Lord God, we thank you for a chance to get together and study your Word. We ask that you would come, Holy Spirit, that you would instruct us in the words that you inspire to be written by your servants. We ask that you would keep lies and falsehood out of our minds this evening, that you would protect us from the enemy and his servants and their works and effects, that our time would be pleasing to you and profitable to us, that Lord God, as we study, we would love the Lord Jesus, maybe even those of us who walk in here not anticipating that we would.

We pray that you would open our hearts and minds and eyes so that we could see him clearly, love him dearly, and follow him faithfully. God, thanks for these people taking some time on a warm, nice, summer night to come and be together to study the Word. I pray you help me to do a good job and that it would be a benefit to them. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

So we get into 1 John. We’re dealing with a letter from a pastor who was one of Jesus’ dearest friends, and before we launch into it, I want to do a lot of theological setup to get you ready to understand the importance of what he’s saying. First thing I’ll tell you is that there is God, and God has always existed without beginning or end. God is eternal. There’s one God, and God is not contingent or dependent on anything or anyone. He’s self-sustaining. In the beginning, Genesis says, at some point in history past, God made everything that is.

So creation comes from God. People come from God, and everything comes from God. In addition to making the physical world, creation, and us, animals and such, God also made a spiritual world. We see the physical world. We don’t see, oftentimes, the spiritual world. The spiritual world includes angels that God made. Angels were built for two primary purposes. One was to worship God. The other was to serve us, and so in that way, angels are helpers to us, and they are worshipers to God. All is well and good until one of the angels got a great idea thinking, “You know, I don’t need to do what God says. I don’t need to obey God or follow God or trust God. I’m pretty smart. I went to college. I know what I’m doing. I can be my own God.”

So this angel rebelled against God, tried to become his own God. In so doing, he marshaled some support. The Bible tells us that a third of the angels that God made joined in legion with Satan. This angel now became Satan, and because of that, there was a great war in heaven, and God and the two-thirds of the holy angels had a conflict against Satan and the one-third of the unholy angels, and the point of this is not that God and Satan are equal, but in fact, Satan is a created being. Satan is an angel. He’s a spiritual being, and he’s under God who made him.

Well, you can guess God won the fight, not a huge shock. Any of you have fought with God, you’ve had the same experience. So what happens is the one-third of unholy angels are cast out of heaven, and they leave the spirit realm, and they come down into the physical world where we live. Okay, what happens then is in Genesis 3. We see that Satan, he’s a serpent, and he’s crafty and clever, and he comes to our first parents, Adam and Eve, and he tempts them to do the same thing that he did. “Don’t obey God. Don’t listen to God. Don’t follow God. Be your own God. Do what you want to do. Ignore God. Forget about God.”

It’s amazing. A lot of people look at that occasion where we then sin and we die, and they think, “Man, God is a terrible God because God now is killing people, and he’s hurting people.” No, he’s not. Friends, you need to know that we kill ourselves. I don’t know if it’s a stretch to actually say that we’re suicidal. God made us. God made creation good. God set everything up in a brilliant and perfect way, and he said, “Now have it, kids. Have a great time. Live forever. Enjoy yourself. Just don’t do this one thing because if you do, you’re gonna die. I don’t want you to kill yourself,” and like spoiled, disobedient, defiant, foolish kids, we just ran in and did exactly what God told us not to do.

This is no different than me with my children, you know, buying them a nice home and setting it all up with toys and swings and sports equipment and bikes and loving them and saying, “Everything’s great. Here’s your Lucky Charms and, you know, here you are. Your life’s good. Just don’t take the cutlery that Mom uses for dinner and stick it in yourself. It’s not a good place for it.” You know, and I go to take a leak. I come back, and my kids are all full of cutlery, and then, they look at me saying, “Why’d you do this to me? You’re a terrible Dad. I can’t believe this happened.” “This isn’t my fault. You’re disobedient, defiant kids. I set up a world, and you did exactly what I told you not to do.” You and I have done that. That’s exactly what we did.

God’s a great Dad. He made us as his kids. He set up a great place for us to be. He just told us not to kill ourselves, and to show him that we don’t have to obey him, we killed ourselves. Boy, we really showed him. That’s the foolishness of sin. Now God is holy. He’s not like us. He looks at us, and he says, “I can’t believe where we’re at now, this huge mess.” God knows that we’re never gonna fix this mess. We’re never gonna reconcile them. We’re never gonna find them. We’re gonna never straighten this out. So God, in his kindness and in his love says, “You know what? I’m gonna go down there, and I’m gonna fix it. I’m gonna go from this spiritual world into the physical world. I’m gonna become a human being to identify with them. I will live among them. I will live without sin. I will die. I will raise to forgive them. I am gonna win them back, and I am gonna save them from Satan and sin and self, and all my suicidal little kids are gonna get saved because these are my kids, and I’m not gonna let them do that.”

So that’s what happens. God comes as the Lord Jesus. He lives. He dies. He rises, and he saves us from our own silliness and ourselves. Now still present and active in the world today is Satan. Okay, there’s the physical world we see. Behind that, is the spiritual world that we don’t see. Some of you have seen it, dreams, supernatural encounters, spiritual experiences, drug hallucinations, all kinds of things. Some of you have had UFOs. Some of you have had aliens, all kinds of supernatural, paranormal experiences, but oftentimes, we don’t see the spiritual world, but the spiritual world involves itself in the physical world, and we see it’s effects everywhere: Sin and death and folly and hatred and anger and injustice.

