Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. We are in chapter 4 of 1 John, and we continue with a discussion regarding the tests that the apostle John writes regarding how we know. Know what, you may ask? Well, keep listening and find out the important answers to that question. 1 John chapter 4: Only We Know, the Spiritual Test. I read on a self-help website, because I need a lot of self-help, that self-knowledge means understanding my own sensations, thoughts, values, and behaviors.

Knowing myself means gaining self-awareness and self-consciousness by constant self-examination. Sounds maybe a little like psychobabble, but it’s true that there are some things only we can truly know about ourselves. I don’t know about you, but for me, one of them should be, when this short life is over, this disappointing life is over, I’m confident I’m going to enter into eternal life with God and the believing loved ones who have gone before me. That’s something I want to know. So when it comes to self-examination, I’m interested in doing what the apostle Paul challenged the Corinthians with when he said, Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves to see if Jesus Christ is really in you.

That’s exactly what we’ve been seeing how to do through the epistle of 1 John, using his tests of life. John says we can know we have eternal life, not because we have come to understand esoteric higher knowledge as the Gnostics in his day claimed. But because we pass certain actual tests, which demonstrate the genuineness of our faith in Christ. So what have we learned so far about this? What are the tests? The first one was, do I believe the right things about Jesus?

We called this the doctrinal test. Remember, the Gnostics taught very wrong ideas about Jesus’ identity. So John’s test is, do I believe that Jesus was both fully God and fully man, and have I put my trust in his sacrificial atonement on the cross for my sins? If the answer is a sincere yes, then I’ve passed the doctrinal test. We also learned about the moral test. Do I have a heart that wants to overcome sin and keep God’s commandments?

Remember, many of the Gnostics taught that what we do in our physical bodies on this earthly plane is not important. John says that’s wrong. Not that we can live perfectly in obedience, because claiming that would make us a liar, but rather, do I have sincere desire to please my heavenly Father? Am I walking in the light, as he put it? If so, I’m passing the moral test. And then we considered last time the social test, which is all about love.

Do I have godly love for other people and feel a special love for those other believers in Christ? Again, the heretics gave off an air of superiority. How they treated others was not important to them. But John says Christianity is all about love, showing God’s love in real ways. God is love, he said. So everyone who is born of God will be marked by godly love because we inherit our Father’s essential characteristics.

Does that sound like you? If so, you’re passing the social test. Most of chapter 3 and then into chapter 4 continue on the importance of that test, loving one another. I noted at the end of our last episode, though, that the transitional verse between chapter 3 and 4 actually lists these three tests all in one place, remember? And it also then reveals a fourth one where we’re going today. Here’s what it says.

Now this is God’s command, that we believe into the name of His Son Jesus Christ. That’s the doctrinal test. And that we love one another as He has commanded us. That’s the social test. The one who keeps His commandments will remain in Him. That’s the moral test.

And then he writes this. And the way we know that He remains in us is by the Spirit whom He has given us. Did you hear that key word know again? The way we will know that He remains in us is by the Spirit whom He has given us. So this is the fourth test. Let’s call it the spiritual test or the test of the Holy Spirit.

Remember we saw in John’s Gospel that Jesus promises disciples in the upper room the night before He dies, John chapter 16, that He would send them the Holy Spirit to be their helper after He returned to heaven. Then we saw in the history book of Acts that that happened on the Jewish feast day we call Pentecost, ten days after Jesus’ ascension. Now John writes to these early Christians in and around Ephesus about 50 years later, and to us as well, since this is inspired Scripture, we know that we belong to God and possess eternal life because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The Holy Spirit of God indwells every real believer. Again, the Apostle Paul wrote about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, where he said, It’s by one Spirit that we have all been baptized into one body, whether we are Jews or Greeks, slave or free, male or female, we have all been given one Spirit.

And as the Apostle Paul puts this test in Romans 8:16, The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. That’s a good one. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. So the relevant question here is, is there real evidence of the Holy Spirit within me? There should be, because He indwells every real believer. John repeats this again in verse 13 of our chapter, chapter 4.

