1John 3:18-4:6 - "Voices"

1John 3:18-4:6

¹⁸Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.  ¹⁹We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him ²⁰in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. 

²¹Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; ²²and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.  ²³This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.  ²⁴The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

¹Beloved, 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.  ²By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; ³and 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. ⁴You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.  ⁵They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. ⁶We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

(Don't miss the Trinity sighting in vv 23-24!

Question: What are you listening to?  Who?  To whom?

So many voices… Parents.  Hollywood.  Friends.  Coaches and mentors.  The news media.  Social media.  Artists and musicians.  God and His Word.  Pastors and Bible teachers.  My heart is always speaking.  So many voices.  Some are pushing truth.  Some are not.  What are we listening to?  John mentions several in this section:

• We are speaking
• Our words and our deeds, all the time, they are speaking
• To the world, to our neighbors and to our family
• They are speaking to our heart, assuring our heart that we are of the truth, that we are IN Christ
• Our heart is speaking
• Speaking to us (condemning or assuring)
• Speaking to God (asking)
• We are making our voice heard on high (or are we?)
• God is speaking
• God the Father is speaking (v23)
• This is my Son.  He is the Savior of the world.  Believe in His Name.
• God the Son (Jesus) is speaking (v23)
• (New Command) - Love one another
• God the Spirit is speaking (to our hearts) (v24)
• Creation is also speaking - if you have ears to hear it (Ps 19.1-2)
• Other spirits are speaking
• The world (v1)
• (false prophets)
• Antichrist (v2)

To that end, John groups all these voices into two broad categories.  He says, don’t believe every spirit.  Don’t believe everything you hear.  Don’t be persuaded by just anyone.  Because there are two sources, two channels, basically.  There is the spirit of truth, and there is the spirit of error.  Those which are FROM God, and those which are not.  And there is a very simple test to determine which channel that voice is channeling…

• Voice test (v2)
• Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ (God’s promised Messiah)
• He has come into the world - in the flesh

If the voice you are hearing doesn’t affirm this, don’t believe it.  Don’t be persuaded by it.  Don’t even pay attention to it.

But so many voices.  Coming at us from so many directions.  TV.  Internet.  Our phones.  Our earbuds.  Billboards.  Signs, signs - everywhere there are signs.  Clogging up the scenery… Do this, don’t do that.  Competing voices.  One advertising firm estimates we are each exposed to some 5000 solicitations each day!  That is up from some 500 in the 1970’s.  So many voices.  But those which are not from God, John says, they are from the world.  And what do they say?  What are they saying?

The world says, doubt God.  Question His authority.  Question His character.  Doubt His goodness.  Question His plan.  Doubt His grace.  Grace is too easy, too cheap.  (well it wasn’t for Jesus).  Question God’s existence.  Doubt Him as Creator - no thinking person believes that anymore.  Doubt His Word.  Did God really say that?  Does He really mean this for good?  If you can cast seemingly reasonable doubt on God as Creator and on His Word, then suddenly you can convince yourself that you are no longer accountable to Him.  No chains on me.  I can do whatever the heck I want.  I am free to do whatever and love whoever I want.  There is no god, the world insists, or if there is, he is more like us.  We remake God in our own image.  A god of our own choosing, of our own design.  One which is tolerant.  Progressive.  Not so restrictive.  The long war against God and His Truth is as old as the garden - if not older.  The spirit of error.  Lies and deceptions and doubts and remade gods have persisted ever since.  The world listens to them.

The world says, this is all there is.  Living in the moment, the here and now.  Live like there’s no tomorrow, no such thing as eternity.  We live, we die, that’s all there is, they say.  They discount the empty tomb.  Living for the present.  The world says, trust what you can see.  The five senses.  The tyranny of the material.  A material bias.  Giving credence only to what you can see and touch (and taste and hear and smell).  A material world for material girls and boys. 

The world says, trust your feelings.  If it feels good, do it.  And if it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it.  The world says, love means letting someone do whatever they want, whatever feels good to them.  The world says, if you disagree with me, if you don’t support me in what I want to do, then you hate me.  Trust your instincts.  Go with your gut.  Listen to your heart.  My heart - that’s the root of so many of these voices.

Here’s what I find in the pages of Scripture:

Jeremiah. 17:9

The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?

Who can trust it?  In other words, you can’t trust it.  Left to its own devices, what you get is the spirit of error.

