Grace Church exists to glorify our Heavenly Father by
 continually making more disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Learn to Discern 1 John 3:24-4:6 Get Real: A Study of 1 John Sermon #17 “Spiritual discernment is the ability to use God’s Word to determine truth from error, and right from wrong.”   Just .00270 micrograms of botulism is a lethal dose for a 200 lb person. To help you understand how small…how insignificant that is, picture how huge a 100 mile freight train is, then compare that 100 mile freight train to … Are you ready for this? Compare that 100 mile freight train to a flea. That’s how little botulism it takes to kill a 200 lb person.   What I’m going to say is going to shock some of you! Three of the most dangerous words, three of the potentially deadliest words in the Church of Jesus Christ are “God told me.”   The title of the article in World Magazine was “Fatal Revelation.” It reported of how a small "Christian" Bible study group turned into a deadly cult in Attleboro, Mass. On a small cul-de-sac in Attleboro, about an hour south of Boston, stands a modest duplex home with a white picket fence and white ruffled curtains adorning the windows. It’s the home of cult members accused of murdering a 10-month-old baby named Samuel. According to written and eyewitness testimony, Samuel's parents, Karen and Jacques Robidoux, and 11 other adults watched and methodically took notes as Samuel slowly starved to death. They thought they were obeying God. The Robidoux family belonged to a small cult that loosely referred to itself as "The Body" and claimed to follow the Bible. Members of the cult, composed of 13 adults and 13 children, believed they had received a revelation from God…that God had told them…that Samuel could no longer eat solid foods. After the cult denied him solid food for two months, Samuel died, three days before his first birthday. Four months later, another baby, Jeremiah Corneau, died under the cult's care when members, in accordance with their belief that modern society is evil, allegedly neglected to seek help from a doctor during a difficult birth.   The deaths of these two children are frightening examples of the havoc wreaked when practicing "Christians" replace the Bible's eternal authority with the shifting sands of man-made "revelation." The incidents also provide a tragic reminder that it’s possible to believe lies sincerely, and that sometimes those lies have deadly consequences.   The Body didn't start out deadly. According to one ex-member, Dennis Mingo, the Attleboro group began as a benign Bible study. When he joined in 1986, only six people belonged to the group. They met once a week to study Scripture, rotating through each others' living rooms.   Cult expert, Pastor Bob Pardon, said, “This [kind of tragedy] develops when people claim to have some kind of direct pipeline to God.” Three of the most dangerous words in the Church of Jesus Christ are “God told me.”   We Christians have a tendency to be very gullible people when it comes to claims about the supernatural. We tend to believe everything that we hear about the spiritual realm. If someone stands up quoting a few Bible verses, making reference to Jesus a few times, we’re apt to fall for whatever he or she has to say. If someone claims “God told them,” we tend to take it at face value…believing that to question that is to question God.   Our good friend John is warning us about spiritual gullibility. He’s commanding us as believers to Learn to Discern, 1 John 3:24-4:6 (p. 863). The Christian’s greatest danger and the Church’s greatest danger is not from atheists or evolutionists or homosexuals or liberals, our greatest danger is from within, those who profess to know Christ who know God-talk but don’t know God. That’s who John is warning us about. If you’re taking notes then, let me suggest… 1. Spiritual discernment is not optional, it’s a dangerous world out there, v. 1. “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.” Remember that line from Hillstreet Blues, “Hey, let’s be careful out there.” That’s what John is telling his readers.      This word for test is a strong word. It means to repeatedly subject to the strongest scrutiny, to see if it stands the test. It means “to try to learn the genuineness of something by close examination.” It doesn’t mean to see if something is close, it means to see if something measures up exactly in every respect.   When a store makes an outrageous claim, if you’re smart you investigate the claim before forking your money out. That’s what this word is describing, that ability to look beyond the surface, to dig deeply into the claim to see what’s underneath. John’s telling us that before we trust any spiritual experience, any religious leader, or any religious group we must first test them, dig beneath the surface, look closely, to determine whether it’s a snow job or the real thing. He’s commanding us, “to test and see whether the message is truly from God.”   John points out the contrast between two spirits. In 3:24 he wrote, “this is how we know that He lives in us: We know it by the Spirit He gave us.” In 4:1 he contrasts that with “do not believe every spirit.” Two spirits are active in this world, the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.   Ray Stedman observes that it’s “significant that this warning comes in the midst of John's discourse about love, because false spirits tend to make a great deal of the subject of love. Every cult, every deviant group, every false movement makes its appeal in the name of love.”   Church services of John’s day were quite different from today. Churches tended to be isolated. There were no formal creeds or doctrinal statements and the New Testament was not yet complete. Their services tended to be informal and unstructured. Churches often had several pastors and lay leaders. Even visitors were free to address the congregation. Charlatans and unprincipled people easily took advantage of the situation. So John cautions his readers against being duped by those falsely claiming to speak in and for the Spirit of God.   