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Date: 7th February 2016

Series name:Testing the spirits

Sermon # in series: 2

Sermon Title:

Bible Reference: 1 John 4

A disclaimer from Pastor Stuart

My role in the church here is to feed and care for God’s people the best I can. Key to that, in my opinion is teaching and preaching from the Bible; but that is not all a pastor has to do! In fact after the emails, staff admin, hospital visits, community visits, leadership meetings, etc, etc, there sometimes seems to be little time for sermon prep! Years ago I used to agonise over trying to come up with two, often three, totally original sermons each week. But I’ve found that, for me at least, that is impossibility. I’ve learned to be grateful for and to use the gifts God gives to help me – not only the Holy Spirit, but other Bible teachers and preachers.

Over the years I’ve discovered that if something teaches, inspires and excites me it’s likely to do the same for those I speak to. So I admit that sometimes I find myself depending heavily on other people’s ideas, at least to ‘prime the pump’ and therefore I claim originality for very little in these sermons. If you look hard enough and wide enough you’ll probably find who I’ve been reading and learning from! I never knowingly plagiarise, but if you find I have, then I apologise. It must have been that what was said was just too good not to use!

I am particularly indebted to the likes of John Piper, Sam Storms, Wayne Grudem, John Ortberg & Rick Warren. The Lord regularly uses them to get my spiritual pulse racing. I’m also indebted to many who kindly make their sermons available on the likes of sermoncentral.com and preachingtoday.com. Others who help me include ‘The Doctor’ (Martyn Lloyd-Jones), C.H Spurgeon and any of the Puritans.

These sermons are not made available because I think they’re good but in the hope and with the prayer that they may be used by the Holy Spirit to bless others as they have blessed our own church here in Ipswich, UK.

Unless otherwise specified, all scriptures are taken from the HOLY BIBLE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder and Stoughton Limited.

Testing the spirits – 1 John 4

Continuing from last time – how can we tell a genuine work of the Spirit from a false one? How do we know if something is really of God?

Last time I highlighted 6 things which, in my experience, are often cited as both evidence for and evidence against something being the work of the Holy Spirit. If truth be told, in our kind of church they are more likely to be cited as evidence against the Holy Spirit being involved in something. But be that as it may! Can we remember any of them?

  1. We haven’t done it this way before
  2. People are getting emotional, falling over or other physical things
  3. People are getting very excited about God
  4. People are seeing/experiencing unusual things
  5. People are being influenced by a leader
  6. The leaders are not perfect

Truth is – these things aren’t evidence or proof for or against the H/S being involved. These things may be happening and the thing be from God, or it may not be from God.

So how do we know? Can we even know? Yes we can! In 1 John 4 John speaks about some things which will always be evident when God is genuinely at work in a church or a person’s life; things which when we see them we can say for sure, regardless of what else may be happening, that this a true work of God.

Again I’m following the great Jonathan Edwards outline here. Firstly, a true work of the Holy Spirit:

  1. Always Exalts the Jesus of the Bible – 1 Jn 4:2-3

"This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the fleshis from God,but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God’

John says that when the Holy Spirit is at work, when a thing is of God then people will be drawn to Jesus and become convinced of who he is. This is the Spirits work – to draw people to Jesus and make people think well of him (specifically Jesus of the Bible – the anointed one (the Christ), not one of their own making!

If this doesn’t happen then whatever else might be happening the work isn’t of God! If however it is happening, if people are delighting in Jesus, believing in him and trusting him as personal saviour; if they are wanting to follow him and become like him, if they are thinking more of Jesus and delighting in him more then it has to be the H/S at work – regardless of anything else that may be going on. You see, no other spirit will do this – Satan certainly won’t; it would be against his very reason for being. He hates Jesus, he’ll never lift Jesus up so people think well of him. He’d never, ever make a person have even a thought of trusting Jesus. Neither he nor any of his spirit helpers ever, ever do this. They hate Jesus, the last thing they want is for people to genuinely start to admire and trust and follow him!

But someone might say‘What if it doesn’t last’? So what if it doesn’t last? Does that prove that it isn’t of God? Does it prove that what the person felt and professed wasn’t a genuine work of God? Of course not! What about Hebrews 6 and those who have tasted? What’s happening might not ultimately lead to genuine, saving faith, but that doesn’t mean that God wasn’t at work in the first place. Many are spoken to, many are convicted, many are moved to admire Jesus – but don’t follow it through. That doesn’t mean that initial work wasn’t from God.

Second infallible test

  1. A true work of the Spirit alwaysleads people to hate sin and turn from it-1 John 4:4-5"You, dear children,are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in youis greater than the one who is in the world.They are from the worldand therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them."