We see it everywhere, and I want you to know that your enemy, Satan, he works in some very clear ways according to the Bible. 2 Corinthians 2:11 says that we do have an enemy. His name is Satan, and he’s at war against us, but he need not outwit us providing we understand the ways of which he works. The basic premise is if you know how your enemy fights, then you know how to defend yourself against his attacks. There’s a lot of things that Satan uses for tactics. I’ll give you three that I find most prevalent as a pastor. The first is in Matthew 4:3 where he comes to the Lord Jesus, and it says, “And then, the tempter came to him.” Okay, the name there for Satan is the tempter. He has different names in Scripture, usually corresponding to his tactics.

HE tempts us as he did the Lord Jesus and as he did Adam and Eve. He will just come out and say, “Come on and do it. I know it’s – you know you want to do it. It’s not a big deal. You’ve done it before. Somebody else has done it. You’ll never get caught. You won’t get addicted to it. It won’t – I mean just try it. You’ll love it. You know you wan to give it a shot. I mean nobody’s perfect. Just try it.” He tempts us to sin. The second thing he does then is in Revelation 12:10. We are told that he is the accuser of the children of God, and he accuses them day and night. Some of you think, “I have low self-esteem, negative self-image, negative self-talk. I say terrible things to myself. I hate myself. I don’t love myself.” Well, many of you are wrong. I’ll tell you how I’ve noticed this working with people as a pastor.

People will come in. They say, “I hate myself. I say terrible things to myself. I say to myself, ‘You’re a jerk. You’re an idiot. You’re a fool. God doesn’t love you. You know, you’re never gonna amount to anything. You should just kill yourself. You should die. It would be better if you were never born.’” I always like to ask, “So do you always talk to yourself in the third person? You say, you know, you’re gonna have a ham sandwich, and then, you’re gonna weep bitterly because the Mariners don’t have a bullpen, and then, you know, and then, you’re gonna cry because the Sonics are gonna be terrible again this year because they can’t find a center, and you’re gonna eat Lucky Charms and go bass fishing. You know, do you talk to yourself in the third person?”

They say, “No, actually I don’t.” I say, “Well, the only time you get spoken to in the third person is when you’re being spoken to by someone else, but that’s the accuser.” A lot of people get depressed. A lot of people go on medication. A lot of people have all kinds of problems because they think, “Why do I do this to myself? Why do I beat myself up? Why do I pummel myself?” Well, maybe you’re not. Maybe there is the spirit realm just pummeling you and throwing accusations at you and just hammering on you, and you think it’s you talking to yourself. He’s the tempter who will tempt you to sin. When you do, then he’s the accuser who will pummel you.

“What are you doing? I can’t believe you did that. You imbecile, you knew better. That is wrong. God’s not pleased. He doesn’t love you. Look what you’ve done.” He tempts you, and then, when you bite his hook that he has baited through your flesh, then he accuses you. The third he is is John 8:44. Jesus says that Satan is a liar. Then, he’ll tell you all kinds of lies. If you believe those lies, particularly about your identity, he will destroy you. Okay, now if you believe a lie, even though it’s not true, can it still destroy your life? Of course. I’ve been faithful to my wife, Grace. I adore my wife very dearly, but if someone walked up to her and said, “I’ve been having an affair with your husband for years. We’ve been in an adulterous relationship.” It’s a lie. It’s not true, but if she believed that, would that affect anything?

Yeah, they’d never find my body. It would be like Enoch in the Old Testament, just “he was no more.” Just poof, just gone. He’s gone. We don’t know where he went. If you believe lies, if you believe God doesn’t love you, you can’t be forgiven. If you believe lies, it will ruin your whole life. Your enemy baits you with temptation. He then assaults you with accusation, and then, he lies to you to bury you in hopelessness. All of this is so important to understand when we get into 1 John because his whole point is gonna be that as in the physical world, there is good and evil. Also, in the spiritual world, there is good and evil. There is God and Satan. There is truth and lies. There is light and darkness. There is life and death. There is heaven and hell. There are angels and demons, and my fear is because some of you are not Christians.

Some of you are new Christians. Some of you have had spiritual experiences or powers or you have had a relationship where a family member who does have spiritual experience, background or power, maybe you come from another religion or another background philosophically is that you – my fear is that you may be a person who believes that everything in the spirit realm is good, which is one of the great lies of Satan, and then, what you’ll just want to do or maybe what you already are doing is try and plug in to that world, not knowing that there’s evil over there. Maybe you’re plugging into Satan or demons or lies, temptations and accusations, and in our day, it’s very popular to be spiritual, very popular to be spiritual, but no one knows who they’re plugging into.

Nobody knows what source their information and their experience is coming from. This was a problem in the days of 1 John. This is exactly the issue that John is speaking to, and he’s trying to get us to be discerning, distinguishing people who can decide for ourselves, “Am I plugged into God or Satan? Am I getting truth or lies? Is this gonna lead to life or death? Will this lead me into darkness or light? Where am I plugged in?” So he starts in Chapter 3, Verse 24. He says, “To those who obey his commands, those who obey his commands live in him and he in them,” and this is how we know that he lives in us.

