 So if someone could lead us in a word of prayer, that will get us started for this morning. Prince, would you be able to pray? Sure, ma'am. Yeah, please go ahead, Prince. Thank you, Lord. Thank you. This time, Lord, we come before you, Lord. And this morning, Lord, help us, too. Lord, we are going to learn from your word, Lord. Help us. This class, Lord bless. And also, I pray each student, Lord, keep us the revelation that we receive whatever we receive, whatever you play in your life, Lord. Thank you in this time. As we are going to the book of the Lord, say in your hand. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Thank you, Prince. Thank you for leading us. We will continue from where we stop. We will stop at chapter 3. There were some key things that we saw there. We were talking about loving brothers and sisters in Christ and how if there is a need, we must respond to that need. And that reveals the love of God that we have for them. And just looking further back, we saw how John is encouraging God's people to love because love comes from God to be holy because God is holy, to be pure, because God is pure, to be righteous, because God is righteous. So he kind of encourages the believer to walk in everything that God already is and that is the calling for the lives of the believers. So in what we are learning from the book of John, we understand that God is calling us for a lifestyle that depicts his perfect nature. And if we know this nature of God and we don't adapt that lifestyle or adapt is also not the right word because we are born again and we know that we have the ability to have the life of God in us and to live the kind of life that God has called us to live to be here on the earth the way Jesus was walking the earth. And it would be an example with the very nature of God displaying the fruit of the spirit, walking in the power of the spirit all that is possible because of the transformation which we have already experienced by the work of redemption. So what we are learning here for practical life, it's not unattainable because if we categorize it in that way that God is calling us to do things which are beyond our capacity we will never be right because we are not understanding the work which God has already done in us. So because he has done the work in us we are able to live it out and fulfill whatever John is calling us to do. So we will continue from there. Today we are going to look at 1 John chapter 4. Again it carries several themes. So we will go over the themes that are there in this book. So we are going to talk about loving God, loving one another and understanding God or knowing God through the love that we have for him and how that is demonstrated by living it out by living the life of care and concern and love for other believers in God. So we are going to look at the understanding. Basically it talks a lot about the love of God. So we will delve right into that. So as we begin this passage, so again we are not going to read through the entire passage if that's what we had discussed. So I'm just going to go over it and it will be good if you can have the Bible open in front of you and look at the verses. So starting off from verse 1, John writes he says that we must not believe every spirit but test the spirits, whether they are from God. And he says there are many false prophets who have gone out into the world. So when John is writing this we have to understand even earlier he talked about the Antichrist and he in fact said there are many, there are many and they don't acknowledge the Lord Jesus as Christ. So who are these people? In this case he is pointing out in saying that there are many false prophets. So is finding a false prophet in that time and generation that common because he is using this term as if there are people who don't speak the truth of God's word. It looks like this was something that was observed in the times of John as well. Now for us in our times we might look at scripture and say that in the last days there will be many false prophets. We see the book of Jude talking about it. We see 2nd Peter talking about it. A lot of apostates people who do not say that the Lord Jesus is Christ and they teach false things, they prophesy false things but more specifically in this passage he says false prophets. So the words which are spoken by people are not accurate. They are not by the spirit of God and which is why he says that we must test all spirits. So he says do not believe every spirit. So when we talk about prophecy we know that prophecy is a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is initiated by the spirit of God. Now just because there is prophecy it doesn't mean that it is from God or similarly any work of the spirit we must test the spirit behind it or the source behind it. Now a good example is when you talk about Moses coming out of Egypt with the people he goes to Pharaoh to negotiate. He goes to Pharaoh to speak the word of God and to give the command of God and say let my people go. But when he does that there are sorcerers who the Pharaoh has and they are able to perform similar miraculous signs the way Moses did. Now Moses was demonstrating the supernatural and Pharaoh's ministers sorcerers they were demonstrating the supernatural. So the supernatural existed. The question is not whether something is supernatural or not. The question is the source of the supernatural because the source for Moses was God himself. God's power was working through Moses and he did those signs where he took his Lord, Moses' Lord, the famous Lord. He became a snake. He was able to pick it up and all of that but at the same time the sorcerers could do similar things. But at the end of it we know God demonstrated his glory because the snakes that were produced by the sorcerers