Walking in Truth and Love Pt. 3 – Not Everyone Does

Well, if you have not already, please turn in your Bible to the second epistle of John, 2 John. As we continue our expository series through the books, the Epistles of John. If you're new, that's not the big Gospel of John. If you aren't familiar with the scripture. This is toward the end of the Bible.

It's one of the little letters. In fact, it's one chapter. You can trick people if you want sometime maybe tell them to turn to, to second John chapter three or something like that and catch them or what was the. Ellen used to have one, The Book of Hezekiah. Is that the one he used to say?

Yeah, there is no chapter two in second John. There's only two John. I have spoken over the years often that I maybe I don't say it a lot from the pulpit, but I do say it a lot in conversation at how shocked I am at how easy it is for people to be misled from true doctrine. I'm not surprised that if somebody starts like a blank slate, let's say somebody starts not having gone to a Christian church or raised in a Christian home, that's me, by the way. I wasn't raised in church and the first person sharing with them maybe isn't a strong adherent to the truth kind of person.

I can understand people who come in as a blank slate, relatively ignorant and being told things that are questionable. I see that, that part of the equation I understand. What I don't understand is people who spend a good amount of solid Bible believing churches under good preaching and teaching who have had some level of advancement and maturity and discipleship for those people to get swept away into false teaching. I'm surprised at that. And what I have found over the years, and you forgive me if this sounds judgmental.

It is judgmental, but not in the unbiblical, self righteous sense. I find that the reason most often at the core of that when you dig in is an ignorance of the Bible and not just biblical data. Like in other words, I don't just mean the amount of the words in the Bible that they don't know. And they don't know a lot. So they have a small, I always say a small Bible and the one in their head is small.

You know, the one they've memorized and internalized. No, I mean even more than that, the use of the Bible. So people who might have a very strong understanding and academic understanding of lots of Bible thoughts, but they don't even know how to use the Bible. So the Bible is Essentially just a propositional book. It's just an encyclopedia.

It's just a reference work. It's not what they have internally. And so what is the antidote for that? How do you. How can you know that you won't be swept away with false teaching, with false doctrine?

The antidote to that is to know the truth and walk in the truth. John is going to say something today, and he is, in the second letter, almost identical to what he said in the previous letter, in his first letter. And I want to make a suggestion to you that if two separate books, to two separate audiences in the New Testament repeat something, it's very, very important. The Holy Spirit is not wasting ink. When you think of Colossians and Ephesians, there's parallels in those two books.

Some people say, for example, that Colossians might have been written within days of Ephesians. That's not that important, except to say that when you look at those two books and you see at two churches in very different areas, Paul repeating something that is similar in both, you don't want to skip over that. The feeding of the 5,000 in the Gospels. It's one of the few things that all four Gospels attest to, that means it's really important. So if John is going to say something to this audience, and I'll get into that in a bit, who the audience might be or is, if he's going to say something here to these people, the recipient of the second letter, that he has already said to the recipients of the first letter.

I'm suggesting to you that it's very, very important. And I'm also suggesting to you now, before we begin by way of introduction, that it's very simple what he says. It's very basic. It's like a very basic fundamental truth of Christianity, man. It might even be to the point of being insulting to our intelligence because, hey, John, give me the heavy stuff, man.

Give me eschatology, give me pneumatology, give me. Give me soteriology. Talk to me about the heavy, deep doctrines of the Word, not these basics. But the fact is, we usually go astray in the basics. And we might not realize that sometimes those other things that we count as very important are chipping away foundationally at basics.

So John is going to say a basic thing here. I'm going to apply it more broadly to truth in general. But I do want us to take with us this idea that the way you can combat falsehood is by being saturated with truth and not just data about the truth, internalized Adopted, owned. Truth. Truth.

That is your truth. Now, I don't mean yours as though you can have a different one than you or me. I mean that you internalize the truth of God's word, the absolute, infallible truth of God's Word, and that becomes your truth. So that when you think, you think God's word, I always say that if somebody cuts you, you bleed. Bible, you care so much about what God says that you wouldn't just be.