We know it by the spirit he gave us. That is the Holy Spirit. There are spirits, angels and demons. There is the Holy Spirit, who is God, not just some impersonal force, but God. First thing he says is that to be a Christian means that you have the spirit of God in you, okay? This is so important. This is the objective authentification of who is and who is not a Christian. Do you have the Holy Spirit? What the Holy Spirit brings is faith so you can trust God. What the Holy Spirit brings is conviction so you repent of sin and ask Jesus to forgive you. What the Holy Spirit brings, according to Romans 5, is love so that you can love God and you can love other people.

In the New Testament, he’s called the Spirit of Truth so he brings the truth and the truth of God’s Word. The Bible tells us as well that he will lead us and guide us in the truth, and that he is the author of Scripture. So he then will bring forth an understanding of Scripture and illumination of Scripture. Now we can read the Bible, repent of sin, love Jesus and have saving faith in him. You know you’re a Christian if you have the spirit of God and the spirit of God comes and does a transforming work in our life. Okay, so this is what distinguishes Christians from non-Christians is that the living God takes up residence in the Christian in a way that he does not in the non-Christian.

He then builds on this concept in Chapter 4, Verse 1. “Dear friends” – I just want to hit this real quick. Some of you are gonna think, “This guy is judgmental.” Yes, and you’re judging me for being judgmental. So we’re even. I love to say that to people. A guy said a couple weeks ago. He said, “You’re very condemning.” I said, “Well, thank you for condemning me and pointing that out.” You and I are people who believe in good and bad, right and wrong, and we make judgments all the time. We just live in a culture that doesn’t like to hear about judging. We judge all the time. I’m gonna do a lot of judging tonight. Okay, I want you to know that my motive, my intention is that I consider you friends, that I consider you friends.

If you weren’t friends, I wouldn’t point any of this out. Okay, for example, let’s say you were gonna go to the doctor, and I said, “Oh, you feel sick. I’m so sorry you’re going to the doctor. What’s your doctor’s name?” He said, “Kevorkian,” and I said, “Whoa, wait a minute. Don’t go to that doctor. That’s a bad doctor. Everybody who goes to that doctor never goes twice. Don’t go to that doctor.” He said, “Are you judging?” “Yes because I’m your friends. There’s – go to Doctor Seuss or something, but get another doctor, but not Doctor Kevorkian. Get yourself another doctor.” “What are you judging?” “Yes, I’m judging that’s not good.”

You and I need to be judging people who discriminate. Ooh, see what we’ve done. What Satan has done, he’s taken the word “discrimination,” and he’s made it into a bad word. It’s one of his great tactics and tricks. Discrimination is just a synonym for discernment or discretion. We discriminate. Now discrimination, for example, racially is an evil, but there are occasions where discrimination is very important. We don’t let pedophiles teach kindergarten. We don’t let alcoholics drive. We don’t let people smoke on airplanes. We discriminate. We judge that they are unfit and unsafe, and we discriminate against them because we love people, consider them friends, and we take their well-being into account.

Likewise, if you go to plug into Satan by being just a naïve spiritual person or you plug into a demon or you plug into a lie or you plug into hell, as a friend, it is incumbent upon me to point out to you that you need to judge whether this is good or bad, and you need to discriminate between that which is good or bad because in the physical world, there’s good and bad. We judge that and we discriminate. In the spirit world, we have to judge between that which is good and bad, and we have to discriminate. That’s what Paul teaches the Thessalonians. “Test all things. Hold fast to that which is good. Reject that which is evil.” In Seattle, it’s so popular to be spiritual and have no idea who you’re plugged into, to never judge where am I getting this information, to never judge what spirit you’re connecting with as a spiritual person.

I was watching E, the Entertainment Network the other night, and they interviewed all these Hollywood celebrities about their spirituality, and the common theme in all of them was very interesting. People would say, “Well, I don’t know who God is, and I don’t know which religion is right, and I don’t know which religious teacher is right, and I don’t know which sacred book I should believe, and I don’t know what’s right and wrong, but I consider myself to be a very spiritual person.” Okay, this is what people were saying, and I’m telling you that most people are that way. They don’t believe it’s the object of faith that is important: Who is your God? They believe it is the sincerity of your faith: I’m making a good effort.

You and I need to be people who say, “Well, wait a minute. It’s not just enough to be spiritual because demons are spirits. Therefore, they’re spiritual.” James 2 says that even demons know God exists. They’re spiritual. To be spiritual may mean nothing more than we’ve risen to the point of being like Satan and demons. At Mars Hill, we are not about spirituality. We’re about Jesus. We’re about the Holy Spirit, and John here is gonna tell us that we have to be so careful to judge the spirit world and to discriminate so that we don’t open ourselves up to that which is unclean.

“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit.” How many of you have had a dream, a supernatural encounter, paranormal experience? You’ve seen a UFO. All of this, I believe, is demonic. How many of you have had a healing, a miracle, an endowed spiritual teacher? How many of you see auras? How many of you have had experiences of clairvoyants? I deal with this stuff frequently as a pastor. I don’t talk about it all the time because I don’t want to glory in the darkness, but there is Satan. There are demons. There is a dark world. Our war is not just flesh and blood, but powers, principalities, and spirits. As the great apostle Paul says, there is the prince of this world as Jesus says. His name is Satan. He’s at work.

