Living Outloud: God's Plan A

 We connect 1 John to Jesus’ prayer in John 17 and talk about unity, love, truth, and discernment as the church’s public witness. 
• moving from hearing God’s word to doing it 
• working out salvation while trusting God at work in us (Philippians 2:12–13) 
• 1 John as reassurance that we belong to God and know the truth 
• Jesus’ prayer for unity so the world believes (John 17) 
• hatred and anger as darkness and spiritual murder (1 John 2 and 1 John 3; Matthew 5) 
• choosing forgiveness, reconciliation, and compassion over stewing and venting 
• love shown in deeds and in truth, not just words 
• speaking truth in love without being harsh 
• testing the spirits and spotting false teachers (1 John 4) 
• checking Bible verses in context and against the whole of Scripture 
• watching for teachings that make the flesh too comfortable 
• holding love and truth in the necessary tension 

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Transcript

God Works In Our Obedience

Why 1 John Offers Reassurance

Jesus Prays For Our Unity

Hatred In The Church Is Darkness

Love Shows Up In Actions

Speaking Truth Without Being A Jerk

Discernment Against False Teaching

How To Test The Spirits

Love And Truth Together

Prayerful Closing And Next Week

SPEAKER_00 0:11

This is the Out Loud Bible Project Podcast, and this is Mike, and this is another episode of Living Out Loud. Let's take a look at what we read, not all of it, but some of it of what we read earlier in this week on the podcast, and dig down a little bit deeper and pull out what we can do about this. Every time we read the Bible, we gotta talk about, well, what do we do with this, right? We don't want to just be hearers of the word. We want to be doers of the word. So to do that, we kind of have to get out of this habit of just like nodding and say, oh yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, all right. And now we actually have to do the tough work of like, okay, what in me needs to change? What part of me doesn't line up with what is being described here in terms of following Jesus or being like Jesus or obeying what he says? Yeah, it's some tough questions, but you know what? If being a Christian was easy and comfortable, then everyone would be doing it. We don't get that luxury. We have to do the hard work, and this is part of it. But fortunately, we don't have to do all that hard work ourselves. Philippians 2, 12 through 13 says, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. That does feel like a lot of work, but it doesn't stop there. It says, For it's God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Well, that's a relief. We need his help to do what he says. Unfortunately, he gives us the help that we need to be able to do what he says in order to do the things we need to do. So with that in mind, let's revisit John's letter, first John. I think I said it again and again in those episodes that this is a book about reassurance, to know that you know, that you know, that you are a child of God, that you belong to God, that your salvation is secure, that you can know the truth, that you can avoid the lies, that you can know that others in your gatherings are believers as well. Not just assume someone's a Christian because they go to church. And I think to better understand or connect with John's urgency and the main point of this letter of 1 John, I think we need to take a look at John 17, his gospel book. John 17, where he records the prayer of Jesus, one of Jesus' prayers right before going to the cross, where Jesus prays not only for his disciples that he's been working with, but he prays for us. He says in verse 20 of John 17, Jesus says, I'm not praying only for these disciples, but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. Like, hello, that's you and me. He's he's praying for you right now. Look at it, check it out. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one, as you are in me, Father, and as I am in you, and may they be in us, so that, and this is huge, so that the world will believe you sent me. Isn't that wild that Jesus puts the plan A of how are people gonna know that Jesus is the Son of God? Hmm. How can we how can we, God the Father, you and I, God the Father, God the Son, how can we get people, all people in the world, to know that I am the Son of God and to put their belief in me and to trust in me? Hmm, how are we gonna do that? Oh, I know. Let's leave it in the hands of all of these humans, specifically these ones who have have heard me my teaching and now I'm gonna leave them to go out into the world and talk about me more. That I'll tell you what. I'm glad Jesus knows what he's doing because I would not give me the responsibility of representing Jesus to the world. That sounds like a bad idea. Yeah, I just I just want all of them to just be so unified, just to just to get along together so well and be so loving toward each other and so unified, they don't that they don't argue and they don't get divided over just petty issues, so that everyone sees them as like, wow, those Christians, they they have peace, they have unity, they're on the same page, they're on the same mission, they've got something that we don't, and we we need to learn something from them. Like that's plan A? Man, if that plan has fallen apart, it's not because of Jesus, it's because of you and me, man. We have not answered Jesus' prayer, we have not uh lived that out. And John here in in 1 John is writing to goad us along a little bit, encourage us to actually be able to answer Jesus' prayer, which uh it it's in our power to do through the power of the Holy Spirit. But man, we have to get over some of this division that that is just ripping us apart on you know big theological levels and on small interpersonal levels in our church and in our in our own local body. That's why John says in verse 9 of chapter 2 the one who says he's in the light but still hates his fellow Christian is still in the darkness. The one who hates his fellow Christian