Grace Church exists to glorify our Heavenly Father by
 continually making more disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

 

Snakes in the 1 John 2:18-23 Get Real: A Study of 1 John Sermon #11 Jonestown! A place synonymous with blind loyalty to a cult leader. It’s hard to believe nearly thirty years have passed since Peoples Temple minister, Jim Jones, and 912 of his followers committed mass suicide, most by drinking cyanide laced punch. Nearly 300 of them were children. Jim Jones claimed that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and had divine powers. Yet, at one time Jim Jones was a popular pastor in San Francisco and even sat on the city’s Housing Authority Commission. Former California Governor Jerry Brown had even attended services at the Peoples Temple. Fred Lewis lost his wife and seven children in the Jonestown massacre said of Jim Jones, “he was a con artist all the way.”   While we know that there are con artists and scams even in the Church, most of us at the same time, don’t really want to believe it. While it’s easy to believe that cultists like the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons are false teachers, we have a hard time believing that pastors we know, radio or TV preachers that we like, even a gifted Sunday School teacher is a false teacher. We just don’t want to believe that there really are Snakes in the Church. We live in a day when there is a lack of spiritual discernment because we are so ignorant of spiritual truth. As a result, many Christians have bought into a contemporary myth, “It doesn’t matter what you believe, just as long as you’re sincere!” But it’s doubtful whether most of those who make that statement have really thought it through. Is sincerity the magic ingredient that makes something true? If so, then we ought to be able to apply it to any area of life, not just to religion.   Say a nurse in a hospital gives some medicine to a patient and the patient becomes violently ill. The nurse is sincere but the medicine is wrong, and the patient dies. “It doesn’t matter what you believe, just as long as you’re sincere!”   A man hears noises in his house one night and decides a burglar has broken in. He gets his gun and shoots the "burglar," who turns out to be his daughter! Unable to sleep, she has gotten up for a bite to eat. She ends up the victim of her father's sincerity. “It doesn’t matter what you believe, just as long as you’re sincere!”   It takes much more than sincerity to make something true. Faith in a lie will always cause serious consequences; faith in the truth is never misplaced. It does make a difference what a person believes! If a man wants to drive from Chicago to New York, no amount of sincerity will get him there if the highway is taking him to Los Angeles. A person who is real builds his/her life on truth, not superstition or lies. It is impossible to Get Real or live a real life by believing lies.   Just sixty years have passed since the birth of the Church. If John was dealing with “antichrists” or Snakes in the Church in the 1st Century, should we be surprised that we have so many today? It’s highly significant that John, the apostle of love, who has just written that love is an essential mark of the true Christian (vss. 7-11), now calls these false teachers “antichrists” and “liars”! He doesn’t call them “brothers in Christ,” who just have a different way of understanding things. He makes it plain that they were trying to deceive the true Christians and that they were not Christian in any sense of the term.   Please mark it down. Biblical love is never divorced from an emphasis on Biblical truth. To compromise the truth about the person and work of Jesus Christ is to be hateful to the core, because such error results in the eternal damnation of those who embrace it.   In these verses John applies his third test by which you may evaluate the soundness of a teacher, as well as your own life. He has already given us the moral test of obedience to God’s commandments (2:3-6). He has given the relational test of love (2:7-11). Now he gives the doctrinal test of truth about the person and work of Jesus Christ (2:18-27). This morning we’re focusing on the first part of this passage. Turn to 1 John 2:18-23 (p. 862). So how can we get the Snakes out of the Church? How can a Christian keep from being conned by religious con-artists? John tells us that… 1. To avoid spiritual deception we must be discerning of people and doctrine. Years ago General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, said this about the future days. There will be religion without Jesus, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration. He said there will be politics without God, and heaven without hell. Booth said that’s what the world was going to be like in the future…the future is here. He was right.   