on chapter 2. We're going to
continue here this morning. Last week we talked about Antichrist. We talked about what the scriptures
teaches us concerning the term. what it is that Antichrist actually
means to be against Christ or not Christ. Now in our world
today, if we were to go back maybe to the mid 1800s or maybe
the early 1800s, we would see that there was a transition in
the idea and the understanding of Antichrist. And then from
that point up to the 1930s, we would see an incredible awakening
of sorts of new things, new discoveries in regard to what Antichrist
or who Antichrist actually is. And from that point to present
day, if you ask the average person on the street, you know, hey,
what is Antichrist? they would give you an incredibly articulate
answer that seems to come from the pages of Hollywood about it's going to be some dude
out here in the Middle East and it's going to be some guy in
some form and some sense of government and some one world order and
new world order and one currency and everything's going to happen
and then there's going to be some bad stuff going on and some
good stuff going on and a war and then a thousand years of
waiting. I don't like to wait at McDonald's. So it's a thousand years. And
then a reestablishment of a sacrificial system as if Jesus death wasn't
sufficient. And so on and so forth. And then
before long, this imaginative storyline became the narrative
of scripture that's not found within it. And so if we are to
know what the Bible teaches about a particular thing, then we must
open the Bible and read what the Bible says about that particular
thing. And if we have any other idea that doesn't agree with
the full context of the scripture, not a verse, I can make a verse
say whatever I want it to say. I can manipulate an argument
using pretexts and proof texts out of context. And when I do
that, I'm blaspheming the Word of God. So as we look in chapter
2 of 1 John, I want to read again 18 through the end of the chapter
and we'll be here again today and we'll be here again next
week and then we'll move into chapter 3 as we continue to back
up and go forward. Children, 1 John 2 verse 18,
it is the last hour. And as you have heard that Antichrist
is coming, so now many Antichrists have come. Therefore we know
that it is the last hour. They went out from us, the Antichrist,
but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they
would have continued with us. But they, the Antichrist, went
out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But in contrast, you have been
anointed by the Holy One. And you, in contrast, have all
knowledge. I write to you not because you
do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie
is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies
that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist. He who
denies the Father and the Son. And no one who denies the Son
has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has
the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning
abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning
abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that
He made to us. Eternal life. I write these things
to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing
that you receive from him abides in you and you have no need that
anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches
you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it has
taught you, abide in him. And now, little children, abide
in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not
shrink from him and shame at his coming. If you know that
he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness
has been born of him. Now we'll stop. And you know
now why, for those of you who've been following along in this
text, you know now why I'm going to spend another week in this.
Because I have to deal with what he just said as it relates to
actually where he's going. Little children. See what kind
of father, the love the father has given to us that we should
be called the children of God and so we are. That's where he's
going and that's where he transitions there about practicing righteousness. It is the last hour. As a way
of reminder, we'll go back through this in some sense. It is the
last hour and you have heard that Antichrist is coming. So
even in the first century, while we may have a weird transition
of interpretation concerning the Antichrist that's more contemporary,
the first century Christians had one also. There were people
who were bothering them in the context of, you better watch
out. The Antichrist is coming. I remember being in middle school
and going to what we would call revival meetings. And I remember
that one of those revival meetings at one time was called a prophecy
conference. And as a Baptist, that didn't
make any sense at all. I said, what are we doing here? Are we transitioning across the
aisle? Are we about to get excited up in here? What's happening?
I don't know what's happening. Well, what it was, was a well-meaning
Baptist with a lot of ignorance trying to make change in the
lives of people through fear. And the prophecy was to go into
John's Apocalypse, which is prophetic writing, it's apocalyptic writing,
that's the genre, apocalyptic, and to go in and tell everybody
there that there's two things that must take place if you're
a true Christian. Number one, you will come back tomorrow night,
and number two, you will bring somebody with you. That's it. And if you really love Jesus
and you really want to know that you're saved, you won't miss
one night. Don't go to the ballgame. Come to revival. You want to
see revival? Who says no to that? I mean, you know. Well, come
back here and listen to me, the prophet of God, tell you what.
And that's the way it went. And I was like, oh my goodness,
this is serious. So I rode my little bicycle to
church every night. I was there an hour early, I
stayed an hour late. When my Bible opened, took notes. I wish
I could find those notes. That'd be neat. And I wrote down
everything, and I put to memory the extreme outline of what it
meant for Antichrist to be in the world. And then I went back
to school the following week, and I began to teach it to other
people. Did you know this, that, and the other? And do you know
if you're not ready, you're going to burn? Did you know that if
you're not ready, the Antichrist is going to get you? I mean,
this is the boogeyman story of the ages. And then, thankfully, God taught
me how to read. And I began to read the Bible.
By the time I was in high school, I began to see that what I had
heard and what I had learned and what I had been taught did
not match what I was reading. So what was the answer to that?
I'm just dumb as a bag of rocks. That was the answer. That's what
I thought. I was just stupid. I was just stupid. I couldn't
comprehend what I read like these extremely important, educated
people. So I needed to just be quiet. So I got myself, through
gift, a Thompson's Chain Reference Study Bible. If you don't know
what that is, the Bible is this big and the notes are like that.
It's not quite that big, but you know, it's written in seven
and a half point. and the study notes, you could chain reference
everything. You see the word bird in the
Bible, you can find every instance of the word bird, and every extrapolation
of the word feather, beak, eye, wind, sore, wing, whatever it
might be, you could find it. And I thought myself a Bible
expert. 11th grade. Oh, you wanna know
about the crows? Page 1641. And there we go. And this is the crows. Look,
look, I even got a chart. It had charts in the back, y'all.
