Christians Have the Holy Spirit

Turn in your Bible, please, if you have not already, to 1 John 3. We're going to handle just one verse in chapter 3, but its placement is the reason why, you'll see in a bit. If you've never heard the phrase, there's a really well-known phrase that familiarity breeds contempt. It's famous. It's well-known. It's quoted a lot. And the idea there meaning that the more acquainted you are with something, the more time you spend with something, the more familiar you are with something. The less you appreciate it and respect it. You definitely see that in homes, right, where I've said in the past that if someone else talked to my wife or kids the way I do, I would probably punch them. We just get used to somebody, and over time, we talk to them freely. And we— you know, when you first meet somebody, you put your best foot forward, right? So over time, you lose that respect, that appreciation.

Well, it isn't only familiarity that breeds contempt. It's also ignorance. Ignorance breeds contempt. And here's what I mean by that. A big major part of being prejudiced against something is ignorance. Like that weird food that those people that aren't the same color as you eat. That weird music that your neighbor who speaks a different language listens to. And that idea of weirdness and differentness is ignorance. You don't know their culture, so their culture must be bad. That's what's behind racial prejudice and things like that. But you do need to know it happens in lots of areas of life. It happens in almost all areas that we get— when we're ignorant of something, we might think it unimportant or worse, bad. Something that isn't our thing is bad.

And I want to be really careful here because I'm going to say some things to you that you might in the past have either been ignorant of, partially aware of, very aware of. And these are things that are not crucial. They're not important. I don't want to say they're unimportant. But they might be things that because you have never thought of, They're not important to you. Because you're ignorant of them, they're unimportant. Or even worse, when I say what I'm going to say, you might say, "Well, I don't like that you're saying that." You might be angry at it. So in other words, that ignorance might breed contempt in what PJ is saying.

For example, in this room, in a room this big with this many people from various backgrounds, especially we have visitors today or people that haven't been with us for a long time or haven't been with us since our foundation when we emphasized providence in our church. If you're about to do something, let's say you tell me you're going into a job interview this week, and I say, which I wouldn't say, but I might say, "Good luck." See, right now, half of this room is squirming that that was just said from the pulpit. And half of the room is wondering, "What is he even talking about? What do you mean squirming? You don't see anything wrong with it? It's normal language. It's vernacular. It's how you speak. Good luck." But half the people in this room, maybe more, are screaming in their hearts, "There is no luck." There is no luck. There is only providence. God is sovereign. He's decreed everything. But because you might be ignorant that somebody can say good luck and not mean luck and chance and that there is no God and they're not atheists, your ignorance of their position might make you think of them as contemptible.

We just talked about one this week, or last week, or the week before. When somebody says, "Hey, Memorial Day picnic. See you tomorrow." Good luck. The person who laughed knows what I'm going to say. Lord willing. You have to say, "Lord willing," because James says, "Say, 'Lord willing,' or else." Because you've been trained and you know that you're supposed to think that way in life. You're not supposed to think you have tomorrow under your control. You're supposed to think that tomorrow belongs to the Lord. You have no say-so in it. And so your brain is supposed to not only think, "Lord willing," it's supposed to say, "Lord willing." And if you don't, you're probably not as Christian as I am because I told you that. So these are things that we do that we may be ignorant of. You may have never heard that you should think, "Lord willing." But you can know that you should think, "Lord willing," and now turn into a legalistic person that says you must say, "Lord willing," because James says to say it.

I have another one of those for you. I'm about to add to the list of things that people do what I think they do it in ignorance. They would never ever dismiss the God or His nature. They would never belittle God. They would not want to do that. So I'm going to say something that you might be ignorant of before today that you are never allowed to be ignorant of or say you're ignorant of after today. So this is your chance. I'm giving you the warning. I'm going to say something today that most of you I know are here today. I see you. I mean, I know you're here. But what I mean is I know you and I know you and I will know that you were here today in the future. I'm pretty mindful of that, by the way, with who's here and who isn't.

So what I'm about to say, you can't unhear. I'm going to give you a minor teaching. We haven't even opened 1 John yet. I'm going to give you a minor teach— it's a major teaching. It's a theological truth. It's about a fundamental nature of God. It's a major doctrine. But it's a small little chunk of teaching, small piece of doctrine in terms of presentation that you must hear. You can't unhear, and you'll be accountable for having heard it. So do you want me to take a second and give you a chance to leave? Here it is. It is wrong, wrong, to call the Holy Spirit "it." People do it all the time. But it is theologically inaccurate to call the third person of the Godhead It. And people do it a lot. I'm not picking on anybody. I'm trying to teach. You're probably going to do it again in the future on accident. But today, from now on, I'm asking you, put it in your pocket as a teaching of the word.

