[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Good morning everybody If you're new here, it's good to see you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good to meet you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Citizens is home, welcome back My name's Scott, I'm a member and elder candidate here at Citizens Church
[SPEAKER_00]: You might not know what that means and elder candidate.
[SPEAKER_00]: This church is led by a group of men, both staff and just lay people in the church that are given the opportunity to lead and oversee the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been my privilege over the last year to be welcomed into that room, to be introduced to the things that they do, the things that they talk about, the men that they are and for them to be introduced to me and get to know me as part of a process of discernment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's been a joy, people have asked me about that and one thing I'm just really glad to report to you is that your elders are the same guys that you think that they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more you get to know them, the more you see how consistent they are with who you might see on stage or in the hallways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Blicker really is the kindest guy in the whole world and he's very wise and discerning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could go on about every one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adam is very insightful and leads so well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jamen really does love Chipotle.
[SPEAKER_00]: He does.
[SPEAKER_00]: He really does.
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't go about each one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially this is just my second time preaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, we might not know me.
[SPEAKER_00]: My family and I became part of Citizens three years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: when we moved back to the Dallas area from about 14 years of ministry abroad, overseas.
[SPEAKER_00]: We lived in India and then in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, and we live in Richardson now.
[SPEAKER_00]: any Richardson folks, and I serve as one of the leaders for Acts 29, the church planting network that citizens is a key part of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Life and ministry in those unique contexts really gave Angela and I and my family a window into
[SPEAKER_00]: to believe remarkable stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe remarkable stories of God's grace on display to enter into what's broken and confused and sinful in the world and redeem it by his power in grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was reading our passage that we're looking at this morning, two stories came to mind as I thought about the implications of this passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: One was remembering Shavanshu from our time in India.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shavanshu was a young man who came into our church
[SPEAKER_00]: He grew up in North India, Shavanchu's name literally means light of Shiva when the principal Hindu deities.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he had grown up in a North Indian home and it would be as would be very common for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He grew up in a context not just even a home but a society and a whole culture that is completely foreign to the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Being told ways of living and ways of understanding the world that are completely foreign to what we see in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one day when he was on the internet, a pop-up ad showed up and asked if he wanted to know more about Jesus and he had never wanted to know more about Jesus and never even heard of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is through that pop-up ad that he began to research and come to know what the gospel is.
[SPEAKER_00]: He found Christian friends in the area repented of his sin and trusted in Christ and joined our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greater than generations,
[SPEAKER_00]: of the literal worship of idols in his home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greater than a lifetime of hearing false teaching, greater than all of that was Christ, who shown the light of the gospel into his heart and changed him.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Dubai, I remember meeting Chris and Abby.
[SPEAKER_00]: Their story is too long and too beautiful to give justice to, but I'll give you the cliff notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I came into their story, when they reached out to me,
[SPEAKER_00]: and had the privilege to become part of their story.
[SPEAKER_00]: The divorce papers were already filled out and just waiting to be signed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shortly after their marriage it was really rocky and they decided it was irreconcilable.
[SPEAKER_00]: In their native Philippines we were in Dubai together but in the Philippines it's a former Catholic country it takes forever to get divorced and so it actually been years that they were estranged and so the lawyers had called and said hey we got a we can get this thing done now and so they got back in touch after after years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And two things were surprising to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both had moved several times in those few years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they found out that they were living on the same city block in Dubai.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing that they found out is that they had both become Christians during that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had both kind of been raised in different Christians, so-called backgrounds, but not knowing the gospel and never hearing of the true message of salvation in Christ and a life formed by him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now, they realize what we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: We both become Christians, but we have only this relational experience of hurt, and of betrayal, and of frustration, and of tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember sitting with them the first time we met.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we met a number of times, and they were on opposite.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were on the same couch.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were on opposite sides of the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just staring at their feet quietly.
[SPEAKER_00]: in over time, as we talked about the gospel, and as they applied the gospel to their hearts, greater was Christ than the brokenness that they had experienced.
[SPEAKER_00]: Greater was Christ in the lies that they had begun to believe about themselves and about their marriage and about the possibilities.
[SPEAKER_00]: These and other stories came to mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: In light of these verses, especially there in the middle, the one who's in you is greater than the one who's in the world, John Wrights.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grader was the truth of Christ in Chavanchi's past false religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grader was the truth of Christ in Chris and Abbey's confusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grader is the truth of Christ, then whatever struggle, whatever falsehood you might be tempted to be drawn into.