While church services today are more structured, there are still many “false prophets” seeking to dupe believers. Anyone with a web site can spew forth spiritual hogwash while claiming to speak for God. Turn on the TV or radio and you’ll hear someone claiming to speak for God. Technology has only expanded the audience base of “false prophets.”   Periodically, I’m shocked at who well-meaning Christians are listening to.  We are commanded to “test” who we’re listening to, to see if they’re truly “from God.” Now the yardstick is not one of our own invention. God’s Word is our standard. Vaughan wisely notes that we are not to judge doctrine by miracles, but miracles by doctrine. Even a miracle teaching what contradicts Christ and His apostles is not “of God” and has no authority for Christians.   In contemporary culture this is not PC. Our culture prizes religious tolerance and pluralism. Such testing is seen as overly critical and narrow, even judgmental. But John’s command is clear, such testing is the responsibility of every generation of believers. Please do not believe something because I say it or some other preacher says it, or even another believer that you respect – believe it because God says it in His Word. Don’t believe something just because it is extraordinary or even supernatural. Remember Satan is the great counterfeiter.   It’s important to note that John wrote this to a local church, a community of believers. It’s in body life – in local church community, that we are safest. While one or two of us may be misled, it is the combined discernment of a church membership that gives us the greatest protection. Blind loyalty to personal freedom and individuality has probably spawned more heresy and aberrant beliefs today than at any other time in Church History.     One final note, there’s a tension here. As Stott warns, as dangerous as it is to believe everything, it is just as dangerous to become so suspicious that we believe nothing. We must have Biblical balance. 2. Spiritual discernment was tested by one’s Christology, read vss. 2-3. Some of the nicest, kindest people you’ll ever meet are false teachers. A false teacher may be gentle and loving. He/she may speak prophecies that come true, may even perform miracles or cast out demons or speak in tongues. But the vital question is: Do they lead people to follow a false god? Specifically, John lays down this rule, “every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”   To confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh means more than just agreeing with that statement. Even demons all agree that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Who has come in the flesh. They acknowledged what the Jews were too blind to see, the full deity of Jesus Christ, as well as His humanity. But though demons acknowledged this, they never confessed it. They never trusted him. They did not commit themselves to Him, they did not live by this truth. Throughout history there have been many religious leaders, popes, priests, and many others, Protestant and Catholic alike, who have acknowledged the deity of the Lord Jesus and His humanity, but they have never trusted Him and they have never committed themselves to Him.     So how do you determine whether a spiritual experience, a religious leader or a group is really from God? How do you know God’s Spirit is at work in your worship experience or in your private devotional life? Some wrongly make that determination on how it makes them feel. If they feel closer to God, then it must be from God. Others, again wrongly, make that determination based on how credible the person sounds or how honest the person looks. Some may listen for the name Jesus or a few Bible verses, and if the person does that it must be okay.   But there are lots of false belief systems that will make you feel good, that look good, and that use the name of Jesus. David Koresh and the Branch Davidians talked about Jesus and quoted Bible verses, yet his followers ended up setting themselves on fire in an effort to usher in the battle of Armageddon. Jim Jones was ordained by a prominent Christian denomination, he quoted his Bible frequently and talked about Jesus, yet he led hundreds of people into the biggest mass suicide in history. Members of the Unification Church, also known as Moonies, quote the Bible and talk about Jesus, yet when you penetrate beneath the surface you find that they believe that Jesus failed in His attempt to be our Savior, and that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon is the second coming of Christ for us today.   The only sure way to sift through spiritual claims is to evaluate them on the basis of doctrinal truth. Doctrinal truth is the constant. It doesn’t move or change. We can get our bearings by comparing what we are hearing or seeing with those critical doctrinal truths.   In 1 John 4 the apostle calls our attention to the incarnation of Jesus Christ because that’s the issue they were dealing with, but that’s not the only doctrine we must use to evaluate spiritual truth claims. Heresy wears many suits. Doctrinal discernment is a skill that we learn by internalizing the Bible and learning how to apply Its truth to our lives. Discernment is that skill that enables us to differentiate, it’s the ability to see issues clearly. And we desperately need to cultivate this spiritual skill that will enable us to know right from wrong, light from darkness, truth from error, best from better, righteousness from unrighteousness. Discernment is a skill and it’s a skill we develop by exercising our minds. It means sweating holy sweat.   Picture two concentric circles. The inner circle consists of those core doctrinal truths, what C.S. Lewis dubbed “mere Christianity.” The incarnation of Jesus Christ is one of those core beliefs. These are the central claims of the Christian faith, stuff like the claim that God exists, that God is a personal God, that that the Bible communicates God’s truth,  the Trinity and so forth. This core is Christian orthodoxy that believers have held through the centuries. It’s the classic truths of the Christian faith expressed since the founding of the church 2000 years ago. The essential beliefs are what you’ll find in our church’s doctrinal statement.   