I love charts. And then I actually was taught
by God that I wasn't dumb as a bag of rocks. That I needed
to listen to what the Bible was saying rather than what men were
telling me. And the same thing is true for all of us this morning,
beloved. And I tell you this every week. Don't listen to what
I say and take it for truth. Follow along. And if it's not
true, then confront it. And we'll see that as John gets
into chapter 4. He says, Beloved, test all the
spirits. The spirit in which antichrists speak is a spirit
of humanism, a spirit of fleshliness, a spirit of it's all about Jesus
with a sprinkle of some of flesh. It's all about the truth of the
gospel. But we're going to add a little bit to it. We're going
to make you the bearer of your righteousness. And we're going
to look at that this week and next week. Antichrist, they had
heard was coming. So John explains it very clearly
in this statement. So now many antichrists have
come. See, this letter is the first
time you ever see the term. And the only other place you
see it is in John's apocalypse. And he manages to express that
Antichrist is the world and everything in it. See, the enemy, when he tempted
Jesus by the will and the sovereignty of God, he stood out, he tempted
him in three ways to exercise his power and his own volition
to feed his body that was hungry. to exercise his power and his
status as a son to put to test the Lord to prove that God the
Father would actually keep his promises. You don't have to prove
that God will keep his promises. He cannot lie. You see? And the
final thing is he offered him the world that already belonged
to him. You see all this? Because that
is what the enemy has been told. You have dominion over the world. He is the prince of the power
of the air, but he has no power except that which God instructs
him to do every morning. And there is no such teaching
in scripture that teaches there is an enemy of God in human or
non-human form that has any right to do anything that God has not
purposed, permitted, and decreed. So the greatest devils of the
world, yes, they're part of antichrist. But the greatest antichrists
of the world who take Christ and add to him. Take the gospel
of free and sovereign grace and reduce it. Take things out of
context, put burdens upon the church and the shoulders and
the consciousness of the church, and then they make it hard to
walk in grace. We know it is the last hour because
we see the working of the world. And beloved, it's easy to say,
and you've heard me say this before, it's easy to say, OK, we know
what is evil. Look at all that evil stuff.
Look at all that evil things. Look at all of that sin and debauchery. Look at that sexual sin. Look
at that greed. Look at that murder. Look at
all that stuff. Look at everything that you see
there. That's what's evil. And we forget to look in the
mirror, number one. And then we forget to look in
the scripture and realize that at no time do we see the apostles
really worrying about the paganism of the world. They're worried
about the wickedness of the saints. The world is not our problem.
In transitioning moral behaviorism and Humanistic righteousness
is not going to do anything for us except make us feel good that
we've done something good like the Puritans started out pure
and then really packed it on. And every generation of believers
have the same problem. We start out pure. You know,
the Pharisees were the Pharisees were the reformers of Judaism
after the Maccabean revolt. Where their enemies were actually
butchering hogs on purpose inside the Holy of Holies. just to rub it in. And they're like, somebody's
got to do something about this. We're taking up swords. And God delivered
them. The Pharisees came out of that
movement. They were the reformers. They were the ones that said,
not only are we going to get back to worshiping God the way he's commanded us,
we're not going to ever let anybody come back and do what they've
done here. And we're going to make sure that over these years
of enjoying your pork skins, Jews, that you've got to put
that stuff down because it's not what we're supposed to be
doing. So they were the purists. And then by the time Jesus came
along, they were Antichrist. So when we identify with a specific
focus group, or we identify with a specific ideology, or we identify from
a historical position, Without really carrying the Word of God
as the thread, we too will just become antichrists. And these antichrists were very
obvious to the apostles because as we see in verse 19, they went
out from us and to us there is the apostles. Remember last week
I told you that the more I read this letter, the more I think
that John is writing specifically to the elders of the church.
Because some of the responsibilities that he puts upon the recipients
of this letter are not the responsibilities of the average church member. Thank God. Because God, when He calls the
elder overseer, the elder overseer kicks against the grain of self-sufficiency
and is taught by discipline by God himself that he has nothing
except what God grants him. And so it's very hard. And John
calls that the anointing of God. We call it something else. We
would call the anointing something different. Somebody that can
communicate well, we would say, oh, they're anointed. Well, every
Antichrist communicates well. But they're not anointed. The
one who is anointed is the one who has the truth in his mouth.
The one who is anointed does not speak and listen to the lies
of the Antichrist. The ones who are anointed are
those who abide in the truth of Christ and teach the church
to do the same and then teach the church to live accordingly. But these heretics left the truth.
of Christ. These heretics, as we see in
verse 19, these antichrists, they were, as some theologians
call them, revisionists. They were revising the gospel. They were changing the truth
of Christ. And it happened in Galatia, the
region of Galatia. It happened in Rome. It happened
in Colossae. It happened in Ephesus. It happened in Thessalonica.
It happened in all of the cities of Asia Minor, which is all Palestine,
by the way. It happened there. And it's happening now. The difference is, because we
have that Hollywood narrative of what is Antichrist, we have
forgotten that Jesus speaks of Antichrist in John chapter 3.
And in John chapter 3, Nicodemus, who is speaking for the totality
of the Pharisees, and the Bible says in the Greek there, John
writes these words, Jesus calls Nicodemus the teacher of all
Israel. You are the teacher of Israel.
