I John 4:1-3a (Message)
My dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and
examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God.
There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world. Here’s how you test for the genuine Spirit of
God. Everyone who confesses openly his faith in Jesus Christ—the Son of God,
who came as an actual flesh-and-blood person—comes from God and belongs to God.
And everyone who refuses to confess faith in Jesus has nothing in common with
God.
False teachers, preachers, and
prophets have plagued the world since the beginning of mankind. What is the first commandment of the Ten
Commandments? “You have no other gods
before Me” (Exodus 20:3). False teaching
of false gods must have been rampant when God gave this first commandment to
Moses. False witnesses are mentioned in
Psalm 27:12 and 35:11. Jeremiah 23 and
Zechariah 5 write against false teachers.
Jesus warned against false prophets in Matthew 7:15. Peter wrote in II Peter 2:1 “But there were
also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers
among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the
Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction”. False teaching, preaching and prophesy have
plagued the people of Israel and the Christian church and continues to be a
huge problem today.
Indeed, false teachers,
preachers, prophets……let’s call them false leaders……are very deceptive. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing as Jesus
warned in Matthew 7:15. They talk the
language, act very charismatic, show charm and kindness, do whatever it takes
to earn your trust by such seductive words and actions, then snare you like an
animal in a trap. False leaders almost
always have two things in common----they love money (greed) and sex (sexual
immorality). Their focus is on themselves not the Lord. Their teaching is not consistent with what is
taught in the Bible or distorts what the Bible teaches. Yet their distortions can be very subtle. Like Jesus said, they can be like wolves in
sheep’s clothing and easily fool gullible people
The apostle John gives
Christian brothers and sisters (“My dear friends” or “Beloved”) sound advice
for how you can tell whether a pastor, teacher, or other person claiming to be
a Christian leader is authentic or not. John
first writes that you must not believe everything you hear. That statement alone strongly affirms that
there is a lot of false teaching going on so do not blindly believe everything
you hear from someone. If you have been
raised by good parents, you tend to believe authority figures because your
parents were trustworthy. However, you
soon realize that many/most authority figures are not like your parents.
John then writes that you must
not assume that someone who is talking about God actually comes from God. What he means here is that false
teachers/leaders are not sent by God, they are not God’s spokespeople; in fact,
they are evil. John bluntly writes that
there are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world. It saddens me greatly to think that there are
people falsely preaching about God, lying to people about who God is and what
He does. You have to be on the alert for
any preacher who does not use Scripture to back up what he preaches about. What is more difficult is to discern when a
preacher is using Scripture, but is distorting the true meaning of that
Scripture.
John gives us the primary key,
the main tool, the best way to discern whether a preacher or teacher in the
church comes from God and belongs to God.
What does that person believe about Jesus Christ? Who is He?
Is there open confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? Is there open confession that one’s faith is
in Jesus Christ? Does that person
believe that Jesus came to earth as a human being, but is also the Son of
God? Ask these questions and how a person
answers will tell you whether he/she is a true believer and represents God in
their preaching/ teaching or is a false leader/ teacher/preacher/prophet. If there is any hesitation about who Jesus
is, if there is any denial in the historical person of Jesus Christ, that
person is a liar and you must not follow him/her.
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