Let me unpick that a little; what John pictures here is a clash of opposites – God’s kingdom and Satan's kingdom (spirit of anti-Christ which is already here), and where the Holy Spirit is at work then people will show evidence of changing priorities, likes and desires. ‘You have overcome them’; ‘they’ are from the world, they speak from a worldly point of view and are readily listened to by the world.What is ‘the world’? It’s not simply a list of does and don’t – it’s a way of thinking – that thinks of self first and leaves no room for God. Things of ‘the world’ are all about what gives me pleasure, what satisfies me. The world is basically selfishness, life with no regard for God or the things of God. Ch 2:15-16 really say it well. Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world’ [NLT].

So what John is saying that anything that reduces our craving and seeking after things that really only have value in this life – money, selfish physical satisfaction, pleasure, emotional highs, etc, etc, is going to be from God. Are these things wrong? No, not in themselves, but our great problem is that we so often put them before God and at that point then they are wrong. The H/S will always elevate that way of thinking, those things that please God and lessen our craving for merely selfish, physical, temporary things, enabling us to be satisfied with much less than we thought before!

Satan will never convict us of sin! He’ll never awaken your conscience to something you’re doing wrong – that just works against his whole reason for being! He will never make you feel bad about something you’ve said or done to God or someone else. Satan will never, ever, ever make someone hate their sins and seek Jesus for forgiveness of sins.

So if we ever see someone with those kinds of desires and/or concerns we can be certain that, regardless of what else may be happening, God is at work.

  1. A true work of the Holy Spirit will always take people to the Bible. 1 John 4:6– ‘We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us.This is how we recognize the Spiritof truthand the spirit of falsehood’.I like the NLT–‘But we belong to God, and those who know God listen to us. If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us’.

‘We’, ‘us’ – he’s talking about the apostles, those originally commissioned and uniquely qualified to start and establish the church. They had unique authority in teaching, were inspired by The H/S to teach and speak truth. Eph 2:19-20 – ‘you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizenswith God’s people and also members of his household,20builton the foundationof the apostles and prophets,with Christ Jesus himselfas the chief cornerstone.

So whenever the Spirit is at work you’ll find that people delight in and spend more time with the Bible. There will be a fresh desire to read it, to understand it and to obey it. This is the work of the Spirit – to lead us to the place where God speaks most of all. A false spirit or Satan will never do this; he’ll never want to lead them to where they might here God speak! The word brings light and he’s the prince of darkness – why then would he ever lead them to the light!

You see, the H/S will always lift up and promote truth – he is the ‘Spirit of Truth’, v6, and truth is found in the Bible. This is a litmus test of a work of the Spirit – does the person seek truth?Do they want to know truth about God?Do they increasingly see the truth about themselves as sinners in God’s sight? Do they trust Jesus, the way the truth and the Life to deal with their sin and then seek to grow in Jesus likeness? Do they yearn/long for more and more for goodness and honesty and love and fairness and justice.

If they do then however much hype and noise and excitement there is then it’s certain God is at work somewhere!We might find things going on strange and off putting even – but if people are loving the Bible, and being changed by it then God is there somewhere and we should be cautious about criticising or opposing.

Lastly

  1. A true work of the Spirit will always make result in people loving God and other people more – v8 "The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love". The rest of the chapter is really all about this and so I reckon this is the most important mark of all. Not everyone is a Bible student or reader – but everyone can and should love God and others. By ‘love’ we’re not talking sloppy sentimentality, we’re talking commitment and respect; we’re talking about thinking of God first before ourselves. When the Spirit is at work people will marvel at God more, worship him more, rejoice in him more, praise him more, prayer to him more. He will become truly #1 for them, above and before all else – even family.

Likewise, where the Holy Spirit is at work people will resolve differences, will forgive each other – they will forgive as God forgave them. This is the way it works. A spirit filled person will not hold a grudge!

So you can see this is the great needfor all of us – here is the answer to family problems! It’s the answer to our problems with sin & temptation; here is the answer to our struggles with witnessing. We need more of the H/S to fill us with Jesus, to lead us into and teach us the Bible, and to cause us to love those we find difficult to love.

Taken together, last time and this, I trust we are each better able to see the difference between a genuine work of God and something that’s just emotion or hype. Let us be careful not to dismiss something just because there’s emotion, because it’s different to what we’ve seen or experienced, because the leaders are not perfect or because strange things are happening. Those are not proofs one way or another!

But know that if you find yourself being moved to love Jesus, hate sin, love the Bible and to love God and others then know for sure that the H/S is at work in you. It doesn’t have to be spectacular or emotional (that’s a mistake we too often make – that unless we ‘feel’ something, unless it’s noisy or exciting then it’s not of God – that’s rubbish’). Know that when you feel a tug in your heart to read the Bible, when you see or feel something about Jesus that makes you ‘wow’ at him or even just want to serve him then know that the H/S is at work. If you hear or read something, or just feel a prick in your heart that convicts and challenges you about some sin you’ve do or do – know that that is of God. Do not despise it, do not, whatever you do ignore it. It’s the Lord speaking and he speaks because he wants to bless you.

Prayer