I’ve seen these things firsthand. I’d tell you things that you’d never go to bed again. So I won’t tell you them, but don’t believe every spirit. People say, “Oh, I saw an angel.” Was it a good angel or a bad angel? “Oh, I found this religion.” Well, is the information in the religion coming from God or Satan? “I saw this religious teacher, this spiritual instructor, this self-help guru or this really nice counselor.” Whatever it might be, he says, “Dear friends, don’t believe every spirit.” One-third of all spirits are demons. Don’t believe every spirit. Don’t believe every talk radio show host. Don’t believe every guest on Oprah. Don’t believe every television personality. Don’t believe every religion. Don’t believe every philosophy.

Don’t believe every book, and don’t just go to the local bookstore, look under the spiritual section, and pick up a book and think, “Well, this will plug me into the other side because you may be plugging into your enemy who will even bless you in an attempt to get you to be in alliance with him against God. Some of you are in darkness. You’ve had spiritual power and experience, and you enjoy and appreciate that. You’re fascinated by darkness because you love the power. It’s Satan’s way of seducing you to be his slave so that you can die with him.

It says, “Dear friends, I love you. I’m not trying to be arrogant or mean, not trying to be unnecessarily judgmental or dogmatic,” but he’s saying, “Dear friends, please don’t believe every spirit. Instead, test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out of the world.” False prophets here are false teachers. They have meaty empires. They have film and music, and they have all kinds of ways of distributing darkness. These are people that have great ability to communicate, to speak, to write, to influence.

Don’t believe every spirit, and what he’s saying here is some of you will have a supernatural, paranormal experience that is a direct unmediated encounter with the spirit world. See an angel, have a dream, something amazingly supernatural happened. For others of you, you will have your gateway into the spirit realm through a teacher, but that teacher is getting their information from Satan or from a demon, and they’re all over the place. So you got to be really careful to be critical and to distinguish and to discern that which is good and evil.

It’s getting a little scary. These are the places I could tell you in 1 John. They’re Scooby Doo verses. My two-year-old son, Calvin, anytime Scooby Doo is on, he looks at me when the Scooby Doo scary part comes on. He looks at me and goes, “Scary, Daddy, scary.” He’s like Elmer Fudd. He changes his R’s for his W’s, and these are like the Scooby Doo verses of 1 John. You’re like, “Oh, there’s demons everywhere. Demon-possessed people everywhere. They run meaty empires.” You got to the spiritual living section. You pick up a book. You’re probably gonna be plugging into a demon.

Maybe we’re all plugged into demons. Ah, what do we do? Test the spirits. We’re gonna tell how to do that next. This is how we can recognize the spirit of God, okay? Just strap on your marshal seatbelt. Deep breath, just do your Lamaze. Just chill. It will get better. Don’t freak out. Okay, this is how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and even now, is already in the world. The world here being condemned culture that is fighting and warring against God in legion with Satan.

How do you know whether you’re getting encounter supernaturally from an angel or a demon, and how do you know whether or not the teaching you’re receiving is coming from the Holy Spirit or an unclean demonic spirit? How do you test? This is a huge question, isn’t it? This is a very important question. The answer is Jesus. I love that about John, Jesus. Okay, if you’re at Mars Hill for very long, you’ll just learn to answer every question Jesus. “Where’s the bathroom?” The Lord Jesus Christ. You’ll answer every question Jesus because, ultimately, that’s how we answer every question is Jesus. Every kid in Sunday school who gets a ribbon learns this early.

Just raise your hand and shout Jesus, and you’ll win. Whatever the trivia contest is, that’s the answer, ultimately, to all the questions. How do you know whether or not your unmediated spiritual experience or the mediated spiritual instructor is from God or Satan? Check the message. You check the messenger by the message. What do they say? What do they say in particular about Jesus? I’ve talked to people. They say, “I had a UFO experience. I had an alien experience. It was a spiritual” – “What did they say? If they didn’t say repent of your sins and trust the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s demonic. It’s demonic.” Well, you’re saying, “Well, then, everything’s demonic.”

Yes, now you’re catching on. It doesn’t take much to be demonic. When you think of demonic, you think, “Oh, the monitors are floating. People’s eyes roll back in their head. Mark gets three more heads and seven arms and walks around green.” No, what we’re talking – all you got to do to be demonic is just ignore and neglect Jesus. That’s it. That’s it. Just miss Jesus, and you’re working with Satan. It’s not complicated as some people would think. So what about Jesus do we need to hear in a message to know that the messenger is plugged into God, the Holy Spirit, not to Satan, the unholy spirit?

Is Jesus Christ God who has come in human flesh? What he’s talking about here is Jesus is God and man. He’s talking about the divinity and the humanity of Jesus. This is so important, friends. There is God and there is us. We have sinned against God. We have killed ourselves. We have fled from God. So how are we going to be reconciled to God? God becomes a man, a second member of the Trinity. God, the Son, becomes a man, the Lord Jesus Christ. God comes into human history as part of his creation to save us from Satan’s sin and self. If Jesus wasn’t a human being, he couldn’t reconcile human beings to God.

He would be an unfit mediator. If Jesus wasn’t God, he couldn’t reconcile God to humankind because he wouldn’t be a fit mediator, but in being God and man, Jesus can bridge the separation that sin has caused because human beings and God. Anyone who teaches anything other than that is not plugged in to the Holy Spirit. They’re working for Satan. Anyone who says that Jesus was a wonderful man, but he wasn’t God or anyone that says that Jesus is a wonderful God, but he wasn’t a human being and flesh, it’s interesting because most of the teachers in our day will say that he was a wonderful man, but not God, but when you get to certain religions by Buddhism, they may even declare that he was divine, but he wasn’t fully human. He wasn’t in flesh.