Isn't it crazy how our world is talking about pronouns right now? He/him, they/them, right? And you say, not me. I'll never give in to your pronouns, you and that aberrant community. I'll never honor you just because you think you're a woman but you were born a man. Pronouns are important. And I'm going to say they're important too. Because if pronouns are important, call the Holy Spirit "he" from now on. If you have a switch that needs to be switched in your brain, do it. Now, I'm already being a Baptist here and preaching strong, but you'll see in a little bit why I'm doing it. Not only is it doctrinally important, but it's personally important that a person lives in you. He is a person that you are to love and to honor and respect. And to shortchange the personhood of the Holy Spirit might mean that you're shortchanging the work that he does in you. And you might not have overcoming strength and power because you think of the Holy Spirit like the Force in Star Wars, an it, an energy, like heretics think of him. So I'm asking you, put it in your pocket, take it with you doctrinally, theologically. God is triune, Father, Son, and Spirit. And Spirit is not an it, He's not an energy. He's not a force. He's not magic. He's not mystical. He's a person. And He's a person that lives in you, Christian. So when you read this morning in 1 John, "Greater is He that is in you," today you leave here with new love for Him. Not thinking of the Holy Spirit, "How come it doesn't do things for me?" Probably because you're thinking of Him as an "it." Don't do that anymore, please. This is the church I go to. I want us seeing God correctly in His nature and His character. And more, today I want you to take it with you, to have that doctrinal foundation, but also take with you the personal foundation. It's really awesome when you learn that He is in you because you're a he or a her. And when you know He's in you and He loves you and He's guiding you and He's teaching you truth and He's affirming for you the truth this morning that Christ has come in the flesh, it becomes— I don't know, we're supposed to love God, right? Aren't we supposed to love him? Well, how can we say we love him if we get him only two-thirds right? Now I know that Trinity is not thirds, don't call me on that doctrinal. He's 100%, I know it's not two-thirds. I just mean two-thirds in the person aspect.

Let's pray. Father, these verses, like the others that John uses in the Gospel of John, are practically a seminary class on the Holy Spirit. And his work and what he does. And Father, we very much can mistake or get that wrong. There's whole denominations that get it wrong. And maybe, Father, our challenge is that we just don't focus enough or give enough attention to the work of the Spirit. Oh, would you help us with that this morning, that we would leave here with a new reverence and respect for the third person of the Godhead, and we would love him and respect him. And that we might even be more strong in our faith and overcome more because He lives in us. We'll ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, I'm starting at verse 24 of chapter 3 because it's a transition verse. John does this quite a bit where the first half of a verse is kind of the previous context and the second half of a verse is the next context, and verse 24 is one of those. So I'm going to go to verse 24, and if you read it with me, chapter 3, verse 24, "Now he who keeps his commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us."

So what I mean by transition, if you didn't know this, if you're new to the faith, the chapters and verses in the Bible are added by translators. They were not in the original documents, okay? Neither in the Old Testament or the New Testament. So in the original documents, say, for example, Isaiah, it would just be a set of big old scrolls. And you would unroll them, and it wouldn't have chapters and verses. You would just have to know the scrolls well enough to know that this is the part about the suffering servant, and this is the part about the— Uzziah seeing— or in the year of Uzziah, seeing the Lord high and lifted up in the gate. You would have to know Scripture well enough to know where to turn to it. So chapters and verses were added much later in history. And so this is— I would call this an unfortunate chapter break, but it's not that big of a deal because I think that verse 1 of chapter 4 should be the word "and" in verse 24. But that's just me talking, okay, because the next subject starts from there. But the reason I bring that up to you now is that this is a place where there's a chapter break, and verse 1 is quoted very often of chapter 4. It's used a lot. But not often is it connected to the last verse of the previous chapter, which it is connected in doctrine— I mean, in context. So you'll see in verse 24, the Holy Spirit is mentioned, and in the very next verse, other spirits are mentioned. So it's a context, the idea of the Spirit of God versus the spirit of antichrist. So I'm saying to you first, the previous context is about keeping commandments, abiding in the Lord. Look at verse 23 actually. "And this is the commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave commandment." That's our previous context, right? That commandment keeping, abiding in the Lord, those kind of things have already been set up to this point.

So then when he says in verse 24, he who keeps his commandments abides in him. If you're keeping God's commandments, that means you live in the Lord, you're in Christ, you're in Him. But then he says, "And by this we know that He abides in us." So we abide in Him in commandment keeping, we know that He abides in us by the Spirit whom He's given us. So you have the Spirit, and usually your Bibles will capitalize that to sort of point out the fact that it is the third person of the Godhead being spoken of here. The Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. But for the first part, the first thing to say is that the Spirit is given. Do you see that? He is given. It is not something that you attain. Being indwelt by the Spirit is not something that you ask or force. By the way, a side note on the regeneration front, those of us who hold that regeneration precedes faith, how does the wind blow on trees? Does the tree ask the wind to blow on it? No. Wind decide where it's going to blow? Yeah, so you also don't tell the Holy Spirit what to do and to come and indwell you. He indwells you if He wants to. He's the boss, right? But right here, I want you to see that that is doctrinal, that the Spirit is given. He is not taken. So that's just a doctrinal side note, a little bonus material for you on the DVD extras. Remember when you had DVDs before streaming? And disc— and the VHS before that? Yeah, some of you old enough to have to rewind something.

