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
No comments:
Post a Comment