Both of these are necessary for you to understand who Jesus is. Now Jesus comes as a man. He lives without sin, though as Hebrews says, he is tempted as every way as we are, yet without sin. He goes to the cross, and he dies, which is the wage for sin. He is a substitute paying the penalty for my sin. He then rises three days later, and in so doing, Colossians 3:14-15 says that he conquered Satan. He disarmed him. He made an open, public spectacle of him. He triumphed over him, and he now gives me his victory. Because of that, I am now in Christ, and Christ is the supreme over all creation. He is the head over the church that we are connected to him. We are in Christ, and because Christ is supreme over Satan and demons, we now sit in authority over Satan and demons, not because of our own power or our ability to do anything, but because of Jesus’ death and resurrection as God who became a man and saved us from Satan’s sin and self.

And what he’s saying is this: Anybody who denies Jesus is demonic. It’s evil. It’s wrong. Anyone who denies that Jesus was fully God, fully man, to reconcile God to men and men to God is evil and demonic. Now that being said, how many false teachers are in the world? There’s a ton. There’s a ton. Religions, philosophies, counseling systems, therapeutic systems, all kinds of things trying to deal with the sin problem without Jesus. It’s just frightening how prevalent this is, and it’s as if the world is so dominated by this kind of thinking that just neglects Jesus all together that it is very common for us, perhaps even those of us who are Christian to not see the obvious omission of Jesus in everything.

Go get a book on parenting. Not a word in there about Jesus. Go get a book on marriage. Not a word in there about Jesus. Go get a book on business. Not a word in there about Jesus. That’s demonic. See when we think of a demon, we usually think of red horns and a big pitchfork and a big tail, and he shows up and “Gotcha,” scares you, you know, and you wet yourself and run in your closet and, you know, run the rabbit’s foot and throw out the holy water and grab the stake to run it through his heart. That’s a little obvious. Wouldn’t it be more subtle and like it says in Genesis 3, more crafty, if he just helped you, blessed you, gave you all kinds of insight, and just never said anything about Jesus or what he said was not entirely true. That’s how he works.

It’s all about Jesus, friends. It’s a very popular thing today to say, “I am spiritual.” At Mars Hill, we don’t call ourselves spiritual. We call ourselves Christian. We’re about Jesus and plugging into the living God and not just about being spiritual and plugging in blindly to a supernatural world, hoping that we get the good part. So we have to be discriminating, discerning people who test the spirits, and I’ll tell you what. For those of you that get dreams, you get visions. You get voices, clairvoyants. Test the spirit. Ask it if it’s Jesus Christ. Ask it if it loves Jesus and worships him as God and man. I have done this on a few occasions, and I’ll tell you what.

I’ve even seen on occasion where one man was healed through an angel that would visit him, and then, he had the ability to start healing others, and when sent back to ask that spirit, “Do you believe in Jesus,” the spirit said, “I am Jesus.” The man reported back. “Well, it’s Jesus.” “Go ask which Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth?” “Oh, no, no, another Jesus,” is what the spirit replied to the man. Okay, I don’t make any of these up. I talk first person experience. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11. He says, “I’m just worried that like Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, you too may be led astray from your simple and sincere devotion to Christ because you’re believing other Gospels. You’re following other spirits, and you’re believing in another Jesus.”

I’ll tell you what. A demon will even tell you his name’s Jesus if you don’t check to make sure it’s the right one. They don’t care. They are liars, deceivers. We have to be very careful that our unmediated spiritual experiences are with God, and that the teachers to whom we listen are plugged into God and speaking his truth on his behalf. He goes on, “You, dear children,” – these are the Christians – “are from God.” We come from God. We belong to God. “And have overcome them because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” Okay, as we’re reading this, some of you are getting scared going, “Oh, my gosh. Now I’m scared. How do I know that I’m not being demonized? How do I know I have the truth? How do I know I’m plugged into God and not Satan? How do I know?”

Good news, take a deep breath, okay? You have overcome the enemy and his servants and their works and effects through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and the spirit of God has been given to you and greater is the spirit of God in you from 1 John 3:24 than Satan and all the demons in the earth. Isn’t that great? We don’t need to defend ourselves to bind Satan, to call crazy meetings. I don’t need to bring frothing people up front and make you scared. All I need to tell you is this. Love Jesus. The spirit of God is the biggest kid on the block, and he can take anybody. All right, that’s all you need to know. You know, on my block, I grew up down in SeaTac in a rough area, and you needed a big brother.

I was the big brother for five kids, and if you had a big brother, then nobody would mess with you, and if they did, your big brother would go a little Sopranos on them and straighten everything out. The right hand of fellowship, we used to call it down there, and the Holy Spirit, God, not just a spirit, the Ghost, the spirit of God, takes up residence in us, and he’s stronger, more confident, capable, and superior because he’s God, not just a created being to Satan and demons. So now when the enemy attacks us or when lies are given to us, greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. Our victory is not contingent upon our ability to beat Satan, but upon Jesus’ preexisting victory and the Holy Spirit’s _____ power.

