I try hard, and it’s probably hard to tell sometimes how much I try, but I try really hard not to talk about sports every Sunday. But when it’s the playoffs, there’s some things I just have to get off my chest. It’s like that burning sense, it’s probably not the Holy Spirit, but it’s burning inside of me to share some of this stuff.
You know, I could lament about how tough it’s been for the Chiefs this year because of injuries. Rasheed Rice was looking so great, and then he goes down. Hollywood Brown goes down.
Those are wide receivers in case you don’t follow the Chiefs. They’ve had troubles with the tackle position this year that have caused troubles with the quarterback position this year, which flared up the ankle problems for my home. So when they had secured the home field advantage, whether or not they won last week, I was happy that they could give the starters that big of a break because, you know, Chris Jones, everyone just was struggling with so much.
And in the midst of this, there’s this other team that keeps hating the Chiefs so much called the Bingles. And the Bingles, who are not in the playoffs, blame the Chiefs because the Chiefs didn’t risk their own starters to beat Denver. And they say they sandbagged the game because they were too scared of the Bingles.
And that just emanated. It raised its level to the national media in some places saying the Chiefs only didn’t play their starters and played some practice squad people just because they were scared of the Bingles. So crazy.
Okay, I’m glad I got that off my chest. Now on to the sermon. It’s funny how, whether it’s with social media and a lot of things, that today the news is mixed with so much error.
I mean, on either side of this, you could look at it and say, well, they’re just making up this narrative. And the narrative can gain ground. This happens a lot politically, too, in case you haven’t noticed that.
And it’s not just social media. It happens on the regular corporate media outlets that they carry these narratives, whether or not they’re true. But somebody said it, so they say it.
Now, if you’re looking at the Chiefs-Bingles thing, some Chiefs fan trolled the Bingles and started a rumor that the Bingles had a petition with 20,000 to 30,000 people to allow the Bingles in because they were that good of a team and because the Chiefs were unfairly losing. And it was just a joke, but everybody bought into that, too. And today, it’s tough to hear the truth.
Whatever we’re talking about with current events, it’s tough to hear exactly what is true. There are so many errors and conspiracies and lies that are mixed in with it, which is kind of the definition Jesus gave us of who Satan is, that he mixes that truth with some lies in it. It makes it hard to discern exactly what the truth is.
That happens with the truth of Jesus himself. That for some people, they just go by what others say about who Jesus is, but instead, they need to learn a little bit more about who Jesus is. They need to come to know Jesus personally, and then they can understand more about this amazing thing that God did for us through Jesus Christ, that God wants to be that personal with us.
We’re going to spend the next several weeks, basically, up until Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, going through 1 John 4 and 5. Now, you’ll get so much more out of this series if you read along in 1 John 4 and 5, but I would go back and read 1 John 1, 2, and 3 as well. There’s just so much information in there that grounds the theology of traditional Christianity to give us a better understanding about who Jesus is. Now, people ask me inside of the church and outside of the church if what I’m going to preach on, on a given Sunday, and I usually give this flip answer, which probably isn’t very pastoral, but I usually say, Jesus, and that’s not always the case anywhere you go, that you’re not always going to hear about Jesus, but that’s the one thing I’m pretty sure of is every Sunday, the focus is going to be on Jesus, and in this series specifically, and especially today, we’re going to talk about Jesus.
We’re going to talk about Jesus and try to filter through some of the deterioration of who Jesus is in people’s minds, and some of the deception, and some of the errors, and some of the untruths that get filtered out there. This series is simply called, Hello God, Are You Really There? How Can I Really Know It’s You? How Can We Really Know It’s God? John has a very specific focus in 1 John on spiritual warfare. You’re going to hear a lot in this series about Christ and Antichrist.
You’re going to hear a lot about spirits that are true, and spirits that are false. Today, we’re just going to go straight to truth versus lies, and it’s not just so you have the head knowledge. I don’t want to just do this so you can argue, and debate, and take someone down who tries to give you a false impression of who Jesus is, but the truth is, I really want you to experience God, and know God, and love God, and deepen your relationship with God, because we have this false impression in the United States that there’s this God, and everything is of God, no matter what religion, no matter what thought process, no matter what is going on, and that creates a Jesus who is so little, but the truth is, Jesus is more amazing and bigger than we can ever imagine.
