Keyser, Keith: NHAGC Youth Conf-2006-04 ~ 1 John 3-4

Now, chapter four. We are ever so merciful here at the New Hampshire Avenue Youth Conference. We don't tax you beyond what you can bear, or at least we try not to. Chapter four, verse one. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of Antichrist whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already it is in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world. Excuse me, and the world heareth them. We are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his spirit, and we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There's no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hated his brother, he's a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also. Now, Christianity is not a faith where you check your brain at the door. Christians aren't to be credulous simpletons. We are to be discerning. And John tells them this in verse one of chapter four, after at the end of chapter three talking about their conscience and God giving them the assurance that they belong to him and can stand before him, and the fact that they have God's Holy Spirit witnessing to them that they belong to him. He then says, well, on this matter of spirits, don't be beguiled, don't be deceived, don't be fooled. He says, beloved, believe not every spirit in chapter four verse one, but try or test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Now, we live in a day and age when experience is held out as what is paramount. You talk to somebody and you tell them you talk about some spiritual phenomenon or some spiritual experience that they've supposedly had. And you show them the word of God, and you say, now, this contradicts the word of God. And they say, well, I don't know about that. I only know what I experienced. I only know what I felt. As if that makes it right. Then the Lord here tells us through John, he says, now listen, there aren't all the same kind of spirits. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and the rulers of darkness in high places, Ephesians six says. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations of every high thing that dare exalt of itself against the knowledge of God, says second Corinthians ten. There is an enemy of our souls, there is the accuser of the brethren, there are unclean spirits out there. The New Testament is filled with incidents of their work and descriptions of them and what they do to people. And yes, they have power, supernatural power that they can do things. They can do amazing things, and it's increasing every day in our country. More and more interest in the occult, more and more interest in mediums, and in seances, in tarot cards, in palm reading, and you name it, who knows what they do, trying to commune with spirits. Now, some of it's fake. When the seance craze first hit the United States in the mid-1800s, it was started by a couple of sisters from western New York State, and it later came out that they had made the entire thing up. They weren't really communing with any kind of spirit or hearing from anyone. They were communicating with one another by different sounds they would make with their feet and their toes and different knocks they would give, and they'd play off one another with different signals. And they got so famous doing this that they put them on Broadway with their own little demonstration, and the rich and famous and people like Mark Twain would come and watch them do their thing. That came out later that it was all a fraud, every part of it made up. But I tell you, there are a lot of other people in parts of the world. You talk to some Christians that labor for the Lord in parts of Africa, for example, and they will tell you things that'll absolutely curl your hair. Because there are spirits out there that have power to intrude on people. And John says, just because there's a spiritual phenomenon at work, don't automatically believe it's from God, because it can be from the devil. After all, Antichrist, the man of sin, when he comes, second Thessalonians tells us that he comes with all kinds of signs and lying wonders and works of the devil. He's going to do tremendous works of the power, of power. He's going to do miraculous things, just as Janus and Jambris, those magi in the day of Moses, were able to counterfeit some of God's miracles, not all of them. So Antichrist is going to come, and he's going to have his bag of tricks. No, he says, don't believe them all. Don't believe anything that comes down the pike claiming to be Christian. Just because someone says something is Christian or this is a Christian experience, don't buy it. Test it. Test the spirits to see whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. It's not just that you have men who are deceivers and women who are deceivers. It's not just that you have people that are out there trying to delude. Behind them are nefarious spirits at work that want to deceive men. The god of this world, says second Corinthians, have blinded the minds of men, and Satan specializes in using these false prophets as his tools. He says, here's the test you put them to. The test is going to be by the content of their message. Verse two, Every spirit, excuse me, every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. Now, that was the very thing they weren't hearing from the error they were hearing. Here he puts these names together. Jesus, that's his human name. You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. Jesus, Jehovah saves, or salvation of Jehovah, salvation of the Lord. Christ, Greek equivalent of Messiah, the anointed one, the one set out and marked out by God to come into the world, and not only to save the world, but the one who was God manifest in the flesh. They confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. They say, yes, there was really an incarnation. Now, let me tell you, if there wasn't the incarnation, if the Lord Jesus didn't come in the flesh, if he wasn't virgin born, then the rest of the gospel falls down like a house of cards. If the Lord Jesus was born like any other human being, then he was just a sinful man like the rest of us, and he cannot redeem anyone. Happily, the Bible says that's not so. Or if he came as some kind of apparition, some kind of phantasm, well, he couldn't die for us, couldn't do anything for us either. He says, no, the spirit that is of God confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. He's come out from the Father, he's taken on a human body. Why has he taken on a human body? Well, Hebrews two gives us the answer. Keep your finger in First John four. turn over to Hebrews two. Not the only place that discusses this. But he says in Hebrews two verse six, but one in a certain place testifies, saying, what is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, thou crownedest him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands. Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him, but now we see not yet all put under him. So here he sets forth the dignity and the place of man as the capstone of God's creation. God creates man and makes him to be his viceroy, his representative before the creation, to rule over it, to develop this planet according to the glory of God, to subdue the world and have it all under the hegemony, under the rule of God, all to be under subjection to him. But do we see it all in subjection to him? Well, you know, with, uh, Greenland melting a pace and the North and South Poles melting and the different, uh, natural disasters that are going on thanks to man bringing sin into the world, and the tremendous problem with various varmints of one sort and another from the microscopic level of superbugs that are antibiotic resistant, on up to great predators that kill thousands of people every year on certain continents. I wouldn't say that the whole world is in subjection under man's feet yet. Man hasn't yet brought this world into order under the rule of God. But we see Jesus, says verse nine, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. For it became him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons in the glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he's not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the congregation will I sing praise unto thee. Then he goes on to say, verse fourteen, for as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and so forth. He says here, in other words, that the whole gospel plan hinges on the fact that the Lord Jesus came down, that he came down from glory, and he took on a real human body, and he linked himself to humanity. He actually had a human nature. He was real man, very man of very man, as some of the old, uh, the old Apostles' Creed puts it, I believe. And here the Lord Jesus came in the flesh for the express purpose that he was going to taste death for every man, that he was going to go to the cross, that he was going to give up his life as a sacrifice that would satisfy God in respect to sin and enable the Lord Jesus now to offer forgiveness and offer this life to human beings. And if a spirit comes denying that, I don't care how nice the people are, how well dressed, how eloquent, how much money, how popular they are, how many people are on their side. If somebody denies the incarnation, they deny it all. And he says, you know that's not of God's. But then he says, ye are of God, little children, in verse four, and you've overcome them, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. That is so reassuring. When you think about all the damage that Satan does in the world, all the delusions and lies that he spreads, all the cults that are out there, all the billions of people that lie in the realm of darkness, and yet he says, greater is he who is in us than he that is in the world. That one who has so much, as Martin Luther put it in his hymn, his craft and power are great, yet armed with cruel hate on earth is not his equal. Satan is indeed a fearsome person, one that I wouldn't tangle with, but for the Lord Jesus Christ, because the one in us is greater than him and causes us to triumph over him and has given us the victory. Satan is a defeated foe. We don't see him yet confined to his imprisonment, but invariably the Bible tells us it's going to happen. He's going to be thrown into the lake of fire. So he tells them to test these spirits and to discern, as he sums up in verse six, hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. But then in verse seven, he turns to love, and it's way past Valentine's Day that I thought we'd end on a high note talking about love. He says, beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. Now here he says this is an absolute bona fide verifiable link if you have the eternal life or not. If you have eternal life, if you're linked to God, if you share in his nature, what is going to be exhibited by you is love. That's going to come out of you. It's going to flow out of you if you have this eternal life. Now, what kind of love? Is this just love in word or in tongue, as he says in chapter three? No, it's not that kind of love at all. He says, verse nine, in this was manifested the love of God toward us. Of what caliber, of what quality is this love? Well, he says, here's the caliber of it, because that God sent his only begotten son into the world, that we might have life through him. Now, that term only begotten in scripture is very special. It means one who is an only in the sight of its possessor. In other words, this is an irreplaceable one. This is one who's unique, one who is so special and of such value that you can't put a price tag on him. It's the kind of thing that in the Semitic mind, in Genesis twenty two, when God addresses Abraham and says, Abraham, and Abraham says, behold, here am I, he says, take now thy son. Now, if we put a period there, Abraham might have said, well, which one? I have two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. No, take now thy son, thine only. Now, God wasn't saying that Abraham didn't have any other offspring before Isaac. God was saying the one that you look at with your unique viewpoint, that he is the only one to you. He is the one that the sun rises and sets on him. He's the apple of your eye, as it were. He's the one that you look at and you say, this is my son, the son of my love, the one I love so much, the one all the promises are tied to. Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Abraham, and get thee to a mountain I will show thee of. And he says here, much greater than Abraham and Isaac, the God of heaven took his only son, the unique one, the one who was of such worth and greatness. And what did he do with him? Well, this is love, that he sent him into the world, he says, that we might live through him. What a tremendous expression of love that was. Is there anything that we can do for our brother or sister that is equivalent to the kind of love God has shown us? I tell you, brother or sister, you can lay down your life from here till the rapture, and as much as you might do much good for the glory of God and the benefit of his people and be an edification and help, and I pray you will, you're never going to equal that gift of love, and I'm not either, and no Christian ever will, because how can you measure up to that standard of love by anything you do? In other words, God sets the bar so inflexibly high that we never have to sit back and question and say, now, have I loved enough anyway? I think I've loved enough. I'll just take a break from loving the people of God now. No, not if you really have it. Not if you're really born again, not if you really have the eternal life, not if you're linked to God, because God is love. And that kind of love is going to flow through you. He amplifies it in verse ten. Herein is love, not that we love God, loved God rather, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Romans says, while we were yet enemies, when we were still sinners, it says, God sent his son for us. What kind of love is this that takes the most lovely one in the universe, the altogether lovely one, the one without spot or blemish, the one in whom he delighted? This is my beloved son in whom is all my delight, and he gives him for the unlovely. He gives him for those who had spat in his face. He gives him to those who had shaken their fists collectively in the face of God and said, we don't want you. We have no room for you on this planet. And that's the very time God sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. When we were going on heedless in our sins, when man wasn't caring, wasn't thinking about judgment to come, the Lord Jesus was going to the cross, bearing our sins, and being made the sacrifice whereby God could put away sin forever and offer forgiveness and life and love to mankind. Well, he says, no man had seen God at any time, in verse twelve. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. In other words, you haven't seen him with these eyes. The light hasn't come in where you, you've seen the Lord, and the light bounced back and went through your cornea and your lens and right back into your retina, then was translated into your optic nerve and back into your brain, and your brain was able to interpret it. You haven't seen him physically, but you've seen the effect of him in your life, because he dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he's given us of his spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the savior of the world. So this isn't one of the false spirits he talks about at the beginning of the chapter. This is the true spirit of God teaching them to confess the truth, that the Lord, that the Son is the Savior of the world. And he says in verse sixteen, and we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelled in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There's no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. And what assurance that gives. He says, you know, it's not like we're fearing the judgment. It's not like we're fearing approaching to God because we have it, and as he is in this world, so are we. We are looked at in Christ by God. Ephesians one would describe it this way. We are accepted in the beloved one, and he says we love him because he first loved us. But then there's the converse, again, the profession in verse twenty. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he's a liar. He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, that he loveth God, loveth his brother also. You know, our brothers and sisters, they reflect for us the love of our Father in heaven. There's a bit of his life, a bit of his love, a bit of himself. His spirit is residing within them. And if we don't love the people of God, you know, we look at the people of God and the good things they display, the righteousness they show, the change that's been made in their lives. No, they're not perfect, but they're a whole lot different from the people in the world. But we look at that person and we hate them. How are we ever going to manage in heaven, where everything's perfect, and all the good qualities and traits of the believers, all the good things and the times they got it right down here are amplified ten trillion times, because everything's light, everything's righteousness, everything's peace, everything's goodness. It won't be a place we like. If we hate the people of God, we don't want to go to glory because there John sees in the revelation a multitude which no man can number. Out of every kindred and tribe and tongue of people that have been born again by God's spirit, by his word, and by his grace, and that love one another. Chiefly, they love one another because they love the Lord Jesus, and they love the Lord Jesus because he first loved them. So I trust that that will be the thing that people think about when they think about you and about me. That when they think about us, the first thing that comes to mind won't be, oh, they're very smart, or they're very strong, or they're very polite, or they're very successful as far as these, this world's things. That's all good. Nothing wrong with any of that. I happen to have all those things, but just kidding. No, may it be said of us that when people think of us, they say, look how they loved. The Lord Jesus said that would be the defining mark of a disciple. They shall know you're a Christians by your love one for another. And that's what First John is all about. Not just saying you have it, but really having it, having the real thing, eternal life, and having it develop itself in you and work itself out of you, having the real evidence to the tests of faith, and being able, conversely, to spot the fakes, to reject the error, and to go on for the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, much more can be said about the chapters we covered, not to mention the chapter we didn't, but I trust this will help you and whet your appetite in the things of God. I just want to pray now, and you've been a very good audience. I appreciate your patience. Father, we're thankful for the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who first loved us. Father, we didn't deserve to be loved, and yet we are. Love that will not let us go. We rest our weary souls in thee. Father, we just pray that these words would sink deep into our hearts, that we would want more to enjoy the fellowship that we have with thee, that we would want to walk in light with unbroken, unmarred fellowship. Father, that sin would be the exceptional thing, that we would hate it as the Lord Jesus hates it, and that we would conversely love righteousness and live for him. Oh Father, help us. Help us in a day when Antichrist, the spirit of Antichrist pervades the world, when there are so many false prophets, when there's so much error. Father, help us to be discerning. Help us to live for thee. We pray this for the glory of God, and we pray that Christ would be preeminent in our hearts and minds even tonight. In the Lord Jesus Christ's name we ask it. Amen.