The second outer circle represents peripheral doctrines that Christians who agree on the core don’t always see eye to eye on. These are things in the Bible can be taken in more than one way, like when Christ will return, the role of spiritual gifts, educational choice--whether to educate our kids in public school, private school, or home school, worship styles, and so forth. These are things we can legitimately disagree about in the Christian community and still be in harmony with each other.   Outside that second circle is the world of non-Christian beliefs. This is where atheism falls and where other world religions stand, where non-Christian cults are, and so forth. This is where spiritual truth claims that contradict the clear and evident teaching of the Bible lie. For example, when the Mormon church claims that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer, it lies outside this second circle, when Islam claims that Jesus is not God’s Son, when Eastern religions tell us that we can gain salvation through reincarnation and karma, these things lie outside of the circle of the Christian faith.   We are disobeying 1 John 4 if trust every spiritual experience, religious leader or religious organization without first testing it against Scripture. It is imperative that we study and develop doctrinal discernment. Most Christians can quickly tell you how they “feel” about something, but very few are capable of giving a coherent, objective carefully reasoned explanation of what they believe. Feelings will never defend you against Satan’s attacks or keep you anchored in the inevitable storms of life. We must know the truth. We must be anchored to the rock of God’s Word. The content of our theology matters greatly! The difference between a person in a false cult who is going to hell and a true believer in Jesus Christ, who is going to heaven, is one of theology. 3. Spiritual discernment is evidenced by a victorious Christian life, vs. 4.  “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the One Who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”   Last week we remembered 9/11. When we look at the success of evil in history, we see that the enemy has great power. Think of our world and all that it is going through in terms of agony, struggle, evil, violence, and heartache, with confusion abounding on every side and no statesmen able to see any further than the end of his nose. All of them in one way or another are publicly admitting that they don't have any answers, they don’t know the way out. Think of the despair that spreads like the tides of the sea across whole nations today. Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death among young people and the suicide rate is growing. Why this terrible wave of despair? When we think of the violence, the passion, the tears, and the death with which our world is characterized, we can see something of the greatness of the power of the enemy. No wonder someone penned these lines: Our race had a hopeful beginning, But man spoiled his chances by sinning, We hope that the story will end in God's glory, But at present the other side's winning.     It sure seems that way, doesn't it? But it isn't, despite all the appearances. God is greater than the power of the enemy. In fact, it’s almost ludicrous to put it that way. God is so incomparably greater than the enemy that there is no contest whatsoever. This is where the eye of faith must always turn in hours of darkness, discomfort, or despair; turn to what the Scriptures reveal as the truth about God and how incomparably greater He is than anything that is present among men or behind men. John said, “the One Who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”     I love the story of the little girl who said that sometimes Satan would come and knock at her door with temptation but she would say, “Jesus, will you please go and answer the door?” It was her childish way of stating this truth, “the One Who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” 4. Spiritual discernment (or a lack of it) will determine who you follow, read vss. 5-6.   John's claim that “whoever knows God listens to us,” would be the height of arrogance if he were speaking as an individual. But the Apostles were entrusted with the special authority to lay the foundation of the Church through their witness and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 16:16-18; Eph. 2:22). We have the apostolic teaching preserved in the New Testament. The standard then by which to judge anyone's (including our own) spiritual discernment is, “What is the person's response to the apostolic teaching as found in the New Testament?” Without that standard, every person becomes his/her own measure of "truth," filled with pride, and not in submission to Christ as Lord.   Our solar system illustrates for us what it is to follow Jesus. Primarily our solar system consists of the sun and eight other planets with the sun being at the center. The sun holds the solar system together by a gravitational pull or force causing the planets to orbit or revolve around it. The sun dominates the gravitational field as it makes up 99% of the solar system’s mass. There’s always something at the center that defines and directs everything else that moves around it. And as the sun is to our solar system, so God the Son should be to our existence. Friend, what are you following? What’s the center of your life, to which everything else revolves around it, Jesus, career, family, money, goals, friends, self? Is Christ the gravitational pull in your life? Is He pulling you closer to Himself? For far too many believers, Christ has been relegated to one of the tracks circling whatever it is that we have submitted for Him in the center.   