Thank you, Casey. Now, I've got to live up to that introduction. Well, good morning, church. Like I said, my name is Chris Duke, and I'm excited to be here today to bring this message to you.
We are continuing on in our love-illuminated series. This is our teaching through the book of 1 John. Have you been enjoying the series so far? All right.
Have you been challenged by this series so far? It happened that way earlier. Yes, we're excited. We're really happy to be going through this series.
We've been changed. We've been challenged. No, if you've missed any part of this, I'm pretty sure I say this every time I'm up here. If you've missed any part of this series, please go back on the app on the website, listen to the parts that you've missed, and re-listen the parts that you already heard.
Because I really think these are powerful teachings. And if we can get this into our life, it will change our lives. It will change the way that we live. Amen.
So today, last week we finished up chapter 3. Today, we're going to be picking up with 1 John 4, 1 through 6. If you have your Bible with you today, open up to there. It's going to be on the screen.
You can follow along on your phone if you've got your Bible on there. But just follow along with me as we read 1 John 4, 1 through 6. Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirit to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God.
Every Spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ's come in the flesh is from God. But every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. That's pretty black and white. That's what John's doing a lot in this book.
It's pretty black and white. Where was I? Here we go. This is the spirit of the Antichrist.
We're talking about the ones that do not acknowledge Jesus. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and even now is already in the world. You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, them being those false prophets. Because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
I'm going to pause here for a moment. That's right here. Every believer in you. This should encourage you.
This should excite you. Because the one who is in us, that's Jesus. That's the Holy Spirit. That's God.
The one who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world. That's those false prophets, that's Spirit of the Antichrist. Because they, they, that's the false prophets. They are from the world.
And therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world. And the world listens to them. We are from God. And whoever knows God listens to us.
But whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of falsehood. So these six verses, this is what we're going to be focusing on today. And really, it can all be summed up with the very first verse in this passage.
First John 4-1. Let's read it again. Dear friends, do not believe every spirit. But test the spirits to see whether they are from God.
Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. So this is what we're talking about today. Testing every spirit. Testing every spirit.
How many of you had a time where you've sent something you felt something that you thought might be the Holy Spirit speaking to you? Right? Maybe you heard something, maybe read something in a book. Or somebody speaking to you, you thought maybe, is this God speaking to me?
And it could be that you heard it on the radio, watch something on TV. But you're just getting the sense. You're getting the feeling that God might be trying to speak to me right now. Or maybe that is just that you had too much of the extra hot hot sauce on your cobble bobs at lunch.
But really, you might find it hard to tell if what you're hearing, what you're feeling is from God. Or maybe you're at a point in your life where you're confused and understanding the path that God has for you, the path that he wants you to walk on. Right? And honestly, I think we've all been there at some point in our life.
We've had a bit of confusion about whether we should go one way or the other. Maybe it's something about the job that you're working. Should I stay at this job? Is God trying to move me into something else?
Maybe it's about the place where you're living. Am I in the place I'm supposed to be where I can impact the community for God? Or does he want me to go somewhere else? Or do you want me to work through me in some other place?
Or maybe it's just everyday life, just things that you're doing everyday in your life that you want to make sure that you're walking the path that God has for you? Well, let me tell you, Church, being confused like this, it's nothing new. It's nothing new at all. Ever since the fall of man, the enemy, that's Satan.
He's been doing everything in his power to deceive us. And one thing I want to make sure, I'm very clear on here, Satan is real. Satan is real. There's a lot of thought today.
There's a lot of spiritual thought. Or Mrs. This isn't thought that Satan is just a metaphor for something. Or it's just that's a symbolism for the evil that's in the world.
No. It's not that it all. He's going to deceive us to mislead us, to get us distracted from doing the things that God has for us. And he's not going to show up in a red suit, with little horns, and a ponytail, and a pitchfork.
He's going, oh, I've got a lie for you today. No, he's not going to do that at all. He's tricky. He's very tricky in the way that he does this.
He's a thief. He's a liar. He's a deceiver. And he wants you to believe that God is holding out on you.
He wants you to believe that God that everything that God gives you isn't good. How many of you know, Church, that everything from God is good? Everything from God is good. And he can only be good.