The world says, I don’t need help.  I don’t need a crutch.  Just try harder. 

What does the world say about Jesus?  Didn’t exist.  Or, a religious leader.  A good person perhaps.  A good example.  A good teacher.  I love how C.S. Lewis puts it:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

It’s the old “trilemma” - a dilemma with an extra scoop of lemma, so to speak.  Three scoops of lemma.  You want fries with that?  (Sorry…)  Lord, Liar, Lunatic.  The lunatic would be, what Jesus said is not true, and He didn’t realize it.  He was a madman, in other words.  Deluded.  Genuinely sincere perhaps, but genuinely deluded.  Lunatic.  The liar would be, what He said was NOT true, but He KNEW that it wasn’t true.  Which would make Him a great deceiver - on par with the devil in hisself.  Or, the third lemma, what Jesus was saying about Himself IS true - in which case He is Lord.  All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him.  And you may choose NOT to surrender to Him as such, but you simply cannot listen to any voice which says He was only a good teacher.  The spirit of error.

But you know what - it doesn’t matter, John says.  What he is saying here, is that what matters is what God says about Jesus.  This is My Son.  He is Savior.  In Him I am well-pleased.  Listen to Him!  The spirit of truth.

God is greater (2X)!  John sandwiches this passage with two layers of awesome sauce, hold the lemma.  God is greater.

• Greater than our heart
• Greater than he who is in the world

The bulk of the error which we hear comes from these two sources - our own heart, and from the world, from he who is in the world.  And John shuts 'em both down here.  Get that stuff outta here, he says.  God is greater.  He is greater than my heart.  And He is greater than he who is in the world.  So listen to Him.  Listen to what He says.  Listen to His truth.  Copious amounts of His truth.  A steady diet of gorging myself on His truth.  Because His truth is one thing which there can never be too much of.  You can’t ever get too much of it.  So many things which you can overdo.  Too much of even a good thing, right?  

Like oreos, for example.  The first one - awesome.  The second one - which always follows the first, cuz you can never eat just one - just as awesome.  Now, are you going to eat a third?  At some point, if you keep going, you go from pure bliss to either discomfort or regret.  Or both.  Not so with the spirit of truth.  Not so with the Word of God.  Not so with Jesus.

In fact, what is the best way to learn to spot the spirit of error?  How do they train bank tellers to spot counterfeit bills?  Show them the real ones.  Exposure to truth.

But I think our posture in a world full of opposing voices, where antichrist - those who oppose Christ - has already gone out into the world - I think our posture tends to be rather more defensive.  All these voices are in fact quite intent on putting God’s people more on the defensive.  They would be entirely pleased if they could render us silent.  Shut us up.  Just don’t talk about Jesus.  Don’t focus on Him.  Just don’t go too far.  Don’t go to any extremes or anything.  Don’t be a zealot.  Which means heated.  Kept at a boiling point.  We know what Jesus says about that, don’t we?  I would that you were hot - or cold.  Cold or hot.  But not lukewarm… 

But all these opposing voices, these competing voices - ultimately they do little or nothing to heat up our faith.  They are generally trying to cool us down.  Cool us off.  Pull us away from white-hot devotion to Jesus.  And put us on the defensive.  We can tend to want to circle the wagons, hoping we can just survive.  That we can ride out the onslaught and just make it to Sunday once a week and eventually limp our way to the pearly gates.  If we can only hang on.  It's defensive.  Rather more passive even.  Our heart are wont to adopt this more passive, defensive posture.  But we don’t see that in the pages of Scripture, at least not in the hearts of those who were completely His.

2Chronicles 16:9 

“For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.”

We see Caleb - Joshua 14.6-14.  Give me the hill country!  He is 85 years old, and he says, give me the toughest assignment you have.  White-hot.  Full-on, full-out devotion to the Lord.  Confidence.  Boldness.  Assurance.  Look at his assurance - “I have followed the Lord fully…”

In Exodus 32, when Moses came down off the mountain - the people had persuaded Aaron to build them a golden calf - "make us a god who will lead us" they said, and Aaron said, "give me your gold jewelry", and as he says it - “I threw the gold into the fire, and out came this calf!”  And we read that Moses saw that the people were out of control, running wild - so much so that they had become a joke to their enemies, and we read that Moses stood at the entrance to the camp, and he said, “Whoever is on the Lord’s side, come to me.”  Whoever is on the Lord’s side, come to me.