It wouldn't just be propositional. It wouldn't be this Greek verb or that Hebrew form. And that's not the emphasis. The emphasis is this is what God says and this is what God wants. Now, already in the second letter, if you have read the letter, you, you know, it's.

It's only a few verses, but John has already gave the introduction to this lady. And I'll now tell you that after I pray in a moment, I want you to be ready to be challenged because it is very possible, and this is what I'm saying about those people that can be swept away. You think yourself impervious to false doctrine and its threat. It's possible. It's possible that you might think that you are impervious.

And no need to worry about me because I'm smart. I was raised right. I'm a Baptist, whatever. I'm a Calvinist. I'm whatever you might think we are.

And you hold on to those badges and those accomplishments of yours as though that makes you impervious to the threat of false doctrine. We are always in danger from false doctrine. Always. God would not have put so much about this in his word if we weren't in danger. And here it is again, like Jude and like so many other, like Paul when he opens his letter to Timothy.

Go stop those guys from their false teaching to the church at Ephesus that he told when he planted that church. When I leave, wolves are going to creep in. This is an issue. It's always going to be an issue, and we need to be prepared for it. And thankfully, John gives us the tool.

We have it right here. We don't have to wonder. It's in God's Word. Let's pray. Oh, Father, you make it so clear in your word what we should think.

It's just that we're proud. Sometimes we think we know we have all the answers. And sometimes we talk so much that we don't realize that we're not saying biblical things. Maybe that's just me, and maybe I'm saying too much, but I do think Father, over the years, these decades, I have seen a very common thing, which is that people aren't quoting you when they talk. They're quoting someone else.

They're quoting themselves. They're quoting their family, their favorite teachers, but they're not saying what you say in your word. That's very dangerous for us. And I'm asking Father that this morning when we digest this meal from Second John, that we would be biblical people, that when we talk, we talk in scripture because then we know we have the mind of Christ because we're saying what he would say. Please help us with that.

We ask in his name. Amen. Well, already John has given the greeting the lady. I said two times I was going to tell you. We don't really know who the audience of Second John is because the lady there, in fact today, is one of the texts that gives a lot of people reason to think it's to a church, not an individual.

I'll explain that as I get there. But I do want you to know that nothing is lost. So here are the two views. The two views of the audience of Second John, who is supposed to read it. Oh, wait, maybe I need to say there's a third view that we need to correct too.

The first thing you need to know about Second John is it was not written to you. Most people, when they see the little Y O U that little word in the Bible, they translate it me. But no, there's an original context, an original audience and proper interpretation. We have to start with who the author is, who the audience is, their historical context, their grammatical context, what's going on there first. And then once we know that, then it can be for us, but it's definitely not to us.

Okay, it's preserved for us. But I take that. Please take that with you. So now let's get back now into the text. There are two potential audiences here.

One of them is an actual individual woman, the lady mentioned. And that woman has actual biological children. And that wouldn't be wacky that the Bible would do that. Right? Didn't Lydia, the seller of purple, that was a lady in the Bible who had a very prominent position.

So it wouldn't be outside of the pale to say that this is to an individual woman and her actual biological children. Many and myself would, I'd being many, believe that it's actually kind of like code language. Like code language. Because this is the time at this stage in the early church when people were being persecuted, the churches were being persecuted, and this might be code, kind of COVID language. To put into the letter so that if anybody outside or any persecutors were reading the letter, they would see it, say lady, and would not think of it as a church letter, an assembling letter.

And if you didn't know, as Rome started getting more and more obnoxious, assembling and things like that became more and more troublesome to Rome. They did not like Christians assembling without permission. They did not like them assembling in their own groups and then not calling Caesar lord. So as that persecution started happening, it's very well possible, and I kind of think it is so, that this letter is written to a church and she's called a lady. Okay?