This is so comforting, but what this means is for you to be a discriminating and discerning people is this: We have to be Bible people. He’s gonna get into this in the next section. I’ll lead into it. “They” – these other people who don’t know the Lord, don’t love the Lord, and are plugged into the wrong spiritual world – “They are the from the world” – the cursed fallen culture that is in opposition to God – “and therefore, they speak with the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them.” What he’s saying is this: These guys who are plugged in to evil, they get rich, powerful, famous, book deals, record deals, movie deals. They get all kinds of things because the enemy blesses his people.

He wants them to succeed so they have an enormous platformed influence with darkness, and he says they speak from the viewpoint of the world. They reason they all sound alike is because they’re all plugged in to the same source. These are just speakers for the kingdom of darkness plugged in, playing forth the tune of death. It’s the dirge of the Devil, and they just promulgate that out into the world. Because of that, you will feel strange. You will feel like an alien and a pilgrim and a soldier in the language of the New Testament. You’re gonna feel weird because everybody else is gonna be, “Help yourself,” and you’re gonna be like, “I need God’s help.”

Everybody else will say, “You need to be proud,” and you say, “I think I need to be humble.” Everybody will say, “Well, you need to just love yourself.” You say, “You know, I think God already loved me. So that’s all taken care of,” and you’re gonna feel like the four quadrants in Sesame Street. You’re gonna feel like that weird kid in the upper right hand corner, right? Which kid isn’t like the others? Which kid doesn’t belong? They’ll all be singing the dirge of the Devil, and you’ll be, “Jesus loves me. This I know.” Just be that peculiar kid up in the right hand quadrant, right? Just the world listens to them because they’re plugged into Satan. The world’s plugged into Satan. The people in the world are plugged into Satan. So when they sing, everybody goes, “Well, that sounds familiar.” That’s my song, and Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and they listen to me.”

So for us, it is different, and this is where he goes in Verse 6. We are from God and whoever knows God listens to us, but whoever is not from God, does not listen to us. That sounds a little bit pretentious at first glance. “I am from God and if you are from God, you will listen to me.” Okay, that’s not what he’s saying. What he’s saying is this: The Lord Jesus chose this man, John, to be among his inner circle of three closest disciples, and he was Jesus’ dearest friend. God inspired him to write 1, 2, 3 John, the Gospel of John, and the book of Revelation, 5 of the 66 books of the Bible. What he’s saying is as a worshiper of God who is filled with the spirit of God, who through the inspiration of the spirit of God, writes the Word of God.

If you belong to God, you will obey the Scriptures. That’s what he’s talking about. You know, it says in 1 Peter 1:20, 21 that the spirit of God is what inspired the writing of Scripture, same thing in 2 Timothy 3:16. “All Scripture is God _____.” The spirit of God works through the servant of God to bring us the Word of God, and those people who really have the spirit of God, when they hear Bible, they respond. They go, “Well, that makes sense. I get that. That makes sense,” but people who don’t have the spirit of God, when they get Scripture, it’s like looking at a dog who had just heard a high-pitched whistle. They just – they don’t get it.

How many of you have had this experience? Before you were a Christian, you heard the Bible, and it sounded like the teacher from Peanuts. It didn’t make any sense, and then, the spirit of God came in and you were saved and all of a sudden, you go, “Well, that makes sense. Now I get it. It all makes sense. Why didn’t I get that before?” Because the Bible says we’re dead in our trespasses and sins, that we’re blinded, that we are deaf and incapable of seeing and hearing and responding in faith until the spirit of God comes in and regenerates us, causes us to be new people that then can go from life into life from death, and we can respond to God.

What he says is this: You can know who the children of God are and you can know who the children of the Devil are by doing a little Bible and seeing how they respond. The Christians perk right up and go, “That sounds like the voice of God. That’s Jesus speaking to me through his word, the word of Christ,” and the non-Christian goes, “I don’t get it. That doesn’t ring true to me. That’s not the song I sing. That’s not the band I play, and that’s not the team I’m on. I’m not plugged in to that world. I’m plugged in to this other world.” So it’s so important for you and I if we’re gonna be discerning, discretionary, judgmental people in a healthy and right way that we do that through Scripture, that we be a Bible people, that we don’t just work out of some subjective.

“Well, my spirit is just not in agreement.” We have to go back to Scripture and say, “The Holy Spirit lives in me. The Holy Spirit inspired the Scriptures as I’m getting teaching from people that are connected to the spiritual world or as I have an unmediated spiritual supernatural or paranormal encounter. I checked that by the Scriptures that the Holy Spirit has given me, and I cling to that which is good, and I reject that which is evil.” We need our Bible. That’s why, in the New Testament, the Bible is called a sword because you have an enemy, and he’s at war against you, and you need to know how to handle your sword. Otherwise, he will take the sword out of your hand, and he will run you through with your own sword, just as he did with Adam and Even and just as he sought to do with the Lord Jesus, but unsuccessfully.

It’s so important as you go into this war that you know how to handle your sword, and what he says is, “Everyone who belongs to God, everybody has the Holy Spirit, they appreciate the sword.” They value the sword. They use the sword because they know that they need it. He then moves forward. This is how we recognize the spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood. He summarizes his instructions. Okay, what I’m gonna tell you is this: Anytime you get a supernatural experience, anytime you receive instruction, two things you need to do. If you forget everything, remember these. Pray and test it by Scripture. Pray and test it by Scripture everything. Everything is consecrated by the Word of God and prayer, Scripture and prayer.