But you see, Satan wants us to believe that the things he's saying is what's from God. He did this with Adam and Eve in the garden. When he told him, he told you not to eat up that tree. No, you can eat from that tree.
It's good. That's good fruit. You should eat from that tree. What he does is he takes things that are from God, and he twists them, and he distorts them.
And he tries to make it a way that is appealing to us. It's kind of like this. Have you ever tried to give a dog a pill? You tried to give a dog a pill.
If you just give them the pill, they're going to spit it up. They're not going to take it. So what do you do? You wrap it up in a piece of cheese, or you put it in some sort of food for them so that they'll eat the food and get the pill.
But the really smart dogs, they'll still eat around the food and spit the pill back out. So what do we have to do? We have to get something that's even more appetizing. That's something that's even more desirable to the dog.
So that it gets distracted by that great food and forgets about the pill. How many of you know that I'm not talking about giving a dog a pill anymore? Right? This is exactly what the enemy is going to do for us to us.
He's going to take something that's absolutely wrong, something that's deceitful, something that's a moral, things that do not line up with the word of God. And he's going to repackage them in a way that seems like it's good. He's going to give us things. It may be through someone who is speaking about scripture.
It seems like they know about scripture, but they're twisting it just slightly to make the message not align with what God has. He's going to use any means that he can to deceive us. This is why we must be able to test what we're getting, what we're receiving to know whether it's from God or not from God. We have to be able to discern what is spiritual truth and what is spiritual falsehood.
What's spiritual truth and spiritual falsehood? This is what the apostle John is dealing with in these verses. And it's not just the things that maybe we read. It's not just the things that we hear on the news or the radio.
This is also people that are speaking directly into your life. It's very easy to be taken captive by someone with a very charming and charismatic personality. That you would just follow anything they say. We have to be able to take what they're saying and test it against the word, to test it against what God has said.
You see, just like those verses that we read said, there are many false prophets in the world today. This comes in many forms as well. You get influencers on social media. You read articles in magazines or online magazines or in the news or anything like that.
You have pastors and pulpits that are teaching you the better things about self-help than scripture. Anyone who's giving you this type of advice, anybody that's giving you these ways to improve your life that does not align with scripture, that is a false prophet. You might be thinking, well, that's a little harsh. They call them that.
Well, let's read this again, verse three, first John, chapter four, verse three. Every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist. False prophet is anyone who's gonna tell you something is truth.
Tell you that this is the truth for your life, that if you follow this out, it's going to take you away from God. It's gonna take you away from the path that he has for you. Charles Spurgeon says this, that it is a blessed thing to have a discerning spirit. It is not an unloving thing to test those who professed to be teachers sent from God.
The apostle says, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God. So we need to be testing everything that we receive. We need to be able to discern what is from God and what is not from God. And the reason for this is there's a lot of things in the world today that claim to be spiritual, right?
And maybe they are. But it's a good thing to know this. Just because it's spiritual doesn't mean it's from God. Just because it's spiritual doesn't mean it's from God.
God is not the only spirit trying to speak to us. This is a big problem in the world today. Rob touched on this a little bit last week when we were talking about love. We've got a lot of people today that define love just by the way they feel.
It's loving for me just to accept you for who you are. It's loving for me just to go along with everything. And just as long as you feel loved and you are living your best life and I'm living my best life, we're all loved. No, that's not at all.
It's the actions that we take to point them back to God. There are a lot of people today that live their lives based on their own personal truth instead of the truth out of the word of God. Their whole identity is wrapped around their circumstances or their feelings instead of who God says that they are. We see this in individual Christian lives as well.
We can see people that were maybe raised one way, being taught one way that does not line up with scripture, but this is what they now believe. There's a lot of people we call this cessationism, people that believe that the Holy Spirit does not move today. People that don't, I mean, you're here in worship, the Holy Spirit moves. These people, they believe that the Holy Spirit doesn't move, that that was the time for the apostles and when the apostles died out, that went away.
But then they come to a church like Grace and we have a worship experience like this today. Or maybe they come to our Holy Spirit class or the prophetic insights class. They start to see the Spirit move and it starts to challenge what they've been taught, what they've been trained in. And then maybe they receive a word for someone, right?
