Putting Teachers to the Test, Part 2

Spiritual deception isn't new. Secondly, remember the principle that the Bible is enough.

Enough. The Bible is God's inspired word sufficient to equip you for every good work. 2 Timothy 3.17. You have everything you need that pertains to life and godliness. 2 Peter 1.3. You've got everything you need that pertains to life and godliness.

You don't have to go beyond that period and write new stuff. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey continues and concludes a lesson on false teachers. You're going to learn how you can identify people who are teaching false doctrine. For example, one of the characteristics of a false teacher is his or her lack of commitment to God's word. There are other principles we need as well. Since false teaching is so prevalent in our world today, you need to be equipped to evaluate what you hear. We're going to examine those principles today.

We're concluding a lesson that Stephen began yesterday entitled, Putting Teachers to the Test. Notice what John writes. He says in verse 1, many of these false pretenders, false prophets, have gone out into the world. Catch that. He's not saying they're going to go out. He's saying they already have.

This isn't a future danger. In fact, the phrase, they've gone out into the world, has the nuance in the original language, this implication, that they are on a global mission. They're literally on their own mission trip. Just as we're sending mission teams to different places around the world to deliver the gospel of Jesus Christ, false teachers are racking up frequent flyer miles, delivering a false representation of the spirit world, a false understanding of the nature of God, and above all, a false interpretation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're on a mission though. Are we on a mission?

They're at it. It doesn't matter where I've gone in the world. It amazes me to find false religion at every other corner, many of them from America. If John is saying that there is a proliferation of false teachers 2,000 years ago, imagine how many false prophets and false religions and false teachers and false spiritual leaders and false paths and false faiths there are today, all claiming to speak with the authority of God. This doesn't mean, by the way, that they're all really bad people, that they always do really bad things. They might be model citizens. John doesn't use goodness as a litmus test, and necessarily the final test for authenticity.

They may have done a lot of good things. In fact, every deceiving prophet or teacher we know from the word of God will not be exposed until the final judgment. In other words, many of them will go undetected throughout their entire lives until they stand before Jesus, and they complain, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not give messages in the name of Jesus? And Jesus will say effectively, Well, you did, but I don't have a relationship with you.

I don't know who you are. Matthew 7. That day of reckoning is coming. In the meantime, John doesn't want us floundering out here and just saying, Well, I'm not going to know for sure if they're telling the truth or not.

I guess we're just going to have to wait. No, he says, look, stay alert. Don't be gullible. Put your teachers to the test. And now John provides the most important test you can give to your teacher.

You have the command, and now the criterion. Look at verse 2. By this, you know the Spirit of God. In other words, this is how you know the Spirit of God is speaking and not some counterfeit spirit. Every spirit that confesses, agrees with this truth that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not agree in some way, shape, or form is not from God. This is instead the spirit of the antichrist that is against Christ, diminishing Christ, of which you have heard that it is coming and now it is already in the world, the spirit of antichrist. John has already introduced us, by the way, to the Holy Spirit in chapter 2, more explicitly in chapter 3, the last verse. In fact, if you look up at verse 24, we're told that it's by the Spirit.

We know this. In fact, we have been given the Spirit. This third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, he's called the Holy Spirit only by John in his gospel, chapter 1, chapter 14, chapter 20. Now John is going to refer to the genuine protecting ministry of the Holy Spirit in you which resonates with the truth from the Word of God about the Son of God, and this is the criterion that you run everything by. What does that prophet, what does that teacher, what does that person with spiritual insight, suppose a discernment, what do they say about Jesus?

That simple. More specifically, by the way, let's look at what John says. More specifically, what do they confess about Jesus Christ coming in the flesh? Verse 2, that Jesus Christ has come, if you have a pencil, you ought to circle the word in, in the flesh. Not upon flesh, but in the flesh. John is attacking Syrenthian Gnosticism.

You're not going to have to know that for the quiz I'm going to give you later, but let me at least tell you this much. Syrenthus lived during the days of the apostle John. He was a burr in his saddle. In fact, at one point in time, John was at a bathhouse and he found out that Syrenthus was there and John rushed out of the building not even wanting to be under the same roof as this heretic. Syrenthus was the first one to sort of package a heresy that has been promoted all the way up until our time today and it is this heresy that Jesus was an ordinary man upon whom the spirit of Christ or the mind of Christ or the Christ spirit descended. It happened at his baptism.