The proof that we are Christians is that we keep commandments. And the proof that we abide in those commandments and He— and that we abide in Him and Him in us is the Spirit that He has given. So the Holy Spirit is an evidence that Paul talks about Him being the guarantee. He's a down payment. When the Holy Spirit comes to live in us, and by the way, He can't stop living in us. If you come from a background that believes you can lose your salvation, The idea there would be that the Spirit can live in a Christian, and then you can sin so profusely or badly that the Spirit will leave you, and no longer are you saved anymore. And we don't believe that. If the Holy Spirit indwells you, He's not leaving, okay? So if the Holy Spirit indwells you, He's been given to you by the Father.

Now we go to that main context with chapter 4, verse 1, and so on. So follow me here. What I'm trying to say is the previous context is about obedience. It says to believe on the Lord Jesus and keep His commandments. If we're keeping His commandments, we know that we are abiding in the Lord. We're in the Lord. We're in the sphere of the Lord, of His lordship and His authority. And then now we're saying we also know this, that He abides in us. And He abides in us by His Spirit, that the Spirit that was given to us. Christians keep commandments. Christians have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells us. And He teaches us to obey the holy word, and then eventually we become holy people. So the Holy Spirit with the holy word, we become holy people. This is God's design. This is the plan.

And verse 1 of chapter 4 gets us rolling on that spirit idea. "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." So every spirit here is in contrast to the Holy Spirit in the previous verse. Do you see why? I'm trying to connect them. So, "By this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit." That's the true Spirit, the real Spirit, the Holy Spirit. And then we go on to say, "Do not believe every spirit." There's only one Spirit that you can believe. I hear people say this all the time. "Yeah, they got the spirit all right, but it's not the Holy Spirit." You ever heard anybody say that? These people that think they're spiritual. "I'm spiritual." Yeah, you are spiritual, but that's a lowercase s in your spiritual. Is not the Spirit of God because there are other spirits. So do not believe every other spirit.

It's interesting the wording here of do not believe. It's literally imperative verbs here. These are imperative verbs. When in the Bible in the New Testament when there's an imperative verb, the verb will have tense, voice, and mood. And when it's in the imperative mood, that means it's a command. It's a thou shalt or thou shalt not. So that when he says, "Beloved," first of all, beloved is like little children. It's a term of affection. This is John talking to Christians, not everybody else. He's talking to believers. He's talking to the audience, the little children that are his spiritual children. He says to them, "Test the spirits. Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits." These are both imperative. Believe not, but test. Commandments. So we're supposed to test spirits. We're supposed to be on guard for false teachers, because he says that. "Do not believe, because there are many false prophets." And the thing that kind of makes me— I don't know, I get frustrated over the years. And the reason I get frustrated is because as a pastor, people are often coming to me with things they're learning, books they're reading, people they're following. "Pastor, what do you think about so-and-so?" And then I have to come along like a big old grumpy stick in the mud and tear them down and tell them, "That's a false prophet you're listening to." And then I look like the bad guy because they just heard the best message of their life while doing their workout at the gym or whatever on the treadmill. They come in, "Man, Pastor, you should hear this guy preach." You should have heard the messages that got sent to me during COVID Like, "You need to be preaching what this guy's preaching." Oh, this guy that says he raised his wife from the dead? That's the guy I'm supposed to be listening to? We're supposed to be testing spirits. And I'm quite amazed oftentimes that all— the only test that some people need, the only evidence that some people need to believe someone is a Christian and have the Holy Spirit is for them to say they're a Christian. That's all they need to do. They say they're a Christian. In fact, sometimes they don't even need to say it. When they get a touchdown, they point up to heaven. That's a Christian, right? And that gangster rap guy, when he wins the Grammy and gets up there after talking about all the women and drugs and everything he does, he got up and thanked his Lord Jesus Christ when he won the award. He's a Christian. So sometimes we have no test except they say the word Christian. And sometimes they don't even say the word, they just point. This says, "Test them." Test them. Put them under the light. Test them. Examine them. X-ray them. Test the spirits.