John says that we can test the spirits and know which is which by not only examining their message but also by who listens to them and follows them. It should scare us and alert us if ungodly people like our message. “Birds of a feather flock together.” Conclusion: It’s easy to read 1 John 4:1-6 or hear a message like this and think, “That could never happen to me.” But it could and it does. We have folk at Grace who the Lord rescued from cults. I asked one of them to share their experience. As we close this morning, let me read their testimony. They write:   “In 1999, while most of you were waiting for the ball to drop into the third millennium and wondering if Y2K would strike, we were doing damage control from the cult we had just escaped from. No, we weren't Mormons or JWs; it wasn't even an organized cult. It was a Bible Study gone bad. It was one made of up professing Christians who had graduated from places like Bob Jones University. These were people who had befriended us at a difficult time in our lives; who seemed genuinely interested in us and furthering our walk with Christ.  We were college educated people, dedicated Christians, from strong Christian homes, and involved with church all our lives. We had heard the gospel a thousand times and believed it to the core. But Satan does not wear a devil suit. He will not come up to you and tell you something that you know is wrong and convince you that it's right. But each of us has weaknesses and fears and doubts, and Satan shoots his arrows carefully. It's not about education, intelligence or devotion to God. It is spiritual in nature. We have all been duped. Not one of us is without errors in our doctrine. "Antichrists are already in the world" says John, and this was written a long time ago. How many more are there today? How much more subtle they are by now? People may seem normal, nice, and sincere. But it doesn't mean they're not sincerely wrong. They themselves are genuinely deceived and they're just evangelizing you!   We were belittled into thinking that we were mediocre Christians because we struggled with sin, that we weren’t living a victorious Christian life. We were taught that God loves us so much and wants to commune with us intimately and “to the pure all things are pure”, and since we were PURE we had license to do anything and it was OK… so basically God could use anything to talk to you…so we watched movies all the time and then spiritualized them, taking new theology from Hollywood instead of the Holy Word. It got so that they didn’t want us to read the Bible, that was OLD news. The Holy Spirit was “leading us into all truth” now. We went to revivals where people would twitch and have physical “tics” and they were said to be so full of the Spirit that they were “controlled by the Spirit” like we should all be. The control thing got severely out of hand. The lady leader would lay on the couch and literally not move until God moved her. She did not want to do anything out of God’s perfect will for her.   We were at one huge gathering with 5,000 others doing this where we were supposed to close our eyes and pray, and God was going to heal all the people with cavities in the room and give them gold in their teeth. Why not? He can do it, can’t he? He is the Healer, the God with a cattle on a thousand hills, etc.   When we finally took them all to church, they couldn’t sit through the sermon. One lady started convulsing and said God was urging her to go downstairs and pray for the sermon. So we all got distracted and went downstairs and never ended up going back to church. We were told it was a dead church and our job was to pray for revival.   The leaders were not under the authority of any reputable church. They said they were looking for a church. Because we began to become disillusioned with our own church, we gave them authority in our lives that they didn't deserve. They were our friends so we gave them the benefit of the doubt. We didn't take what they said at face value, but rather assumed they did not mean exactly what they said. We thought it was just semantics or an inability to express themselves accurately. But if truth is a vertical line, and you start walking at a one degree angle, by the time you get a mile down the road you're way off the target. By then you've lost the discernment you need to get yourself out of the mess. Slowly your grid for truth changes until your thinking is warped.   And how do you disagree when someone says "God told me…" or even better "God told me to tell you…" You're not just disobeying the leader, you're disobeying a direct command from God. You'd better repent before His tolerance of your bad attitude runs out! So you do everything you don't want to do and hate every minute of it.   Through God's Sovereign hand we escaped the pit we were in. It was not by our will power or because we finally figured it out. But God physically removed us by amazing circumstances so that we were no longer under their influence. It was then that we received counseling and support from real Christians and began healing. God has since blessed us in every way possible: in our marriage, jobs, finances, church, friends, and our spiritual radar. We gained back everything we had lost and much, much more.”   It’s a dangerous spiritual world out there. We must Learn to Discern. How can we avoid getting sidetracked on our spiritual journey? By getting and keeping our bearings through doctrinal discernment and confidently applying spiritual victory. If you can learn to do that, you’re spiritual life will become strong, even in the face of challenges and problems, even in the face of false belief systems. Testing the spirits and living as the overcomer that you truly are, will enable you to live powerfully as Jesus Christ’s follower in a world that seems like it’s gone crazy.   Some years ago Dr. Ray Stedman titled his sermon on our text, "When Unbelief is Right." His final statement is, “God help us to be unbelievers in error as well as believers in truth.” May that be true of all of us!   “Spiritual discernment is the ability to use God’s Word to determine truth from error, and right from wrong.”     On the back of your sermon notes insert you’ll find Seven Tests of Spiritual Discernment from the late A. W. Tozer. Let me encourage you to tuck that away in your Bible and use those questions to help you as you combat error and seek to adhere to God’s Truth.