Not a teacher, not one of the, not a good teacher, not a sufficient
teacher, the teacher. Nicodemus role was a teaching
role in which the totality of the nation submitted to his interpretation. And Jesus calls Nicodemus ministry
teaching. prayers, darkness. We should think about that for
a second. He calls it darkness. He calls it world. He says, this
is the judgment. The light is coming to the world,
but people love the darkness rather than the light because
their works are evil. In the context there, Nicodemus is thinking
about those evil Gentiles who are the world. who are not God's
chosen, who are not following the examples and the prescription
of worship. These are the things that are
in Nicodemus' mind and then when he continues to go on, and of
course this is after he's given him the doctrine of the new birth,
which he could not understand. So Nicodemus is thinking of all
these paganistic heathens who live separated from the practice
of righteousness in their lives because they know not God. But Jesus is talking about him. And the world and everything
in it is passing away. Beloved, I believe that the world
in present day application, according to John's writing, is truly evangelical
Christianity. Is nationalism as it merges with
Jesus. The parting shot of John is beloved,
keep yourself a Midas. We have idols after idols, after
idols, after idols, and because the pulpits of America are devoid
the gospel of grace. The sheep are left to fend for
themselves and to discern what it is that they need to believe
and what it is they need to do, and the culture has already made
the list, so it's easy just to pick it up off the table in the
vestibule. You know what a vestibule is? and take it home, put it on your
refrigerator, and just do there. Do that. Follow the rules. Live that way. You're fine. How
do you know that you're saved? Well, in 1978, I accepted Jesus
into my heart. Will you find me a text or scripture
that shows you anything about accepting Jesus in your heart?
And let's talk about it. The Bible proclaims the gospel
of free and sovereign grace as the finished work of God through
Jesus Christ who satisfied the wrath of God, propitiated Himself.
God the Father propitiated Himself. He satisfied Himself through
the death of Jesus. It is finished. There is nothing
that the elect must do except hear it by the power of the Holy
Spirit, the rebirth is the granting of faith, which is the change
of disposition, which is called repentance in the New Testament.
To believe that which you cannot believe, that you now believe,
that's repentance. Repentance is not about putting
away sin so that you can get right with God. But because Christ
has made us right with God, let's put away sin. That's the instruction
of the New Testament. Don't conflate the gospel of
free and sovereign grace with rules and regulations of how
to live profitably. These heretics have left the
truth of the word. They have left the foundations
of the faith, that which was from the beginning, that which
they heard from the beginning. Hebrews talks about the very
same thing when there are a lot of people who come and say, yeah,
I believe in Jesus. You know what evangelism is,
according to Matthew 28, is that when we see those people, when
we're teaching people, when we're opening up the word of God and
we're spending time with people, evangelism cannot be done in
a short, quick minute. It's not possible. God doesn't
work in chicken nuggets and fortune cookies. You don't go get the
sample of the gospel like you do in the food court at the mall.
I guess all that's shut down right now, isn't it? You just
can't say, okay, I found Jesus, he's got a little cheese on him.
I got a taste of this. I got a taste of that. But that's
not the fullness of the doctrine, the body of doctrine, which is
Jesus Christ, who is Jesus Christ. That is from the beginning that
God, the Holy Spirit, reveals to us through the written word.
We learn it and we grow in it and we acknowledge it and we
rest in it and we wrestle with it. But we never deny it. Revisionists
and antichrists deny it by saying, yeah, but. That's what they do. And so because
they have left the doctrine, they have been excommunicated
out of the fellowship of the apostles, and in doing so, when
the apostles said, you are not of us, you are not in Christ. Not because their word carried
the spiritual weight to do it, because their word, by the power
of God the Spirit, knew the truth. And if it did not match, you
weren't Christ's. It's troubling. So it was plain who was not with
them because of what they say and what they teach and what
they insist upon. But he's not talking to them at all. They're
never going to read this letter. Unless somebody shares, you say,
see what he's saying about you, you know, which probably happened.
Facebook existed a long time ago, it was just in slower transmission. Verse 20, but you. See the contrast. But you have been anointed by
the Holy One. Holy One is Jesus Christ. You
have been anointed. You have the spirit of the One
who is the Holy One. You know the truth. You have
all knowledge. And this is review. I talked
about that last week. That doesn't mean we know everything and that
we're wise above all things. But we know that all things concerning
the person and the work of Christ are true as the Scripture reveals
them. So the idea of this anointing
here is two-fold. First, is that God the Spirit,
as I've already talked about in John 3, that Jesus says you
must be born again. It's an interesting thing because
as it's written, it is an indicative of the one who is in faith, who
is in Christ. They are born again. And it is
also an imperative, they must be. But the cool thing about
it is Jesus says, well, if this is imperative, how do I produce
it? And Jesus answers Nicodemus and says this, well, it is an
indicative, but Christ, the one who is raised up, God, has done
all the work. He is the one who brings life,
God the Spirit. So you must be born again. As
you see the wind, you cannot see wind. You can only see what
the wind does. The same is true for the Spirit of God that blows
where He wishes, when He wishes, and whom He wishes, and nobody
can command Him to do anything. He's God. He only answers after
the counsel of His own will. So in that, now, the Spirit of
God brings to life His people on the occasion of His desire. But there is something else that
is indicative of those people. They have heard the doctrine
of Christ. People are not born again, ever, by being imparted with some superficial
knowledge or false knowledge about Jesus. No one has ever
been made alive by the Holy Spirit because they have heard a lie
on Christ. It doesn't work. Can someone who has heard the
truth then begin to consider a lie on Christ? Absolutely.