Next most important part. This is not about discernment ministries. This is not about headhunting. This is not about finding how bad other people's doctrine is. It doesn't say test whether they are not of God. What does it say? Test whether they are of God. Test whether they are of God. Did you catch that? Some people think they're really good Bereans, but they've never once done a real Bible study. All they've ever done was find out how bad all the other Bible studies are. They've never once discipled anyone. They've never once worshiped God. But man, they can tell you everything that's wrong. Do you know your pastor wears the wrong brand of shoe? Discernment ministries might be valuable. I'm not saying they're all invaluable or not valuable. But I am saying we're supposed to be testing the spirits. We'll see how and why in a moment. But when we test them, we're supposed to be actually seeing, are they the Spirit? Are they of God? Because there's only one true one that's of God, and there are lots of other ones and false teachers who are teaching their teachings. So we're supposed to test. These are commandments. These are not options. We're not supposed to lay down our shields and our armor of the Lord and our swords and our helmets and lay all those things down and say, "I'm just going to be a super duper charitable person and believe everyone that says they're a Christian." It seems like we go— we swing the pendulum from extremes, like everyone's a Christian or no one's a Christian, right? Everyone who points up to heaven after the touchdown, Christian. But no one— they don't say it just right because their preacher doesn't wear a tie. They're clapping in their church, they must not be Christian. Like we have these extremes. Hey, we can test them. There's a test. There's a diagnostic test. It's the— you'll see it in a moment what it is.

Verse 2, "By this we know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God." This is, again, you live in 2026, and maybe you do or don't know this, but in the last, I don't know, well, I would say in the last kind of election cycle, maybe the last 2 election cycles, I hate to point to that, there's been this real shift where a supposed revival in Christianity because it's associated with conservatism. Now, I'm not here to talk about politics, but I am here to tell you that the revival of so-called Christianity in those movements and in the conversations when people are using the word Christian, when people are using the word Jesus, they're not talking about a real Jesus who came in the flesh. They're talking about Christianity as a sort of philosophy, as a sort of personal fulfillment exercise, that I think Christianity is great because it makes people happy. Yeah. Because Christians are good people. I mean, you've probably never heard of a guy named Joe Rogan, right? Biggest podcast on planet Earth. That's what he says. That's what he says about Christianity, that it's a good self-improvement program. Does he believe in a historical Jesus? Does he trust that historical Jesus with his salvation? No. So is he of the Holy Spirit? By this you, you, you know the Spirit of God. Not the other people. They don't know the real Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, Him. They don't know Him. "By this you know Him, because every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ—" That's a title first before it's His name. It's not Jesus— Christ is not His last name. Christ is a title. Jesus, Yeshua, the Messiah, the chosen anointed one of God, the one promised in the Old Testament. You already have the Old Testament in His name. Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises of the chosen one, the anointed one, the meshiach. Mashiach. That is Christ. He has come in the flesh. That means Christmas is real, and it's not about a fat guy in a red suit. That means when he was born, God himself took on flesh. This is the incarnation. This is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity. In fact, John's sentence almost seems to make it the most fundamental doctrine, right?

Now, side note. At this time in history, in the first century when John's writing, Gnosticism is sort of growing. It's not fully grown yet though. So you'll learn later in Colossians that Gnosticism, the idea of all flesh being physical flesh, material being evil, spiritual being good, growing in spiritual enlightenment— that's even alive in our day too. This idea of growing in spirituality and putting away the flesh, that is not fully grown yet in John's day. So there aren't a lot of true Gnostics when John's talking. But there are people who are saying it's not all that important that the Messiah be a real person. There are people that might say what they say in our day. He's a good moral teacher. His values should be our values. We're supposed to help poor people like Jesus. That makes me Christian. But listen, folks, it says it. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. Now, that doesn't mean everybody that says Jesus Mary's son was a man. That's not what it means. It means everyone who affirms the truth of Scripture, including the New Testament testimony that God became a man, that he was real, that he is not just a figment of our imagination. He's not what the docetists say, that he appeared to be a man. He wasn't just a good moral teacher. He was a human being. So anybody— if you want to know if somebody has the Spirit of God or not, the Holy Spirit, if they're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, this is how you know. If you know the Spirit, first of all, you can know the Spirit. And incidentally, this is the Greek word gnōskō here, not the word oīdata in the original Greek. This is intimate knowledge. The reason that's important is because you can't intimately know energy. You can't intimately know power. You can only intimately know a person. And this is that kind of know, family knowledge of a person. So those who know the Spirit, you can only know a person like this. So this is why I'm telling you, don't think of the Spirit as an it. He's a him. And as you know him, by this we know him, the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. So the short version of that is every spirit that confirms the New Testament properly understood, that Jesus, second person of the Godhead, God Almighty, the Son of God became a man.

So I guess I could— first question is I'll ask you. Do you believe that? Do you believe it exclusively? Do you believe that it's important that Jesus, the second person of the Godhead, the Son of God, God the Son, came in the flesh? That when he was born, he was really born in Bethlehem for real in the City of David. And he was a real person, a real teacher, and a real Savior, and will come again as the real King. Do you believe that? That what Walter read earlier about the people bowing down before him, that they will bow down before a real person? Because you have to believe that to be able to say you are of the real Spirit. And if you don't believe that, verse 3 is for you. So if you think it's optional, that that's not important, the only thing important about Christianity is my personal fulfillment, and I like to live the moral rules of Jesus, and that means I'm a good person, if that's you, Verse 3, "And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world."