This is how we know that we live in Him and He in us. He has given us His Spirit. There’s that key word again, this is how we know. So what does this really mean? This is the most subjective of the four tests, something only we can really know. It’s not as visible as when we make a public profession of faith in Jesus, or when our lifestyle and desires begin changing after accepting Christ, or even when our attitudes toward other people start changing and we start treating them more lovingly.

I always ask classes when I’m teaching these ideas from 1 John, if the class is made up of professing believers, how they know they have eternal life and they have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them to prove that. Besides the fact God promises that we do, we should always take God at His word, is there recognizable subjective evidence, personal evidence within us? The answer to that question is yes. John doesn’t enumerate all the evidences of the Holy Spirit’s presence in this letter, but I hear many of the same answers from Christians over and over again, and I agree these are real evidences that we should experience if we are indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit. One response I always get has to do with worship. Christians sense the Holy Spirit within them when they experience true worship.

When we’re with a group of believers focused on God in times of corporate worship, maybe we’re singing praises with hundreds or thousands of other people, or we could be just in an intimate small group, holding up the needs of friends in prayer, joining together in unity. When believers are gathered in Jesus’ name, whether it’s few or many, and their hearts are in unity, we often feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. At times, I’ve felt directly linked to God when praying all alone, something like entering almost into a different zone, like the Holy Spirit is praying through me or helping me pray as I should. Or even when I’m listening to good music driving down the road all alone. If it’s beautiful music with lyrics full of biblical truth, I often find my heart rising in worship and sense God’s presence with me.

I’m not sure this is something I can fully explain to unbelievers, but real Christians know what I’m talking about. Another time we know that the Holy Spirit is within us is when we listen to God’s Word, or we read it thoughtfully. If you’re a believer and have been listening to Share the Word, for example, I bet there are times, at least I hope this is true, when something inside you joins in agreement with what I am saying or whoever the teacher is saying from God’s Word. That’s the Holy Spirit impressing on you that you’re hearing the truth. He’s testifying to the truth of inspired Scripture. I like the passage that says, The Word of God is alive with penetrating power.

It resonates deep inside us, and the Holy Spirit says to our spirit, This is the truth. This is right. Remember this. Live in this. There are times, too, when I’m facing a decision or an opportunity, when I feel very strongly impressed from within of what is the right way to go, like the Holy Spirit is guiding me, leading me in a certain way. I’ll tell you honestly, I believe the Holy Spirit wanted us to develop this podcast, for example, and He was impressing that on Tony and me and a few others.

I couldn’t really escape the idea for quite a while. It kept coming back to me and confronting me like a voice inside saying, Hey, Paul, you need to do this. And if you’re truly a believer, I know you’ve experienced things like that too. Sometimes it’s as simple as a strong impression: You need to call this person, or You need to check in on that person. And when you do, you realize it was the Holy Spirit directing you there because they needed help or they needed to hear from someone. Sometimes it comes from another person that the Holy Spirit uses to urge you in a certain direction or encourage you when you need it.

These things I am talking about are admittedly very subjective. Only we know, not things we can touch or take a photo of, but they are personally very real. They are, as John says, a witness inside of us that the Holy Spirit is there, and that’s a proof that we are passing the test for eternal life. On the negative side of the ledger, the Holy Spirit also convicts believers of sin when we disappoint God. We sense that when it happens, if we’re walking in the light. And when it happens, we’re warned in other New Testament passages not to disregard that voice.

We shouldn’t ignore him or override his conviction, because if we do that long enough, he just may let us go on in our headstrong way. It’s no different than when I counsel one of my adult children, and I say, Hey, Sam, I’m afraid this isn’t going to work out very well for you. Or, Boy, Lydia, I hope you rethink that decision. But if they ignore my input and press on anyway, at a certain point, as their father, I quit chiding them. I’ll pray for them, but I’ve said enough about it. I have to let them go and maybe learn things the hard way.

