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We’re in our third week following the New Testament letter, which is called 1 John to help you get your head around it because your head, maybe in many different places. John has written his letter so that his readers would have the best fellowship with God possible. That’s why John has written his letter. He wants his readers to have Fellowship with God, that he is unaffected and unpoisoned by sin, error and hatred.

And that’s the letter which unfolds for us, called 1 John. Now it is a very real privilege to have fellowship with God. It comes because of Jesus. Jesus says I’m the door. Whoever enters will be saved. You want to have fellowship with God, begin with Jesus. It’s also a very valuable thing to have fellowship with God. One of the old hymns puts it like this.

Pardon for sin, a peace that endures your own dear presence to cheer into God. Strength for today. Bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine 10,000.

Besides a great privilege to have fellowship with God, but it is a targeted privilege. There are forces at work to ruin the fellowship. There are inward forces and we saw those a couple of weeks ago in the area of sinfulness, and there are outward forces in terms of the world. And that’s what we come to today. The outward forces, which would ruin our fellowship with God and our main section today 1 John Chapter 2 verses, 18 to 27. The main section is how God is going to prepare us in the face of the world, to be wise and to be secure because he’s given us his truth. I love the way John uses language in this particular part of his letter. To make sure that we sit up and take notice, he says it’s the last hour.

Imagine if I came to you this morning and I said, with the authority of God, it is the last hour. What does that mean? It’s the last hour. And then he says, as you walk out of the room today, there are antichrists. In fact, it’s possible in the room here there are antichrists. What does he mean by that?

And then he says. But you’ve received an anointing. Really. What does he mean? You’ve received an anointing. Now this language you see, is designed to wake us. And so I want to ask you if you turn in your Bibles 1 John, Chapter 2, verse 15. I do want to say a quick word to you about truth, because there is plenty to say about truth, but it is impossible to measure the importance and the value and the significance of truth. I was very interested to read the reason why the film The Titanic, which came out in the late nineties, had the scene in the movie of some of the senior sailors firing guns and ordering the men to stand back so that the men, so that the women and the Children would get onto the lifeboats first.

Because every eyewitness to the sinking of the Titanic will tell you that the men were incredibly courageous in standing back and letting the women and the Children get into the lifeboats first. So why did the movie introduce this scene of sailors firing pistols and ordering men to stand back? And the answer is because the movie was adjusting the truth of the first half of the 20th century to fit the cynicism of the second half of the 20th century, because nobody would have believed the men would do it. This was a massaging of the truth to suit the culture.

Allowing truth to stand untouched

Now you’ll notice, if you think about it, that the massaging of the truth takes place in the disciplines which seem to be safe.

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Disciplines like history, religion, ethics. But the massaging of the truth does not take place in the disciplines which are not seen to be safe. So areas like science, technology, engineering do not massage the truth.

In other words, if I think that there is a safe distance between myself and one set of facts, like the reality of Jesus or doing the will of God, if I think there is a safe distance between me and that set of information, I can easily in my mind massage the information to suit myself.

If, however, I think there is no safe distance between myself and certain facts like the need to drive on the left side of the road, I will submit because I don’t see that there is safety in massaging the truth because my self-interest and human self-interest is at work dictating the truth, and that’s why we need to see what is actually going on in the world that we’re part of because people are selecting their information, not on the basis of truth, but they’re basing their seal, their seal activity on the basis of personal power, personal pleasure, etcetera. And I’m not suggesting that when you become a Christian, you’re above that.

What I’m saying is that you should at least understand yourself, and you should at least understand the world in which you live. Personal interest drives us. Selecting/rejecting truths has got a lot to do with personal interest.

And the reason this is so important is that because of our sinfulness, we’re not even good at working out, which is a safe area to do it in.

We’re so prejudiced and we’re so jaundiced. We think it will be safe to massage the truth in a certain area and we’re completely wrong. And we think it will be dangerous to stick to certain truths. And yet it may be perfectly harmless. And, God, you see in his goodness tells us the areas that we need to be careful.