Through the Holy Spirit, they receive a word and they're able to go to that person and they're able to speak life into that person, speak truth into that person, from the prompting of the Holy Spirit. It can be something just as simple as, hey, I really feel like you need to know that Jesus loves you, right? And then they see how it impacts and changes that person's life. And now they've gone from, the Holy Spirit doesn't talk to us today, all the way to the other side of it, which we call this the Cares Maniacs, where they think, I am a prophet of the Lord, I can speak no wrong, everything that comes through me is of God, right?
We definitely have to have a balance there. When I think of that, this side of it, the Cares Maniacs, I think of the guy in the movie, Braveheart, his name is Stephen. And this is the guy that would go around, he's always looking to the heavens and talking, and when he first comes into the scene, the next thing, are you talking to the Almighty? And his response was, you know, I was gonna do this in an Irish accent, but I can't do an Irish accent, so I'm just gonna read it.
His response was, in order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God. That should be a big red flag there. If somebody's coming to you saying, oh yes, I am spiritual, my only equal is God. No, we should be cautious with these people.
Because I'm gonna say it again, just because it's spiritual doesn't mean it's from God. All right, so the big question we have to ask ourselves when these things happen is, was that God? Is that the enemy? Or was that just last night's pizza?
We need to be able to tell if what we're hearing is from the Lord. This time it's right into our series title, Love Illuminated. Love Illuminated is our love for God that is shining out from our life, because we've made a decision to live our life in the way that God would have us live it. Or to say that a little simpler, we're gonna do what he wants and not what we want.
And by doing that, his love is gonna shine through us to the world around us, amen? And the more you live your life this way, the more God is gonna reveal things to you, even through just simple things. Have you ever done this? You go online, you're trying to look up some, maybe you're gonna make a purchase, you need to do some research about it, read reviews, all the things like that.
And the next thing you know, you move on to another thing and then to another thing and then to another thing and then you're a couple of hours into it and you're reading about some other topic that has nothing to do with what you started out with. You're like, how did I even get here? What did I go through to even get here? Well, this happened to me recently.
My son and I have started taking these father son golf lessons and there was one night, I was like, well, I'm gonna see what I can find that. That might be able to help us improve in what we're doing. And so I start reading about one thing and then I move on to the next and I move on to the next. And now I'm a couple of hours into this and I'm reading about these things called range lights.
And if you know golf, you might be thinking, okay, golf range, yeah, that makes sense. I'm gonna see how that's so far off. And that would make sense if this had anything to do with golf. Range lights are an old form of navigation that would be used in a harbor for ships to know that they were on the right path.
Nothing to do with golf at all. No idea how I got here. But what they would do is they would set up these lights at different distances and there would be two or three lights. And if a ship captain would know that if they're coming into this harbor, if those lights are lined up, I'm on the right path.
I'm on the right course. But if I'm off course in any way, those lights will not be lined up. You'll see them separated from each other. And then you know, I'm in danger.
I'm in danger of hitting rocks or running a ground or anything like that. Something that's gonna cause me to become shipwrecked. And I think this is a great analogy of knowing that we're hearing from God, right? If our spiritual harbor lights are lined up, then we can be fairly confident that we're following God's will.
So with the rest of our time today, this is what we're gonna look at. We've got three spiritual harbor lights that when they are lined up, we can be fairly confident. We are navigating God's will. All right, light number one is the word of God.
The word of God, we always start with the word of God. Always start with the word of God. The Bible should always be the first place you go. The Bible is our primary harbor light in navigating the will of God.
Whenever someone tells you something like, hey, I've got a word for you or they're telling you how to live your life or how you should be treating your spouse or your family or maybe you're trying to make a decision about your finances or your career. The first question you should ask yourself is, what does the Bible speak directly to this issue? What does the word of God say about this specific issue? Now, I do wanna warn you, more often than not, you're not gonna find your specific situation in the Bible, right?
There's no verses that say, that shall take you this job, right? Or that shall move to El Paso. Did that for up. The Bible doesn't speak to every specific situation, but we still need to check, right?
And now once we've checked the Bible, well, I can't find my specific situation, then what we need to do is check to see if there are any general biblical principles that line up and apply to our issue, right? God may speak to some other area, but it lines up with what you're struggling with as well. For example, the Bible doesn't specifically say I shouldn't buy a Taylor PS14 CE 50th anniversary special edition in acoustic guitar that costs $50,000. I looked, I could not find that verse anywhere in here.