John is sounding the alarm. He contrasts the false teachers with true believers and addresses his readers as “dear children,” implying their vulnerability and need to be on guard against these unprincipled men who were trying to deceive them (v. 26). As a wise spiritual father, John is giving important counsel that helps us avoid being deceived. And he does this though with some unique religious terms. These aren’t terms most of us use in every day conversation. You don't often run into these terms except in the context of talking about spiritual things. I doubt that you used the term antichrist this past week, yet it’s a term we need to understand. The last hour, what does John mean by that? He wrote this nineteen hundred years ago. How can he have been anything but mistaken in using the term, “last hour”? We read here of the anointing of the Holy One. What in the world is that? By way of a series of red alerts, let’s work through what John is warning us of.   a) Red Alert! We are in the last days. “Dear children, this is the last hour.” The end of the world has always been a fascinating theme. Hollywood is infatuated with disaster movies; Armageddon, Deep Impact. Now we have a disaster TV show, Jericho. End of the world themes have always fascinated people. Perhaps this is part of the fixation on global warming. Speculation over how and when the world would end has captivated the minds of every generation. We know it’s possible. During the Cold War with the escalation of the Arms Race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it even seemed probable. Terrorism and lunatic leaders like Kim Jong Il of North Korea or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran have caused end of the world paranoia to rise once again.   Christians know that the end of the world is inevitable. Scripture teaches that there will come a time when this world as we now know it will cease to be and It encourages us to be cognizant that the end is coming. That’s why Christians have been studying the end times since the time of Christ.   One old farmer had a grandfather clock that went haywire and chimed fourteen times one midnight. He jumped out of bed and said, “Wake up, Honey, it’s later than it’s ever been before.” In 2007 that’s true. It’s later than it’s ever been before.   But some have said that John mistakenly thought that Jesus would return in his lifetime. Such a view undermines the divine inspiration of Scripture. If you buy into that, then you really cannot trust anything that the apostles wrote. Worse, you become the judge of Scripture according to what strikes you as true and it also impugns the intelligence of the apostles. John had heard Jesus say that no one knows the hour of His coming (Matt. 24:36). It’s not reasonable to accuse him of being mistaken here about the time of the second coming. Rather John is calling the entire period between Jesus’ ascension and His return "the last hour." No one knows how long this period will last, but the phrase, "the last hour," implies a sense of urgency, in that Jesus may come at any moment. Remember Jesus concluded His teaching on the end times with this application to the wise hearer: "Take heed, keep on the alert; for you do not know when the appointed time will come" (Mark 13:33).   E. M. Blaiklock wisely said, “Nothing is so damaging in the study of New Testament prophesy…as to imagine that the Eternal God, who stands above and outside of time, is bound by the clocks and calendars of men.” In the Christian era it is always five minutes to midnight. The last hour began in John’s time and has been growing in intensity ever since. It’s referring to a kind of time, not a duration of time.   b) Red Alert! There are many antichrists. “and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.” John points out that a distinguishing feature of this age is that antichrist is coming and already many antichrists have appeared. John is the only New Testament writer to use this word and it only occurs five times in four verses (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7). But this concept of the antichrist is more frequent. Daniel 7 talks about the little horn and Revelation 13 talks about the beast, both of which refer to antichrist. Paul mentions the man of lawlessness who will exalt himself and display himself as being God. His coming will be "in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders" (2 Thess. 2:9). He will deceive many, who will perish. When John says that antichrist is coming, he refers to this future evil leader. But when he says, "even now many antichrists have appeared," he means that the evil spirit that will characterize the final antichrist is already working in these false teachers who have left the churches. The prefix "anti" can mean either "instead of" or "in opposition to." It may contain both ideas here. False teachers rise up within the church and present a system that subtly presents another “Jesus.” The false teacher may use the same label, "Jesus Christ," but He will not be the same Jesus presented in God’s Word. If a gullible person takes the bait, he’s led farther away until finally he’s in total opposition to Christ.   