And that's not wacky either, because the ekklesia, the church, is always in the feminine in the New Testament. So it could be cryptic language. One other thing I didn't, I said it last time, but the word for lady is not the typical word for a woman, which I think is gune. The Greek word for lady is curia, and that is the feminine form of the word lord. So it's a pretty high, kind of a lofty word that John uses.

I don't want to read too much into that. I'm not saying I know why he chose that word. I'm just saying there's plenty of evidence and good, speculative, sanctified reason to think that this is to a church. Now, I will also say what I've said before as we start, whether it's to an individual and her actual children or as to a church and the members of that church, the applications are all still the same. They all still apply to us equally.

The same way you. You take it the way it's intended to the individual and you apply that to your life, or you take it to the way it's intended for the church, and you apply that to your personal and your church life. So we're in verse seven. And now John has turned the corner. He already talked about them loving one another, though.

This whole series is sort of thematically titled Walking in Truth and Love. And we've emphasized. And since Pastor's family's here, I can reiterate that story all those years ago when I first heard him preach. Very early on, Jamie and I were actually talking about this. Well, she was talking about it today when we first started at the church.

But this idea that when Pastor said that love and truth, when he preached the epistles, he said love is feared in truth. And he put his shoulders up like this and his shoulder pads went up And I was new to suits when I came to Christianity. I had never seen a suit in person. So to see somebody do that and people. I always remember that because people would laugh about that at the time.

And I always thought, and he thinks too, that I hope people aren't just laughing at me being funny. I hope they're getting the word. But I always remember him doing that saying, love is feared in truth. And that stuck with me for these almost 30 years. Over 30 years.

Now, I don't know if I had. It had been 30 years when I heard that. But all these decades I listened to him. It stuck with me that you cannot separate truth and love. You can't.

You can't separate them. They are. They can never be divorced. You can never be a faithful Christian and only have truth and no love. And you can never be a faithful Christian if you only have love and no truth.

You have to have them both. And so that's the theme of this letter, to walk in truth and love. And John has already introduced the lady and. And then he's also said he's very grateful and happy to hear. He rejoices that she has some of her children, either biological or members of a church or walking in truth.

We emphasized there that they were walking in truth. And then he says, and this is, you're walking in truth, just like the commandment that we gave you and that you received from us. And it's not a new commandment. It's the same thing that's been there all along, that you have to love God and love his people. And then he says, this is love, to keep his commandments.

That's how you love. Love is defined by commandment keeping. I know that bothers some people because they think what you're saying is legalistic, that you can earn God's favor by obedience. That is not what that means. It means you have God's favor and he tells you what he wants from you.

And what he wants from you is to love him above any other idol, to not make idols, to worship, to not blaspheme his name, to keep his day holy, to love and honor your parents. These are the things. That's how you love your neighbor, you love your parents. You don't steal from your neighbor. You don't covet your neighbor's things, you don't take your neighbor's wife.

This is love, commandment keeping. So it's not. Those are not disparate things. Those are not things that are separate from each other. Commandment keeping, truth and love.

No, they're tied together, okay? And John has already said that. That you walk and you love one another. This is God's commandment. This is his will for you, that you love one another.

And then like a sharp right turn, like John. Just like maybe you've been through that in your life. Years ago, I had some exchange students that were at MJC when I worked there as a custodial technician, because that sounds better than janitor that I was giving a ride home to in my truck. I didn't know that they didn't know how to drive. And I jokingly said, would you like to drive?

I jokingly said that. Don't ever do that, by the way, because one of the students grabbed the wheel of my truck and yanked it like that. I was on Bridgemoor going like 50 miles an hour, and we almost made a right turn. Now, thankfully, I recovered from that. But I'm telling you, that is what it feels like, what John does here.

That's what. To me, I get the. Is it okay for me to say vibe? Maybe I'm not cool enough to say vibe. I get the sense.

Maybe I'll say it that way. I get the sense that what John is doing here is strong. Maybe it isn't in his mind, but to me, it's like John essentially saying, like, okay, I said the stuff that. That you might readily accept. Now I'm going to hit you with the truth that you cannot deny, that you must be careful about, that you must adopt.