That's why the New Testament's been written. You're believing
lies. You have already believed the
truth. Go back to the truth. But nowhere
do you see, I know all you all got the shopping list, and you
went and bought all the supplies, and you burned them in an incense
altar, and now you're in Christ, but now I need to teach you what
really happened. That doesn't work. There's no such thing as
a Christian who hasn't learned the doctrine of Christ. The body
of divinity, the body of truth, the whole shebang by the Spirit
of God. I mean, we know that grace truth.
We've all come to the place before where we've learned new stuff
and went, wow. Like when we see John 6 for the
first time in a while, and we just, we actually read the Bible
and we go, okay, this is what I've been trying to say. This
is what I've been trying to explain. I thought, I mean, y'all don't
know this, some of you do, but I thought I coined the phrase,
particular redemption. And I'd already outlined a book,
I'm gonna write a book on this. Some dude out of a conference
came up and says, oh, I hear you've been reading so-and-so. I'm like,
who? So-and-so, I read it, I was disappointed and excited. I was
like, oh, okay, so I haven't come up with this phrase. But you have the anointing. And
that is the spirit of God of the new birth. It is also in
that empowering of the overseers to teach and understand and rightly
divide the word of truth. And I'm in the middle of a project
right now to try to help some international pastors learn to
have biblical literacy. And it's been going on for a
little over two years. And I'm partnered with some other
brothers who are trying to help me. And the bottom line is, is
that everything that I've come to know about teaching people
to read and understand and teach the Bible and teach people to
read and understand and teach the Bible, because that's the
progression, see. all the different spirals and jumps and leaps and
grammatical things and all this other kind of stuff is really
insufficient because the scripture says that God will teach us through
the written word. So we've got to have teachers
who have been taught by God in order to have the church who's
been taught by God, because otherwise the church is going to be taught
wrongly. And until God chooses to open your eyes through the
reading of the word on your own, you're never going to know the
difference. And I believe the anointing too
in verse 20 here is dealing specifically with the calling of God for the
eldership. To be affirmed by the elders
and then to also be affirmed by the body of Christ. How do
you affirm that? How do you know someone has the
anointing of God? How do you know someone's called to the
work of the ministry? Two things specifically. One,
they are doing the work of the ministry. They're not waiting
around until they get the role. And secondly, there is no lie
in their mouth concerning Jesus. Because if there's a lie in their
mouth, they are Antichrist. Jesus uses that same phraseology
with the Pharisees. Remember I talked about the Pharisees
being the reformers of Judaism, of Israel? But what does Jesus
say about them? He says, Abraham's not your father. The devil is. God is not your father. If God
were your father, if Abraham were your father, if Moses was
your father, then you would know me. And you would know that I
am from the Father. But you don't. And you can't
because you're not the children of God. You are the children
of the devil. You have been put here for the purpose of reprobation. You have been put here for the
purpose of destruction. You have been put here so that
in every inkling That all the righteousness you must muster,
that all the righteousness that you can exude, that all the teaching
of righteousness that you have had in your mind and off your
lips for millennia is worthless. And you are the creme de la creme
of righteous living in moral standard and biblical knowledge.
But my friends, Jesus speaking, To the masses in Matthew, if
your righteousness is not more than theirs, you will perish.
Now that struck fear in the hearts of the hearers. But there's a difference. Because
when the elect hear the truth by the will of God, the spirit,
they see it. And they see it, and they rest
in it, and they embrace it, and they know it, and they apprehend
it, and they comprehend it, and they grow in the knowledge of
it. And this is what takes place in the community of faith, which
is a vital, important imperative of the church. By name, Ecclesia,
gathered ones. This is the vehicle through God's
word that promises our stability and promises our abiding. Because
when we are together, as we said yesterday in our men's gathering,
we're not all going to be fools at the same time. And if I come up with something
extremely foolish, I can promise you that seven other brothers
are not all going to agree with me if they're in the word. They're
gonna say, there might be two that just, yes, man, yeah, pastor,
that's right. And the other four are gonna go, no, it ain't right.
Trey, go get the whip. We about to tear something up. I mean, he's a good whip. Jesse's
a good whip for me. What are you talking about? Why
are you posting that? What are you trying to start
now? You are anointed and you understand
all things concerning Christ. You are not ignorant of Christ.
You're not ignorant of his substitutionary atoning sacrifice for his people. Verse 21, I write to you, this
is where we are this morning. I write to you, not because you
do not know the truth. Now I want you to see that. John
is not writing to them because he needs to correct their theology.
They know the truth. Beloved, a man, woman, child,
infant, rich, poor, ugly, pretty, doesn't matter who we are, anybody
who knows the truth and can preach and teach and share and speak
the truth, these people are in Christ. Unless sometime in the
timeline of that life they go, you know, I've really been contemplating
that, I did believe this, but now I don't. They never did.
They believed it in a cognitive way, but they'd never been born
by the Spirit of God. Never. And he's writing to them
because they know it. because you know it and because
no lies of the truth. So I want to write to you, John
says, because you are Christ's people. You are God's children. He's called them this over and
over again. He secured them in this way continually to show
them that they are safe in the one who was in the beginning.