[SPEAKER_00]: This passage aims, principally, here me here, this passage aims to increase our confidence in Christ's greatness in our life through the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need the ability to see through the false teaching and see through all the voices and things influencing us and trying to get us to think about this or that and see through that through reading, redeeming, and victorious truth in his arms and Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're here in John chapter four.
[SPEAKER_00]: We took a break for Easter, at first John chapter four, and here in first John chapter four, he's picking up kind of a line of discussion that he's had throughout the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: In first John chapter two, he warned them about false teachers.
[SPEAKER_00]: They went out from us because they were not of us, he said.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in chapter 3, he against her talking about these teachers and how you could recognize them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, you'll recognize them because they approve of unrighteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're sinful in the fruit of what comes from them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you'll know them by their moral behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's one way to know about these false teachers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here in chapter 4, he's brought it up again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what he's telling them is that you need to be aware of people and of voices that have wrong thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: So chapter three was, they have wrong behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter four is that they have wrong thinking.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what he's calling for here is what we call in Christian context discernment.
[SPEAKER_00]: discernment.
[SPEAKER_00]: discernment means to have the ability to judge things well, to see something and know if it is good and true and beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: or if it's wrong and ugly and broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: John wants his readers to have discernment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this incredible promise, this incredible promise that all of us resonate with, that greater is he that is in you than he who's in the world, that comes in the context of something.
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes in the context of John's call to them to have discernment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like Shabon, you need a discernment, just like Chris and Abby needed discernment, so we too need discernment.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why we need discernment?
[SPEAKER_00]: What it looks like to have it and how to get it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty simple, why we need it?
[SPEAKER_00]: What it looks like?
[SPEAKER_00]: How to get it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about why we need discernment.
[SPEAKER_00]: John sets up the context for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sets up the context and it's an effort to bring tension.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an effort to bring warning.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's trying to help them know why do they need what he's talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the warning that he gives them is a problem that's really big and pretty urgent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at what he says there in verse 3.
[SPEAKER_00]: verse 3, this is the spirit of the Antichrist which you've heard is coming and is even now already in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 1 says many false prophets have gone out into the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 5 says the world listens to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a bad guy and he's got a lot of people spreading his message and it's popular.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the time that John was writing about this, what this was looking like was teachers going around to these house churches and they were claiming to be from God and they would teach, but actually what they were doing was teaching false.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were teaching messages that would distort the truth of Jesus Christ and lead people away from the truth of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would look like to walk in love.
[SPEAKER_00]: That phrase in verse three might trip you up a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean that the Antichrist is coming and is now already in the world?
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is he on the way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is he already here?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's coming and he's already here and John's point in that is that it's both.
[SPEAKER_00]: As Christians, we understand that the world we're in right now is they already not yet time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Already, Jesus has come and the end of the age has dawned.
[SPEAKER_00]: When He comes again, it will be for the final victory and to claim that what He bought when He came in His first coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: Already, it is the end of the age, and the end of the age is coming when Jesus returns.
[SPEAKER_00]: Already, Jesus has claimed a victory over sin and death in Satan in his death from the cross, and one day, finally, He will defeat Satan once and for all.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Antichrist is coming to be defeated, and He's already here seeking to do His worst in the meantime.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's doing that through the false teachers.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's doing that through any who will collaborate with him and leading people away or distracting them from the treats of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: The devil loves a copycat strategy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me just give you the devil's playbook for a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: The devil loves a copycat strategy.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Jesus was on earth, God Himself incarnated into human flesh
[SPEAKER_00]: What was the devil's primary tool in distracting people from them, deceiving them about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: We see throughout the gospel's demon possession, that the devil would try to incarnate himself through demon possession.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, okay, God became man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me try and put on this flesh stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you saw demon possession happening all across the gospels didn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: For sometimes even the Jews would accuse Jesus of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, maybe he's just one of these demon possessed people.
[SPEAKER_00]: But now, Jesus showed his power over that and his resurrection from the dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the book of Acts, the demon possession approach starts to peat around a bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the devil realized that Jesus ascended in what's happening now is that gospel clarity is coming through the preaching of God's word through the apostles and his disciples.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the devil wants to take his copycat strategy into that approach.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, if the demon possession thing is going away, what we're going to do is we're going to distract and confuse the gospel through false teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the first weapon of the enemy, deception.