were eaten up by Moses' snake. So God showed his power and his glory. So I think you're getting the point. The supernatural can exist out there. The question we must ask when we see the supernatural is what is the source? And we know Jesus when he talked about the Holy Spirit he said he will lead you into all truth. When he talked about the Holy Spirit he said he will take what is mine and he will give it to you. When he talked about the Holy Spirit he also said that he will glorify me. So the work of the Holy Spirit in the demonstration of the supernatural work of God must be tested if that work is glorifying Jesus. If that work is in agreement with the Lord Jesus. We will see that in chapter 5. There is an agreement. The Spirit and the Word agree it says. So what the Holy Spirit does is an agreement with Jesus. He is the Logos. He is the Word. So there is an integrity. There is a harmony in the Godhead. The Holy Spirit will not try to do something which is totally outside of the will of the Trinity. So when we see a supernatural work which is from God it will glorify God, it will agree with God. Now what does John say? Looks like there are false prophets during his times and so he is warning the people and he says do not believe every spirit. So do not believe every word that is prophesied or he is saying do not believe every supernatural work that you see. But does he mean that you must discard it right away? No. His point is that we must judge it. So whenever we see something, whenever we hear something the first thing that we have to do is does the Holy Spirit bear witness to what is going on? Is it from the Spirit of God? So his point is to test not to discard straight away. So he says do not believe or in a simple way taking it in. Don't do that. But test the spirits. So that's the spirit means we obviously know there is an entire demonic realm out there and they can speak words that are lies. They can speak accusation, condemnation. Their direction and instruction will lead us into damage, destruction for our lives even death. So there are so many spirits out there. So which spirit is speaking is the question before us. Then he says whether they are God. So we are testing them out because there are many false prophets of people who are led by these demon spirits who are so-called ministering and he says they have gone out into the world. Now in 2 Peter chapter 1 verses 20 through 21 it will be good if somebody can read that passage please. 2 Peter 1 verses 20 through 21 can you turn in your microphones and read that? 2 Peter 1, 20 through 23 ma'am. 20 and 21. Okay. Knowing this first that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy come not in old time by the will of men but holy men of God speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Thank you, thank you Dave. So you know it's right there. We are told that prophecy is not by the will of God. Obviously it's a gift of the spirit and it is initiated by the spirit. It's not by the will of man. So if I say something out of my mind how can that be a blessing to the people? Yes, if it is a word of wisdom, a word of knowledge, a word of instruction. So I was talking about Paul the Apostle who also talked about judging the spirits. Or in other words, judging the work of the spirit. So when he talked about the gifts of the Holy Spirit this is in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and verse 29. He says that we must have a group of people who actually judge the prophetic word. So why judge? There is no problem with the word that God releases. God's word is true and the source is perfect. But when the word is released if there is an issue with the interpretation of that word then others who are in the Lord and who are matured in the Lord they will be able to pick it up. Or if it is from a different spirit not from the Holy Spirit. People who have walked with the Lord well versed with the word of God they can immediately pick it up. Because by virtue of practice as Hebrews 5 teaches us so judging the spirit is very important. Judging the word is very important. Now judging the word does not mean that we are judging in a negative way the individual who is doing the word. Not at all. But we are just careful about testing the spirit behind the word and the word which is being proclaimed to us. Now similarly when Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church in 1 Thessalonians 5 and verse 21 he says test all things and hold on to what is good. So again that element of testing not because God's word has an error in it but it is in the process of delivering that word if there is an error of some sort from the human side or for whatever reason if it is not from God but if it is from a different spirit then that is not something that we want to follow and John wanted the believers to be mature enough the believers to be discerning enough to determine who are the false prophets what is the word that they are bringing because when we depend on untruth it can put us in bondage. You remember John we will look at that also as we go forward in the book of John the scripture where John said that you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free so what is a characteristic of truth? Truth will deliver us Truth will liberate us Truth will help us to live our lives better because we are going by the instruction of God Himself but when we base our lives on untruth what happens? We put ourselves in a dangerous position and I don't have to say too much about this because we have already studied this course on prophecy, understanding the prophetic so we must be careful about the spirits behind the word which is being proclaimed to us I think Kiran had a question because I got disconnected that is erased from my chat can you repeat that Kiran I was going to