It’s March Madness.  Many of us, about to take up sides.  Gonna root for our team.  Gonna cheer for our team.  I think it’s a great time of year to be reminded that there is something greater.  Someone greater.  Someone greater to cheer for here.  Someone greater to listen to.

In considering all these other voices, and the One greater Voice, John has us considering our own voice.  And he says it is all about confidence.  Confidence.  And Assurance.  And there are two sides to that.

Assurance before (from) Him.  Confidence, before Him.

We’re told that our heart is desperately sick.  Deceitful above all else.  And it is extremely fickle.  Here today, gone tomorrow - many people rooting for God on Sunday morning, but maybe not as much on Monday morning?  But confidence before Him.  Assurance from Him.  Some of this stems from the voices we’re listening to.  And some of it stems from the evidence of what God is (or isn’t) doing in my life.

I think our desperate heart tends to go one of two ways - either denial, or guilt.  Denial says, I don’t need help.  I don’t need to abide.  I'm in fact NOT desperate.  Eternity isn’t quite so urgent or binding.  Or denial says, I don’t have a problem.  I’m ok.  I didn’t do anything wrong.  That wasn’t sin.  I’m not a sinner.  Remember what we looked at in chapter 1?  If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  Denial.  The spirit of error.

Guilt says, I’m guilty - and it stays there.  Focused on self and filled with shame.  Five fingers pointed at me.  And the accuser loves to dig the knife in deeper.  You did that - you’re such a bad Christian.  God doesn’t love you.  God can’t forgive you for that.  You can’t approach Him today.  Crummy Christian, crummy Christian, crummy Christian.  The spirit of error.  Guilt pushes you away, makes you want to slink away and hide.  Tail between your legs.  Guilt aims at alienation instead of reconciliation.  Pushes you away from God, away from His forgiveness and cleansing.  Remember, with God there is this total cleansing and forgiveness.  Sins washed whiter than - by the blood of Christ.  Sins removed farther than.  Totally gone.  But guilt looks like this…

[picture of a guilty dog]

If we confess our sins, John said in ch 1, if we agree with God about our sins, He is faithful AND just to forgive us, AND to cleanse us.  Clean hands, clean heart - and so we can thus approach the Lord on His lofty throne with assurance and confidence!  Assurance FROM Him, and confidence BEFORE Him.  We come to God and confess, God, You are greater, and I need You.  I need Jesus.  Desperately.

[picture of a happy dog]

The word for confidence in this passage is actually the word, boldness.  Boldness.  Let’s think about that - why does it matter that we would have boldness?  Boldness in Scripture is always for speaking.  It means to utter beside.  And in this case it is for asking.  Verse 21 - we have confidence from God, AND whatever we ask we receive from Him.  It means we can sidle right up next to our heavenly Father and ask Him for whatever - just like any child would do with their dad.  And why is this important?  As it pertains to our God Who is greater, and your voice - let me ask, what are you asking for?  What are we asking Him for?  Remember, asking is the rule of the kingdom…  "Whatever you ask…"  It’s not about always getting yes answers.  It’s about boldness.

James 4:2b 

…you do not have because you do not ask.

2Chronicles 7:14 

“…[if] My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land."

John 14:12-14 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. AND whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it."

Think about your praying - how does it fit into this idea of bold?  And with bold asking for whatever, there is also the need for listening… Our God puts a huge premium on listening to His voice.

Exodus 5:2 

But Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the LORD…”

Numbers 14:22 

“Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice…”

Hosea 9:15    

All their evil is at Gilgal; Indeed, I came to hate them there!  Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of My house!  I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels.

What happened at Gilgal?  Where was that?  Joshua 9.3-15.  The people of Israel did not listen to the mouth of the Lord.  They did not take the time to inquire of Him, to listen to Him.

Deuteronomy 4:30 

“When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the latter days you will return to the LORD your God and listen to His voice.”

Why wait until the latter days?  Why wait until we’re at the end of our rope?  Why not take time to listen to Him every day?  Tune in to His channel.  He is greater.  He is better.  And, He is waiting.  He is the loving Father, the party waiting to happen, waiting for both the prodigal and the dutiful to come to Him with all their heart and learn to simply enjoy Him.  He is the friend Who sticks closer than any brother, Who is always faithful, Who will never leave us or forsake us and Who loves us just the way we are.  He’s the One Who designed us in the first place.  Tune in to His channel.  Listen to His voice...