Will you stand as you are able? 1 John 4, 1 through 6, 1 John 4, 1 through 6, When I read this, I see that John was dealing with a lot of the same stuff in the first century that we are dealing with today. He talks about, he says, there was a group of people that were with us, but they came out of us, meaning they separated from us, because they started disagreeing over who Jesus was, and they would go in and confuse churches. I mean, some of them might be what Paul would have called the Judaizers that would say, hey, Jesus isn’t enough.
You’ve got to accept the law and do all this other stuff, and some of them are ones that may be closely related to if you have studied Christian history. There was a priest that was pretty high up named Arius, and he started claiming that Jesus was not really God. So, it’s the Arian theology that came out of that, if you hear about Arians.
That’s one of the big differences that started doing it, and John was already trying to tell the people. I mean, again, if you go back to 1 John 1, 2, and 3, he says, I’m not telling you all this because you don’t know the truth, but because you do know the truth. So, he’s saying, remember you know the truth.
Remember you know who Jesus is. Remember you know how amazing Jesus is. These voices would come in, and they would be loud, and they would be persuasive, and believe it or not, people can talk about Jesus, and be loud, and be persuasive, but be in error.
So many people want to create Jesus and create God in their own image. You know, God couldn’t do this. The Bible says this, but God couldn’t be like this, and they’re persuasive, and they’re loud, and they use the same words like love, but those are different than what the Bible tells us about who Jesus is.
John was facing, the churches were facing people who were pretty persuasive, pretty charismatic, pretty vocal, and their arguments sounded good, and people were listening to them and going, oh, maybe this is the missing part of my faith. Maybe this is what I need to do. Maybe I just need to focus on this and not worry about it.
Now the cool thing about 1 John is it talks about truth and lies, and it’s almost looked down upon to consider anything a lie that somebody says, unless they’re your enemy these days. But John does it very clearly in this book, talking about truth and lies, but the beginning of this section tells us something we’re going to see all throughout the book of John, and he starts with the word beloved. The word beloved just means you are loved.
John loved the people in his churches so much. In fact, sometimes he would call them little children. Sometimes he would call them beloved to know that they’re loved.
When you correct someone, believe it or not, when you correct someone, it can be done out of love. There’s another modern definition that says, if you love someone, you won’t correct them, which again just cuts into our ability to know Jesus and to live out our calling in the fullest. It’s something when he says you’re loved, it’s a sense of holy love, like we were talking about John Wesley’s theology is holy love and his grace, that that love is holy, but we seek the greatest love of all, which is the love that comes from God.
We seek to be like God in love, not like the rest of the world, and we seek that love knowing that we only get it because of the grace of God. In 1 John 3, backing up to verse 18, I will say this. This may be difficult or undesirable for a lot of people, but if you bring your Bibles during this series, it’s going to help you a lot.
Maybe take notes in your Bibles or somewhere else because the difficulty with 1 John and the book of John is there’s just so much information in every single sentence that it’s hard to do the whole thing. That’s why we’re breaking it down in just a few parts. In 1 John 3, he says, I write to you not because you do not know the truth, because you know it and because no lie is of the truth.
Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.
Let what you have heard from the beginning abide. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and the Son and the Father. And this is the promise that he has made us eternal life.
So when you abide in the truth, you abide in God. People say, I just want to feel it. I just want to do what feels best.
And then I’m feeling God. And John is saying that is not true. You don’t abide in God if you don’t abide in Jesus.
If you deny Jesus, you do not abide in God. You are not of God. So John lays this out in 1 John 3 and moves on here into 1 John 4 about a lie detector test is what I see.
If you have the Holy Spirit, you have the capability in you to see the truth through the lies. Now, John says, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. So he’s connecting when he says, do not believe every spirit.
He’s saying every spirit that is guiding every person, even people who are talking about Jesus is not necessarily of God. It could be an antichrist, meaning it goes against Jesus. Well, the first thing you have to know about anything that goes against Jesus is that he says, by this you know the spirit of God.
Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Some were saying that God would not come into human flesh because it’s so unclean and so dirty and so imperfect.
And so ungodlike. Now, the theology that we have to focus on here is the Christology. The Christology here is on the two natures of Jesus.
The two natures of Jesus are that he is, see if you can finish this, fully God and fully man. Jesus is not just God, but he’s also man. He’s not part man, he’s fully man.
That he has come in the flesh. And this connects to the theology of the incarnation. Carne is the Greek word for flesh or muscle.
I didn’t mean for it to be like that. The Greek word for muscle or flesh, carne, means he came, that he really was and is human. And he is eternally, fully God and fully human.
That he had both. And that is the part where it says, confesses that he came in the flesh. He is the word made flesh, as John made very clear in John 1, where it says everything that was made was made through the word.