Now these false teachers, whom John labels antichrists, didn’t carry pitchforks or wear red suits with horns and a tail, or T-shirts saying, "Warning: I am an antichrist!" Rather, they arose very subtly in the churches. Some of them may have been pastors or teachers who for a while had taught the truth. But they were antichrists nonetheless.   c) Red Alert! Beware of anyone who breaks from the true church to form a new group with a new theology! “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.” Ronald Knox translates this, “They came of our company but they never belonged to our company.”   One of the greatest revivals in American history was in response to the preaching of Jonathan Edwards during the Great Awakening in New England in 1742 and many responded in apparent faith in Christ. What is rarely talked of is that just four years later, many of those had lost their spiritual interest and were no longer following Christ. That same year, 1746, Edwards published his book, Treatise on the Religious Affections. It was written to address these very questions: How can the true believer be distinguished from the false; How is it that some who begin so well do not continue? Jonathan Edwards, like our Lord and the Apostles carefully distinguished between those who only appear to be saved and those who really are.   An attack from without tends to draw Christians closer together but heretics within the fellowship scatter the flock. Throughout history persecution from without has purged and strengthened the church but divisions and broken fellowship are the results of pretenders within. On non-essentials we need to be gracious and give room for liberty but on the non-negotiables or doctrine (the deity of Christ, salvation by grace alone, the bodily resurrection of Christ, etc.) we cannot give any ground.   Most of us have not experienced on a churchwide basis what John is talking about. He’s not talking about people who get disgruntled in one evangelical church and leave to join or form another evangelical church. And while that practice is usually regrettable and sad, it’s not heresy unless they also have abandoned core Christian truth. Heretics not only eventually separate themselves from true Christians to form their own groups, but they also deviate from orthodox Christian doctrine on major issues. They claim that they have the truth and that others do not, or that they now see things that others do not see. And invariably they try to recruit others from within the church to join them.   While such situations are painful and unpleasant, John’s words should prepare us to not to be surprised or disheartened when it happens. If it happened to the churches under John’s care, it can and will happen to churches today. But when it happens, we need to think Biblically about some issues.   First, true Christians are born of God. The key issue with these false teachers was, they were not of us. They did not share the new life in Christ that brings us into His body, the Church. So they felt free to leave. You can be on the membership list of the church without having experienced the new birth. While I believe it’s important to be a member of a church and that’s what the New Testament teaches, what is far, far more important is to make sure that you’re truly of the Church (Big C) through the new birth.   Second, if you truly know Christ, you will persevere with the church. It’s imperfect. It contains difficult and irritating people but it’s still family! You were born into it through the new birth, and so was everyone else who has truly trusted Christ. While you may not have picked these folks to be in your family, God picked them and you’ve got to learn to get along with them! Although they often grate like sandpaper against your soul, it’s by persevering with them that God smoothes your rough edges. You will experience hurt feelings and misunderstandings if you get involved in a local church! Be committed to work through these matters. Don’t bail out on the church! As B. H. Carroll used to say, “When you see a star fall you can know it is not a star.” When someone leaves the true Church, they are not a Christian.   Third, there are blessed subtractions. John was much more concerned about purity of doctrine than he was about church growth or unity. He never says, “We should go after these dear brothers and bring them back!” Or, “Let’s set aside our differences and love these people.” Rather, he says in effect, “Their departure shows their true colors. Let them go!”   If the doctrinal issue is a core matter of the faith, purity is much more important than unity or church growth. We must never measure a church’s success by the numbers who attend, but rather by its faithfulness to the truth of the gospel.   