[SPEAKER_00]: Deception from the false religions of the world, to the subtle twistings of clarity around the gospel, there is an adversary.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is an adversary that is actively working
[SPEAKER_00]: in everybody in this world to lead us away from the truth of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: The specific test that John gives in these verses to know, if we're engaging with this false teaching, is that it doesn't center on and commend the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't center on and commend Jesus Christ came in the flesh.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's John's shorthand way of saying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It leaves our minds back to the gospel of John chapter 1, where John says that the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one has seen God, but he has made him known.
[SPEAKER_00]: And John's mind, that's the gospel that God Himself came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ, and through His person and worked, we might be saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, some religions teach a totally different gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: In John's case, there were people within the Christian community, they were teaching subtle messages that drew away from the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: But all of us, all of us need to know whether we're far from being taught in Christ or even here in the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse one, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: We live in an age where we can't think of ourselves in a passive environment, where we can just coast to joy in Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to slide to clarity about who he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in a world, as Martin Luther talks about in his, him, his famous him, a world with devils filled that threatens to undo us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Anichrist is coming, and is now already here, seeking to deceive as many as he can from the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm aware for a lot of us that that's
[SPEAKER_00]: That's more like devil talks and you normally do in your daily life.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm assuming, I'm so thankful for citizens, I'm so thankful for the way that this church models, when I'm preaching about today, models teaching that is full of discernment, I hope there's some of that today, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if models teaching that's full of gospel clarity, that's in the kids and unite ministry, that's in a recovery ministry where we're seeking to apply the truth of God's word to the problems of the age.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I trust that I'm hoping that many of you here in this room, you're thinking, well, I do trust a teaching here as citizens, and I try to, I listen to a sermon podcast on the side or two, but it's good teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you're not in a place where you're constantly being tempted to listen to teaching that's taking you away from the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe when I trust that, and I praise God for that from most of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, I want to also impress on you this morning is yes to devil, and that this is explicitly what John's talking about works through deception.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's another tool of the devil that John isn't saying explicitly here, but is true from his warning to us about this world, that the devil also uses distraction.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the devil's goal, as these verses say, is to lead us away from Christ, to lead us away from clarity of the gospel, if he can, confuses about the gospel, he'll distract us from the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Corey Timbill, I think it's even been said here.
[SPEAKER_00]: She saved hundreds of lives of Jews in World War II, she was a Christian writer and author.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said, if the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a reality for us to think about there.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I was reading these verses this week and thinking about them, I thought to myself, I feel like I've lived a life that's dedicated to not being deceived about the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've gotten theology degrees so that I can know for myself the truth of the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've put myself in a church where I'm sitting under teaching about the truth of the gospel, but am I as committed to not being distracted from the gospel as I am to not being deceived about the gospel?
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I committed to testing in the words of this verse, testing what distracts me from the gospel and distracts me from Christ as much as I'm committed to testing what deceives me?
[SPEAKER_00]: What am I talking about here?
[SPEAKER_00]: This last week, I saw this report, in the next couple of years, AI, you heard of that, AI?
[SPEAKER_00]: AI will generate more content, more words.
[SPEAKER_00]: AI generated words will be more of that will be generated than the cumulative total of words written by humans since the dawn of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the next couple of years, AI will overtake our collective work as a human species.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot of content.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a lot of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's just one way of thinking about the inundation that all of us have of content,
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we know what we're thinking about is what we should be thinking about?
[SPEAKER_00]: How within all of that information, do we discern what is right to spend our time on?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one thing I think we're good about in the suburban context that we all live in, we're pretty good about discerning externally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not as good as discerning internally.
[SPEAKER_00]: We discern the right cars to drive, the right clothes to wear, the right schools to go to teams to cheer for restaurants to eat out, the occasions to take to signal where we're at socially.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're good at discerning that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, and I'm saying this for myself as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't hear this as the preacher speaking down to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we fill our minds with, we can have a less discernment about.
[SPEAKER_00]: The podcast we listen to, the books we read, the movies show the shorts we watch, everything in that, that information deluge, if we'd really didn't audit of that, does it show a discernment and a passion for what's true and fitting and right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Much of it probably is morally neutral, but it's still informational.
[SPEAKER_00]: We tend to over-calibrate for external discernment while ignoring private internal discernment.
[SPEAKER_00]: We tend to value externally because that's how we appear, but neglect to discern internally of who we are becoming.
[SPEAKER_00]: teens, kids in the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some of you here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm really jealous that you wouldn't hear me as just talking down to you and telling you to turn off Netflix and YouTube and go phone free, although if you might want to think about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love a good movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: A jayman mentioned interstellar last week, Easter sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love interstellar, watch it a ton of times, probably too many times.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the Dodgers make the world series in Sarktober, my sons and I are going to watch every game.