This is urgent, what I'm about to say to you. So we got the pleasantries out of the way. There are no pleasantries in the Word. I don't want to not show reverence to the Word, but you know what I mean. He said, love one another.

And you might be thinking, oh, that's nice. We need to hear that. I needed to hear. I'm supposed to love my fellow brother and sister in Christ. I got it now.

And then John says, but wait, there's more. There's more to this. Why do you need to love one another? Verse 7. Because for many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh as coming in the flesh.

This is a deceiver and Antichrist. This is why you have to love one another. Because there are liars. And you say, wait a second. How are those connected?

Do you want to know how they're connected? Directly? Because if you are not in a good, healthy love relationship with God's people, if you are not In a good commandment, keeping relationship with the Almighty, loving him by keeping his commandments. If you're not in that relationship, if you're not in the truth, if you're not in his commandments, if you're not in His Word, then the deceivers have an easy fertile ground to get you with. It's easy.

They don't even have to put bait on the hook. They can just get you with the hook. And he says for many deceivers. Do you notice it says many deceivers? It doesn't say a few.

It's a lot. Many deceivers. Now I hear a real quick question. This isn't. I mean, you're not going to be graded on this, but I am going to ask you, do you think there are more or less deceivers in 20, 26 than there were in 1 or 34, whatever ad?

44 ad, 50, whatever ad there's more now, okay? There's more deceivers and more ways to get deception disseminated. Many deceivers. The word deceiver is a weird word here. When I say weird, it's somewhat unique.

It's not a typical word related to truth. It's a word that means like imposter, means somebody that's like wandering from truth. So they're deceivers. There are many of them. It says they have gone out into the world.

This verb for gone out is aorist. And in the Greek what aorist means, it's punctiliar. It's a one time action in the past. So what this is saying is there are many deceivers, liars, imposters, those who wander from the truth. There's a lot of them and they have mobilized and have gone out into the world.

It isn't translated. They are going out into the world. It says they're already out there. They're out there in the world and I have to tell you something. Hit me for the first time.

I've never seen it before. It isn't new. I'm not. Not something. Hit me in the text you always watch out for.

When a preacher says he's never seen something before, I see the text, but I am telling you something that hit me hard because I. I don't know about you. Do you feel like you evangelize too much? Do you feel like you share the gospel too often? You're just too busy all the time? Like you can't get your work done at your job because you're sharing the gospel all the time.

You can't Take care of your duties at home because you're sharing the gospel all the time. You're so busy evangelizing that you can't get any work done. I assume you're like me and you think you could evangelize more. And what hit me in this text is that the deceivers have gone out into the world. They're out there.

And my question to us is, what if they accused us of the same thing? Would we be guilty if a deceiver said, I know that person from Sovereign Grace Baptist Church? They're out there in the world and there's nothing we can do about it? They're out there already. Aorist tense.

They're out there. If you were charged with being out there into the world, doing for the truth what these deceivers did for a lie, would you be. Is there enough evidence to hold you guilty? I was convicted by it. Because when I'm doing the Greek, right, when I'm translating, I'm doing the Greek and it says aorist.

And it hits me, oh, this isn't just saying, they can be out there. They will be out there. It's not a future tense. It's an aorist tense. It's in the past, and they're already out.

It's not even imperfect. So that it's continual and it could stop at some point. No, no, they're out there. And then it hit me. Ah, I got a stomachache.

Am I out there? Am I out there sharing the truth? So many have gone out. There's deceivers. They're imposters.

They're liars. They're not sharing the truth. And it says what the lie is. Their lie is that they do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is what I'm talking about when you say basic.

This is a basic doctrine, a fundamental, basic doctrine of Christianity, that Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary, born of a virgin, came. He is God Almighty, and he became a man. That's why we celebrate Christmas. The incarnation, the doctrine that God became a man and came in the flesh, that is a fundamental of Christianity. And it's so amazing to me that in the first century, John, a contemporary of Jesus, his friend, is already saying, there are people already saying he didn't come.