The Bible tells us that something resembling a dove descended on Jesus. Well, that was the Christ spirit and that empowered this ordinary man to do wonderful things, amazing things. But the Christ spirit left Jesus at the crucifixion, poor Jesus, and Jesus then died. Of course, this effectively destroys the atonement. A man can't die for the sins of the world. An ordinary sinful man cannot die to pay the penalty for other sinners. So I want you to notice carefully here how John equates Jesus with Christ.

He runs both terms together. Jesus Christ. Jesus was not empowered by Christ. Jesus is Christ. He didn't have some Christ spirit descending upon him.

He is and always shall be the anointed one. John writes Jesus Christ was then in effect already existing but then he came in the flesh. He was a real man with a real human body, pre-existing as equal to the Father. Philippians chapter 2 fills in the blanks. He was none other than God the Son from time past.

Now he's come in the flesh. Now John is also answering, by the way, the Jewish argument that Jesus was not the Messiah. He uses that term Christos, Christ, the anointed one from God who would be none other than the Messiah. In other words, Jesus didn't begin his existence in Bethlehem, that is as the Son of God.

Bethlehem was simply the birthplace where God's Son who existed from all of eternity first appeared then on earth in human flesh born of the Virgin Mary. So in this one brief phrase which is absolutely loaded, John answers, Gnosticism, and Serafinianism, and Judaism, and Mormonism, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Buddhism, Hinduism, you just go down the list. Every religious system that refuses the unique singularity confessing to the truth that Jesus Christ is uniquely God in the flesh, pre-existent eternal God. By this criterion you can examine the religions, the isms, the spasms of our over religious world. They come to your porch and they say we'd like to interest you in Jesus Christ.

You can say I am already interested in Jesus Christ who is my Lord and Savior, the God-man who came. But don't think that every deceiving prophet or teacher believes something differently other than this confession is not going to do any good things for people. Think of it this way, Warren Wiersbe and his wonderful little commentary on First Gen Illustrated it this way, he said, suppose you have a counterfeit $10 bill.

You don't know it, you just happen to be given it the course of a year a week. You think it's genuine and you use it, Wiersbe writes, to pay for a tank of gas. I would update his commentary to clarify you got two and a half gallons of gas, not quite a tank.

Dates the commentary a little bit. The gas station manager later uses the bill to buy supplies. The supplier uses the bill to pay for groceries. The grocer then bundles the bill up with 49 other $10 bills and takes it to the bank tell her counsel but then stops and says, I'm sorry but this particular $10 bill is a counterfeit. Now that $10 bill did a lot of good things while it was in circulation. But when it arrived at the bank and was handled by an expert, it was exposed for what it really was. There will be that exposure at the final judgment. In the meantime, we expose them by judging them according to this test. We test their confession of faith. Now what John does next following the command and the criterion is he provides a contrast. Notice verse 4, there's this contrasting relationship. He writes, for you are from God, little children, and have overcome them.

That is these false teachers. Because greater is he, a reference to the spirit of God, who is in you than he who is in the world. In other words, by means of the spirit of God, through the word of God, delivering the true confession about the son of God, you, John writes, have defeated false teachers.

The verb you have overcome is used in a lot of different ways and many of them may be correct. In this context here, in the perfect tense, he's actually implying a definite time in the past where these believers had faced false teachers, they'd heard the message, they scrutinized it, they determined it by means of the spirit of God with the truth of God's word that they weren't saying the right thing about the son of God, that they were false, and they dismissed that teacher, they refused to listen to that teacher, and they gained victory, they overcame them. That's the idea here. John may have an incident in mind, or maybe two. We don't know because he doesn't tell us. We do know that John has already used the present tense in verse one to tell us that we should continuously be testing the spirits. So the total picture here in John's heart and mind as he writes this to these believers and to ourselves would be this. We may have won a victory or two in the past against false teaching. We've been alert. We've been listening.

We've been evaluating it against the confession of Christ in the word. But we are to maintain alertness. We are to stay at our posts.

We are to effectively keep our helmets on. We're to watch out. We're to evaluate what we hear and see and read about Christ or God or heaven or hell or the way there.

