(remember, these are unedited/draft show notes, not a transcript — listening is always better…and if you listen AND follow along below, you’ll see why)
Focus Question:
What do you mean by that?
Intro:
Father in heaven, holy is Your name. Thank you for the gift of Your Son and the guidance of Your Spirit. Amen.
Last week in the book of John we talked about his exhortation to “test the spirits.” Today in 1 John we actually get to the place that he wrote that. And our focus question today is going to riff off that again, albeit from a different angle — a problem that we all face in testing the spirits and a deceptively simple solution you can use.
New Testament segment:
Passage: 1 John 3:11-4:6
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 20
Words: ~474
So you heard it again…we are to test the spirits. While it’s still fresh note one thing: John is equating spirits and false prophets. We’re going to come back to this in our Bottom Line segment.
Old Testament segment:
Recall that yesterday we heard Ezekiel describe another vision — the Lord takes him to the temple and he sees all kinds of horrid and abominable things — the elders of the land making offerings to unclean animals, women worshipping Tammuz, a Mesopotamian fertility god, some other dudes worshipping the sun. And thus begins a several-chapter section that speaks to God’s impending judgment due to all this unfaithfulness. Today it continues.
Passage: Ezekiel 9-11
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 58
Words: ~1694
The bottom line:
(note, I added some in the podcast…you should listen)
So you heard it again…we are to test the spirits.
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming; even now it is already in the world. 1 Jn 4:1–3, CSB
Notice one thing, remember one question. John is equating spirits and false prophets. And false prophets are deceptive most likely because they take something and twist it. But why is it deceiving? Because it looks and sounds right to some people.
Even today we have churches…or people in our churches…who use words that are part of the Christian lexicon, but do they mean the same thing? Is the Jesus they talk about the Jesus you know from Scripture? When they say they trust the Bible, do they mean the same thing you do?
Here’s the simple question, our focus question: What do you mean by that? Tell me more.
And, of course, this means that we have to continually be in God’s word so we know the real from the counterfeits.
Thanks for being on the journey.
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
(1) “The Lexham Figurative Language of the New Testament Dataset,” in Lexham Figurative Language of the Bible Glossary, ed. Joshua R. Westbury et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).