They are saved in that which was from the beginning. They
are saved in the truth and the knowledge of God. And they are
saved in their continual growing of the knowing and the knowledge
of God. And so as I look at it and I
think, well, what were some of these people doing? What were
they saying? Well, I believe they were saying that Jesus wasn't
truly in the flesh. Or that they were saying that
Jesus was not sinless. Or that they were saying that
maybe God works in areas of darkness. Maybe God does a little sin here
and there to get the job done. Because in the language of this
letter, it stands to reason that these were issues that John wanted
to address, but he doesn't. You know what he doesn't do,
though? And this is important in the context of what we're
hearing today. He never explains their error. Don't you hear that church? He
never explains their error so that guys like me who write this
thing down on a piece of paper and who draw lines and circles
and wonder for years, what is the error? I'm not supposed to
know and neither are you. Why? Because knowing the error
has zero, zero efficacy in knowing the truth. Antichrist doctrine is off the
table, out of the mind. John wants these elders, he wants
the church to not know the error. He wants them to know the truth.
And how do we know the truth? Have you ever taken a glass of
something that you had fixed and you were drinking your tea
or your milk or whatever, or your soda, and you accidentally
pick up someone else's cup and it's not the same drink. The worst thing that you could
ever put in my mouth would be diet Dr. Pepper. And you pick it up, and in your
mind, you got your sweet tea, and you go, sweet tea, sweet,
not sweet tea. You don't have to drink four
or five sips to go, I wonder what this is. It's not sweet
tea. It's not your cup. You're grossed
out. You don't even know where you are. You're at a picnic in
public. You're in the movie theater. You picked up this random guy's
drink over here. You don't know what it is, but
you know it's not right. You don't take two sips. You
don't take it home and say, well, we don't want to throw this away,
whatever it may be, I'll drink it later. No, we pour it out. And you pour out your cup, because
the other guy's got yours, and you're going, oh. That's what
it is with truth. We know the truth. We know the
truth. We know the truth. We have all knowledge. We understand
it. We need to be giving our time to the knowledge of the
truth. We need to spend our time teaching the church to do the
work of the ministry, which is to teach each other the truth, to grow
in the truth, to learn the truth. And beloved, I'm going to tell
you right now, there's not anybody you can go find million subscribers
on YouTube that is going to teach you the truth. I don't care how
close they are with using solas. That's a historical narrative
over there on the wall. Reformed theology is historically
set. But as the ages go, it becomes
deformed theology. Baptist doctrine, historical. But it only takes a generation
for it to become Antichrist. So you are going to have to stay
in the Word of God and you're going to have to stay close-knit
with a body of believers who will continue to walk in the
truth of Christ in learning and living. We are safe in Christ. They are
secure in the knowledge of Him and His grace. These, in verse
21, we see there, they know the truth. I write to you not because
you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because
there is no lie of the truth. If what they're hearing is not
of the truth, then it is a lie. It is a lie. It's not an alternative
view. It's not an interpretive issue. Listen to that, beloved. Listen
to that. I've probably gotten that question a hundred times
in the last ten years. How do you know that your interpretation
of the Bible is correct? I get that a lot in 1 John. I
mean, this teaching, not that it's my teaching, but the teaching
of 1 John in context is burning some rear ends across the country. And that's just the ones I hear
about. But it's causing people to even
consider, am I even in a Christ-filled church? Because I asked my elder
when God told me just last week, why he teaches 1 John as a proof
text so that I can know that I'm truly born again. And he
told me to get out of his office and quit asking dumb questions. And then if I had a problem with
not living a Christian life to prove I was in Christ, then I
probably wasn't in Christ. Shackle, shackle, shackle. Burden,
burden, burden. For those of you who haven't
been following with us for the 13th sermons, 1 John is the therefore
of the gospel of John. We are in Christ. We have the
knowledge of the truth. So now let's continue to grow
in the knowledge of the truth, and let's rest in the truth,
and let's obey the commands of Christ. And we'll get to the
point of what that is. We've already seen it. We already
know what it is. It's to love one another. That's the only command
John gives. Well, he actually gives two,
but one is out of our hands. So there is no law of the truth.
There is no doctrine that's not perfectly aligned with scripture
that is true. There is no narrative that imposes
an idea of some theological system that is not perfectly aligned
with scripture that is true. This is not an interpretive issue.
I argue that the Bible is so simple If it's written in the
language that we can understand, it is so simple. If we just read
it, we will understand it. And in those dozen or so places
that are problematic, we can work those things out with the
context around it. But even in those problematic
places, if we're not trying to impose something that's out of
context, we probably will realize, well, even if we don't understand
this, it's not important to the gospel. It's not going to change
who Christ is or what he's accomplished. So if we are hearing something
that's not of the truth, then we are hearing a lie. And beloved,
I think the body of Christ needs to stop worrying about the lies
and proclaim the truth. I mean, I talk to a hundred people
a week in some form or fashion. And you think about how people
think and what they, well, what do you think about this pastor?
What do you think about this verse? What's this trying to
say? And it's usually little nuanced things. Like should I
wear a head covering? I don't know. If your hair is
ugly, wear one. If your conscience bears witness
to cover your head, cover it. Don't impose that on anybody
else. And don't think you're holier because your head's covered
unless you got holes in your head. I don't know. But I mean, you get you get things
like that. And when you talk to people and you realize that
they are so inundated, well, what do these people believe?
What do these people believe? What do these people believe?
