EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/7/2025 9:55 PM
My Worship Time Focus: “Guidelines For How to Test”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 4:2-6
Message of the verses: “2 By this you know
the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in
the flesh is from God; 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not
from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard
that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. 4 You are from God,
little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the
world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak as from
the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God; he who knows God
listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know
the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
I have to say that this set of verses reminds me of
some things that happened to me while I was a supervisor working at the
Cleveland Casting Plant which was owned by the Ford Motor Company. I have been retired from there over 25 years,
but there are some memories that I still have from there as I worked for Ford
for 35 years. The story that I remember
is about a man who was older than me who
I truly believe was a believer and we
were talking about different versions of the Bible and his test to where he
would read it had to do with a few of these verses, and if they did not meet
his specifications then he would not read them from that version of the
Bible. I have always read the NASB from
the time that I first became a believer and still use it to this day, and the
reason that I use it is became it is as far as I am concerned the most accurate
version of any Bible version around. I
say this because it to me is the most accurate version that translates both the
Hebrew and Greek texts. That is my
opinion and I am sticking with it. Now
this evening what I am going to do with these verses is to quote from John
MacArthur’s very short introduction to them and then beginning tomorrow evening
will be breaking them down as he has them outlined in his commentary.
“John
sets forth three familiar tests for determining whether a teacher and his
message reflect the Spirit of God or the spirit of Satan. These tests are theological (Does the person
confess Jesus Christ?), behavioral (Does the person manifest evidence of the
fruit of righteousness?), and presuppositional (Is the person committed to the
Word of God?. True teachers are thus
characterized by a confession of the divine Lord, a possession of the divine
life, and a profession of the divine law.
Those who fail to exhibit these tests pove that they are not from God.”
2/7/2025 10:12 PM
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