The test of orthodoxy is submission and adherence to the apostolic teaching contained in the New Testament. Mark it down. When someone comes up with some new “truth” that no one else has discovered since the days of the apostles, beware! These heretics claimed that they had now been initiated into a deeper level of truth than the average church member had experienced. It always flatters our pride to think that we have some deeper level of truth that others lack, or we have had some special spiritual experience that other poor souls are missing out on. These false teachers were claiming such knowledge and offering it as bait to those who had not yet been enlightened. But rather than been drawn to some “new truth,” John’s “dear children” needed to abide in the old gospel truth that they had believed from the start. Sadly, if you investigate many of the cults, you’ll find most of them started out in Bible-believing local churches.   John’s first point then is that to avoid spiritual deception, be alert…We are in the last days. There are many antichrists and beware of anyone who breaks from the true church to form a new group with new theology! 2. To avoid spiritual deception we must utilize the resources that God has provided for us.   a) Knowing the truth is a gift from the Spirit. “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth” (vss. 20-21). Remember, Jesus gave the “anointing” or “another Comforter” to us. This anointing is the Holy Spirit. The reason I say that to know the truth is a gift is because it depends on the anointing. Verse 20 “you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.” Or verse 27, “the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you.” When someone is converted they are immediately baptized and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the anointing. The gift of the Holy Spirit enables true believers to know the difference between God’s truth and the lie of the antichrists.   So this anointing is simply the coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives. Acts 10:38 says that Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit. 1 John 4:13 says that God has given us of His Spirit. The anointing referred to in verses 20 and 27 is coming of the Spirit into our hearts or the baptism of the Spirit at the moment of salvation.     We can go back then and rephrase verse 20 like this: "You have the Holy Spirit from God in you and so you know the truth." Verse 27 would go like this: "The Holy Spirit which you received from God abides in you and so you have no need that any one should teach you. That is, you don't need these progressive prophets who claim to add new information about Christ beyond the truth you heard at the beginning." What is plain from these two verses is that without the Holy Spirit we would not know the truth. But we do know the truth about Christ in spite of lies taught by antichrists because the Spirit Himself bears witness in our heart that we know the truth.   You and I are the home (or as Paul says, “the temple”) where the Spirit of God lives on this earth. He has come into the world to speak of and glorify Christ. Let me put it this way. He is the pro-Christ who answers an antichrist. He promotes the words and work and person of Christ. He reminds us of the power of the cross and the certainty of the resurrection, and everything else we need to live vital Christian lives.   b) To avoid spiritual deception, we must be discerning of the truth. The late philosophy professor Allan Bloom began his best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind, “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative." Allan Bloom was right. Ours is a culture which rejects the idea of absolute truth, especially in the spiritual realm. It smacks of arrogance to say that you know the truth and that others who do not share your view are wrong. You're free to have your own spiritual opinions, as long as you don't claim that your view is the only true view.   This prevailing tenant of postmodernism has now invaded the church through "the emergent church." This growing movement downplays preaching (what could be more arrogant than for one man to stand up and say that he is proclaiming the truth?). And it magnifies sharing personal experiences in an accepting, nonjudgmental atmosphere.   But this is completely contrary to John's statement in 2:20 “all of you know the truth” and to 2:21, “I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.” John believed in absolute truth in the spiritual realm, and that you can know when you're right and others are wrong! This means that…   c) Sound doctrine really matters! John says, “No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also” (v. 23).  He goes on to say (2:25) that all of this concerns God's promise to us about eternal life. That's critical! If you deny the truth about God's Son as revealed in the New Testament, you do not have the Father and you do not have eternal life! Sound doctrine really matters! Your eternal destiny depends on it!   d) Sound doctrine is inextricably linked with a personal relationship with God. John says that if you deny the Son, you do not have the Father. He goes on to talk about abiding in the Son and the Father (2:24). Abiding is his word for fellowship or a close relationship with God. His point is that if you deny the cardinal truth about Jesus Christ and yet claim to know God, you’re deceiving yourself. Alexander Ross points out that “the man who denies the Son is an orphan, a fatherless child in the vast loneliness of the universe.”   