It’s exactly like that when we ignore the Holy Spirit’s conviction. But if we do it repeatedly, his voice in our lives may, after a while, diminish. It’s a very foolish thing to let happen, by the way, because his voice in our lives is always urging us toward what’s good. He’s always urging us to do what’s right in our best interest. Don’t misunderstand this, though. I’m not saying that the Holy Spirit leaves us when we act headstrong or ignore his conviction.

I don’t believe that. We’ll discover the reasons why as we progress through other New Testament passages. But I am saying that he may leave you alone if you keep quenching his input or grieving him by disobedience. In fact, at a certain point, he may even bring discipline into your life to get you back on course. So we need to, in Paul’s words in Galatians 5:25, do our best to keep in step with the Spirit. That means stay attuned to him, be sensitive and responsive to his promptings and conviction in our lives.

I think all true believers experience these witnesses of the Holy Spirit. We experience Him when we worship. We know He impresses truth on us when we hear the Word of God. We sense that He leads us, urges us toward obeying God or toward making the best choices. And when we don’t, He also convicts us. He lets us know that God isn’t pleased with what’s going on.

All true believers experience these kinds of internal proofs of the Holy Spirit. John’s insisting that. Before we finish, I want to point out something very important he also brings up in this section that’s related to the spiritual test. At the outset of chapter 4, he warned his readers not to, these are his words, believe every spirit, but to test the spirits because, he says, many false prophets have gone out into the world. Prophets are people who speak for God, mouthpieces for God. False prophets are those people who claim to speak for God but who are not really.

Some are frauds who may in fact be speaking for the enemy. We were just talking about this, I think, in an earlier chapter recently. Just because someone claims to be a prophet or a pastor or whatever religious title, just because they say some spiritual-sounding things or tell stories that are amazing or even apparently do miraculous things, none of that means they are truly speaking for God. Never forget this. Pharaoh’s magicians could apparently do miraculous things. Revelation tells us the Antichrist will perform signs and false wonders, and that’s why people in the world will follow him.

That word test here, when John says test the spirits, comes from the science of metallurgy. He’s saying we should be like a jeweler who scratches the surface of a ring or necklace with a drop of nitric acid on it to see if it’s genuine gold. To be sure, it’s not really a cheaper metal made to look like gold. We can’t be naive about this. Satan uses false teachers in our generation just as he used the Gnostic heretics in John’s generation. No matter how appealing or convincing or seemingly deep and insightful, if their message does not conform to the truth in God’s Word, John says it’s not from the Holy Spirit.

Always bear this in mind. Jesus promised the apostles the Holy Spirit would lead them into all truth. The Holy Spirit then inspired the very words of Scripture that those men wrote. So if someone claiming to speak for God teaches things contrary to the Scripture they wrote, they are false teachers. They are false apostles. Period.

Because the Holy Spirit is never, ever going to contradict Himself. This is precisely why John writes things in this section like, Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but any spirit not acknowledging that, that is Jesus’ true humanity, is not from God. John’s immediate purpose in writing that was to expose the Gnostic teachers who denied Jesus’ real humanity. But the principle applies much further. No matter what someone teaches that’s contrary to biblical truth, no one speaking for God is contradicting the truths in the Scripture. The same goes for anyone who claims they have new spiritual revelation, new spiritual knowledge that goes beyond what the Bible says.

People buying into someone claiming that, that’s exactly the way every false cult since the beginning of time has begun. Someone claiming to be a prophet, teaching ideas that go beyond what God has told us in His Word. I just watched a documentary the other night about the Waco, Texas Branch Davidian cult. People were so deceived by this guy who called himself a prophet, David Koresh, and his claims to have new revelation from God, that they believed that he was actually the incarnation of the second coming of Christ. Eighty followers of his burned in that compound because they were so deceived by him. There’s a reason the book of Revelation closes the canon of Scripture with this warning: If anyone adds anything to the words of this scroll, God will add to that person the plagues described in it.

There’s a reason we’re told to defend the faith that’s once for all been delivered to God’s holy people. The fact false teachers contradict or else go beyond what God has put down in Scripture for us is exactly why John insists that we test the spirits. Check carefully what people claim against what’s already been revealed. The truths in the New Testament are the final word. This is why I’m glad you’re listening as we honestly explore the big ideas in the New Testament each episode. That’s why we also urge you to be involved in a church that preaches and teaches God’s Word accurately.