How long did it take for this error to creep in the church? The church hadn't even officially started yet. This is maybe before Acts, maybe shortly after Acts. I don't know when john was written. 50s, 60s, second john, whatever it is, it's early.

It's very early to find out that there are deceivers already saying, hey, the one you all saw ascend to heaven, the one you saw talking and sharing in temple grounds, the one you saw raise people from the dead. Yeah, he's not real. That was already happening. There wasn't even any crazy philosophy that came along and tried to make it spiritual and other things. No, just early.

There was no Jesus. He didn't come. Why is it important to acknowledge as a fundamental truth of Christianity that the Son of God came in the flesh? His name is not a name, it's a title. When it says Jesus, first of all, even his proper name, Yeshua, means the Savior.

It means the Lord saves. That's the meaning of that. His name, his first name. But then the second name that we might think of as his last name is not a last name, it's a title. Yeshua, the Lord saves Christos, which is the Greek version of the Hebrew word Meshach, which means the chosen, anointed one of God.

So when God has chosen him for this thing which he sent him in the world to be the savior of the world and the King of kings and Lord of lords and the truth incarnate, when God sends him into the world and says, this is my beloved Son, hear him, listen to him, and people say he didn't even come, it is a fundamental loss of Christianity. You cannot be a Christian without believing a real Jesus was really born of a real virgin at a real time in history. If you deny that you are not Christian, and you might in this room, especially if you've been raised in church, say, well, duh, of course we have already knew that. No. Do you understand that a big portion of many people right now, especially in the conservative political world right now, people calling themselves Christian don't believe that there was a real Jesus.

They think of Christianity as a moral lesson. That's all it is. It's morality, it's behavioralism. It just makes your life better to be a Christiany and kind of be like our founding fathers a little bit. But the idea that Jesus Christ, the real son of God, the second person of the Trinity, became a man born of a virgin, a fundamental of the faith people are already denying in the first century, and I promise you, they're denying it in the 21st century.

And if you're going to call yourself Christian, if you're going to say you're one of his, John is saying there's deceivers out there that won't say this fundamental. They won't say it. They won't confess that he's here. They won't say out loud that word confess means to agree with the truth that he is who he said he is. They won't agree to the fundamental truth that Jesus Christ came as the Son of God, that he died and that he buried and that he rose again and he will come again.

They won't say those fundamental things about who and what he is. That's not heavy doctrine. You don't have to get into election and all those other things we love. You don't have to get too deep into what the, what the passages mean about, I don't know, family and whether you wear a hat or not. Those are all important things because they're in the Bible.

But nothing is more important than the Christ of Christianity. If you get him wrong, you don't have the Christianity. And there's deceivers out there, lots of them, saying he didn't come in the flesh. Then he says to punctuate it. If you didn't get the point already, this is a deceiver.

He already said that, but he's saying it again. And Antichrist. Now, I emphasized back in the first letter, I don't have to do it here, that there was in that text some definite articles in the Greek, the word, the something that makes something definite and specific rather than general. In that book there is a definite Antichrist. And the spirit of Antichrist.

In this book it's general. So I don't have to say that again from the first letter. I don't think this means the Antichrist as a person, the one who will rise up in the end times. I think this is saying that anybody who doesn't believe that Jesus come in the flesh and he is who God says he is, those people are Antichrist. That's what they are.

They are anti him, they're against him and they're in that spirit of being against him. This is a. The word deceiver here is interesting. It's a substantial adjective. This all that you all don't.

Don't think I'm trying to be smart here. I think most of you who know me know better. I'm not trying to be clever. When I say a substantival adjective like that's a grammatical big word. You already know that word.

If somebody asks you what size drink do you want at the fast food place, what do you say? Do you say the small cup or do you say small? Or do you say, like me, large? You say small or large or whatever, right? That's an Adjective.

That's not a noun. When you do that, it's not a noun. It's not a thing. There is no small. Small is a descriptor.

It's an adjective. This word is something. It doesn't. Wouldn't translate directly. It would be something like that.