[SPEAKER_00]: You missed a chance to aim in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I go to the gym this week, I'm going to watch some YouTube to make sure that I've got the right form.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not against content.
[SPEAKER_00]: against distraction from the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has richly blessed us with technology and stories, but the devil wants to use that rich gift to eclipse him in our minds.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, I speak to you as a fellow person in the water trying to
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we stay as committed to testing what's distracting us from Christ as what's deceiving us from Him?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why we need to do it is because we're in this world with Devils filled.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in this world that is seeking to confuse and distract us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what would it look like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, what would it look like to have discernment within that context?
[SPEAKER_00]: We probably know what discernment is not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not being gullible.
[SPEAKER_00]: All this probably have those friends or family members that are the ones that are easier to play the April Fool's jokes on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the ones who feel honored when they get that email from the Nigerian prince, they're like, like, hey, like royalty.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you probably know some people in your life that could use a little more discernment, but all of us, all of us need to follow John's warning.
[SPEAKER_00]: to verse one, do not believe every spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a way to exist as a Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a way to exist as a Christian and give in to false teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: To listen to teaching that provides a false understanding of salvation, false understanding of who we are as humans, false solutions for life's problems, false assurances, like freedom from suffering, that is not promised in the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: freedom from poverty or freedom from sickness, that is not promised in the Bible, but you will have teachers that want to tell you that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to be discerning.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to test the spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, John's not alone in this, and this is why I'm lingering on this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: John is not alone in this, nearly every book in the New Testament warns against false teaching and false teachers, warns against hearing the wrong things.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to be careful, careful what we listen to, measuring it against Scripture, like the Bereans do in Acts chapter 17, you remember them?
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hear Paul teaching, the Apostle Paul teaching, doing miracles, seeing what he is preaching
[SPEAKER_00]: And they say, OK, we may go read my Bible and see if that's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, they diligently search the Scriptures to see if what Paul said was true.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to be like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I'm so thankful for citizens.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to commend citizens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I feel like this is a church in a context.
[SPEAKER_00]: In my interactions with all of you, where you are seeking that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this church, we want to magnify Christ on Sundays and are now ministries in empower and equip all of us
[SPEAKER_00]: discernment isn't gullible.
[SPEAKER_00]: discernment knows that not every spirit, not every teaching, not every distraction, not every voice even in our own head is worth listening to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and, here this, like so many other things, what we're after isn't just the opposite of what we want to avoid.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we want to avoid being gullible,
[SPEAKER_00]: But the flip side of that is also something to be aware of.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think maybe even particularly concerning for us in our age, there's fake news, there's misinformation, there's AI-generated memes, we are a skeptical people increasingly so.
[SPEAKER_00]: John Stott and his commentary here on First John on these verses, he says, we need to avoid both extremes.
[SPEAKER_00]: the superstition which believes everything and the suspicion which believes nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't believe everything, we need to test, we need to discern.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just as there's a way to live as a Christian and unquestioningly take in everything that you hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's also a way to live as a Christian or as if you were not identified as a Christian, as someone who's just inherently skeptical and unbelieving as if unbelief is a virtue.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you've been hurt by teachers.
[SPEAKER_00]: You listen to a teacher, maybe like I like me up on a stage, and you thought his teaching was pretty good, but then over time you realized his life didn't match up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like for a challenge after three, it became clear that actually sin was the fruit of their teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's made it really hard for you to trust teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're here just for the vibes, or because it's easier on your family, or friend relationships, if you show up at citizens, but what you're hearing doesn't really make sense to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're skeptical.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, maybe for some of you, you grew up
[SPEAKER_00]: that really was known much more by what it was against, rather than it was for.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're able to critique every sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're able to critique every bestselling Christian book.
[SPEAKER_00]: A game for you is going to borders and looking at the Christian section and being like, yeah, that's wrong with that one, and that's wrong with that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what to do with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And hey, I'm saying that because that resonates with me personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're like online trolls just living for the next chance to jump into the comments with a roast of the latest Christian teacher, but never embracing the beauty of what we're for.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you see there's a way of being both goalable and a way of being skeptical that keeps us from the discernment that John's calling us to.