Sets of ‘Two’

And the question really is, will we listen? So with that little introduction, let’s turn to our passage this morning which is 1 John 2:15. And I want to give four quick points this morning the first of the points I would call two loves. Is there a godly love or an ungodly love in your heart? The second point this morning is basically two sides or two groups or two humanities. The third point this morning will be two warnings. God gives us two warnings about what to look for in the most serious error. And the fourth point this morning is two protections God has provided for us two protections in order that we’d be able to live in the world securely and joyfully. So First of all two loves verses 15 to 17. The outward danger to our fellowship with God is the world.

So he says, Chapter two, Verse 15. Don’t love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him for everything in the world. The cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, the boasting of what he has and does comes not from the father, but from the world. The world and its desires pass away But the man who does the will of God lives forever.

Now, as we’ve heard this morning, Jesus is, uh, John is not talking here about the round world. He’s not talking about the creation, which is beautiful and yet unpredictable. He’s talking about the secular world. He’s talking about the system which dethrones Christ, which would like Christ to be nowhere. He’s talking about the secular world, which thinks and advertises and campaigns and plans and, uh, promotes and lives as if Christ is irrelevant. That’s a system. And his appeal, you see, is don’t get devoted to the hostile world because if you get devoted to the hostile world, you’ll move away from Christ.

It is a very loving appeal that John is making. He loves his readers. We’ve already been told in verses 12 to 14. He regards them as his dear Children. He reminds them that they’re forgiven and that they belong to the father and that they know God and that they’ve overcome the evil one. So he loves his readers, but he makes this appeal not to be devoted to the hostile world because he wants his readers to be in fellowship with God now. Sadly, of course it is so easy even in the Christian life, to have fellowship with God that goes sour because we are deceived by the world.

And then we find ourselves in a distant fellowship with God, and we walk in this miserable condition of being deceived and distant, the person who has a sort of a foot in each camp who thinks I’m going to be as worldly as I can be. And I’m going to be as spiritual as I can be finds that they are actually putting 2 ft in two different boats and splitting dreadfully. But, John wants us to have fellowship with God. He also wants us to be safe with God because, he says in verse 17, the world is perishing.

Now where you pin your heart is where you will end up eventually, and so if you pin your heart on something which will perish, you’ll perish. If you pin your heart on someone who is eternal, then you will enjoy eternal life. No wonder John is concerned. He wants his readers to be in fellowship with God immediately and safe eternally so. Whatever you do is you read these verses don’t miss.

The loving concern and challenge of these verses don’t throw them out as some people have done in the last 2000 years and said, Well, this means we’ve got to join a cult or we’ve got to join a commune You know, this is to totally overreact to the verses. The other possibility, which is much more likely in our building this morning is to under react is to say, well, I know somebody who’s a lot more worldly than me. They have two boats.

Well, I don’t so I’m OK. That would be to under react. What we need to do is we need to recognise our capacity. It’s in me and it’s in you, and that is to have some kind of occasional just respect for Christ, just an awareness of him. But actually our devotion and our passion, the thing that gets us excited, is for something else for something that is passing.

And if you have desires that can grip you suddenly frighteningly, and I’m sure you do because I do. And if you have, um, eyes that are tempted all the time, to go by appearances and miss what’s important and I’m sure you do, because I do. And if you have a sort of a pride that deludes you every now and again and I’m sure you do, because I do, you know that it is possible to have what John would call a fatal love where you have hooked yourself to a train which is going to basically take you dreadfully downhill into destruction.

And that’s why we need to beg God to give us an increased love for him. Dear God, please help me to grow in love for you. I have that at the top of my little list of prayers. The top of the list is a a plea that God would help me to grow in love for him because that in a in a sense, is going to be the key to everything.

And, uh, there is a great secret to growing in love for God in Verse 17, which is to do his will. We haven’t heard the quote of Jim Elliott’s for a long time in this pulpit. So I’ll just remind you that Jim Elliott, who was one of the martyrs, um, back in the sixties, I think perhaps even earlier, perhaps back in the fifties in Ecuador. And, uh, he was the man who said he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

That, I think, is a good echo of what John is saying. So there are two loves two loves, the love of God and the love of what is perishing. Let’s think Secondly, about two sides to humanities in verses 18 to 21 look at verse 18. 1st of all, there are God’s Children, and if you look at verse 19, he four times says us, us, us, us. And in verse 20 he says, You have an anointing God’s Children, that is us, says John. Have an anointing. That’s one group.