But the Bible does talk about how we should be good stewards of our finances, right? And making a purchase like that may not be the wisest decision. I asked my wife, she said no. Now some of you may be sitting here today and you're thinking, well, I don't really know the word.
I don't know the word of God. Maybe you're a new believer and you haven't really gotten into it much, right? Or maybe you just haven't picked it up to read it. Maybe read it a long time ago and just put it down and never went back to it.
Well, let me put your mind at ease. In order to follow this harbor light, you do not have to be a biblical scholar. You do not have to know the Bible all the way through in order to follow this harbor light. So now you have no excuse.
You can check your issues with the word of God. Think of this hundreds of years ago, before the Bible was printed in languages that the common people could have, how did people check that they were aligned with the word of God, right? Did they just not do it? No, not at all.
Romans 10, 17 says, so then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. They would do exactly what we're doing now. They would go to church. They would hear what the pastor's saying.
They would hear what they're preaching out of and they would apply those things to their lives. You know, I mean, but I kind of church. I just haven't heard enough. I've heard enough different things that apply to my situation.
Well, this is where you have to have humility. You have to humble yourself enough to say, I know I have this going on. I know I need to check with what the Bible says, but I don't even know where to start looking. And you need to ask someone for help, right?
Or maybe you're on the other end of that where you're like, no, I've read the Bible through a hundred times. I know what it says about many things. And I don't know if it talks about this. You need to go ask for help, right?
Because I don't care how many times you've read the Bible through, there's always gonna be somebody who knows parts of it better than you do, right? We have to be humble. We have to take this with humility. Now, if you're thinking, well, I don't have anybody in my circle that knows scripture.
Well, the first thing I'm gonna tell you is that if you don't have that yet, one thing you can do is you can come ask a life group leader. You can ask one of our elders. You can ask one of our pastors. These guys know the word, but they are also humble enough that if it's something that they don't know, they're gonna tell you, they're gonna say, all right, let's see if we can find this together, right?
So please don't walk away from me today thinking, well, I don't have the Bible memorized so I can skip this step. No, we've gotta do this. We've gotta check everything with the Word of God. And if you don't know what it is, seek help from the people around you.
We have so many resources that will help you find out what the Bible says about any situation, right? And because of that, not knowing the Word of God is not the issue here, not knowing what the Bible says about anything is not the issue that we're dealing with. The bigger issue is that once you've sought out understanding, you know what scripture now says, the question is, do you actually do it? Do you follow what it says?
Verse thessalonians 4-8 says, therefore anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being, but God, right? If you are, if you come to me, you say, I've got this going on, I really wanna know what scripture says about it. I'm like, okay, let's find out what it says and we go and we find a few verses and this is what it's speaking to. And then you walk away and you're like, nah, I'm not gonna do that.
That's not an insult against me. That's nothing against me. What you're doing is you're rejecting God. James 4-17 says, remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.
It is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it. So walking away from that conversation, saying I'm not gonna do that, you now know what you ought to do. So now you are actively committing sin and rejecting God. So these actually lead us to a more important question.
Do you treat the Bible as God's word or just as good advice, right? Is this the living word of God that can speak into you, can break strongholds? Or is it just a lot of good things? If you're a real Christian, you're going to take the Bible as the truth of God and you're going to obey it and you're going to act on it.
Think back to week one of this series, Pastor Ryan went through the test to tell if you're a true Christian. And as a real Christian, we should obey the word of God. It's not because it's a list of rules, it's not because it's, it's, it's gives us the one, two, three. This is what you follow to have a healthy Christian life, not that at all.
No, we follow what the Bible says because we're grateful for God's love in our life. Amen. Right, we, it should be your desire as a child of God to know what the word says and to obey it. So you might be thinking, well, I follow what God says, why do I need to know what the word says?
Well, Psalm 119, 105 says, the word is a lamp for my feet, a light to my path. So what we see here is the word of God will light the path that God has for us. We're not talking about a physical path. We're talking about the path that God has for your life.
Right, when we follow that light, we're able to walk in the will of God. But the only way we're going to know that light is to know the word. All right, the idea that's conveyed here is an ongoing reading and studying of God's word, ongoing reading and studying. You might be thinking, I don't read the Bible at all.