And the word came into the world and the word was made flesh. The word made flesh is huge. That says that nobody can say Jesus is beyond our reach.
Nobody can say that Jesus, that we’re not good enough or we’re not, that God doesn’t have this huge amount of love and grace that he can’t step in anywhere, even into the manger like we talked about. The grossness and the dirtiness of the manger is where it all started with the word made flesh to tell us that no matter what is going on in our hearts and lives, no matter where we have been, it is not too far for God to reach. That God is fully God and fully human and both of the incarnation and the two natures of Jesus connect us to the Trinity.
There is one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So we’re led to believe that Jesus is like a lesser God or that he is not God by so many places. And there are many religions that will say Jesus is a great teacher or a great prophet or like an angel or a lower God.
But because of the incarnation, because of the two natures of Jesus, we have the Trinity that says one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that they share the same godliness within them, the same nature, fully God, fully human. Jesus said in every spirit that does not confess, Jesus is not from God. Just like in 1 John 3, where he said, who is the liar, but he who denies Jesus is the Christ.
We can see that and it is huge. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard is coming and is already in the world. So John’s two arguments in here are that he is the word made flesh and that we are to confess Jesus.
Now, sometimes that seems like, yeah, we confess Jesus, we’re here at church, we’re here doing this. But when we skirt on that and we think, man, maybe this is not a good situation for me to confess that I love Jesus. Not to tell someone necessarily in a conversation, well, you’re about ready to go to hell if you don’t know Jesus.
But to say, I made it through this because of Jesus. Jesus can be in any conversation if we love him. And because we love him, God’s love in us wants others to know Jesus.
The depth love of God goes beyond this love that says, I’m only gonna love you. I mean, I’m gonna love everything about you and I don’t wanna interfere. I mean, if you really love someone, you’ll confess Jesus.
Confess that you love Jesus to anyone, no matter how difficult the situation. 1 John 4, verse 4 is the one that really drives it home. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them.
For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. If somebody presents you someone with Jesus, with a Jesus who has no power, with a Jesus who can’t transform us, with, you know, something is so difficult within us that God can’t draw us in closer and make us more holy and make us more like Jesus, then that’s the spirit of the antichrist. Jesus is greater.
I mean, how much confidence does that give you? To know that how hard life can be, how difficult things can be, how twisted the truth can get, that he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. I want that he in me. I want that true Jesus to be in me, that Christ who is greater and more powerful and loves me enough to say, hey, Eric, you’re not as good as you think you are.
You need to grow. You need to be more like me. You need to be bolder in your faith.
You need to care more about others. You need to learn more about who I am, or you cannot become like me. I want a Jesus who loves me that much.
John 18.37 says, for this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come in the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. And Jesus talks about how the sheep know the voice of the shepherd, that we know and can test and discern when it’s Jesus’ voice and when it’s some other voice within us that is an antichrist that is really drawing us away from Jesus.
In verse five it says, they’re from the world when they speak the world, the world listens to them. You know, the itching ears that hear what they wanna hear. And sometimes when people say what you wanna hear, it just rings home and sounds like your life experience but can draw you away from God.
4.6 says, we are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us.
By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of air. If someone is from God or if someone is of God, they’ll be confessing Jesus. They’ll be acting like Jesus.
They’ll be helping like Jesus. And they’ll be living in the flesh like Jesus lived in the flesh, doing bold things for the kingdom of God in the world today. And when you test the spirits through prayer, through discernment, through the reading of the word, there’s a group in the book of Acts called the Baravians who every time they would hear, they would even hear from someone who is a big name, but it says they would search the scripture.
We test the spirits by making sure it’s of Jesus and not just so we can be smarter, but so we can know God. I mean, don’t you really want to know who God is and how God is there? And when we test the spirits, 1 John 4.6 says, the truth will blast through the lies and we will see the truth clearly and it won’t be covered by the lies. And our relationship with God will be that much more pure.
Let’s pray. Almighty God, we just thank you for Jesus Christ today. We thank you especially as we turn to celebrate holy communion, to remember the gift that you gave us in Jesus Christ, that because he is fully God, but also fully human, we can be forgiven, we can be strengthened, we can come into the presence, even into your throne room, that you’d love us that much.
That you will transform us from within and that as we remember the sacrifice of Jesus, we remember that this was done out of love so that we could know you and we could discern what is truth and what is lie. And even in 2025, experience the truth and the grace and the holy love of Jesus Christ. Amen.