The more we hear the truth, the more familiar we become with God’s Word, the more alert we will be to false teaching when we hear it. Like the old illustration of the bank teller who handles genuine currency so much, he can detect the counterfeit bill. They can because they’re so familiar with the real thing. A counterfeit feels off to them. If we have learned God’s Word and it’s soaking up in our minds, the Holy Spirit will bring its truths to our memory and a big red flag will go up when we hear false teaching. It will feel off to you.

In verse 6 of chapter 4, John writes, We are from God, and whoever knows God will listen to us. But whoever is not from God will not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. The spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Don’t think for a moment that spirits promoting error are not still very active in our world. They absolutely are.

Paul calls them in another place deceitful spirits spreading doctrines of demons in 1 Timothy. We can’t be naive enough to believe everything that sounds spiritual that purports to be Christian, even if it’s accompanied, as I said earlier, by things that appear supernatural. We have to be able to recognize the spirit of error. A reel came across my Facebook feed the other day. It looked like a church service, so I clicked on it out of curiosity. I was immediately assaulted with hard-driving, almost chaotic-sounding music.

In the video, people were jumping around like their clothes were on fire, some shaking uncontrollably, others on the floor motionless. I mean, scores and scores of people in a large auditorium acting like this. The scene looked and sounded completely out of control. It bothered me in my spirit to even watch it. It gave off an almost demonic vibe to me. When I looked into the comments, I was amazed to see how many people were saying things like, Wow, the Holy Spirit really fell on that congregation, or Now that’s what I mean by a real outpouring of the Holy Ghost.

But what came to my mind were some of the truths we have already heard in God’s Word. 1 Corinthians chapter 14, where the apostle Paul was correcting a church that was confused about spiritual gifts. He wrote to them there, When believers come together, everything must be done decently and in an orderly way, because God is not the author of confusion. He was drawing a contrast, actually, between how the gathered church should look and feel versus the ecstatic rituals practiced in Corinth’s pagan temples. And then he added, Because the spirits of prophets are always subject to the prophets. He meant God’s true spokesmen are in control of themselves, not acting out like the pagan priests who sometimes came under demonic control.

I’ve had very well-intentioned people tell me over the years that the real proof of the Holy Spirit in a person is when they enter into such an out-of-control state, or when they babble nonsense that they don’t even know what it means, or when they fall out on the floor and go unconscious, or something similar. Maybe you have too. I think they are deceived. These kinds of phenomena are more likely the result of a spirit of error, a counterfeit spirit, or perhaps just an emotionally generated frenzy or some kind of group hypnosis, something, but not the Holy Spirit. Because the Spirit always leads us, as we just heard, to act decently, orderly, and under control. And He’s always going to act in ways consistent with His Word.

I’ve wandered a little far afield today, but the biggest thing I want you to carry away from this lesson is that the authentic evidence of the Holy Spirit is within all true believers, as when He connects our hearts to God in worship and prayer, when He leads and directs us as we seek His will, when He convicts us of the truth when we hear the Scripture, or convicts us of sin when we are off track. These are all ways a true Christian knows the Holy Spirit is within them, which is one more indicator that we have passed the tests of life. Is the witness of the Holy Spirit within you a test you are passing? This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. As we listen to each chapter, there are gems that we take away that are specific to our walk.

I wanted to reiterate the statement that Paul made that the authentic evidence of the Holy Spirit is within all true believers. When I truly looked at what we’ve discussed so far, I began living my life and trusting in the guidance of the Holy Spirit moment by moment. And what I mean by that is that the Holy Spirit has become my GPS. But it’s important to continue our studies in the Word of God, to imprint His Word on our hearts so that we may be able to recognize the truth from lies. When Jesus was tested in the desert, He didn’t rely on His deity, but on the Word of God. It is written.

And the more we know, the more we know. Where do you stand with each of these tests so far? From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.