Now this does not mean that a new believer must have all of their theological ducks in a row and be able to give precisely correct theological statements about the trinity or the two natures of Christ in order to be truly saved. What it does mean though is that if someone knowingly makes heretical statements about Christ and is not open to correction, his/her salvation is suspect. Sound doctrine necessarily goes along with a genuine personal relationship with God.   e) Sound doctrine about the person and work of Christ is absolutely vital. “Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ.” Christ’s deity and the Trinity are truth anchors. Most heresies go astray with regard to the person or work of Jesus Christ. John Calvin pointed out that since Christ is the sum of the gospel, heretics especially aim their arrows at Him. The only way we can know the Father is through the Son (John 14:6). These false teachers were denying that Jesus is the Christ, that He is God.        Rev. W. Kingstone Greenland visited a vacant house with a friend who desired to purchase it. The friend was particularly struck by the beauty of one of the rooms which he wished to turn into his study; but he objected to a cupboard in the corner. "I will have to remove it," he said to the architect. "No, you won't," was the reply. "But I can do what I like if I buy the house," said the man. "You cannot do what you like with that cupboard," answered the architect. "Why not?" he asked. "Is it protected by a clause in the deed?" "No," said the architect, "it is not on the deed; it is on the plan. You cannot take away the cupboard without taking down the house, it is part of the main structure." Beloved, if we take away the deity of Christ, we destroy the whole structure of Christianity. That doctrine is built in. It is central. It is foundational to the structure.   The context here, which refers to Jesus as the Son of God and which closely links the Father and the Son, indicates that these false teachers denied the full deity of Jesus Christ. They denied the incarnation, that God took on human flesh in the virgin birth of Jesus. They taught instead that "the Christ" came upon the human Jesus at His baptism and departed at His crucifixion. John says that they denied both the Father and the Son. Yet, you cannot have God without Jesus.   Mark it down. Cults all go astray on the person and work of Jesus Christ. They deny His deity and His substitutionary death on the cross. They deny the Trinity. Some of them speak in Gnostic fashion of "the Christ within us all." By denying the Son of God, they do not have the Father. In the words of John the Apostle of love, they are liars, deceivers, and antichrists. Conclusion: Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip about a six-year-old boy and his toy tiger. In one episode the irrepressible Calvin says, "I am a great believer in the value of novelty. I say anything new is good by definition. It can shock, insult, or offend me as long as it doesn't bore me. If you can't give me something new then repackage the old stuff so it looks new. Novelty is all that matters. I won't pay attention if it's not fresh and different." Hobbes, looking on reflectively, says, "I can see why timeless truth doesn't sell well." Calvin: "Give me a good flash in the pan any day."   This mentality of saying, "I'm bored, and what I require is something new just for the sheer novelty of it," may be appropriate for a six-year-old. But it’s not appropriate for grownups. "A good flash in the pan any day" is a destructive way to live. John says, "Remain, stand firm, abide." The news about Christ and His life on earth, His death, His resurrection and His return, is familiar to us who have heard the truth taught. Yet it is revolutionizingly new in its influence, in the joy it brings, in the facets that we haven't seen yet as the Spirit teaches us to understand and apply it in marvelous new ways. Let me close this morning with the lyrics of an old gospel song, I Love to Tell the Story: I love to tell the story of unseen things above, Of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His love; I love to tell the story because I know 'tis true, It satisfies my longings as nothing else can do. Refrain:  I love to tell the story! 'Twill be my theme in glory- To tell the old, old story Of Jesus and His love. I love to tell the story---'tis pleasant to repeat What seems, each time I tell it, more wonderfully sweet; I love to tell the story, for some have never heard The message of salvation from God's own holy Word. I love to tell the story, for those who know it best Seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest; And when in scenes of glory I sing the new, new song, 'Twill be the old, old story that I have loved so long. If it’s new, it’s not true…if it’s true, it’s not new. There are snakes out there…be careful!! Know God’s Word…let the Spirit keep you in all His truth!