That's fine, just pick it up. Start reading it. Try to read it once a week. Maybe you're doing good with once a week.
Try to make it twice a week. Whatever regularity you have, try to increase that regularity. If you have trouble reading it, like I tried to read it at night, but I always fall asleep or I always get too late in the day and I'm not able to get my reading in. Read it in the morning.
Read it on your lunch break. Use the Bible app and listen to it on your way to work. There are so many ways that we can get the word into our life. And if what you're doing right now is not working, shake things up, change it up.
Whatever it takes to start getting the word into your life. And the important thing is that you continue to do this. You may have a day where you're like, oh no, I was supposed to read it and I forgot. Well, I'm just going to stop.
We don't want to do that. Pick up the next thing and keep going. This isn't crisis reading. We're not waiting until something bad happens in our life to then go to the word and start seeing, well, what does it say about what's going on in my life?
What does it say about the situation? No, this is getting it into your life so that whenever these situations arise, that's going to come back to mind for you so what you should be doing. When you do this, when you start getting it into your life on a regular basis, you're going to start seeing God's character reflected in your own life. No, we're definitely not talking about Bible roulette.
Bible roulette, if you're not familiar with that, that's where you just open the Bible and whatever it says, that's what I'm going to follow. I'm going to read just the first thing that comes in here and that's what I'm going to follow. So God, I've got the situation going on, so tell me what I need to do. Judas hung himself.
Well, that doesn't sound right. Let me just try again. Okay, therefore go and do likewise. No, we're not talking about that at all.
We don't want to do that at all. I'm not saying God can't speak to you that way. I'm just saying that's not the healthy way to do it. Right, we need to be in God's word on a regular basis and the more you're in God's word, the more these things that you read will come to your mind when you face different life situations.
Proverbs 418, this goes right along with the verse we just read in Psalms. The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter to the full light of day. So the word is going to light our path and the path of the righteous is like the morning sun. So this is what this reminded me of when I read this is, I used to go camping a lot when I was younger.
There were often times we would get up real early before the sun had risen and we would do these sunrise hikes. We'd go out still very dark outside. You're using your flashlight, trying to see where the path is, making sure you're not tripping over rocks, running into trees, things like that, making sure you're not taking the wrong path. You're using the flashlight to make sure you can see everything and then the dawn starts to break.
You can see things a little better without the flashlight and as the sun gets higher, you're able to see the path clearer, you're able to see the animals that are out in the brush, you're able to see the colors of the flowers and the leaves and the trees. This is what it's like getting God's word into your life. At first, it's not gonna make sense. I'm not even sure what I'm reading right now.
But the more you do it, the clearer it will become. And the clearer the path that God has where you will become. But then John contrasts that in the very next verse, verse 19 says, but the way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know what makes them stumble.
That's the going out on the path when it's still dark outside without your flashlight, making the wrong turns, tripping over the rocks, running into trees. The next thing you know, is when you have no idea how to get back home. This is not what God wants for our lives. This is not at all what he wants for our lives.
He wants to speak to us through his word, but never forget, God will never share anything with you that does not line up with scripture. It has to line up with his word. If it doesn't, it is not the spirit of God. So that is light number one.
Light number two is the witness of the spirit. The witness of the spirit. We need to be listening to the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit. We saw this this morning when we had a couple of people that came up and gave words that were prompted by the spirit of what word to give.
The only way that we're going to have this happen in our lives to be able to hear that inner promptings is if we are spending time with the Holy Spirit. Amen? Spending time with the spirit is like this. It's reading the word.
We just talked a lot about that. It's spending time in prayer. It's spending time in worship. Not just Sunday mornings, but your own personal times of worship as well.
Spending time in fellowship with other believers. That's a way to spend time with the Holy Spirit as well. Now if we've been spending more and more time with him, we're going to be able to more accurately sense the way that he's leading us. You're going to want to make a decision one way, and you'll get that check.
No, we don't need to do that. We need to do it this way. Maybe you're thinking, this has too much of a risk. I don't know if I can do it.
And the Holy Spirit will say, no, I'm going to carry you through this. And your life is going to be so much better on the other side. I know it seems like a risk now, but the reward is so much better. We've got to be able to discern this.