And additional victories can then be won against them. Now I want to point out briefly the contrasting response to what he's teaching. Look at verse five. They are from the world, that is, those who disbelieve this confession. Therefore, they, these false teachers, speak as from the world, and the world does what? The world listens to them. These present tense verbs indicate these false teachers keep talking, talking, talking, talking. And the world keeps listening, listening, listening, listening. And haven't you wondered why does the world keep listening, listening, listening to all the talking, talking, talking? In fact, the verb for talking means empty prattling, nonsense. And the world goes, wow, that was so great.

It was perfect. Maybe even shed a tear or two. Why does that happen? Have you ever wondered why heretics have a following? Have you ever wondered why false religions gain a following?

It amazes me. It amazes me that there would be those that would actually believe that somehow we're just going to vaporize into eternal consciousness. I mean, if I were an unbeliever, I'd say, what fun is that? How can a woman believe in Mormonism? She's going to spend eternity bearing children.

What fun is that? The message of false teachers, however, stimulates base desire and attitudes. And the world is effectively hearing what they want to hear. And these teachers wrap their language in pseudo-spiritual lingo. They mention God and Jesus and all of that kind of stuff.

They even hold their Bible up and say, repeat after me. But John writes here in verse 3, it is anti-Christ. That is, it does not exalt Christ. It exalts the human. The focus is not on God as a person, but on what God can give you.

It doesn't exalt or glorify Christ. And these teachers in John's day, he says, look, they have already proliferated. They're already on their mission. They're everywhere. And we would have to say the same thing today. Are you alert?

Are you listening? They are everywhere. One talk show host that literally has a following of millions of people talks often of spiritual themes. She's lived for 25 years with a man to whom she's not married. She's created a convoluted, self-made religion with elements taken from Christianity and humanism, Catholicism, New Ageism, Eastern mysticism. She regularly invites mystics, spiritualists, pseudo-spiritual leaders and teachers on her show. She spent a weekend a few years ago of spiritual silence. She brought along her yoga instructor to provide meditation and guidance where she rediscovered their center, their wholeness, as she put it. She completed her weekend and then described it in her magazine, which is simply called O after her name, Oprah.

I was in the grocery store line. I saw the article about this spiritually rich weekend, so I bought the magazine and hid it between the eggs and the bread and made it to my car without anybody seeing, I think. I wanted to see what all this spiritual insight was about. She wrote about what she learned from her weekend of silence. And I quote her, Our real power comes from knowing who we are, and that begins with looking inside ourselves in silence. I've always believed you really need no gurus, no leaders, no guides. You just need yourself. You have all your own best answers. What you are trying to find is already there. Be still and know it.

I hardly need to comment, but I do have time. Listen, the truth is not in you, is it? I know I'm preaching to the choir, but it's really not in us. The only thing we find in ourselves is depravity, sin. In our flesh dwells no good thing. We die daily. We crucify the flesh. We lament like Paul about this body of death, and we surrender daily moment by moment to the Spirit of God, for in him is truth and life.

You don't need a weekend of silence. You need the Savior. In case you're new in the faith here today, let me close up this stitch. The Bible doesn't actually say, be still and know it, or as she was really twisting to make her own point, be still and know yourself, because all the answers are in you. Now David wrote in Psalm 46 verse 10 of the psalmist did, which this poor dear lady twisted in order to make her own convoluted point. The psalmist is actually quoting God who says, be still and know, say it with me, that I am God. Because honestly, I will be exalted among the nations.

I will be exalted in the earth. Because the world doesn't want to know about a God who's sovereign, who will be exalted over everybody and everything, let's rush to applaud the message of those who merely tell us what we want to hear, that it's really all about us. But those who have the Spirit of God within them, look at verse 6. We are from God and he who knows, he who genuinely knows God listens to us.

Key word us. He's referring to the apostolic community, God's messengers, true spokesmen, delivering to the church the gospel which we now hold in our hands called the New Testament in this form. Through the apostles this came, and the last verse in the last chapter of the Bible ends with a period. He says, here's this contrast, by this we know the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of error. The word error is from the word plan A which we transliterate to get our word planet.