come to that question you had something? Yes ma'am ma'am how long the evil spirit can hold a believer and let believers to imagine something different maybe from God how long ma'am is it possible or how long? Good question Kiran Good question Yeah so you see that when we speak that word comes from our heart so it comes from our spirit it also comes from our soul so the mind part of us because we perceive it in our spirit and we speak it up now if you recall when we studied about the soul of a human being of a believer we also touch on renewing of the mind and taking every thought captive and bringing it under the subjection of the Lordship of our Lord Jesus Christ now if a believer is not walking with a renewed mind they are actually opening themselves up to danger now if they are not careful enough now if one of something goes wrong the Holy Spirit is convicting you and then you depend of that wrong mindset you yield yourself to the word of God you commit yourself to the word of God you renew your mind it's fine but if a believer continues in untruth and is averse to changing their mindset according to the word of God so you see this whole thinking pattern of being renewed by God's word is very very important and it also strengthens the will of the individual so the point I want to make is how long you ask right how long will the demon spirit work in a believer because we know that believers can be demonized they cannot be demon possessed because the spirit in us is the Holy Spirit but they can be demonized which means that in the strong holds of our soul demon spirits can take charge now they will take charge as long as our will is agreeing to that but the moment a believer decides I have the authority and I am asking you to leave in the name of Jesus then that demon spirit has to leave so this is the dynamics in our believer so it depends on the will of the believer the moment you recognize I have the authority why am I putting up with this in Jesus name I command you the demon spirit leave that's it so I can't tell you that A1B 3 months 10 months it's not like that it's dependent on the will of the believer the believer has to decide the ball is in the believer's coat God has already given the believer the authority ok so does that make things clear Kiran? yes wonderful so that's the thing but if we allow if we have open doors for the demon spirits and we don't do anything about the strong holds within us it's an act of our will only if an over a period of time it can get worse because our will can be weakened to an extent where even if you want to decide we might find it difficult so you know that then you need external help you need prayer, you need somebody to come help you and all of that but if initial stages the believer himself can take authority in Jesus name and repute that spirit and get that spirit out then you would only minister by the Holy Spirit so that's the thing so there is all this dynamics involved so yeah again prophecy we said two sources we might speak by the Holy Spirit as a believer that is the default we must minister by the Holy Spirit but yeah there are demon spirits also in the world out there there are people who minister even spirits is there any other source that can bring the word Holy Spirit yes tell me no no okay alright how about our mind the human spirit sometimes it's not from what we say is not from God it should be our own spirit also so you have your spirit your God spirit you have a voice of the enemy but as we train ourselves as we improve we grow in God we come to a place where we are able to recognize so let me just give you the scripture for that yeah so this is Hebrews 5 and verse 14 and I am going to post it for us in the chat I will just give you the NIN version okay verse 5 verse 14 but solid food is for the mature who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil so how did we train ourselves concentrate on the train ourselves part good from evil but also you know what is from God what is my own voice what is the voice of the enemy train ourselves so over a period of time we are able to mature and discern these things and there is also the working of the spirit of you know the gift of discernment that is a gift of the Holy Spirit even through that we can tell sometimes we listen to messages we listen to people sharing about God I don't know if it has happened to you but it has happened to me I remember once there was a particular book about the occult about you know like believer's authority only but it had more description about the demonic realm as compared to the work of God and the work of the cross and all that so a good friend of mine gave me that book and said you must read it you know it talks about these kind of occult practices and those kind of occult practices and the writer is a believer she preaches and listen to that so but the moment the book was you know recommended something within me he said don't read this book okay it's not a good book because it is not going to edify you edify is build up now if you ask me the introduction was very good because the person said she's a Christian lady she's preaching you know there's a lot of scripture in there talks about the occult this and that but I can't explain to you but within my spirit I was like no this is not good this is not good for your spiritual work you're not going to mature by reading this book your faith is going to be damaged if you read this book you know that sense came and then I I didn't say anything I left it and then I kind of came home and you know researched a little bit of the internet about this person the book and there were a lot of believers who had actually written about it and they said no it's not good because it's the focus the focus is going more on the demonic world than on the cross than