Pastor Tim Patoka
Resurrection Reality
April 21, 2024
The Risen Savior Provides Good Shepherding 1 John 4:1-6 1) Test for It 2) Listen to It Suppose that you need to be somewhere, but you can’t go. Who do you send in your place? If you’re a country’s leader or ruler, you send ambassadors or the Secretary of This-and-That to represent your country’s interests. If you’re a parent, you’ll send your oldest child or ones you trust to take care of things while you’re gone. If you’re a boss, you’ll send managers and inspectors to ensure your company’s culture and quality assurance. Regardless of who you are, you send someone who acts as an extension of yourself. Our Risen Savior does the same to provide good shepherding for us. He calls spiritually mature men to serve as our pastors who shepherd a specific flock of people on God’s behalf. They do this by feeding them with God’s Word, corralling those who stray aside, and protecting them when danger arises. However, there are many people who claim to do this on God’s behalf yet end up saying very different things about God. As sheep of our Good Shepherd, how do we know through whom our Risen Savior has provided good shepherding for us? That’s why we turn our attention this morning to 1 John chapter 4. It’s here that God tells us how to test for good shepherding so that we may listen to our Good Shepherd’s voice through it. 1) Test for It The Apostle John starts right off by telling us that we aren’t to believe everyone who claims to speak on God’s behalf. Rather, we are to test them by their confession of faith, what they believe and teach. John describes it as this, “This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit [that is, religious teacher] who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” (1 John 4:2 EHV) The first thing is to confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Promised Savior of long ago. He alone takes our sins away by fulfilling every prophecy and requirement so eternal life can be ours. The second thing is to confess that Jesus has come. He is a real person in history who did everything the Bible says: born to Joseph and the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, raised in the town of Nazareth, died on a cross in Jerusalem, and rose from the dead three days later. The third thing to confess is that Jesus has come in the flesh. As true God, he existed before anything was created and is God in every way. However, he is also 1