Before I ever read the Bible, and I read the Bible all the time. I spent 100 hours studying Genesis this last week, and I pray before I study, and I pray throughout the course of my study. “Holy Spirit, you live in me. You wrote the Scriptures. Teach me. I want to learn the truth.” Before you read a book, even if you’re a college student taking a class in sociology or psychology or history or philosophy, pray to the Holy Spirit before you study, asking him to teach you how to distinguish what is helpful and unhelpful, what is truthful and untruthful in that which you are reading.

Guys, we should be praying over everything. There’s a capacity in us all to perceive that study is solely an academic mental cognitive engagement. It is a heartfelt, soulful, whole body, spiritual experience to learn. The first temptation was for us to partake of knowledge apart from God, and ever since that time, we have been pursuing knowledge apart from God and to bring knowledge back to God, which is indeed wisdom, we have to be Biblical and prayerful, so that we are learning from the Holy Spirit and not getting deception from the Devil.

Pray, check it by the Scriptures everything you read, every magazine article. When you pick up the newspaper in the morning, pray, and then, read the newspaper. When you turn on the news at night, pray. Then, watch the news. Every piece of information that comes to you should be filtered through the grate of prayer and Scripture so that you can be an _____ and not get sucked into lies and plugged into this false world. Tell you one final story and wrap this up for you.

I told you this story before, but a couple years ago, I got this privilege to go on a guided tour of MTV Studios in Time Square. Just a handful of pastors got to go. We got to go see everything where they do Total Requests Live, where all the junior high girls yell and stuff, and then, we got to go. I got to – I bumped into Matt Pinfield in the hallways and bumped into Jewel. It was one of those weird days. “Hi, Jewel.” She was big at the time, and now she’s not, but so we’re getting this whole tour and we’re seeing the control room and getting to see the whole thing, and then, the director of marketing, a young gal, real well-dressed, real articulate, smart, obviously a high IQ, got it together, probably in her 20s. She took us on the tour, and then, she took us upstairs to the board room for MTV, and it was glass windows overlooking all of downtown Manhattan and the bay.

It was a pretty epic view, and she said, “Well, I got about a half hour. We’ve done more demographic research on young people than any other organization in the country. What do you guys want to know?” I mean what a great opportunity. So we’re pastors. You know where we’re going. You know, start asking her questions. She’s very bright, very helpful, very cool gal, and we said, “Well, what about the spiritual life of your average person who watches MTV?” She says, “Oh, they’re spiritual. Everybody who watches MTV is spiritual. All the young people are spiritual.” “Okay, what do you mean by that?” “Well, they all believe in prayer that prayers are heard and answered, and they all believe that there’s a supernatural world beyond the normal world. They all believe that when we die that we’ll live forever and go somewhere else.”

She laid out all these things, and then, the question was asked by a gentleman I was with. “Well, who do they think God is?” Great question. She said, “Oh, they have no idea.” In light of what John’s been teaching us, does that concern you at all? “I pray.” “To who?” “I don’t know.” “My prayers are answered.” “By who?” “I don’t know.” “I’m a spiritual person, and I get insight from the spiritual world.” “Well, what spirit is it?” “Couldn’t tell you.” “Well, do you even know who God is so that even if you did figure out who that spirit was, you’d know whether or not they were working for or against God?” “I don’t even know who God is.”

“So do you believe you live forever when you die?” “Yes, I know I will live forever.” “Where?” “I have no idea, but I don’t worry about that because the spirit world is all good, and as long as I’m plugged in, I’m plugged in to goodness, right?” No, no. Dear friends, don’t believe every spirit. Test the spirits because not every spirit is connected to God, and if you connect with that spirit, you will not be connected to God either. Now what happens is we get this discussion, and I believe people respond to this in some different ways. I think one thing that people do is they respond by being spiritual people. They’re just thinking, “Well, I don’t know who God is. I don’t know how I’m supposed to walk with God. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I am spiritual. I believe there’s something. So I’m gonna be a good person and a spiritual person. I’ll pray and believe in karma or something, and then, I’ll be a spiritual person, and I know it’s not much, but I’m hoping it will be enough.”

Other people take it a step further, and they become superstitious. “Well, there’s a spirit world out there, and I want to make the spirit world happy. So I’m gonna just like buckshot out of a gun, do all kinds of spiritual supernatural things. I’m gonna be this superstitious person that maybe lights candles or prays or has an icon or gives devotion or believes in karma. I’ll be the superstitious person trying to appease the spiritual world and the good and bad demons or Gods or whatever else is out there, and I’ll be superstitious.” I was actually pretty superstitious before I got saved. Some people are just spiritual. Some people are superstitious. Other people look at it, and they say, “You know, that’s silly. I mean you’re spiritual, but you don’t know to who. You’re praying, but you don’t know to who. You’re trusting, but you don’t know to who. You don’t know what you’re doing,” and they just become skeptical.

So they say, “You know, that’s just ridiculous nonsense. None of the religions can agree. None of the teachers can agree. Nobody knows what they’re talking about.” You know, a spiritual person just looks like a naïve, silly optimist. The superstitious person just looks like the person who’s kind of frantic and lost hope and trying to make God happy, whoever it is, and so the skeptic says, “Forget it. I don’t pray. I don’t try and figure it out. I don’t come to any great conclusions. I’m skeptical, and I just move on with my life and try and be a decent person.”

