Sermon outline, First Sunday After Epiphany

INTRODUCTION
As Jesus predicted, false prophets arose in the first century, misleading many believers (Matthew 24:24; 1 John 4:1). Christians have to be on guard; not everyone who claims to speak for God does speak for God. But how can we tell?

THE TEXT
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God . . . .” (1 John 4:1-6).

SPIRITUAL WAR
False prophets are not simply human agents, motivate by their own desires and will or shaped by their cultural environment. These factors certainly affect their actions, but John says that fundamentally they are agents of various sorts of “spirits” (vv. 1-2). As in the court of Ahab (1 Kings 22), the contest of true and false prophecy is not a contest between the spirit and no spirit. It’s a contest of the Spirit of Truth and lying spirits. What John describes is literally a Spiritual warfare, a warfare that involves invisible, spiritual powers as well as human beings. Christians are capable of examining spirits because we have received the Spirit who examines all things (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:6-16).

TONGUE AND EAR
Spirits and prophets are to be tested by their tongue and their ears, by what they confess and by whom they listen to. Everyone who confesses with his tongue that Jesus has come in the flesh is of God (v. 2). The Holy Spirit, somewhat paradoxically, is known by His testimony to the flesh of Jesus. Spirits that deny Jesus are anti-Christ (v. 3; cf. 2:18, 22). For John, confession is not merely a matter of the mouth. The tongue speaks what’s in the heart, and the heart is also manifested in action. “Antichrist” names not only a doctrinal heresy, but unrighteousness and hatred for brothers (3:10-12).

False prophets are also known by ears (vv. 5-6). This works two ways. On the one hand, false prophets find eager ears in the world. Tongue and ear make a pair. Lying spirits speak from “the world,” and the ears that listen are also worldly: “The world listens to them” because they “speak from the world” (v. 5). On the other hand, false prophets are listening to something other than the apostolic voice. John makes the astounding claim that “the one who knows God hears us” (v. 6). Listening to the apostles is a test of whether someone is a child of God or a child of the devil. This claim is even more astounding if, as seems likely, John is alluding to the Jewish shema (“Hear!”). Israel is knowable as the people that responds to Yahweh’s “Hear, O Israel”; the new Israel is known as the people that responds to the apostolic “Hear.”

CONFIDENCE
There is no doubt about the outcome of this war of spirits. False prophets speak from and to the world, but Christians have overcome the world, because the Spirit who is in them is greater than the spirit who is in the world.