The second group and remember John is very black and white are what he calls Verse 18, the antichrists and you see in verse 19, he calls them. They they, they they four times. Obviously they have no anointing. So there are two groups of people that John is concerned about. There are the Children of God, and then there are these false teachers, and we live according to verse 18 in the last hour.

Now the last hour does not mean that John made a mistake and miss timed the end of the world. The word hour in the Bible is not a clock calendar word. The word hour has to do with circumstance or mission or goal. That’s why Jesus kept saying My hour has not yet come. Even though, of course, the arrest and the trial and the sacrifice and the death of Jesus took a lot more than 60 minutes. He was talking about his goal or his mission.

And we live in the circumstance or the condition or the situation of the last hour. It’s not a time thing. It’s not as though we are now going to walk from Saint Thomas to Bondi Beach and we get to Bondi Beach. That’ll be the end of the world. It’s not a distance thing. No, the Bible gives the clear indication that from the time of the resurrection to the return of Jesus, the human race is walking around the lake.

We’re always just one step from facing Jesus. The last hour means a time of imminent meeting of imminent seriousness. And so this very significant time that John is talking about the last hour or the last days, as it’s referred to elsewhere in the New Testament. He draws up these two sides, and he uses very graphic and unique language. There are those who are antichrists. There are those who have anointing.

Now the worst thing to do when you see these words in one John is to go off into some kind of madness at this point or to go off into something that is very mystical and odd and, um, left field and start looking for people in the world who are monsters or start looking for people in the church who are especially holy.

Because John is not introducing strange ideas, he’s just using fresh language. He just wants to make sure that when it comes to false teachers, we know they’re serious anti-christ. And when it comes to believers, he wants us to know that the believers are blessed, anointed.

So this is John using language which will make us take note of what is really happening. I personally am not sure Verse 19 that the anti-christ the anti-christ is anyone else but the devil.

You might like to, uh, think about that, but I’m fairly persuaded that the Anti-christ is just Jesus Reminder that the devil is coming, coming in his influence and the antichrists that he refers to in the plural. I’m not sure that they’re any more than just false teachers. I think he’s using very vivid language to make sure that we sit up and take notice. It would be the false teachers who would use language which was bizarre and misleading and confusing and divide divisive. But no, John is just using very fresh, very gripping language.

Now, he says, there are the false teachers. He calls them the Anti-christ. But you verse 20 you believers, you have an anointing. And this anointing is the word that was used when a king was made a king anointed with oil, or when Jesus began his ministry and was anointed with the Holy Spirit and Paul, for example. In two Corinthians, Chapter one talks about every believer being anointed, Paul says in two Corinthians Chapter one, God has anointed us, and he’s put his spirit in us.

Every Christian is anointed with the Holy Spirit, and this means that the Holy Spirit helps us to stay clear and secure the last thing John would mean when he talks about the word anointing. Is some secret club in the church or some special guru or some special holy person who has secret power? No, no. That’s the way the false teachers were talking. John wants the people who are reading this to know very simply, there are the false teachers deadly serious, and there are the believers, magnificently blessed.

So they’re very simple, powerful words. If you therefore are faced with false teachers and there are false teachers in the churches and there are false teachers on the television and there are false teachers in publication, John is wanting to remind you they are not nice and harmless.

They are so often again and again anti-christ. And when he talks about you this morning, the believer he doesn’t want you to think that the Holy Spirit is given to you as some kind of private comfort for you to just go home and be happy. Now the Holy Spirit has been given to anoint you for a specific, serious role.

This doesn’t mean when you have received the Holy Spirit you somehow have some hotline to God where God will speak to you and give you messages that are on par with the Scriptures that will also divide the fellowship and make you unbearable. Uh, John is writing what we need to know. That’s why he’s writing and he’s writing to unite us. So there are two sides in the spiritual battle. There are two groups. There are two humanities. Uh, we, of course, may get quite sleepy about the spiritual battle.

We might get quite sentimental and not really be that interested in it. But John is very serious, he says. There is great opposition to your soul, and there is great provision for your soul. In fact, we would say great opposition, greater provision. If John was here this morning preaching at this pulpit, he might say something like this. The teaching of many of the religions and the churches in Sydney is not just a little bit on the strange side. It is anti-christ.

The gift that God has given you in his holy Spirit is not just for your own private enjoyment. He has been given to you to equip you for serving and battling and for a privileged role. So those are the two sides, no, two warnings, verses 22 to 23.