Now, obviously, I am premillennial in my eschatology. I do believe in a literal Antichrist. This is one of the reasons why, because this is the word "the" in front of Antichrist, and it's singular. Not plural, like in the other contexts. So whoever and whatever this Antichrist is, it's one and it's masculine. So there is a real Antichrist coming. And he operates not in the true spirit, but in the false spirit, the evil spirits. That's your option. You got the Spirit of God and then you have every other spirit that's evil. There aren't other good spirits. Don't believe in ghosts. Don't believe in angels that are floating around with little wings and bows and arrows. Don't believe in false spirits. Believe in the one true Spirit who confesses that Jesus— who tells you to confess that Jesus has come in the flesh. And the other people, other spirits, anybody teaching otherwise, that it isn't about the Son of God becoming a man, it isn't about God being a man, the God-man himself, if anybody else is saying anything else other than that, they are of the Antichrist. They are like him. Now, if you don't know what Antichrist means, here, this is— here you go. You don't have to go to school for this. I can help you. It means to be anti-Christ. That's what it means. You don't have to dig deep into eschatology to know what an antichrist is. It's somebody who tears down Christ.

And the reason I emphasize that to you now before we move forward is the antichrist is not anti-America. He's not anti-you. He's not anti-happiness. He's not anti-family. Now, all of those things are under things that he's working with for sure. I mean, I'm sure the antichrist when he comes will really hate the idea of a nuclear family with the husband and wife and children and all that. I'm sure he'll hate that. But here's the issue. The issue is that we make ourselves the main character. And when we hear Antichrist, we hear, "Oh, he's going to be mean to me." That's not what's most important. The most important thing is he does not want the truth of Christ spread on planet Earth.

If the devil could win, he doesn't care about you. You're incidental to the devil and to the Antichrist. You're incidental. Yes. He only cares about you when you, who have the real spirit, the true Spirit of God, say, "Jesus is who he says he is, and I'll follow him, and I'll follow him no matter what." You want to know why? Because he's anti-Christ. And if you are pro-Christ, then he's against you. But most people are pro-family, pro-happiness, pro-America, pro-something else, pro-profit, pro-retirement account. Pro-life. Pro TikTok influence. That's what most people are, pro. And the Antichrist is not so involved in those things unless, unless, unless you're being led by the real, true Holy Spirit and exalting Jesus for who He said He is.

Every spirit that says Jesus is who He says He is, He is the Master, He's the King, He's God in the flesh, He's my Messiah, He died for me, He rose for me, I will follow Him, I will exalt Him, People who say that, the devil doesn't like those people. You want to make the devil mad today? Would you like to see the devil angry? Go share the gospel of the true Jesus. But if you think, "No, he's mad because I'm enjoying my Starbucks." No, he's happy you're enjoying your Starbucks. He's not mad about that at all. Because if you're thinking about Starbucks and not Jesus, he won.

The Spirit that is God's Spirit, he is the evidence, tells us, He leads us. We know Him, and we know Him, and we confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. So yes, these are doctrinal issues, but remember, John said that Jesus would say this before He left. We're right now in 1 John. This is after Jesus ascended, right? But before Jesus died and rose, He said in John 15, "But when the Helper comes," that's the Spirit, "whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth," who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me. Jesus promised that would happen, that when I leave, I will send My Spirit, and My Spirit will indwell you, and He will live in you, and He will tell you who I am, and He will let you know and make assurance in you because you abide in the commandments. I— He abides in you. There will be this beautiful union between Me and you. I and you are one like I and the Father are one, and the Holy Spirit will indwell you, and He will guide you in all truth. He will teach you the things that are true and real about me. I will send the Spirit to you. He will help you know me.

And so if you want to know what God cares about, he cares that you know Jesus and exalt Jesus. And if you want to know what the false spirits care about, they want you to think about pretty much anything else. Anything else. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be the next iPhone. It could be a pair of shoes. It could be a haircut. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as you're not thinking about Jesus. Mm-hmm. Now, some of the funnest, most exciting verses coming up now in verse 4. The Holy Spirit is in us. He affirms, He teaches, He helps so that we understand the reality of the real Jesus. We're not like the false teachers, the false prophets who make Jesus a moral teacher, maybe not even real, not even historic, not actual, not human. Just the idea of Jesus being, you know, a good moral leader in your life and your happiness and and helping the poor and being Jesus-like, you know, being Jesus-ish. That's modern Christianity. No, the real Spirit indwelling in us, Him telling us He's come in the flesh, He's real, He was a real human, He lived those 2,000 years ago, He died those 2,000 years ago, He rose those 2,000 years ago, now He's yours, now He's at the right hand of the Father making intercession for you, now He's mediating for you.