is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and doesn't know where he's going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. John doesn't let up in 1 John 3 15. He says, Everyone who hates his fellow Christian is a murderer. Like, whoa, that escalated quickly. Well, did it though? Because Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, it's in Matthew 5, when Jesus says, No, no, if if you're angry with a person, you're basically spiritually a murderer. It's like, whoa, that's how that's how Jesus sees it. If you if you're angry with someone, you hate someone that makes you a murderer in God's eyes. We certainly have no business murdering our fellow believers. How is the rest of the world supposed to want what we have if we do that? And here's the thing, we're gonna bump up against other Christians as we try to do ministry and as we show up every Sunday to go to church and we do our things there, we're gonna bump into each other and we're gonna have our disagreements. Someone's gonna say something that really hurts us, they're gonna they're gonna do something that I don't know, we feel disrespected or we feel slighted or we feel overlooked, we feel made unimportant. It's gonna happen because we're humans doing life together. So when Jesus is saying, I want them to be so unified that the world knows that I came from God, like it's he's not expecting that we're not gonna have arguments and that we're not gonna have our conflicts, but we have to not let those conflicts result in an anger that just kind of sits and seeth and develops into this underlying hatred where we just avoid them, we talk negatively about them to our spouse at home or to other people, or even stewing in our own minds about how much we just uh like, I don't know, they just take up away too much real estate because we we give them too much airtime in our brains over what they said or what they did. We're not giving that to Jesus and forgiving them and reconciling and going and talking with them. Instead, we're trying to handle it ourselves by just, I don't know, maybe venting until we feel better. That doesn't work. That hatred, that's just that's just murdering the person in our mind. We ought to, like John says in 1 John 3.16, that we've come to know love by this. Jesus laid down his life for us. Thus we ought to lay down our lives for our fellow Christians. By the way, John's got some bangers in the 316s, doesn't he? John 3.16, 1 John 3.16. Some good stuff, it's worth memorizing. But he says in verse 17, whoever has the world's possessions and sees his fellow Christian in need and shuts off his compassion against him, how can the love of God reside in such a person? Compassion is one of the first things to go when we have a grievance with someone else. We're not inclined to be compassionate when we're harboring some anger, some frustration against a person. We have to get over that. We have to give that to Jesus so we can return to a state of compassion. You think Jesus was, I don't know, happy with everything that everyone was doing, and that Jesus was not grieved by what someone else said or did to him when he laid his life down? No. We know from the book of Romans, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Jesus didn't wait for us to apologize to him before he did the most loving, self-sacrificial thing he could do. Are you waiting for someone to take the first step in apologizing or making something right before you're willing to forgive, before you're willing to have compassion, before you're willing to speak with them again and release some of that hate and anger and frustration and murder that's going on in your brain? And how can we expect to love people of the world if we can't even get this right in our own family, our own spiritual family of the church? We've got to do this heart check and make sure that we are acting in love, not just saying that we love. Like John goes on to say in chapter three here. Let's not love with word or with tongue. Come on, that's not love just to say that we love someone or just to talk about love, but we actually have to demonstrate our love indeed and in truth, like he says. Love comes through our actions, that's the indeed and in truth. Our love is demonstrated by actually defending and speaking up for the truth. It's not very popular nowadays to defend the truth or to speak truth. It's often seen as a hateful, intolerant thing. And I definitely think we can speak in a hateful and intolerant way, and that's not appropriate. I think we gotta speak in such a way so that if someone is offended by what we say, that they're offended by the Jesus in the message and not because we're just like a jerk, right? Like, come on. Let's let our speech be seasoned with salt a little bit, you know? Let's not just go out and blast people with truth and not care how they receive it. I think we can that's part of speaking the truth in love. But we need to be able to demonstrate our love for believers and our love for the truth by defending the truth. And it may require saying some tough things to other people who say that they're Christians, or other people who are not Christians and they're just speaking out of pocket and they don't even know what they're talking about. Because it's tricky when people are sharing things, talking about using Bible verses to try to make their point about whatever agenda they're trying to push, saying, well, the Bible says this, and you, oh, you want to follow the Bible, don't you? And if you do not know the truth, if you do not know the word of God, then you are vulnerable to these dangerous ideologies that are trying to get you to believe something that is real close to the truth, but is not the truth. Something that sounds like the Bible, but it's not the Bible. Something that sounds nice like the heart of God, but it's not the heart of God. The only way to know is to know the word of God. And first John speaks into the certainty that we can have. Because false teachers were a problem back in John's day, and they're a problem nowadays. And John tries to