Let’s look at those two verses, he says. Who is the liar?

It’s the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the anti-christ. He denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the son has the father. Whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

So John has outlined these two groups. He now gives two warnings about the false teachers, the anti Christ teacher. Now, of course, if a person is an anti-christ teacher operating in Sydney or media, they would never call themselves an anti-christ teacher. They would say I am pro Christ, but they are anti-christ, says John. If they deny key truths, they’re anti-christ. If they’re selective in their doctrines, they’re anti-christ. If they’re reductionist in their portrait of Jesus, if they present a false Christ, they’re anti-christ. And the example that John gives in verse 22 and it may have been very big in his day, and you can’t get a more foundational heresy than to deny that Jesus is the Messiah is what he calls the one who denies. Jesus is the Christ.

I don’t know if you know this, but In the days of the early church, there was a powerful movement that the Christ, almost as a kind of a ghost, came on Jesus of Nazareth for a certain period of his life. It’s as if Jesus of Nazareth was quite a good man. And so the Christ fell on him and made him very influential from basically his baptism until just before the crucifixion.

And, uh, this heresy was designed to prevent the idea of God dying. But, uh, it’s separated totally. You see Christ and Jesus, more recently in academic circles, it’s been quite common to separate Jesus from Christ. There are many scholars who will say, Well, we will admit that there is Jesus of Nazareth, and he was probably a very influential man. But now we’ve got these crazy New Testament Christ stories where the writers have exaggerated and they’ve gone completely overboard.

And we have got sort of two pictures, one which, uh, if we could go back, would seem to be very simple and ordinary. But now we’ve been given this overboard exaggerated view of the Christ. And so this is one of those tensions in academic circles as to whether the Christ and the Lord Jesus can be held together in many, um, simple Christian minds sitting in pews of churches today, the Jesus Christ separation takes place again. Um, because there are many who say, Well, I know that you’ve got these facts of Jesus and that’s lovely, but I’m having experiences of Christ that don’t necessarily fit the facts. And yet that’s fine with me.

And so the person of Jesus and the teaching of Jesus is separated from the very person of this mysterious individual Christ. So it is a first century issue. It is an every century issue. It’s certainly a 21st century issue. It may well be that Jesus is today viewed by so many as just a historical person, but not the king. In fact, I would suggest that the bulk of the people in the streets in which we live would say that we’re happy with Jesus.

We’re happy to give him the surname Christ, but he’s certainly not going to have the role of Christ. They will separate that he is real and that he is king now. John wants us to know that this separation is fatal, he says in verse. 23 it will cut you off from the father. If you don’t deal with the real Jesus, you’ll never get the real father. If you don’t grasp the son, you’ll never grasp the father. That’s why he says Verse 22. The heresy is the lie. It’s the lie. This is the major warning. If you want to work out whether somebody is part of the Anti-christ school, ask yourself whether they are selective on Jesus.

Ask yourself whether they are reductionist. This is the major warning. Are they just teaching the things that are popular? Are they saying the things that will bring the crowds? Are they saying, saying the things that will keep the money coming?

That is all part of the anti-Christ. Now the second warning in Verse 19 is that such people move off. They move off quite willingly. They’re not satisfied.

But they also says John, move off. Quite revealingly, these people, says John, are not real, and you can tell they’re unreal because they lie about Jesus. They don’t tell the full truth, and they eventually leave. Now, I wish there was more time this morning to say more about this, but it is worth asking, isn’t it? Whether there are not today many, many people who do not have time for a church that stresses and teaches doctrine carefully, whether there are not people who are just impatient and are looking for something which is so different from doctrine. Now doctrine is gonna meet, meet and drink for the real Christian. The real Christian wants to know the truth.

The real Christian wants to work out truth from error, but there are many aren’t there who are more interested in selective truths?

They’re less interested in serious and demanding truths. You know, I’m sure that the 21st century church in the West is awash with smorgasbord. Christianity is awash with consumerism. One writer in America says that in his opinion, the majority of so called evangelical churches and evangelical Christians have lost the truth, and they have sacrificed it on the altar of pragmatism or church growth or postmodern ideology or paganism or hedonism.