[SPEAKER_00]: John was writing these letters to the church in Ephesus,
[SPEAKER_00]: and Paul also wrote to the church neffices, the book Ephesians, and he also wrote about being aware of false teaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the way that the image that Paul gave to him, I think is so helpful of what discernment looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: He uses the idea of a ship at storm.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in Ephesians chapter four.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he challenges them to maturity and Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: and to speak the truth to each other, so that they may not be tossed to and fro by ways, carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So discernment looks like navigating the storm of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sifting through all of the teaching, all of the information, all of the distraction, all of what's going on, in finding what lifts up Christ and what doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: enjoying God's world while not being distracted by the flood of experience is an information and delighting in what's good and beautiful about the gospel and not being cynic or hopeless.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not tossed to and fro by every wave, steady, stable, safe to harbor.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what discernment looks like.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we ward off the false teaching that so easily deceives us?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we name what's true and believe it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, also seen what's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: This world with devil's fill, Martin Luther also says, we will not fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: For God has willed his truth to triumph through us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him, his rage we can endure.
[SPEAKER_00]: How's that gonna happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's read again, verse four.
[SPEAKER_00]: Little children, you are from God, and have overcome them.
[SPEAKER_00]: For he who's in you is greater than he who's in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Believer, the Holy Spirit of God is in you and is there to commend this truth to your heads and to your hearts over and over and over again, day after day, after day until you see Him in glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Reminding you that Jesus, God very God, came in the flesh about 2,000 years ago, lived a
[SPEAKER_00]: and died an unjust death, taking upon himself the punishment for our sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because of that, those who believe in him and trust in his gospel that he was raised again from the dead, showing his power over death in his life, that we can be redeemed from all that we've done.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can be washed clean from the stain of all sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can be welcomed as a child in these verses.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the Spirit does that day after day after day, and as you cling to that promise day after day after day, and believe in the greatness of Christ overcome He who's in the world, you will discern between truth and falsehood.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Chris and Abbey came to talk to me about their marriage, as I said, there was some false teaching and false thinking that they had in their background,
[SPEAKER_00]: and there was some false ideas they had in their head that they had to discern and overcome together.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had taken that most important step, salvation, discerning from their past, the need to follow Christ, and now they were working to discern how to apply that gospel into their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't long after Chris and Abbey's remarriage ceremony.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember the day when it was beautiful?
[SPEAKER_00]: That some hard news came.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they reached back out to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that time, it was a year or two later, and they had already gone out with one of our church plants from the church, just a beautiful, serving-hearted couple.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they reached back out and said that Abbey had cancer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it didn't look good.
[SPEAKER_00]: The doctors were not optimistic.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it interacts with him throughout that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to have the window to see a particularly Abby and Chris alongside her, right there beside her, navigate cancer, unwelcome suffering with hope and with joy and with confidence in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a picture to me that I'll never forget of a sister in Christ who had learned what this pass
[SPEAKER_00]: that although there's deception out in the world, although the anti-Christ is teaching different ways of navigating these kind of things, she is going to look to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she is going to find her hope in him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she did that till the day she died.
[SPEAKER_00]: Believe her, I don't know where you need more discernment today, but I do know you need more of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe like Abby, you're on that journey from getting clarity on the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're getting clarity on how to work it into your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting clarity on how to have hope in difficult times.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a process of discernment of finding a way to look to Christ in those experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you've listened here today, you realize there is some teaching and content that you're taking in.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not morally neutral, but it is deceiving you about the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to do some discernment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe as you listen today, you've realized that you are distracted.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are distracted.
[SPEAKER_00]: You look at the screen time report and you think, oh man, that wasn't that good.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're distracted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make room in your schedule in your time for the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: know that the devil can be in the iPhone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know where you need that, but I hope for two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with this I will close.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that you feel the call for discernment from John.
[SPEAKER_00]: That you feel those waves around you, that this morning was a reminder to you that you are in a storm.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a world seeking to deceive you and distract you and you need to discern.
[SPEAKER_00]: And most of all, most of all, I hope that you embrace the confidence that's yours in Christ, that in him you are God's child, and you have overcome, and you will overcome He who's in the world, let's pray together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Father, thank you for these verses, thank you for what they remind us of, thank you for what they call us to
[SPEAKER_00]: And Lord, thank you for the way that they show Christ to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we do confess today that Christ is greater.
[SPEAKER_00]: That Christ is greater.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's greater than anything in this world that could hold our attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's greater than anything else that might provide solutions to our problems, to our eternity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ is who we look to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where else can we go?
[SPEAKER_00]: He has the words of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Father pray blessing over this room and I ask anything that I have said that's helpful would be remembered and anything that isn't would be forgotten and that Christ would be magnified.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in His name we pray, amen.