Which one of those is closest to God? None of them. These are the three options that Satan will give you, and they all meet his purposes. You’re not connected to Jesus. You’re connected to demons or you’re not connected to demons. It doesn’t matter to him as long as you’re not connected to Jesus. His objective is met. Our goal is not to be spiritual. Our goal is not – at least not in the way that I’m explaining it today. There is a better definition of spirituality, but not spiritual in the way that I’m explaining it. We’re not superstitious, and we’re not skeptical. We have something much better for you than spiritualism. We have something much, much, much, much better for you than superstitiousism and skepticism. We have Jesus.

We have Jesus, and the spirit of God will connect you to the Son of God, and you won’t just be a spiritual person. You’ll be a Christian, which means you’re not just connected to the spirit realm. You’re connected to God by the spirit, through the Son, to the Father, reconciled to the living God. It really comes down, friends, to Jesus. He said he came down from heaven. He said he was the only God. He said he was the only way to God. He performed miracles to prove it. When questioned, he reiterated his claims. We killed him and three days later, he came back from death to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he alone is God.

He did that to save us from Satan’s sin and self. He did this because he loves us, unlike the spirit realm of darkness, which loves us not at all, friends. Any of you that have dabbled in the spirit realm thinking that the power or the insight or the draw was interesting or intriguing, that is was exciting and exhilarating, you quickly found that it consumed you, and it was a trap, and the hook was baited, and you were done. God is a loving God. God is not like all other spirits. God is not unclean. He is clean. He is not unholy. He is holy. He is not bad. He is good. He is not duplicitous. He is truthful, and he loves you very dearly, and it grieves him so much when we would settle for being spiritual or superstitious or skeptical.

When instead of being spiritual, we could be spirit-filled and have life with God, through God, for God, by God, and it all comes down to Jesus. God who became a man to die and take away our sins, to rise and conquer our enemies of sin and death. Guys, it’s all Jesus. That’s all we’re talking about. I invite you to give your sin to Jesus, to receive from him the spirit, not just to be spiritual, but to be spirit-filled, to be convicted of your sins so that you can change, to be led in truth, to read your Bible, to pray, to be connected to God, through his spirit, to be plugged in to your maker as you were created and intended.

If my tone tonight or if my attitude seems flippant or coy or disrespectful, please forgive me and please dismiss that. Please stick on the issue of Jesus and where are you at with him. Okay, if everything I have said falls away, Jesus, Bible, prayer. Okay, just take those three home with you. Read the Bible. Pray to Jesus. Be connected to God. He will speak to you, and he will love you. You respond to him in faith. You trust him walking away from your spirituality, from your superstition, from your skepticism, and you extend your hand to the living God, who adores you and by faith, you move forward, not as a spiritual person, but as a spirit-filled person, as a Christian.

For those of you who have or who will tonight will partake of communion, which is remembering Jesus’ body and blood. When we partake of communion, we are remembering that God became a man in human flesh. The bread reminds us of Jesus’ body. The drink reminds us of his blood. It is our reminder that Jesus was fully God who became fully man and died as the God man, as a substitute in our place. We’ll give of our tithes and offerings. If you’re not a Christian, you’re a first-time visitor, don’t give. We don’t want your money.

We just want you to be connected to God. That’s our hope, and then, we’re gonna sing and we’re gonna celebrate because we have overcome through Jesus’ resurrection and the spirits in dwelling power. Paul says at the end of the book of Romans that we now can stomp Satan under our feet that we walk not in cowering fear of darkness but we walk in the light as he is in the light. We have fellowship with him and one another as John says elsewhere, that we walk in confidence and boldness as he said in Chapter 3. “Come in to God in prayer asking him, and he hears us and loves us and responds to us because he is a good God.”

We are overcomers, and so as the overcomers, we will conclude with celebration, thanksgiving to God, by whose grace we have overcome, and he loves to hear the congregation of overcomers declare his victory because we were made for that purpose of worshiping him. We invite you to that tonight, and I’ll pray for us.

Lord Jesus, we do love you so much. God, some of us came here spiritual. Some of us came here superstitious. Some of us came here skeptical. God, I pray for those people that you would send your Holy Spirit into their heart. I ask Holy Spirit a humble request, that you would regenerate them, that you would give them love for Jesus, faith in Jesus, eyes to see his goodness, ears to his truth, a heart to love his ways. We need a miracle from you to be connected to you, Lord God. It is not you who has rejected us. It is we who have rejected you.

It is not you who has abandoned us. It is we who have abandoned you. It is not you who has killed us. It is we who have killed ourselves, but we thank you that you are a loving and good God. You have pursued us, that you have come for us, that you have sought us and bought us and found us, that you claimed us as your own, that you have made us more than spiritual. You have made us spirit-filled, that by your power, we are overcomers that we have new life, and God, I pray for all of my dear friends here, that none of them would leave without knowing that they are indeed a child of God.

I pray against the enemy and his servants and their works and effects, God, their temptations to remain in sin, their accusations that change is not possible, their lies that God is not real and that Jesus did not rise and that the Word of God is not true. Lord God, we just in humble faith ask you to do what only you can do, and that is to put your enemy and ours under our feet. In Jesus’ good name. Amen.