on Jesus than on insulting what Jesus has done so you know we depend on the Holy Spirit to help us discern so that's what John is saying he's saying we as believers we must be very discerning not believe a free spirit but recognize if at all there is the voice of the enemy there and he in this scripture is warning them about false prophets so let's go further he says by this you know the spirit of God every spirit that confesses Jesus that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God 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 so his distribution between these two spirits I told you earlier the work of the Holy Spirit one of the tasks of the Holy Spirit is to glorify Jesus now the Holy Spirit will testify to our spirits that Jesus is indeed fully God we've talked about that he is fully bad if at all there is any confusion in that the Holy Spirit will never tell us that oh no he was never fully God or he was never fully man and he walked in because we know the God have is in agreement in harmony so they will say the same thing now if a spirit is telling us and in this case John points out and he says the spirit says confesses that Jesus Christ has not come in the flesh it is not of God so the humanity of Christ the denial of the humanity of Christ that would not be from the spirit of God so why does it matter as the humanity of Christ if someone claims that yes the Lord Jesus is dating he is God himself that's fine and if they say he was never really fully human here on the earth he still was God he walked as God how does it affect us as believers what do you think why is the humanity of Christ important I think Christ being a human the reason that he was like humans are fatal they are weak and the ultimate thing is that Jesus was supposed to die as a sacrifice so if Jesus was not a human how would he die if he was still God so if you had that business if you had to be the sacrifice and you had to die and you had to definitely be human thank you very pertinent points there if he was not a human how could he become a sacrifice because the whole point of the Lord Jesus coming here to the earth was to be that perfect sacrifice and you know somebody among us needed to die for that that is why we see the Olympians too he became he put away his heavenly glory and he became little lesser lesser than the heavenly beings and he came into the world what is that lesser becoming human becoming human and not carrying the sum that heaven's glory which he had why with heaven so Kiran you want to add to that I saw you unmute yes ma'am just little want to add incarnation sensibly glory the Jesus Christ left on the heaven came on the earth and he was fully God and fully human being he has that emotional and pain and feelings and everything yes yes Kiran that's true so he became fully human and Kiran was describing how he became finite limited to this world in a mortal body and there's so much to actually talk about the humanity of Christ even in the book of Hebrews it talks about how he became obedient through his sufferings we read about how he became a captain because he's also gone through the things that we go through in every way yet without sin so all these experiences happen to human beings temptation suffering you could talk about other physical limitations if Jesus had the glory of heaven here or not I don't think he would need to walk around because we read that in the 33 years that he lived here he covered something like 200 miles that was the radius in which he actually walked so limited to the physical body hunger he hung up he broke bread, gave thanks I'm sure he participated in eating that lunch as well so he was limited in every way to the human body so when we deny the humanity of Christ as they rightly pointed out he cannot be that atonement price he cannot be the perfect sacrifice so if he's not the perfect sacrifice then we have to wait for somebody else so there is the very denial that Jesus is Christ or the Messiah or the anointed one so that is the problem when we say that Jesus was not fully human and in those times when John was administering to the church there was Gnosticism and as part of Gnosticism there were grand teachings about they did not deny that the Lord Jesus was God but they denied His humanity so what were they doing they were actually saying that the Lord Jesus is not Christ and there lies an issue so John wanted to warn the people you see there was a lot of wrong philosophy wrong teaching all of those things going around so as a good teacher John is warning them saying there are false prophets there is a spirit there is a spirit that says that Jesus was never a human and he clearly indicates that this spirit is a spirit of the antichrist and as the name suggests anti is opposite anti is you know it is denying it is the opposite of Christ right so everything that is not Christ so the spirit of antichrist or in other words it is a demonic spirit which will not let us confess the Lord Jesus as Christ okay either denying His deity or denying His humanity in this case and even in those times they had warned the people of the antichrist now in the previous passage we have seen that there are many antichrists you know John says that but there is one person who we are going to see manifest on the face of the earth and the end time events will unfold through the leading of that one individual so the antichrist that human being is yet to I wouldn't say up here but yet to manifest himself and be recognized but the spirit is a demonic spirit which is leading that antichrist and everyone else who is denying the Lord Jesus as Christ okay so we must steer clear of this spirit and the leading of this spirit moving on he says you are of God little children and have overcome them because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world