EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/1/2025 8:59 PM
My Worship Time Focus: “Intro to 1
John 4:1-6” “Testing the Spirits”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
“1 John 4:1-6
Message of the verses: “1 Beloved, 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. 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 want to begin by writing what John MacArthur wrote
in his commentary on this section of Scripture.
“Eureka!
“This
simple Greek word—meaning ‘I have found it!’—became a life slogan for thousands
of California gold prospectors in the mind-1800s. It summed up every treasure hunger’s dream
and expressed the thrill of striking pay dirt.
For James Marshall (the first to discover the precious metal in 1848)
and the ‘forty-niners’ who followed him, the term eureka meant instant riches,
early retirement, and a life of carefree ease.”
I realize that this next statement that I write has nothing to do with
spiritual things, but I don’t think that I knew when the San Francisco football
team was named after the good rush mentioned above.
There
were many who left their homes to go to California in those days only to find
that what they were looking for was only what is called “fools gold” something
that looked like the real thing but was only something that was fake, and worthless.
There
were those who were experienced minors who could distinguish pyrite from gold
simply by looking at it. However, in
some cases, the distinction was not quite so clear. So, they developed tests in order to discern
what was genuine from what was not. One
test involved biting the rock in question, not something that I would want to
do for sure if I found out it was iron pirate. Real gold is softer than the
human tooth, whereas fool’s gold is harder.
Now a second test involved scraping the rock on a piece of white stone,
such as ceramic. Now true good leaves a
yellow streak, whereas the residue left by fool’s gold is greenish black. In
either case, a miner relied on tests to authenticate his finds—both his fortune
and his future depended on the results. Now we have what looked at something that John
MacArthur uses to led us into what he is really writing about.
“Spiritually
speaking, Christians often find themselves in a similar position to the
California gold rushers of the mid-1800s.
When confronted with various doctrines and religious teachings, all of
which claim to be true, believers must be able to tell those that are
biblically sound from those that are not.
“As
what true in the gold rush, just because something glitters doesn’t mean it’s
good. Christians need to be equally wary
of spiritual ‘fool’s gold.’ They must
not accept something as true without first testing it to see if it meets God’s
approval. If it fails the test,
Christians should discard it as false and warn others also. But if it passes the test, in keeping with
the truth of God’s Word, believers can embrace and endorse it wholeheartedly.
“California
gold prospectors would cry ‘Eureka!’ only when they found true gold. When it comes to spiritual things, Christians
should be careful to do the same.”
I
have to say that I like the true story that MacArthur introduced this section
of verses as it shows us a lot of truth, something we as genuine believers are
to do.
Tomorrow
evening I will continue to look at what seems to me as PT-2 of MacArthur’s
introduction to this section.
2/1/2025 9:26 PM
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