We've got to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit's promptings and his guidance. And we need to do this when it's in the calm, so that we can recognize his voice when we're in the storm. If you don't hear his voice in the calm, you're not going to hear his voice in the storm. If you're not spending time with him, in the stillness, in the quiet times of life, you're not going to hear him in the chaos and loudness of the world.
There's a word in the Old Testament, paga. It's a Hebrew word in the Old Testament, paga. And the direct translation is intercession. But there's also this sense of a sudden meeting or collision or intersection.
This is the way that the Holy Spirit talks to us sometimes. It's that sudden, intersecting thought. Maybe we're in a time of prayer, a time of study, a time of meditation on the word. Maybe we're just focused on something else at work.
And you get this intersecting thought of, you should reach out to this person. Or you should pray for this person. A lot of times that's the Holy Spirit prompting us. That's that inter-prompting of the Holy Spirit.
Now the first thing we need to do, light number one, check it against the word. Did that intersecting thought? Does that line up with the word of God? If so, act on it.
Act on it. But remember, just because it's spiritual, doesn't mean it's from God. It's got to line up with His word. God wants to speak to us, and He will if we're just able to listen.
Jesus said this in John 14, 25, 26. All this I've spoken while still with you. But the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I've said to you. To hear that, the Holy Spirit is going to teach us things through reading the word.
He's going to remind us of things that we read in the word. But there's a little key part of that word. Remind, remind. It's the re-part.
The Holy Spirit is only going to remind you of the things if you've had it in your mind in the first place. You've got to get the word in your mind for the Holy Spirit to be able to remind you of what you've read. Just a couple chapters later, says this, John 1613. But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth.
So the Holy Spirit is going to teach us. He's going to remind us of things from the word. He's going to guide us. He's going to guide our path just like the word does, just like the word lights it.
He wants you to succeed. He wants you to walk the path that God has for you. He wants nothing more than the best for your life. But the only way we're going to hear His voice is to be able to follow His Word, follow His leading, is by spending time with Him and knowing His voice.
Then when He talks, we will be able to recognize His voice and how He's guiding us. We should expect to hear from God through the Holy Spirit. But it should always line up with God's word. Let's read about how Paul responded to the Spirit while trying to preach.
Act 16, 6 through 10. Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Frigia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the Word and the province of Asia. There's one that kept him from preaching in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter by Thynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.
There it is again, the Spirit's stopping him. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing in Beggonkam. Come over to Macedonia and help us.
After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. See, Paul is someone who was receptive to the Holy Spirit. He was guided away from the places that he wanted to go. He wanted to go and preach in Asia.
He wanted to go and preach in Mysia. But the Spirit led him away from those places because the Spirit wanted him to go to Macedonia. It wasn't a bad thing that he was trying to do. He was going to go and preach about Jesus.
But the Holy Spirit knew there was a different plan for his life. And because Paul knew the voice of the Holy Spirit, he listened to him, didn't go where he wanted to go, and went where God had for him instead. The Spirit will guide us just like we read in John 1613. But we have to have that relationship with him first to be able to understand and hear his voice.
One last thing on this topic before we move on. To hear the Holy Spirit clear, we have to get rid of the impurities that are in our lives. We have to get rid of the impurities that are in our lives. The more impurities in your life, the more static on the line with the Holy Spirit.
What do I mean by impurities? You think, I drink bottled water. I don't have any impurities. It's all filtered.
It's fine. No, impurities I'm talking about sin. Disobedience to God. Knowing what's right and not doing it, just like we read in James.
As long as these things are in your life, you're going to have trouble hearing from the Holy Spirit. I can't think of a better incentive to surrender those areas of our life to Christ than to be able to have a better connection with the Holy Spirit who's going to lead us and guide us. Amen? All right, that's light number two.
Light number three is godly counsel. This is our final guiding light, godly counsel. And I'll be quick on this one. You can see if they're already godly counsel.
It comes from mature Christians. Mature Christians. Now, as a mature Christian, I'm not saying someone who has gone to church a lot. I'm not saying someone who's been at the church a whole lot.
I've seen them going to church for 10 years. That doesn't mean that they're a mature Christian. Being a mature Christian is someone who shows a history of producing good fruit in their life. We see this in the way that they treat others, the way they treat their spouse, the way their kids act.