When the Spirit teaches you that, verse 4, "You are of God." You are of God. Little children. There it is too, John loving the little children again. And have overcome them, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. That verse gets quoted all the time, and I always wonder if people who quote it think of the false spirits when they quote it. I always wonder, because to me, when I see this verse quoted, most of the time it's just about you being strong and conquering and, you know, this as a Christian. I win, I'm a Christian. I'm going to get the job because I'm a Christian and I'm going to overcome, and I'm going to win the game because I'm a Christian and I'm going to overcome. I'm going to be tougher than my neighbor who keeps letting his dog get on my lawn because I'm a Christian and I overcome. No, this is saying there are two kinds of people, people who are led by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and people who are led by the same spirit that will lead the Antichrist, evil spirit. And you know that you are of the true Spirit. As opposed to the false spirits.

And I'm saying to you that that should matter to us because the false spirits are trying— the prophets that are led by them are trying to dissuade us from following the truth. They're trying to muddy the truth. They're trying to get us to say, "Can this really be true? How can this be true that a man walked on water and rose from the dead?" They're trying to get us to doubt it. "How can it be true in history? Why don't more people believe it?" I know you've asked that question, haven't you? Mm-hmm. Be honest with yourself. "Well, why don't more people believe this if it's true?" That's all the devil wants. He wants the same thing now that he wanted in the garden, to get you to wonder if God meant what he said. But notice it, "You are of God, little children, and all this next word." You know this word. Some of you are wearing this word on your feet. It's the word Nike, nikaya. That's the word for victory. That's why Nike chose that for their shoe, by the way. Yeah. It's the word for victory, overcoming. And it's not just the word for victory and overcoming. This one's exciting, folks, because it's in the perfect active indicative. When it says, "You have overcome," that's in the perfect tense. And the perfect tense is not like other tenses. If it was in the aorist tense, that would mean it is a one-time action in the past. If it was in the imperfect tense, that would mean it's a continuous action but in the past. If it was in the present tense, that means it's a continuous action, usually right now. But this is in the perfect tense. Here's what that means. That means that when God saved you and he indwelt you with his Holy Spirit and he brought you to himself so that you would see that Christ has come in the flesh, and not only did he come in the flesh and is that true, but it's true for me because I'm of God. Amen. It also says that I am— I was going to overcome in the past because he saved me. I am going to overcome right now in the present because he saved me. And I will always overcome in the future because he saved me. Perfect tense means past, current reality, future results. You can never undo what God has done. Maybe you Christians need to hear that today. Maybe you need to hear that if the Spirit of God indwells you, if you have been born again by that Spirit and you have trusted Christ, the real one who's come in the flesh, and he is your Savior and your King, and he has indwelled you, now that Holy Spirit lives in you, and you hear that he's greater in you, the one that's in you is greater in you than in the world. Yeah, that might be so you can dunk a basketball, but the most important thing that it says is that you will overcome and that you have victory guaranteed because of the one who indwells you. Yes. Not because of you, because of your power, because of your strength. It means you cannot be lost because he cannot fail. Your security in Christ doesn't depend on you. Hallelujah!

We know that we are of God, John is going to say, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. Not us. We're of God. And you notice it says, he who is in you is greater than he that's in the world. That tells you the spirit that's out there in the world, That tells you the spirit that's operating in our world right now, in the fallen world. Since Adam fell, the whole world has been under the sway of the evil one. That doesn't mean he is sovereign. It doesn't mean he's in equal power with God and there's a tug of war going on. No, the world that followed Adam into sin loves that the devil's in control, and they're happy to give him control. And they're happy to teach falsely about the one who died for Christians.

Verse 5, "They are of the world; therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them." Yes. They are of the world. That means those who follow them, the spirits out there that the false prophets are being led by, they're of the world. Not you. You're of the Lord. You are of God. You have the Holy Spirit. And anybody that doesn't have the Holy Spirit that confirms in us and confess— so that we can confess that the real Jesus is the real Jesus, the spirit that's in everybody else out there in the world and doing all the yapping and talking out there, That spirit, that world out there is not of the Spirit of God. And that world out there is talking all amongst itself, and it just wants to talk about world stuff. Just all the things out there that it says are important, all the things out there that it tells you you should think are important, all the things out there that it's jamming before your eyes every time you scroll, that's measuring every millisecond that you spend on every single item you stop on.

Now they're going to have to regulate phone addiction in kids. Did you know this? Literally, it's going to turn into regulation. Why? Why does the government have to tell us to regulate our phone intake for our kids, our screen time? You want to know why? Because you handed those screens to your kids and they just scrolled. Not you, but the world did. And what are they reading when they're scrolling? Reading. What are they hearing when they read? What are they listening to? You know, I've never heard, not yet, so I've been around since before the internet. Yeah, I'm that old. Shout out to my people who know what a 386 computer is. Anybody in here know that? Thanks, Dave. You're old with me. Windows 3.1, remember how long it would take to boot up? DOS. Whoa, DOS? Somebody went with DOS over there. When was the last time Scripture went viral? When was the last time there was a Bible trend, like a TikTok trend, a social media trend? When was the last time? Folks, the world is saying world stuff and is not saying God stuff. Can I be more blunt than that? Yes. The world loves hearing the world talk. It doesn't really, it only loves hearing itself talk, but you know what I mean. They are of the world, therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them.