This person. This. This person is a dis. Is deceptiony. Is that.

Can I make up a word? That many have gone out in the world and they're very deceptiony because it's an adjective, but it's a substantival adjective. So it's okay to translate it a deceiver. It's a deceptioner or something like that. It's not a noun.

It's an adjective. And I think that's important because that says something fundamental to the nature of the deceiver. It doesn't. It's not just describing something they do. It's something they are.

You got it. So that when he uses an adjective as a substance, as a noun, as a thing. I just realized, an English teacher in here. I need to watch what I'm saying. Don't beat me up over substantival adjectives when he's describing it this way.

Do you know in the Lord's Prayer, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from what? Nobody said the evil one. It's both. Because that's a substantival adjective. It's the adjective evil.

And when you say the evil one, you can say, like, I'm gonna eat. I love these jelly beans. The green, the pink, the. Wait a second. That you're using adjectives.

So that's what happens here. And I say it's important enough to mention because it's saying that these deceivers are deceptive by their very nature. It isn't saying people go out and occasionally they deceive. It is saying they are identified fundamentally. At their core, what they are are deceivers.

And they've gone out and they are against Christ. They are. They are either an Antichrist themselves. They are either something like the Antichrist himself, whatever it is. They are not pro Christ.

They are Antichrist. Now comes the warning. Now comes our responsibility that John expects us to take. There are many deceivers out there. There's a lot of them.

They are. They are imposters. They're fake. They're out there saying they follow Christ. They're out there saying they're Christian, but they don't believe a fundamental of the faith like he came in the flesh, that he was real, that Jesus truly existed.

He was really born in Bethlehem and that he was really a human Middle Eastern guy over there and walked the earth for 30 something years and talked about his father and then died a cruel, unjustified death. And then he rose again. They don't believe all that reality that Christians, true Christians, hold fundamentally. They deny those things and they lie to people and say those things are not fundamentals. All that matters is that you have either a happy life or a fulfilled life, or you find your meaning and purpose.

And these are the kind of things people say is most important. But if you say all of that and ignore Christ, you're opposed to Christ, you're Antichrist. And then the warning comes. Verse 8. The first two words says look to yourselves.

It's funny to me that the word for look or see is blepo. I've always found that as a funny word. So when I, when I'm translating it, it always looks funny to me. And I have to remind myself, this isn't funny, this is serious. Because the Greek word here is blepete, like, like behold.

It would be translated what we see often as behold, but in this case there's a unique construction. I'm not. I didn't look to see where else it might be in the New Testament, but I don't recall it happening a lot. Usually when the New Testament writers say behold, it's just the word behold. It's in the imperative mood.

Look, watch, behold. Right? But in this case, it's behold yourselves. If I say I myself, isn't that redundant? Redundant isn't that.

I don't need to say myself. If I say I right in the Bible, that is something for emphasis. When the Bible will say he himself did it, or I, it is I myself. When you see that language, it's an emphatic tool. It's like an exclamation point or an underline or something.

It's to draw emphasis. Well, John does it here, watch or behold yourselves. Now, it says to yourselves as though it's transitive. That's not really the. Like, you yourselves, watch out.

It'd be better translated, something like that. You, you, the ones I'm talking to, you need to watch out. You who can hear my voice or read my letter. You look at yourselves. Behold.

Watch out. Beware you, beware. You yourselves beware. Something like that.

I think it's important to catch at least, especially for us. You might not be a somebody who holds to the doctrines of grace. We use that. That's the way we talk about Calvinism. It's okay that you're.

If you're not a Calvinist, I am very Calvinistic. But sometimes we in the sovereignty crowd, I mean, it says sovereign in our church. So if you're surprised by that, I'm sorry. We in the sovereignty crowd who very much emphasize God's work and make sure we never ever try to take any credit for what God does, we who really, and I do think we're right in doing that, we should do that. We should be often echoing the idea that God does everything.