So John, you see, is raising something so sinister, so serious, so significant. Two warnings, the lie and the leaving. Lastly, this morning, two safeguards verses 24 to 27. God safeguards his people, the first safeguard is plainly the teaching, which is in Verse 24 he says. See that what you heard from the beginning remains, and you see in Verse 27 that the teaching is so clear for Christians. You don’t need a teacher now. Don’t misread Verse 27. John is not shooting himself here. He otherwise he wouldn’t write the letter. He knows that God gives teachers and people need teachers, and I need teachers and you need teachers. But what he’s saying is that Scripture is not a closed book to the Christian.

It’s not as though you need some high priest to come along and read the book to you. It’s not a foreign language. You can read it. You can read it for yourself. You don’t need a teacher to read the truth, but you can benefit from a teacher who will explain things. There’s the first provision of God.

There’s the first Safeguard the word of God. The second again, we come back to the anointing verse 27. There is a divine safeguard, which is the anointing. The Holy Spirit given to the Believer enables the Christian to get the point.

The Holy Spirit what a wonderful series of things the Holy Spirit does for us. He teaches us. He causes us to grieve. When we’re drifting, he convicts us, he comforts us. What a gift he is to us. The Holy Spirit. And God has given us these two safeguards, the scripture, in order that we would survive a lot of the confusion that’s out there and a lot of the error that’s out there. And we would even be able to overturn the error. But he also gives us his spirit. Our friends. You don’t need a theological degree to be wise and discerning.

There are very wise people in this church who can see as quick as a flash through the issues, and they’ve had no formal theological training. But they are students of the Bible. They’ve been reading their Bible for years.

They can work out a forgery and a fake as quick as a flash. But it is also true, sadly true, isn’t it, that we have university graduates who are absolutely clueless who will fall for anything? Therefore, John says, take seriously the safeguard of the word of God. You’ve got to become a self feeder.

You notice something takes place with Children. They have to be fed, and then they begin to feed themselves. And the Christian has to be a self feeder.

You’ve got to be able to feed yourself enough to make yourself clear and keen. And ideally, you’ll feed yourself with Bible and books and talks and conferences and sermons and Bible studies and everything you can so that you are absolutely overflowing with fresh information. And if this applies to the ordinary believer, if this applies to the special believer, how much is it? How much does it apply to the ordinary pastor the ordinary pastor has to feed himself?

Otherwise, he’s just going to be drawing on stale old material, which has been trotted out forever. Self feeder Use the Scriptures. It’s God’s safeguard. But he’s also given us his spirit and his spirit, who inspired the scriptures and loves the scriptures and wields the Scriptures, is able to help us to see through a whole lot of error and danger.

I was reading this week of a minister who bumped into one of his parishioners and said to him, What do you believe? And the man said, I believe what my church believes, the minister said. What does your church believe? And the man said the church believes the same as I believe. And the minister said, What do you both believe? And then the guy said We both believe exactly the same.

Now there is a minister desperately trying to get something out of his per parishioner. But with the gift of the Scriptures and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we ought to be those who are equipped and overflowing with all that we need for living in the world. So I suggest as we finish this morning that you remember these very gripping words last hour. Serious stuff anti-christ false teaching is really insidious.

Anointing God has given you the provision for living, serving, growing and overcoming. And when you think about those three words, they are all full of encouragement and hope, aren’t they? Because we’re in the last hour. And yet because Jesus had his hour, there is safety.

We do face anti-christ teaching. And yet because Jesus died and rose, all the opposition and all the hostility has really been defeated. Ultimately and we do have the anointing the gift of God’s spirit, the gift of life, and that’s because Jesus died and made it possible. And therefore, as we go out, let’s take seriously what John takes seriously. And let’s take joyfully what John reminds us of joyfully.

Let’s bow our heads and pray

Our heavenly Father, we ask as we are reminded of two loves this morning, a worldly and a godly – that you would increase in us a love for you. As we’re reminded of these two sides drawn up in the battle one highly resistant and one that is devoted, that you would enable us to be your devoted people, as we think about these warnings, the lie, the undermining of the truth, the leaving, the giving up. We pray that you would make us discerning, cautious and walking closely with you.

And as we think about your safeguards, the word that you’ve given us, the spirit you’ve given us, we pray that you would help us to walk in the strength and the joy and the safety and the usefulness of the Spirit inspired Word. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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