There's a young man that I've been talking to for probably 10 years. And
I just happened to notice this week that he's literally invested
in cult learning. But he's a believer. But he's
just spent the last seven months or six months, however long he's
been in quarantine, studying and becoming experts in LDS and
Russellites and every other iteration of all sorts of things. He knows
now everything. He is a cult historian. He doesn't
believe it, but he's bankrupt spiritually right now. And I know when you're in college,
you can live on ramen noodles, but you really ain't healthy. You can't live on a lie. You
can't live with a lie. It has to be the truth. John
goes on to verse 22. He continues in this debate,
in this argument, who is the liar? He asked the question,
who is the liar? But he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Now
I want you to think about it for a second. See, there is a
body of knowledge that these people already have, the gospel
of free and sovereign grace. They understand the finished
work of Jesus. They understand the efficacy and the sufficiency
of what Christ has done. They understand the object of
Christ's atonement. They know and understand election. They have a very strong handle
on what God has accomplished for them in their place. And so to deny any part of the
doctrine of Christ is to deny Christ Himself. And if Christ
did not save the elect of God through His vicarious atonement,
then He is not the Christ. If Christ offered up Himself
in hopes that He would save some people, but He really wanted
to save all people, but knowing full well He wouldn't, He's a
fraud. And he is not the Christ. He
is not the anointed one of God. He is not the holy one of God.
He is not the righteousness of God. He is not the wisdom of
God. He is not the love of God. He's the loser of God. So people who deny anything of
Christ, they are liars. This is the Antichrist, and he
is the one who denies the Father and the Son. How many times,
I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with people
over the two plus decades of ministry, plus even in my youth,
where everybody's got a path to God. Yeah, I believe in God.
I believe in God. Yeah, I got a Bible. I believe
in God. Yeah, I got a this, I got a that, I got a the other. Yeah,
I've been in church. I believe in God. Well, do you
believe this about Jesus? Nah, I don't believe that. You
don't believe in God. Well, now I come to God my way.
My relationship with God is my relationship with God. You can't
tell me how my relationship with God is supposed to be. No, God
tells you how his relationship with you is going to be. And
his relationship with you is in Jesus alone. And his relationship
with you is in the gospel of free grace and the gospel of
sovereign grace and the gospel of the power of God unto salvation.
This is the decree of God for his promises, for his people.
And if you are not his people, you'll never believe it. And that's a very unpopular evangelistic
strategy. Everybody says they believe in
God, even atheists on a roller coaster that they didn't want
to get on. Oh, God help me. I mean, you know, everybody cries
out to something on their deathbed. See, he did believe in God in
his last breath. I don't believe that. I don't believe that somebody
can just say, Oh, God, and then die and then be saved. Because
it isn't what we say that saves us, it's what God did that saves
us. And when the truth is in us, we can confess that over
and over again. Denying what the apostles teach
in the New Testament is to deny the very word. And the very son
of God is to deny God himself is to make him a liar. And one cannot lie on Christ
and say that they are in God. That's what the Pharisees did.
Well, Abraham is our father. We believe in Messiah, the Christ,
same word. And he's coming to save us. Sounds
like a gospel confession to me. And then Jesus showed up and
taught him who he really was. And they're like, nah, you're
not my Messiah. There's a lot of messiahs who
are Jesus, who are Christian, who are in the culture, but they
are not the Christ of scripture. So how do we know? We're in the
Bible. We're in the Bible together, and if you notice, I'm going
verse by verse by verse. This is the third time I've gone
over these same verses, and I have one more week, and we're going
to go over them over and over again, and it is not me imparting
my creativity on these verses. I mean, I could do a 20-minute
sermonette with an outline. A true Christian stays with the
apostles. So stick with the apostles, brothers,
sisters. A true Christian doesn't deny
Jesus. Don't deny Him. A true Christian
abides in the Word. So keep reading. A true Christian
walks in righteousness, so obey. Let's pray. Pass the plate. I
mean, you know, how do I do that? You don't. That's not what His
teaching says. I mean, it doesn't take creativity.
It doesn't take a seminar. It doesn't take 135 hours of
school to learn to do that. Just go sell cars for six months.
You got it. It's easy to come up with those
things. So let no one who denies the
sun has the Father. They lie on Christ. They do not
have God. But whoever confesses the Son
has the Father also. If you want to be found in the
presence of God, you have to confess the Son. And in order
to confess the Son, the truth of the Son has to be granted
you repentance. So that you have some understanding
of what Christ did. You know what I was taught in
my early twenties? Well, this is good and all, James, but let
me tell you how God works. We can just mention the name
of Jesus and God can save some people. I can just say, you've got to
believe in Jesus. And they go, you know what I
do? And they're saved. That's baloney. Many antichrists
have come in the what? Name of Jesus? Many antichrists
are here today in the name of Jesus? But the issue, you realize
it doesn't say anti-Jesus. The name is common. Only when
the one who is Yeshua Yahweh saves, Jesus the Christ, the
one holy and anointed one of God, is it truth. The point then of abiding in
the truth of the doctrine of Christ is abiding in the promises
of God for eternal life. This is where we are today. Verse
24, let what you heard. Now see, if you go to Paul and
his writing in Romans 9, 1 through 9, you see Romans 10.
Romans 10 is a proof text, is a pretext of anti-Christ evangelism
out of context. If you just say the magic words,
you remember that? I dream of Jeannie, you know,
she can do her little nose. You just do the magic intentation, then you have
eternal life. Did you do it right? Well, I
don't know. Were you sincere? Yes. You must not have been sincere
three months later, because I still see you smoking outside. You
know. Well, I'm just defeated. Well,
you better rededicate your life. I'm going to open the altar, come on forward,
cry loudly, and maybe God will hear you. That's not salvation. The promise is the point. The
promise of life, what you heard from the beginning, abide in
you. What have you heard? Have you
heard the truth of Christ and so believe in it? How are we
hearing? Hearing comes by what? Christ. How are they to hear if we don't
go and teach? and share and teach the Bible
to the people who say they believe, who say they want to hear it. I think missions could be extremely
short-lived if we just get to Christ straight away. No, we're
going to spend 12 years meeting needs and then on that 13th year
we're going to say, okay, now that we've got everything settled,
I want to talk about Jesus. Let's just show up. Hey, we're
talking about Jesus. Oh, yeah, we know Jesus. Let
me read Jesus. John one. And you look up John 20. That's what happened in John
six, wasn't it? Jesus preaches himself and everybody does. Mission trip over, didn't even
have to buy a ticket. Evangelistically. So how do we
hear hearing? Faith comes by hearing, but hearing
comes by the words of Christ. We have to teach the doctrines
of Christ. We have to teach the Holy One
of God and what He did and who He is and who He did it for.