He's already used it and I've mentioned this, but that's the word the ancients used of those bodies out there in space that seem to them to just wander aimlessly. What a tragic description of unbelieving humankind that wanders. Let me give you three summary statements to wrap up this paragraph and then we're done. First, remember the problem of spiritual deception isn't new. I find that encouraging. I mean, we're in a battle, but it's encouraging to know that John was battling it as well, false teaching related to the person of Christ.

We have the same battle going on today. In fact, we're also told, if you read through the end of the book, that spiritual deception is going to continue and it's even going to exist in the millennial kingdom when Jesus Christ literally physically sits upon a throne. At the end of a thousand years of near perfect conditions, millions will disbelieve him and march against him. Let's overthrow Jesus. Deception continues into the end of human history as we know it, Revelation chapter 20. Spiritual deception isn't new. Secondly, remember the principle that the Bible is enough.

Enough. The Bible is God's inspired word sufficient to equip you for every good work. 2 Timothy 3.17. You have everything you need that pertains to life and godliness. 2 Peter 1.3. You've got everything you need that pertains to life and godliness. You don't have to go beyond that period and write new stuff. Isn't it interesting that many of the religions and cults of the world have the Bible and they don't have a problem with it but it's something in addition to the Bible?

They'll tell you this is fine but we've got something new. So it's the Bible plus Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price. It's the Bible plus the Jehovah's Witnesses Zion's Watchtower. It's the Bible plus the Hindu's Bhagavad Gita.

That's fine. You can keep the Bible, just add the Bhagavad Gita to it. It's the Bible plus papal decrees and church traditions. It's the Bible plus Scientology's Dianetics. It's the Bible plus the Jewish mystics Kabbalah. False religions always promote something in addition to the Bible.

You can keep the Bible but we've got something else. Are we alert? That ought to tip us off because they'll come up on your porch perhaps or you have them at work or you see them or you read about them or you're watching them. Maybe they personally say to you, I've had one couple say to me on one occasion in my neighborhood, we'd like to interest you in the Bible.

I said I'm interested. That's how they began but it was really the Bible plus. Isaiah the prophet warned and that warning exists to this day. If they, that is spiritual teachers, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

They failed the test. Spiritual deception isn't new. The Bible is enough. Third, remember the person of Jesus Christ is eternally divine. So be alert to anything that diminishes his glory, his sacrifice, his resurrection, his coming.

He is and always was and always will be God the Son who at one point in time came in the flesh. Warn people around you who may be misled. Dean Neferratus was riding the number 22 CTA bus in Chicago. The bus David Walz writes was filled with dozing office workers, restless young people and affluent shoppers. But at the Clark and Webster stop, two men and a woman climbed in. The driver, a seasoned veteran, immediately called out, everybody watch your valuables, pickpockets on board. And everybody paid attention, they all woke up.

Women clutched their handbags and men reached for their wallets and cell phones and all eyes, he writes, were fixed on these three who looked rather insulted and harassed, but they didn't even break their stride as they promptly exited through the middle doors of the bus and out. Stay alert, stay awake. There are those who will come to steal away things that matter. Tell each other the truth. Boldly warn others of false teaching. Don't stray from the Scriptures. Learn all you can about Christ and while you're at it, keep your eyes on Jesus, exalt Jesus, follow Jesus Christ, surrender to Jesus who is the author and finisher of our faith. All of us from time to time encounter false teaching.

We need to be prepared to identify it when we hear it. I hope this lesson has helped equip you in that regard. Remove false teachers from your life and pursue the wisdom that comes from God. If you tuned in after we started, this is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey.

We have a gift for you today. The Apostle Paul preached contentment in the midst of difficulty. He modeled the kind of faith that sees every obstacle as an opportunity, but Paul was also human. Like you and me, Paul had hopes and dreams that were often frustrated and unfulfilled. Stephen has a resource called Resolution. In it, he explores a time when Paul openly expressed his disappointment. By looking at Paul, Stephen helps you confront and deal with your own disappointment and frustration. You're going to learn four key truths that you can use the next time your dreams or intentions are frustrated.

This resource called Resolution is free right now. There's no obligation whatsoever. Visit wisdomonline.org for information. Simply request your copy and we'll email it to you right away. And then be sure and tune in next time as Stephen concludes this current series here on Wisdom for the Hearts.