Friday, August 10, 2018
Test the spirits
1 John 4:1
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Nicely put together words and high-sounding ideas are sometimes very deceptive. They sound so good that they suck you in. Sweet talkers abound, and we would do well to be able to separate truth from sweet mouth. But some of us, like the soca song says, “have a weakness for sweetness.”
Here are the words I read early this morning as I saw a post from someone celebrating a recent message from a pastor, “Your deliverance is connected to your praise. The size of your praise determines the size of your blessing” And complete with photography the post is attracting likes, shares, and comments, “preach pastor, preach.”
I have been struggling to figure out what those words really mean. Now, to be fair to the pastor I wasn’t present, I didn’t hear the recording, and the person who posted the excerpts could have made a mistake, however, this type of talk is very popular and widely available.
These are rabble-rousers whose purpose is to fire up a crowd and make everybody feel good about the time they spent “in the presence of the Lord.” As we noted already recently, not every spirit that you hear from a pulpit in church is of God.
Many good speakers, actors, and the like, who know some of the church jargon that is popular today, could put down a stirring performance in the pulpit and get a congregation going. You don’t have to know God or have the presence of the Spirit, you just have to say the right things with the right attitude.
As a result of this many so-called preachers are in pulpit delivering motivational speeches with enough soundbites, punchlines, and quotable quotes to get an enthusiastic response in the service, and then tweets, Instagram and Facebook posts with many shares and likes and retweets that keep the analytics graphs animated.
This gets dangerous when the person speaking has evil intent, and when the goal of being in the pulpit, or in the position of a minister, is to deceive the flock for their own ends by taking them captive through deceptive spirits. Many times we forget that we are in a spiritual context and that evil spirits remain at work.
This is the point of the admonition from the apostle John in our passage today. The spirit of the Antichrist is already in the world and is at work to deceive, “And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.” 1 John 4:3.
John then, in this short section, lays down for us the tests that we should carry out given that we have people, controlled by evil spirits, spreading false ideas that sound like truth. Everything that is taught must line up with scriptural truth, and so the primary test of truth is what is said about Jesus.
There are two ways that this test can be carried out. First, does the preacher or teacher truly accept that Jesus Christ is the Son of God come in the flesh, died for our sin, rose again, is alive and well and seated at the right hand of God making intercession for us? This is the core of our faith, but you may be surprised by how many preachers are not preaching or believing this.
Another way to carry out this truth test is to see if the person is focused on Jesus at all. Many a Christian preacher can get through a sermon, a series even, without the mention of Jesus. Without Him being the focus of our life and faith. A good tell-tale sign is those preachers who take us to the Old Testament, not for illustration and example, but for their substance. Paul said that those are “a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.” Colossians 2:17.
The second test is to see that what is being taught lines up with the teaching of the apostles. There is a lot of teaching and preaching now that does not line up with the apostles’ doctrine. I had an uncle who told me when I was much younger, that things were going on quite well until Paul came along and changed up everything to suit himself.
My uncle did not cotton on to something new. This argument over the writings and teachings of Paul existed from the very beginning. The apostle Peter, who started out as the most credible of the disciples of Jesus, had to intervene in this matter before. Peter declared the writings of Paul to be scripture and indicated that untaught and unstable people were already distorting what was clearly laid down in the epistles.
“Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless; and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.” 2 Peter 3:14-16.
Start applying these two tests to everything that is taught or preached and know what spirit is speaking to you.
Think on these things:
- Do you take it for granted that your preacher is teaching truth according to the scripture?
- Have you ever applied any scriptural tests at all to the things you are being taught in church, on TV, or online?
- Do you know what kind of preparation is given to the pastors and teachers in your church and what are the safeguards to ensure that their teaching remains in line with the scriptures?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would test the word we hear against the truth of scripture to be sure that we are being taught by the Spirit of God.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex