Don’t Believe Everything You Hear

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I had a friend, a good friend, who had the misfortune several years ago of getting himself elected to the state legislature. Like, I cannot understand for the life of me why anybody would want that job today. I used to want to do that when I was a kid, and then social media came around, and anyway, the world seems a little meaner, and I can’t imagine why you’d want that job.

But anyway, he got elected, and a few terms in, I was helping him with some things for his campaign, and ran into a guy that I knew from high school, who said, I can’t understand why you’re supporting that guy. Okay, what’s wrong with that guy? And I can’t remember, it’s been a few years, I can’t remember exactly what his objections were, but it was crazy stuff.

Like he said, I can’t imagine why you’d support somebody who wants to make divorce a felony. I can’t imagine why you’d support somebody who wants to make church attendance mandatory. I can’t imagine why you’d support anybody that, you know, wants to round up all the homosexuals and burn all the pagans.

And I remember looking at this guy going, what? What? Really, what?

Because I’ve known this guy, the candidate, I’ve known him really well for a lot of years, and I feel like that would have come up in conversation. And by the way, I would have told him he was nuts. I’ve heard people run on that platform, and I’ve told them they were nuts.

But somewhere along, that was, see, that was a little bit before social media, before people just started making stuff up. Or maybe they did, and it just didn’t spread as much in that day. But I was shocked at the thought that people were just making stuff up.

That was probably my first introduction to misinformation. And misinformation is rampant in our day and age, right? I mean, we hear talk about it, and sometimes what we’re told is information is actually misinformation, and sometimes what gets labeled misinformation is true information.

And we just have to be very and very discerning as we try to get through all of this. Because here this guy was, and he’s probably not the one that came up with all these stories, but he’s talking about all these just off-the-wall crazy things that this man wanted to do. And I’m going, wait a minute, I’ve known this man for years.

And by the way, he’s term-limited, he’s not running for anything, and doesn’t live here anyway, so I’m not stumping for him with you this morning. I’m not giving names either. But here he was just talking about all these off-the-wall crazy things that he said this guy wanted to do.

And I knew for a fact he didn’t believe any of that stuff. And yet somebody had convinced him that that’s the way it was. And he thought I was a terrible person for supporting this guy.

There’s misinformation all around us. That sort of thing is common. And we should check our sources on things that we believe.

But these false rumors are not new. They’ve been around for a long time. And they’re not limited to politics.

They’re not limited to social media even. Misinformation has been around for millennia. Since the time that we, for as long as we’ve been able to talk to each other, there’s been misinformation.

And it’s particularly dangerous when that misinformation deals with stories and rumors about God and His Word. and who He is and what He is and what He said and what He didn’t say. And sometimes it’s very easy to get it wrong.

Sometimes it’s very easy to find a source that’s going to tell you wrong. You name whatever you want to hear about God’s Word. Name whatever you want God to stand for.

Name whatever you want the Bible to teach. And I can just about guarantee we can find you a church that will teach it. Somebody out there is teaching it.

There have been some crazy things that have gone out on people’s video feeds and the churches and supposed Bible teachers. And some of them, you know, I go and download the video as soon as it’s there because when people get word of it, it starts getting deleted. But people will teach all sorts of things about God and his word that are not necessarily true.

Now, you might say the same about me. Well, how do I know that you’re telling me the truth? Because I’m going to tell you what’s in this book.

And those of you who are new here, you won’t know this, but those of you who have been here for a while, do I not regularly tell you, go check what it says in this book and make sure what I’m telling you matches up? Don’t I say that all the time? Because the truth is not true just because Jared said it.

Jared knows nothing except what’s in this book. And I tell you all the time, if what I say doesn’t match up with what’s in this book, then take what I say and ignore it. And if I get to doing that too often, fire me and find somebody who will tell you what’s in this book.

But read this book for yourself. So how do you know I’m not misleading you? Compare it to the book.

Not only am I giving you permission, not that you needed my permission, but I’m encouraging you to do that. I’m expecting that you’re going to do that. The Apostle John was concerned about people who were giving misinformation in his day.

Misinformation about God, misinformation about His Word. That’s how I know that this isn’t a new phenomena. It’s been around for thousands of years when the Apostle John was talking about it.

And that’s what we’re going to look at this morning, is what he said when he gave instructions to early Christians about how to deal with misinformation about God and His Word. And by the way, I want to be very clear as we get into this this morning. The point of this message is not to say I’m right and everybody else is wrong just so I can be right.

I’m wrong all the time. I’m married. I know I’m wrong all the time.

Sometimes even when I’m right, I’m just teasing. If I’m wrong, that’s fine. I’m open to correction from God’s Word.

As a matter of fact, there have been things over my ministry that I’ve later realized, wait, I had that wrong. And I’ve had to go back and correct it if the opportunity was there. Fortunately, it hasn’t been anything too terribly large, but I’m not infallible.

My point in this is not to stand up here and say, only listen to me, my point in this is to say, check anybody you’re listening to against God’s word. All right. Because I don’t want it to sound like I’m some self-aggrandizing preacher that’s trying to be the authority on everything.

The authority here is God’s word, not me. And if we can be clear on that, we’re good. But we’re going to be in 1 John chapter 4 this morning.

1 John chapter 4. And if you turn there with me, and once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read from God’s word, if you’re able to stand without too much trouble, if you don’t have your Bible or have difficulty finding 1 John this morning, it’ll be on the screen for you. But we’re going to read from the first three verses of this chapter.

And here’s what John writes to these early Christians. He says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. And just a little explanation on that real quick, as he says, test the spirits.

These people would come with, these prophets would come into the churches, they’d say, I have a message from God. This was before all of the New Testament was written down. We can just go directly to the source, the inspired word of God.

They didn’t have that yet. It was still in the process of being inspired, being written. And so people would come to the churches and say, I have a message from God.

The spirit told me, and John’s basically saying, whatever spirit they’ve got, you test, you make sure that’s the spirit of God talking to them and not just the spirit of self or the spirit of the devil or the spirit of whatever got ahold of them. Test the spirits because many false prophets have gone out the world. Verse 2, by this you know the Spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the Spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. And you may be seated.

So one of the first things that we ought to take away from a passage like this is that the truth is worth pursuing. The truth is worth studying and looking The truth matters to such an extent that we have to be careful about what we listen to. We have to be careful about what we take in because it’s very easy to be deceived.

It’s very easy to find somebody that’s just going to tell you what you want to hear, whether it’s from God or not. I mean, I don’t care if we’re talking on the far left, the guy I heard talking a few weeks ago about the non-binary Jesus, or on the far right, the guy who said, Jesus’ will is just for you to be rich and if you’ll do what I tell you, He’ll make you rich. You can find any Jesus you want.

You can find any teaching you want. But just because they say they’re teaching God’s word, just because they say they’re speaking about Jesus, doesn’t mean they’re telling the truth. Not everyone who teaches about God’s word teaches the truth about God’s word.

And that’s why it’s so important that you filter everything you hear, even if it’s from me, that you filter it through God’s word and make sure that I’m telling you the truth. Could I be teaching you false things? Yes, I could.

And that’s why it’s your responsibility to know God’s word, to study God’s word, and to evaluate. He says, beloved, do not believe every spirit. He’s telling them you can’t believe everything you hear.

Now, does that mean you can’t believe anything you hear? No, because some of what we hear is the truth. Some of what we hear is the truth.

But we can’t believe everything we hear. We need to be discerning. You know, when we’re kids, we tend to believe everything we hear.

We tend to be a little bit gullible. That’s why it’s fun to pull my kids’ legs. I’m trying to think of an example off the top of my head.

One will come to me later. Well, okay, this may be a little morbid. But a while back, one of my children, I won’t name names, said, why were you so dressed up when you went to work today?

And I said, because I had a funeral. I did a funeral today for so-and-so. Oh, did they die? And it took me a few seconds to recover from laughing so hard.

because I thought, well, and I said, no, it’s more fun to do the funeral before they die so they can come too. That’s how I want to do mine. Really?

No, no, no, baby. No. They just believe that.

But as we grow up, we get a little more skeptical. Sometimes we get too skeptical, but we get a little more skeptical because life teaches us that we need to evaluate what we hear. And it’s the same thing with God’s Word. John told them they could not believe everything they heard just because somebody said that they were teaching God’s Word.

And how they would know the difference, we’ll get to in just a moment. But the first thing we need to understand is that not everything we hear is the truth. But the truth is so worth pursuing that we can’t afford to get sidetracked into the lies.

Not every spiritual message is a true message. And by the way, John did not issue this warning because he hated anybody. And I’m not, sometimes when you preach a message like this or preach a passage of scripture like this, people will say, well, you’re just being hateful.

I don’t hate anybody. I’m not telling you this because I hate people that are teaching differently. I’m telling you this because I love you.

John was not saying this because he hated the Gnostics or because he hated the Judaizers. He was saying this because he loved the people that he was writing to. I love my children and I want them to know the truth.

So do I tell them the stove is hot because I hate them or because I hate the stove? Do I tell them not to run out into traffic because I hate other drivers? No, I tell them these things because I love them.

And it’s very telling that John starts this passage out by calling them beloved. He’s not writing to strangers to straighten them out. He’s writing to people that he cares deeply about.

And so he gives this warning because he loves his readers and he wants them to know the truth. And so I hope you take that in this spirit this morning that I tell you these things. Number one, because God’s word says them.

But number two, because I love you and want you to know the truth. And I want us to find God’s truth together. And so he tells us we’re supposed to test what we hear.

Verse one says, test the spirits to see whether they are from God. In other words, a message that you hear about God, it may be a true message. It may not be.

And so you’ve got to check. He tells them to test. And there’s a Greek word here for test that means to thoroughly examine. It’s not just to give it a passing glance.

It’s talking about thoroughly examining what’s taught. Kind of like we would say if somebody was interrogating a criminal, they bring them in and they set them down and they shine the bright lights on them to make them talk. Do that with the message you hear.

Whether it’s from me, whether it’s from anybody else, examine it. Take notes. Compare those notes against what God’s word says.

Dig into it. I love it when people come to me afterwards even days later and say you said this, now what about this? a lot of times people are real apprehensive about doing that, I’m not trying to be critical no, I love this, you were paying attention and you’re thinking critically and you’re applying God’s word, this is what you have no idea how exciting this is for me because this is what you’re supposed to be doing and most of the time we can sit down and talk about here’s how this works and come to an answer there have been a few times I’ve had to say oh, I got that wrong.

But that’s what’s supposed to be happening. Now, it’s all in the spirit of how you do it. You don’t want anybody coming at you saying, you got this all wrong either.

I don’t like that either. But we’re supposed to be testing what we hear. And for the message to be from God, and testing whether the message is from God means that whether they’re seeing whether the message originates from God or not.

Again, in their day, they didn’t have the finished New Testament. And so what they had were people coming, professing, I have a new revelation from God. Now, can God still do that?

Sure, he’s God. He can do what he wants without my permission. But I don’t believe that’s the normal way he speaks to us today because we have his word.

So they had these people coming and saying, I have a new special message from God. Okay, at that point, then it becomes your responsibility to test and see whether it’s from God or not. And if I bring you a message from God, it’s your responsibility to test whether it actually squares with what this says or not.

And by the way, it’s not a suggestion to us. It’s not God telling you maybe you should do this. It’s a command.

Test the spirits. It’s also not just a special ministry for a few people who, you know, that’s their thing. Now, some of us are going to put more work into this than others because some of us are geared that way.

we all have our different ways that we’re wired and different ways that God has gifted us and equipped us. But at no point are we supposed to just shut our brains off and say, and just take in whatever the preacher tells us just because, well, that’s somebody else’s ministry to be discerning. I’m not saying you have to dig into every Greek participle of everything I tell you and become an expert on all of that and, you know, go to that length.

But open your Bible, open your Bible and just make sure. Just keep studying and keep growing. It’s a command to all believers to use discernment with what you listen to, with what you watch, with what you read, to see whether the message really is from God.

Because testing what we hear is going to keep us from being deceived. That’s why it’s so vital. We’re not just being nitpicky here. I mean, I will listen to preachers.

I will even listen to friends of mine and go, okay, where’s he going with this? And sometimes I’ll ask them afterwards, what did you mean by this? And then we talk about those things.

It’s never meant to be combative or accusatory. It’s just, I want to make sure I understand what you meant by this. But testing is so important because there is so much false teaching out there.

By the way, that’s not me saying that. That’s not the cranky old preacher saying that. He said, the apostle John, the one whom Christ loved, said in verse 1 here, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

False teaching is prevalent. And that word false prophet, we can’t necessarily appreciate in English all of the meaning that’s baked into that word. He’s calling them imposters.

He’s calling them phonies. He’s calling them counterfeiters. Because what they’re doing is rivaling the truth and they’re distracting people from the true message from God.

And he says there are many of them. So we have to be on guard. You know, I can walk through my backyard and into our pasture.

And I’ve seen snakes, but I’ve never seen rattlesnakes out there. So I feel pretty confident and comfortable walking through there, paying a little bit of attention because I know it’s not overrun with rattlesnakes. But I’ve seen enough pictures that Sharon has posted of her hikes out in the refuge of rattlesnakes that I know they’re all over the place.

So you better believe any step I take in the refuge, I’m going to be paying close attention to every step because there are many of them out there. Now, are they in every square foot? No, but there’s more of them than in my backyard, right?

And so because there are many, we’ve got to be careful. And it’s the same thing here. He says there are many false prophets.

And so that’s a warning for us to be on guard. And here’s how we test. He’s told us to test. He’s told us why it’s important to test, but he also tells us how to test. Here’s a test. He says, look for starters at what they teach about Jesus Christ. In their day, one of the big things that they were dealing with, one of the main false teachings they were dealing with, was something called Gnosticism, which is a really complicated set of teachings that I don’t have time to go into completely now. But it was basically a cult of secret knowledge, and it’s still at the heart of a lot of false things that are taught today.

It hasn’t died, it has just taken on new forms. And among the many, many, many, many false things they taught. One of those things was that Jesus came as only a spirit. Basically, there’s a difference between being Jesus and being Christ and something about him coming only in spirit form and not having a body.

And some people fell into this because they thought, well, that sounds good. We’re elevating Jesus. We’re making himself more like God if he came just as a spirit.

But there’s a big problem right there on the horizon for us if Jesus didn’t come with a body. Can you think of what that might be. Say it louder.

He couldn’t have died on the cross. Spirits can’t be nailed to the cross. Spirits can’t bleed.

Spirits can’t die. And so these Gnostics were undermining the very teaching of the crucifixion. And so John said, one thing you can do is look at what they teach about Jesus Christ and know whether their messages are from God or not.

And so he says in verses two and three, by this, you know, the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God this is the spirit of the antichrist which you have heard that it is coming and now it is already in the world now there are other things taught in scripture that we’re supposed to check and be on guard about and so I don’t think John here is saying that this is the only test this is the only thing you’re supposed to care about and if they get everything else wrong that’s fine I think for us this is a starting point. He says look at what they teach about Jesus and if they get that right continue to use discernment about what they teach but if they get what they teach about Jesus wrong then it doesn’t matter what else they get right.

If somebody teaches you all the things that the Bible says about holy living and how to live a life that pleases God but they get Jesus wrong then all they’re doing is teaching you how to be well behaved on the way to hell. So this is a starting point. These are the training wheels.

What do they say about Jesus? And by describing Jesus as coming in the flesh, John’s talking about the whole biblical idea of Jesus coming in ministry, that he is God who came in human flesh, fully God and fully man. He was born to a virgin.

He lived this perfect sinless life, and then he was nailed to the cross as the one and only payment for sins where he shed his blood and he died for us and rose again in the same body that was crucified. All of that is rolled up into John’s teachings of what it meant that Jesus came in the flesh. And he’s saying, if they get that wrong, it really doesn’t matter what else they get right.

And for John to throw this out there as the basic test, this is the bedrock, this is the foundation, reinforces for us the importance of who Jesus is and knowing the truth about who Jesus is. We have to get that right, or it doesn’t matter what we do get right. And Jesus himself pointed to what an important question that was, because he asked his disciples.

Who do people say that I am? And there were all sorts of crazy answers that were given. Elijah, Jeremiah, well considering they didn’t believe in reincarnation, I don’t understand why people thought that.

Some people said he was John the Baptist, come back from the dead. I don’t understand how that works either considering the crowds on a few occasions saw Jesus and John the Baptist in the same place at the same time. But there were all sorts of wacky ideas about who Jesus was.

And the disciples were glad to volunteer those. Hey, everybody says you are this, you’re that. And then Jesus got right down to the heart of the matter and said, okay, but who do you say that I am?

And I have to imagine they just kind of looked at each other the way y’all do sometimes when I ask a question. I have to tell you, it’s not a trick question. I don’t do that, right?

I feel like they probably looked at each other and said, is this a trick question? What do we do? And Peter finally opens his mouth and says, you are the Christ. You’re the Messiah, the son of the living God.

That was one thing to say he was the Messiah. All of Israel was looking for Messiah, But they were looking for a human Messiah. And Peter added to that, you’re not only the Messiah, you’re God the Son.

And Jesus said, you got it right. He said, blessed are you, Simon, Peter’s birth name. He said, flesh and blood has not.

. . You didn’t figure that out by human wisdom.

God revealed that to you. The Father told you that. As far as I can tell, this is the most important question Jesus ever asked during his ministry.

Who do you say that I am? It’s a question we still have to grapple with today. And that’s at the heart of all of this.

The truth is worth pursuing because Jesus is worth knowing. This is not all as I’m talking to you about digging into the scriptures and evaluating what you hear and seeking the truth. It’s not all academic.

It’s not just all to fill our heads with knowledge so we can go out and be the smartest and win some kind of award for being able to know the most things. right? The truth matters because Jesus matters.

Because Jesus is worth knowing. And not some false idea of Jesus. Not some Jesus of our own design, but Jesus as he truly is.

The Jesus who came for us. The Jesus who is able to save. The Jesus who conquered death.

The Jesus who’s coming again. That’s the Jesus we want to know. And so over the next several weeks, we’re going to spend some time looking at what the Bible says about the question, who is Jesus?

Now that we’ve finished the book of Philippians. That’s where we’re going next is who is Jesus. And some of you may be sitting out there saying, I’ve been a Christian for 50 or 60 years.

I know who Jesus is. Me too. I’ve written books on the subject of who is Jesus.

But every time I go to his word to study more about him, I’m always learning something new about him. I don’t mean something new that nobody’s ever seen, but I mean who Jesus is is deeper and broader than we could ever imagine. We could spend a hundred lifetimes studying who Jesus is and only scratch the surface.

So if you’ve been a believer for many years, stick with us and pray that God will show you something that’s either that you’ve never seen before or that you need to see again. Some of you may be new to Christianity and you come into this thinking it’s all a list of rules and do’s and don’ts. And some of the, you know what, if it comes from God’s word, it’s important, but the do’s and don’ts are things that we do to please Him once we belong to Him.

But checking off all the do’s and don’ts on the list is never going to get you into a relationship with Him. And it’s never going to get you to heaven. The main thing is knowing Jesus.

Knowing who He is. Knowing what He’s done for you. And believing in Him.

So we’re going to spend the next several weeks digging into who is Jesus. Again, not so that we can win some kind of award for being right, but so we can have a better understanding of who is at the center of all of this, of who is the very reason why we live and breathe and who we worship, who we sing to, the reason we come together and study, the one we want to please, the one who loved us enough to die for us. And I think it’s important for us to start off by realizing that not everything that’s taught about Jesus is true.

Not everything you’ll see on TV today about Jesus is true. By the way, be careful watching History Channel documentaries about anything from the Bible, because I swear some of those Bible experts have never seen one in the wild, right? Everything you hear on TV or on the radio or on social media is not true.

And I’m not saying ignore them and listen to me. I’m saying ignore anybody who’s not telling you what this is. Because John talks about a Jesus who loved us enough that even when we had sinned and our sins separated us from a holy God, he writes about a Jesus who in spite of that loved us enough that He gave up what He was entitled to, the surroundings He was entitled to in heaven, the glory, the splendor, all of it.

He gave up all of it and came down here to become one of us so that He could live among us, so that He could minister to us, and ultimately so that He could die in our place. And He was nailed to the cross bearing responsibility for our sin, for my sin. And He was punished for all the wrong that we had ever done.

And He shed His blood and He died on that cross to take the penalty, to take the punishment that we deserved so that our slate could be wiped clean, so that we could be forgiven, so that we could have eternal life with the Father. And then he rose again three days later to prove it.