We see this in the way that their walk is with the Lord. We see this in the way that they just exude the joy of the Spirit whenever you're around them. We see the way that they spend their time, their talents, their treasures. 1 John 4, 6 says this, we are from God.
And whoever knows God listens to us. But whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of falsehood. So we should desire to seek out those who have a strong walk with the Lord.
And we should desire to seek them out because we should try to be emulating them. We should try to be finding out what did they do to get where they are in their life so that we can get that into our life as well. Right? You might see them like, hey, every time somebody comes up to you and asks a question about something, you always have something from scripture.
All right, I saw you going through the struggle, but you always had a smile on your face. And you always had so much joy in your life. Like, how did you do that? How did you have that attitude while going through this?
We seek out that counsel. Well, we always want to take what they say. And again, see if it aligns with the Word of God. I'm pretty sure I'm going to say this a few more times during this message.
See if it aligns with the Word of God. We should be checking everything with the Word of God. In fact, Acts 1711 says this, now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Every day they examine the scriptures to see if what Paul was saying was true.
And let me tell you, if these guys thought that they needed to examine the scriptures to make sure what Paul was saying was true, you definitely need to check the scriptures and make sure what Chris is saying is true. We've got to make sure that everything that we're receiving is biblical, that it aligns with the Word of God, that points right back to number one. Do this with any message you receive, any Sunday that you're hearing, you hear a message, or anything else that you hear from anyone else, you want to take it and you want to go back and see if it aligns the scripture. See, I can be standing up here telling you all sorts of wrong things.
You're just reading it on the screen. I could have written whatever I wanted. I'm not, I don't do that. We spend a lot of time studying and making sure what we're saying up here is what the Word says.
But any of us, any of us, Pastor Ryan, Pastor Rob, Casey, Omar, any of us that come up here and preach, don't just take our word for it. Compare it against scripture. See if it lines up with what God's word says. And if you find something that's different, come and tell us, come and talk with us.
We are human, we are flawed. We're going to study this very deeply, and we're going to try to make sure that everything we're giving you is absolutely accurate. But it is always possible for us to make mistakes. So come and tell us, and then we can have that discussion and show you either how it does align with what we're saying, or we can take that and learn from it and correct ourselves.
A.W. Tozer says this, the most dangerous thing in the church today is the uncritical spirit. The most dangerous thing in the church today is the uncritical spirit. That's just coming in here, listening, taking everywhere that I say is the whole truth, and then leaving and never checking it against scripture.
We've got to be critical of everything we receive, and make sure it aligns with scripture. Amen. All right, so to wrap up, these are our three spiritual range lights. We've got the word of God that's checking everything against scripture.
We've got the witness of the spirit. That's being able to hear the interproppings from the spirit. And then we've got godly counsel, and that's from mature Christians. Once we get these lights lined up in our life, we can be confident that we're walking in God's will.
Amen. And we can take that next step of faith and we can watch how God is going to work through us and do amazing things through our lives to strengthen and speak to those in our life around us. So we need to trust God's ability to make our foot land in the right place more than we trust the devil's ability to get us off track. Psalm 3723, this is my last scripture for the day.
The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. That's love illuminated right there. Our love for him, our desire to walk in God's will, his love for us and delighting himself in every detail of our lives.
All right, let's stand. Now we are in the summer right now, we're not having our midweek groups, our like group meetings. And we don't have the questions to go over and discuss. But I do have three questions for you this week that you can just pray on and you can spend some time thinking about these.
The verses of these three spiritual harbor lights, which one have you been the weakest? Which one have you struggled the most with? Is it getting the word in your life? Is it being able to understand and hear the Holy Spirit?
Or is it seeking out godly counsel? Number two is, is there any static? Is there any impurities? Is there any sin in your life that you need to get rid of so that you can hear the Holy Spirit better?
Right? So render that to Christ's repent of that sin. And if you're not sure, just asking you will reveal it to you. And finally, is there any area of your life that you need to seek godly counsel about?
Find those people that have the good fruit in their life and to seek out counsel from them. So God has made it possible for us to know Him and experience amazing changes in our lives. We just have to act on it. Amen, let's pray.