My question for you this morning is, who is the loudest voice in your ears? Is it the voices in the world, or is it the voice of the Spirit of God through the Word of God telling us to follow faithfully and keep the commandments of the Son of God? Amen. Who are the loudest voices for you? Paul says it beautifully, and I'm going to say that we should adopt Paul's thinking. Paul says, "God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." The world is dead to me, Paul says. I used to be in it. I used to care what it was doing. In fact, I used to say what it was saying. Yeah. I used to hear what it was saying. I had a full-blown degree from the university of the world. And Paul says, not anymore. Since I follow Christ and I'm crucified with him, that world crucified him and it crucified me too. He was crucified by the world and I'm crucified by the world too. And the world is crucified to me. It no longer is going to have ownership over me. I'm not gonna care what the anti-God, anti-Christ spirit of the age, spirit of the false teachers, evil spirits. I'm not going to be led to think what they do. I'm not going to follow them in what they're saying. I want to hear from God. I want a word from the Lord. And no, I don't mean go out in the orchard and listen and whisper and wait for the Lord to talk to you in the wind. I'm talking about the Spirit of God that authored the Word of God so that we can learn about the God of the Word. I'm talking about the authoritative, all-sufficient Scripture that tells us that Jesus is who he says he is, that he is the Christ, the Messiah, that he is the one who came in the flesh, that he is the Son of God and God the Son. The Scripture tells me that. The Spirit of God bears witness to me that he says that. The Spirit of God lives in me, and he's greater in me so that I can overcome any threat. And the most important threat I need to overcome is falsehood and evil spirits. Those are the ones who would destroy me. The world would destroy me.

The craziest part about this, after all these years, I always remember this story so vividly, so vividly. And some of you know the person I'm talking about. They're not in the room. They— you haven't known them for years, but some of you know them, those of us who have been around a while. And I remember somebody deciding to say, "We are going to live in sin." It was a couple. They were already dating. They could have done it right. They could have received counseling. They could have gotten married. They could have done it right. And this is years ago. They're not in the room, okay? They meet with me to tell me they are now no longer Christian. So not only are they going to go and live in a sinful way before the Lord, they're also telling me they're abandoning the faith of Jesus Christ. Mm-hmm. And we have a meeting. I'll never forget it. It was at Barnes Noble on McKinney over there. What a crazy place to hear these things, sitting out front of Barnes Noble. Is it Barnes Noble or Borders that's on McKinney? Barnes Noble, I think. So we get done with our meeting. And in this meeting, I didn't leave my car in the driveway. Jamie had to go shopping. So she dropped me off in the car, and then she went shopping, and then came back to get me. So in an unusual twist of fate— I mean, this is— there's no fate. You know what I mean. In an unusual providence— Providence. She was driving and I was in the passenger seat. That doesn't usually happen so that our marriage can stay strong.

So I'm in the passenger seat, she's driving. And I had already done my weeping before she got there in the parking lot. I was already— it took her a while to get there. And I was just spent. And I was angry. This is somebody I'd known since they were a child, somebody we'd been there for. And as I'm driving down McHenry heading toward home, I told my wife, and I meant it when I said it, oh, I meant it when I said it, "I hate this stupid world. I hate it." Not that I was ever all that in love with the world, 'cause the world's never been really good to me. I had a tough childhood, so the world was never really nice to me. It didn't tempt me that much, a lot. You know, I wanted to be a part of it and a musician and all those other things, but really it wasn't a love for the world, it was more a pride that I wanted to be on display, you know. And so there I am driving home after the tears saying, "I hate this stupid world." And then I said something at that time that now when I think about it, I was pretty smart. I don't ever think I was smart. But I said something in that moment that now when I think it, and I mean it now even more, it meant a lot to me to think that. I'm thankful that the Lord had done that work in my heart so that this is what came out of me reflexively. I said, "Even if I abandoned Christ, I would still hate this world."

