory, can be simultaneously both alive and dead. Don’t ask me to explain that, I’m just a bald vicar from Essex. I can’t fathom how that can be so any more than a hamster can get a PhD in rocket science, but it is scientifically proven. Someone got a Nobel Prize for it.

And if Schrödinger's cat, according to the greatest scientific minds on Earth, can be two mutually contradictory things at once, then why can’t Jesus be simultaneously both God and man; not half and half, but fully and totally and gloriously both?

Any religion or sect or cult or philosophy that downplays one or the other - that says Jesus is less than fully human or less than fully divine - you know. That’s not from God.

The key question for any new-fangled spiritual fashion is, “What do you think about Jesus?” If you get, “Well, I don’t know really. Did he really die for our sins? I’m not sure about that. Can we really accept that he is the way, the truth and the life in this day and age..?” If you get that, say “Not today thanks,” and shut the door.

A former bishop of this diocese, whose obituary in the Guardian was headed, “The Bishop Who Didn’t Believe a Word of It”, publicly dismissed the Gospel accounts, mocking the virgin birth and the resurrection. I don’t care if he was the Right Reverend, the Most Reverend or the Very Reverend; he should have never been a church leader and I wouldn’t have let him preach here.

Jesus Christ has come in flesh… The Baptist preacher David Pawson once spoke about a Christian friend of his down in South Wales, who was in business with a retired army officer. One day, the former army man asked the Christian friend, “What do you think about spiritualism?”

So, the Christian said, “Well, I take it seriously. I believe there are such things as spirits; good as well as evil ones.” He said, “Oh, and how can you tell the difference?” So, the Christian opened his Bible to 1 John 4.2. “This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” He said, you just ask them that.

What the major didn’t say was that his wife had been going to seances and had invited him to go with her that night. So, he went along - and got some quite remarkable messages which must have come from a supernatural source because they revealed things that no one could have known or guessed.

And then the medium said to this retired major, “Would you like to ask anything?” And, though he wasn’t a Christian, he said, “Yes. Ask if Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.”

Well, the medium went into a frightful state, and afterwards the man said, “In all my years in the army I never heard such obscenities and blasphemies as came from that woman’s lips that night.” He and his wife never visited that medium again.

The Popular with Whom Test (v4-6)

The second test here is what I call the popular with whom test. Once again, this is not easy to understand, you need to work hard at it. It’s not a “sit back with a drink and enjoy the show” kind of Scripture. It’s an “engage the mind and work it through” passage.

Maybe it’ll help if I read it in the Message paraphrase; v4-5: “My dear children, you come from God and belong to God. You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world.”

He’s saying, when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you just get a feel for what wholesome, healthy, good teaching sounds like - and what is just off beam. The Spirit of truth makes you spiritually robust.

“These people” (v5) [he’s talking about false teachers with odd ideas] belong to the Christ-denying world. They talk the world’s language and the world eats it up. But we come from God and belong to God.”

If you’re a Christian, born from above, you’re not from here. This isn’t your home. I’m not talking about Teesside. I mean Earth. We’re misfits. I hope you feel that sometimes.

I hope you say to yourself, “In some ways, I don’t… belong. My values and beliefs are so different to much of the world around me. I just don’t see things the same way.”

Don’t be surprised when non-Christians don’t agree with you. We worship a saviour who got rejected, battered, ridiculed and crucified.

He appointed 12 disciples to start the worldwide church we are part of - and all but one of them got silenced, named and shamed, beaten and murdered. So, don’t be put out if the world doesn’t give you a standing ovation and medal of honour.

Every survey on why people don’t like Christians comes up with the same number one reason; can anyone guess? Intolerance. Christians are offensive and obnoxious to people because they say some things are false. Christians think that not all things are equally true and valid. That’s judgemental, that’s intolerant.

But some things are true and false. If I walk into Barclays Bank in Yarm and say, “I’d to withdraw my £10,000” they will politely tell me I can’t do that because I don’t bank there.

People don’t want to hear that Jesus is the only way to the Father but that is what he said.

People don’t want to know that their sins separate them from God but that is what Jesus came to fix.

People don’t want to be told that God commands all people everywhere to repent and change the path they’re on, but the Bible calls that essential.

By contrast, false teachers will often be well-received by non-Christians because they say what the world wants to hear.

The gospel is counter-cultural. Christians are going to get low popularity ratings in secular culture.

This is what John is talking about in v6: “Anyone who knows God understands us and listens. The person who has nothing to do with God will, of course, not listen to us. This is another test for telling the Spirit of Truth from the spirit of deception.”

Ending

May God give us discernment, understanding and wisdom. Let me finish with a funny little story about vigilance.

There’s a security guard on building site who notices one of the guys working on site pushing a wheelbarrow full of mud home every evening.

He pulls him up and says, “What are you doing there?” The guy says, “I’m just taking this unwanted mud because I’m landscaping my garden at home...”

Well, the security guard suspects something is not quite right, so each day he checks through the mud to see if he’s hiding any tools - but every time there is only ever just mud.”

After about six months of this, the security guard is about to retire, it’s his last day, so he checks this guy’s load for the final time.

“I have to know,” he says. “I know this isn’t about mud. Tell me what you’ve been up to. If you tell me what you've been doing, I promise I'll tell no one. I’m leaving anyway.” The guy says, “I’ve nicked 156 wheelbarrows.”

Let’s pray…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 9 February 2020