so in the writings of the apostles generally even along with the warnings you will find words of encouragement that will build up the listener because imagine I am bringing you a warning and the intention is not to break your spirit the intention is not to just say oh it's like this it's scary you must not listen to them but the spiritual reality of who we are from time to time courage the believers with that automatically they are able to live as per God's purpose and God's calling because they know who they are right it's very important to know who we are so here John is bringing that in and he calls the believers as little children and he says that they have the ability to overcome this these false prophets or antichrist that have gone out he says greater is he that is in you that he that is in the world now the listeners who ever heard John who have thought oh my goodness so there is a spirit that we must recognize we must identify each type what if we make a mistake what if we don't discern right so there is that sense of fear and insecurity that the believer might develop but in a correct way you know John is stepping in and he is saying you know what you actually don't have to worry because greater is he who is in you and he that is in the world so the spirit that is working in us who is that spirit he is the Holy Spirit of God and rightly he is pointing out to be saying this spirit who is in us he is much greater so whenever we talk about believers authority you know I like to say this that there is no comparison of Satan and God they are not equals at all so just for our understanding if we think that Satan is like a mustard seed then God would be as large as the sun okay it's original size of the sun just for our illustration I am sure even that is not a proper comparison but they are not equals so whenever we look at the demonic realm we must not get scared and say oh my goodness how are we going to deal with this because God is much greater he is much higher so greater is he who is in you then he that is in the world remember in one John chapter 2 John pointed out about this world and he said that a believer who is you know given over to the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes the pride of life the world systems we call it the world systems from the Greek word cosmos okay that believer he is not really demonstrating the life of God so once again there is a spirit in the world that tempts us into sinful ways of living and does not want us to to live and represent the nature of God what spirit is that it is the spirit of the Antichrist it is the spirit from the demonical it is a work of the enemy but we must always remember that even when we talk about the enemy if we fully understand our authority as believers we are way you know greater in the potential that we have overcoming power that we have because of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us who is God's spirit and satan can never compare with that so there is a word of encouragement for the believer even as the believer wants to walk right and discern these demonic spirits moving on he says that you know these people of the world they speak as of the world and the world is comfortable with them and listens to them but again he keeps reminding the believers look remember the nature of God remember your nature as well who you have become in Christ he says greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world that is one thing that he said and now he is saying we are of God we are of God addressing the people as children we also know the same John John 1 verse 12 he writes and he says that when we accept Christ into our lives we become children of God so he knows who we are and he is reiterating that to the believer and he is saying don't forget the nature of God don't forget your born again nature as well so you are of who you are of God so you are coming from God so to speak and you belong to God and he says because you are of God I will just read that verse he says 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 now pointing to these people who are of the world and he says the world is very comfortable to listen to them obviously lies things for pleasure things that make one feel good things that never point out somebody's mistake these things will keep the people of the world very comfortable and so he says the people of the world when they speak the world is very happy to listen to them but we are of God and the dynamics the body of Christ and the believers must be that because we are of God we are rejoicing in the truth we listen to one another and we rejoice in the truth remember we talked about love when we started this study on the book of John and he said the God kind of love continues chapter 30 what characteristic of that love is it rejoices in the truth now truth may not always be pleasant to digest but true love will rejoice in the truth of God's word even if that truth is pointing out things which make us a little uncomfortable okay but true love will rejoice in the truth and just the opposite of that you know whatever is not love and the spirit of untruth that will rejoice in error be happy in what is not of God and things that are not glorifying God things that are sinful so that's a little bit about the instructions that John is writing to the believers he talked about the spirit he talked about discerning and now we will slowly go more into the love of God and the demonstration of God's love so at this point let's go ahead and take a break we will come back and then we will go further from here but if you have any questions about what we have talked so far please do bring it up in the next session okay so let's take a break class 10 minutes and we will be back after that thank you