encourage his people that he's talking to, and and thereby we can receive this encouragement as well, that with the Holy Spirit inside of us and giving us discernment, we can know that we know the truth. Even John, in in verse 21 of chapter two, he's saying, I'm not writing to you so that I I teach you the truth. Like, you know the truth. I'm telling you that you do know it. And if there is a lie, any bit of what someone is saying is a lie, then it's not the truth. And anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ, that is, being the Son of God, coming as fully God and fully man, as the sacrifice for our sins. Like, if anyone who is denying that, well then that's not the truth. Well, that eliminates a lot of people who seem to be Christian or maybe even affiliate themselves as Christians. I'm talking Mormons, I'm talking Jehovah's Witnesses, using the same sorts of names and languages we do with Jesus and salvation and all these things. But they cannot say, honestly, from their beliefs, that Jesus is fully God, come to earth as fully man to save us humans from our sins. And so John's saying you have the assurance that if you believe this and you have declared Jesus as your Lord, your savior, as that he is the Son of God, then you have this anointing of the Holy Spirit. And with this anointing of the Holy Spirit, you have him residing inside of you. And he says in verse 27 of chapter 2 that you don't need anyone to teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about all things, it's true and not a lie. Just as it is taught you, you reside in him. That's what John says. Now, uh, my my charismatic brothers and sisters will sometimes use this verse as some sort of proof text that the role of teacher is not necessary because you have the Holy Spirit. Well, it says right here, if you have the Holy Spirit, then you don't need anyone to teach you. This is not talking about a Bible preaching, a gospel-centered, truth-telling teacher. It's not talking about that in that context. It's talking about these false teachers who say, no, no, you don't you can't know what the truth is unless I tell you. And what I'm telling you is this. I know the Bible's confusing, the Bible's confusing, you're not going to be able to understand it yourself. So let me help you know what's true. I know you you're not sure what's true because it's a it's a tough, confusing world out there. And I wish the Bible was easier to understand, but it's not. So listen to me and I'll tell you what's true. I'll help you through this. It's that kind of teacher, quote unquote teacher, that John is warning against and saying, no, no, you don't need anyone to teach you what is true, because you have the Holy Spirit inside of you to tell you and to point you to truth. You don't need someone like this stuck telling you what to believe and what is true and what's not true. This is certainly not negating the role of teachers, because teachers, proper Jesus-believing, gospel-centered, truth-telling teachers, take the truth of scripture and unpack it and present it in such a way that helps you understand it, helps encourage you to follow it and obey it, and gives you some practical steps to become more like Christ through his word. We certainly have a need for those teachers. Paul talks all the time about the role of teachers and the importance of teachers and what a gift teachers are to the church. So let's just give up this nonsense of like, well, I have the Holy Spirit, so I don't need a pastor to tell me anything. No, no, come on. Bible teachers will be put out of a job at the final resurrection when we're all in heaven together. Until then, let's listen to our teachers, learn from them and and do what they say the Bible tells us to do. But in no case are we to check our discernment at the door. That's what chapter 4 of 1 John talks about, testing the spirits. He says in verse 1, dear friends, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they're from God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Again, going back to the you have the Holy Spirit within you as a child of God, as a as a believer who has submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. You have the Holy Spirit in you to help you discern what is aligned with his spirit, with God's Spirit, what is not. Don't just believe some teacher just because of what they say, or just because of how they say it or how they look or who knows, whatever, whatever reasons. That's not how we determine what's true. We can know what's true if we test the spirits by the Holy Spirit that we have living inside of us. Because I tell you what, it says not don't believe every spirit. Because every teaching about the Bible comes from a spirit. It could be the Holy Spirit, in which case the Holy Spirit inside of you says, Oh, yeah, this is good. This is good. Or it could be an evil spirit. Teachings from demons, Paul talks about. There are teachings from spirits that are not the Holy Spirit, and only God's Holy Spirit living inside of us can tell us the difference. So how do we know if a teaching is true and good and aligned with the Bible? Well, we've talked about it a little bit. I mean, know your Bible. Like, God has already given us a big clue into his heart and what's true through the Bible. Does it line up with what else it says in the Bible? Don't just listen to a Bible verse. This is a this is a good one. If someone's trying to make a point just by sharing a Bible verse, that's not enough. That's not good enough. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who just shares a Bible verse is a false teacher, but if someone's trying to make a point based on a Bible verse, go look up that verse, look at the context. Every verse has a chapter, every chapter has a book, every book has a context. Don't just take someone's word for it because they're throwing up a Bible verse. And say, oh, well, I guess if it is in the Bible, then okay. No. No, go look it up for yourself. See if it is if the point they're making is supported by the rest of the context of that verse. Compare it to what else we know from the rest of Scripture. Okay, that that's a point to make here. Is that what uh what Paul would agree with? Is that what Jesus would agree with? Is that what what uh David would agree with? I don't, I don't know. We're we're talking in generalities here, but if there is a truth, that truth is gonna be echoed throughout scripture. And that the Bible does not contradict itself. Anyone who tells you that is a false teacher in and of themselves. Okay, the Bible's not gonna contradict itself. Now, I I hope that through our time together in this podcast, both in the past and moving forward, that it will give you a sense of the whole flow and the whole story of scripture at a multiple different touch points so that you can when you hear something, you can say, well, you know what, that reminds me of something back here. It's not easy. Knowing the Bible is like, oh Mike, that sounds like a lot of work. Am I supposed to know the whole Bible? Well, yeah, because we're not second graders and this isn't homework that we can get done before dinner. It's on us to determine if what is being taught or what is being presented as truth, if it lines up with the rest of Scripture. We can also test the spirits and help determine what's true by asking ourselves, would I naturally want to do this, what they're asking me to do? Obeying and responding to the truth is often going to mean the death or sacrifice of something in our flesh, something that we don't really want to get rid of, but the Holy Spirit inside of us kind of convicts us that we should. Even though it's not comfortable, I don't really want to, I wouldn't choose to do this on my own, but uh, as someone who wants to follow Jesus and obey God, I I guess I should probably do that. That's a good indicator that what's being taught is true and from the Word of God. As opposed to something like, oh, so I can move in with my boyfriend or girlfriend? Okay, well, that sounds good. I've been wanting to do that. I just I wasn't sure. I just wasn't sure. Or oh, it's oh it's hateful if I tell someone that homosexuality is wrong? Okay, well, good, because I wasn't really comfortable with that conversation. So I yeah, and I don't want to be hateful, so I won't do that. Okay, just a couple of examples, but you see the point where if if we've got this tension inside of us between it's like, uh I don't I don't really know what I should do in the situation. Someone teaching with a false spirit is going to try to cut that tension and tell you, hey, look, and they may even try to use a Bible verse out of context. They might even try to convince you that, well, you know what, don't you just don't feel don't feel bad about that. Don't feel bad about it. Just just do this thing that is probably what you want to be doing, and don't feel guilty about it. All right, you're just feeling a little bit guilty, you're feeling a little bit torn, just let that go. That's cutting attention that is really a result of the Holy Spirit convicting and trying to pull you in the other direction that is uncomfortable. That would mean the death to your flesh, and your flesh does not want to die. That's why it resists. So those are the two major ways that I would say that is how we test the spirits, as John says here in chapter four, by primarily the primary way being test what is being said with the word of God. If someone's using a Bible verse, don't just take their word for it. Check the Bible verse's context in the chapter, in the book, and in the whole context and the whole overarching story and flow of scripture to see is this in line with God's heart? It is not easy. It requires knowing the word, but it's work worth doing because it's in many cases a matter of life and death, spiritual life and death. And also just try to keep a finger on the pulse of what is your flesh trying to get away with, what is your flesh trying to do to feel more comfortable and avoid the pain and discomfort of your spirit putting to death the parts of you that do not submit to and line up with Jesus. Not saying that it's always difficult or that you always don't want to do what God says to do, but it's a general rule of thumb that if there's some teaching out there that's trying to kind of make you feel better and do what you kind of in your flesh you want to do, that's a big red flag. That's a big red flag. If if they're trying to make us feel less uncomfortable, let's let the Holy Spirit make us feel uncomfortable. Let the Bible make us feel a little bit prickly, because that's where Jesus is going to do his best work. That's where he wants to make us into a new person. Love and truth. That is John's emphasis here in his letter of 1 John. We have to, have to, have to hold both of them in the tension that they naturally create. Love for a person, whether it's a fellow believer or someone out in the world, is going to compel us to stand up for truth. And truth is going to compel us to love the person. Well, how can I know what love really is? How can I know what's true? John set out to reassure you that you can know that you are saved, that you have the Holy Spirit. He does not expect you to figure it out on your own, but pray and let the Holy Spirit help you pray in Jesus. Jesus' name to God the Father, that He guide you in truth and He helps you love the way Jesus loves. You don't have to figure it out on your own. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, because you know that it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. Praying for you as you go out and fulfill his good purpose in your life, in your family, at your work, in your community today. Thanks for being here and a part of this conversation. This has been Living Out Loud, our weekly conversation of the Out Loud Bible Project Podcast, where we talk about not just hearing it, but doing it. Join me next week. We're going to check out 2 John and 3 John and Jude and continue on to Revelation. Some exciting parts of Scripture here today. I'm excited to share them with you, and I'll see you then.