We have to teach the fullness and the full counsel of the gospel.
We don't pull pieces out of the narratives. We don't ever go
to Hebrews 13 if we haven't taught 1 through 12. We don't ever go to Romans 13
if the body of Christ is not secure in their salvation that's
found throughout. Because then we just have a bunch
of obedient people who are obeying the elders and who are obeying
the magistrate, but they don't even have a clue why. And then there's a conditional
statement here in verse 24. If what you heard from the beginning abides
in you, then you too will abide in the
Son and in the Father. Stop there for a second. How
do I let it abide in me? Jesus already said that. I went
in John 17 a couple of weeks ago. John 14, John 15, I've been
all over it. Jesus says, I abide in you. And because of that, you abide
in me and you bear much fruit. The abiding is not our job in
the sense of our salvation. The abiding is our job as we
make war against the wrong cup being sipped to our lips. That's
not right. Or a sour, like I picked up a
cup of coffee here sometime first of the year. That was the week
before us. And I thought I was going to die. And those of you
who don't know me, I am an incredibly fearful person of bacteria and
fungi. So I have, that, I had to go
home and sleep that off. It was bad. Prey, peroxide, you
know. It's just, mm, thinking about
it now, I'm losing my train of thought. Okay. I didn't care
to concern myself with saving that cup. We know the truth. We spit it out. We can investigate. We can be discriminating. That's
discernment. We can listen. We can say, OK, what are you
trying to say? Listen, let him get it out. And I go, that's
not the truth. This is the truth. That's wrong. This is right. That's a lie.
This is not. That's death. This is life, because
that's what it all boils down to, isn't it? What does he say
there in verse 24? And this is the promise that he made to us.
Eternal life. That promise is God's to keep. That promise is God's to procure.
The conditions of that promise are met in Jesus Christ. He is
the payment of salvation. It is finished, Jesus said. Now,
if we look in the gospel narratives and Jesus said, well, I hope
you get it right. We'd be in trouble. No, he says it's finished and
he hung his head. Into thy hands I commit my spirit.
Then he died. And then God raised him to life
to prove that the promise was true. If we have died in Christ, we
will live in it. See, the promise is the point.
There's something against how this promise looks. or how this promise is applied
in the hearts of unconverted people. And that is a lie, and
it is Antichrist. Well, in order for you to have
life, here's what you must do. I mean, I listened to a sermon
earlier this morning. Somebody had sent me, and I wish
I hadn't, but I did. And it was ridiculous. How to
secure salvation, that was the name of the topic. And this man who preached it
would consider himself my brother and would consider himself in
the reformed faith and would consider himself in the context
of the gospel, sovereign grace, but yet he preached a lie about
Christ. And the entire 35 minutes was
about what we must do to ensure the promise of God for us. See, people love to revise the
gospel. They love to revise the gospel because they've not been
shown by the Spirit of God the truth. They don't have repentance
to believe that which is clearly making no provision for the flesh.
And so our way is to try to make a way for the flesh to be actively
involved in our salvation. But if we believe the gospel,
another way of putting it here, John is saying, if you believe
the gospel by my hand, according to me, according to Paul, according
to James, according to Jesus, then you will abide because you
are redeemed and you are saved. But if you listen to these antichrists,
if you listen to these revisionists, if you listen to these heretics,
if you listen to these false teachers and you make much of them And
then you forsake that which you have heard from the beginning.
You were never in Christ. But you are in Christ. They aren't. In verse 26, I write these things
to you about those who are trying to deceive you. See, John wants
them to be aware that these people exist. He wants them to be aware
that there are false teachers. And beloved, a lot of times false
teachers don't even know they're deceived. Yes, you've got the
charlatans that are making bank on heresy. It's obvious. You order a steak and you see
a hot dog on the plate, it's not much rocket science. Doesn't
take much of an IQ to figure out you've been duped. I paid
$12 for that. Oh, I'm at Disney World, okay,
that makes sense. You know, $75 soda to boot. Oh,
you wanted ketchup, well, you better get the debit card. It's
not that easy, it's subtle. It's subtle. The lies are subtle. And these men believe what they
believe and they believe it wholeheartedly. And then they say on one side
of the mountain, sovereignty, sovereign grace, the elect of
God. And on the other side of the
mountain, but you better be careful. You better get it right. You
better put yourself in a place. You better come. You better act. You better live.
So we have the responsibility of saying to those in our circle
of influence, stop listening to that. Quit paying for a steak. They're serving you a hot dog,
dummy. You are drinking last week's coffee. You're going to
die. And when we say it, let the Word
of God then abide in us that we get off of that debate and
we get into the positive doctrinal assertions of the proclamation
of Christ and His work. Get there. There alone is life. The confrontation is just busting
in the door like LAPD. We're here. We're not here to
arrest you. We're here to set you free. Get to the freedom. Don't talk about the mechanics
of how the door was bolted on. I just kicked it open. Don't
worry about the door. We'll throw it away later. Get over here."