Now that's a crazy thing for a guy, a pastor, to say. Even if I abandoned Christ. Hey, we're all capable of abandoning Christ. We're all capable of it. If it weren't for the Spirit of God helping us overcome, we're all capable of abandoning the Lord. Now, that doesn't mean you can lose your salvation. It might mean you weren't saved. It might mean you can apostatize. It might mean that you can backslide. I don't mean that you can turn away from the Lord and He'll let you go. That's not what I mean. What I'm saying is even if there were the possibility of not being with Christ, I still hate this stupid world because it lies and it chews everybody up and spits them out and it breaks every promise it ever makes. Why would we follow somebody like that? Why would we ever follow somebody that treats us the way the world treats us? And you say, "What are you even talking about? This world is awesome to me because this week, this is what was popular in the world and I liked it and it was happy. And then this week it was different and I liked it and I was happy. And then this week it was different." Don't you see? That's the lie. Yeah. That lie of moving you from thing to thing, making promises to you that, "No, no, this thing will make you happy." "Oh, okay, I thought it was this thing you told me about." "Now it's this thing? Okay, yeah, this is the important thing. This is the thing. Oh, this is the news headline. This is the thing I'm supposed to care about. Oh no, it's this president. I'm supposed to care about that? Okay." And that's the lie of the world to keep you moving from thing to thing. So that at the end, when it's time for you to answer to your God, he's going to say, "What did you stand for?" And you're gonna have to say, "Which week are you talking about?" Yeah. 'Cause one week I stood for this, and then 3 weeks later I was standing for the opposite.

The world is lying. The spirit of the world is lying. The spirit of the world wants you thinking about all those things because none of those things is Christ. All those headlines that don't have Jesus in the headline, all those viral things that aren't Scripture, all those things you're scrolling that are not Jesus or His word. Oh, man, if I were the devil, I couldn't do it better. If I could get somebody doing this for hours at a time and never once seeing Scripture, oh, I would feel like the best enemy of God ever. How can he ever beat me if that's what I can get people to do for hours on end to the point of addiction, to the point where they need to make medicine to fix it? Don't listen to the world. Instead, listen to verse 6. We are of God. We are of God. He already said, "You are of God." You Christians who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, you have the second person of the Godhead telling you that Christ has come in the flesh, that he is who he said he is, that all of the testimony of scripture is true, and that he is all of that for you. You're a Christian. He's in you. You abide in his commandments. His spirit abides in you. You're following the Lord. That's you. And then John adds John to the mix. Look what John says. You have the opportunity instead of listening to the world. We are of God. He who knows God hears us. That's John talking. The apostle talking. You listen to the apostle talk instead of the world talk. Got it? He who knows God hears us. He who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

So if I could encapsulate it and take it as far as it probably should go, whoever listens to Scripture is of God. John is writing Scripture. He's authoring Scripture as he writes this, right? He already said that in the beginning. We declared this to you from the beginning. This is the same thing you knew about already. He says that to these people, to the little children. He says, "You know these things. You are of these things. You're of God." He's telling you, Christian in this room right now, though we may not be in the first century, John may not be there writing this letter directly to us, he's telling you in the room right now who are Christian, you are not antichrist, you are pro-Christ. You in this room, you're pro-Christ right now. And you are of God, and because you're of God, you hear the words of God. You don't listen to the words of the world like everybody else does. You're not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. You're solid. You're anchored in the Word. You have confidence that the Word of God tells the truth. And whatever lies they're speaking out there, and whatever lies they're hearing out there, and whatever happiness they're trying to get out there through lies, I will be dedicated to the Word of God. I will be dedicated to keeping commandments. I will abide in Him and He will abide in me, and we'll be solid.

And then, nikaios— and by the way, I was going to say it in Greek, but it sounds silly when I try to say it. I was stuttering at home. Mm-hmm. I'm trying to say the form of the verb here, I'm not going to do it, of overcome because it sounds like you're teasing somebody, like almost saying, "Nanny nanny" or something like that. But we have overcome. We already overcame. And I challenge you in the room, if you're struggling with overcoming, is the Spirit of God in you? Do you think the Spirit of God is like most people these days? Is He transient? Does He stay with you for a while and then leave you for a while? Does he come and give you a high five for a couple of months and then leave again? Is that the way you think the Holy Spirit works? No, no, no, no. If he's in you, you have overcome. If he's in you, you have victory. If he's in you, he's greater than the world. You're not anti, you're pro. Maybe you need to hear that today. Instead of sitting around wondering if you're pro, maybe you walk in your victory. Amen. And say, "I'm not going to give in to the voices of this world. The loudest voice to me is going to be the one that comes from the Word, that is by the Spirit of God, that confirms what I know to be true. I know my Savior lives. I know Jesus is who he says he is, and I can trust him. I'm gonna walk with him." That's the spirit of truth, not the spirit of error.

How about let's have a victorious Memorial Day. How about we stand in the truth knowing that Jesus won? How about instead of us trying to think that the world is a better place— I'm just trying to make this world a better place. If you want to make the world a better place, share the gospel.

Father, thank you for giving us the victory. Thank you for giving us your Spirit. We don't usually, Father, pray to Jesus or to the Spirit, but we would take a moment now And I think it appropriate to thank you, Spirit of God, for indwelling us. Thank you for showing us the Son, for giving us new eyes. Oh Father, as we thank you in Jesus' name by the Holy Spirit, we leave here with an assurance that we are of you and we are victorious because of it. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.