That's where we need to be. People are trying to deceive
the church, but they can't. And these deceivers have departed
from the truth, and this departure is to revise or reduce or make
addendums to the gospel, to the truth that the apostles taught
in accordance to that which was from the beginning, that which
they've been taught from the beginning by the One who is from
the beginning. This is the truth. Then in contrast,
verse 27, in closing, here. Told you I had to do this one
more week. But you, but you, but the anointing that you received
from Him abides in you. See how the tension is now off?
But it says, I must abide. The anointing abides. The calling
abides. The truth abides, beloved. You
remain in the truth or you're disqualified to teach it. And you have no need that anyone
should teach you. And I believe in the context
there, John is saying, don't listen to these people. Don't
entertain time with them. Don't sit down at a table so
that they can talk about their view of their heresy. Well, I
just want to discuss it. That's the way of the cults,
isn't it? And we've learned to discern that. Why can't we discern
it with the people amongst us? Can I just show you how Jesus
isn't really God? Can I just show you what the
Bible says concerning the fact that Michael is also God's son? Can I show you that Lucifer is
a twin brother of Jesus? I mean, these are true. These
are real, not true. These are real. Doctrines of
some cause. Can I just show you where works
are required for salvation? Can I just show you where anybody
can be saved? Can I just show you? No, you
can't. I'm not interested. Because here is the full body
of truth. Let me read it to you. Sit down
for 90 minutes and listen. And if they are the elect of
God, He will correct that crud. And if they are not, they will
double down on their heresy and they will walk away. You, the
anointing you have abides and you do not need that anyone should
teach you. But as His anointing teaches
you, listen to this, the present tense, as His anointing teaches
you about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as
it has taught you, just as you learned there and were taught,
and now you are being taught now. abide in Him. So now there is a different view
in which the idea of abiding sits. The idea of abiding now,
we hold fast to that which we know. We hold fast to the truth
of the one that we know. We hold fast to the assurance
that we know. And in doing so, we also need to learn more about
His righteousness in the practice thereof. And then John's going
to explain it very clearly as he parts into chapter three. John's letter is an incredibly
cohesive, myopic argument. This is not a letter that has
25 topics. This is a single, powerful truth. The Antichrist, the Against Christ
have nothing worth learning. They do not learn, we should
not learn rather, false doctrine. It is evil and a poor investment
of our time. We should not partner with those who teach false doctrine.
We should not call brother or sister those who change the doctrine
of Christ. These people are of the lie.
They are the children of the devil. They have no love for
God. They have no love for the church.
They have no love for the gospel. They revise the teaching of the
truth. They blaspheme God the spirit. They twist scripture
in order to make provision for the flesh. They are evil. They
have not abided in the truth, not because of how they live,
but because of what they believe. Everything that is true is taught
to you by his word, beloved. And His Word gives you the wisdom
to understand and to teach rightly. Just as He has taught us, we
then therefore must abide in Him because He still teaches
us just as He taught us. And the anointing, God the Holy
Spirit, is our seal, our guarantee of our hope. is the discernment
maker when we learn the truth, when we see the error. He will
not change the message of his truth. That would be a lie and
God does not lie. So verse 28, 29, which is where
we'll be next week. Let's hear it as we close. And
now little children abide in him so that when he appears,
we may have confidence not to shrink back from him and shame
at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure
that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of Him. I want
you to hear two passages of Scripture from this letter. In chapter
3, verse 23, John writes these words, and this is the commandment
that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and that
we love one another just as He commanded us. And in chapter
5, verse 1, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has
been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father has been
born of Him. So don't hear what John is not
saying. Don't hear the revisionists of
our day. Don't hear the false teachers of our day who want
to put a burden on the body of Christ to do something, to be
something and to gauge something that's not biblical. I write these things so that
you may not sin, he said. But if you do sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, who is
our propitiation. But the point of my writing is
not that you would stop sinning. That's not even addressed here. The point of my writing is not
that you would understand the truth because you already know
the truth. The point of my writing is not so that you would fall
into fear and wonder if you're really in Christ. I've already
said you are, beloved. The point of my writing is not
so that you would fall into guilt because you just aren't living
right. That's not why I'm writing this letter, John says. It is
so that you may point your mind to the truth. And in doing so,
you may point your ways and your path to the truth. And that you
may love one another, and that you may live toward the light
of God, who in there is no darkness at all. And that is the truth
of this text. May the word of the Lord give
us understanding. Let's pray. We love you, Father,
for everything. Lord, for teaching us the gospel,
for teaching us the truth, for teaching us all that it is that
you've wanted us to see, for helping guard in us the perfectness
of your righteousness in the gospel of grace. guarding in us the sealing of
our faith, the efficacy of our faith and that it is not our
faith that saves, but it is. Christ. To whom we look. And whom we rest. And whom we
live. So, Lord, as we continue to learn. Grow us deeply. Break us from
our fleshliness. Help us to submit to the truth
and not to be committed to the yoke of slavery. Lord, give us the truth that
we might correct it. That we might proclaim it. that
we might come together as a body and with those around us and
in our community, in our family, in our homes and in our jobs,
at our schools, that we might be able to rightly proclaim the
promise of God, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus for his
people. And that in doing so, that you would bring your elect
to life. that they would proclaim the
truth and that they would rejoice. We pray this in the name of Christ,
our Savior. Amen.