God is sovereign. There is only one king. He's the main character of Scripture. His glory is the thing that matters most. I think if we say that enough and try and try, maybe even with a noble, meaningful goal, to humble ourselves, we might get to the point where we say something like I've heard people say, where they say, God's going to do what he's going to do.

I have no say so in it. And that's very possible. I've heard that with my own ears. I had a friend who abandoned the faith and he said, well, if you believe in election, then God's going to come and get me, right? He said that.

So he's testing God. He's testing the sovereignty of God. So when John says, look to yourselves and he's going to say in a moment that you don't lose the rewards. If he's saying it, I would hope that we as Christians who hold to the power and authority of the word of God would not say, well, there's nothing I can do here. There's nothing I can do.

You know, I don't have any say so over God's sovereign, only God, sovereign. I have no say so because the Lord is telling Christians here, you watch out for you. You're responsible for you and your truth and what you accept and don't accept. You're responsible to reject deception, you Christian, not just the leaders. He's not writing to pastors.

We just talked about this in Sunday school. He's saying, you yourselves look to you don't say, let go and let God. No, no, no. Cling to truth with energy and vigor and hold on tight. So I say that to you because sometimes you can get so sovereign in your thinking that you get passive in your obedience, thinking, you want to know how I know that's true?

Doesn't Paul say something like, should we sin more that grace would have bound. Paul knows our nature. He knows our nature, that if you tell me I can have something for free, I'm not going to work for it. So I think John is saying, you watch out, be aware, this is on you. This is your responsibility.

And I think he's telling us that too. It's our responsibility. You yourselves, he's talking to the lady in the church there or the church there. But he is also, by application, this is preserved for us. Then he says, this is why you look to yourselves, that this is a hint of Claus, that we do not lose those things we worked for.

Now, again, this is really where we can get messed up. First of all, side note, technical note, there's a variant in the New Testament manuscripts. This is sort of one of my babies. You don't have to join me in this. If you want to take a quick breather while I tell you about this, you can.

There are various manuscripts, Greek manuscripts, beneath what we have in our English Bibles. Our Bibles are not all based on the same Greek manuscripts. So if you have a new King James or a King James, that is one set of Greek manuscripts. If you have an esv, an niv, a new American Standard, that's a different set of manuscripts, okay? I prefer the manuscripts underneath the King James and new King James.

I'm not a King James only guy, but I prefer those manuscripts. That's my conviction. And in this case, the two differ, okay? They differ. And one of them says, look to yourselves that you do not lose those things.

So if your translation says you, well, the others say we. So look to yourselves that we. So in other words, John's including himself and the rest of Christians. But I'll tell you, even though the textual thing is there, it means the same thing. Because if he's talking to the elect lady and her children, whether that's an individual or a church, it still means the same thing.

We're supposed to apply that. If you're saying that to her, he's saying it to us. So it still works. It's still for everybody, right? I just say it to you because I want you to know it's there where it does say, look to yourselves, that second person plural.

And then he says that we, that is first person plural, if that is what the manuscripts say, that would very much lend to this being to a church instead of an individual. Because it's not you, an individual, and now all of us together, it's you as a church and all of us as fellow Christians. So it's okay. You don't have to hold to that. You just put that in your pocket and say, that's interesting.

I'll think about that another time. I just Share it with you. Maybe I'm sharing it with you. Just so you know, I'm working hard. I don't know.

I'm trying to be vigilant and do my job as I exegete the text. But I really do think it matters because I hold to that majority text position. I don't hold to the Texas Receptus alone. I hold to the family. It belongs in the Byzantine majority.

You can look into all that on your own. But aside from that, let's put that aside now. Whether it says you or we, the application is the same. And he says, look to yourselves. Behold you yourselves, watch out, because.

Or that we do not lose the things we work for. Clearly, John is not talking about salvation here. He's not talking about you being able to lose your salvation. We don't believe that and we don't think that's what he's saying here. What he's saying is the work that was done that in the.

In the beginning of whatever that ministry is there, whether it's a lady or the church, that work that is done, all the hard work we did to share the Gospel, to disciple people, to get them prepared to follow and walk with the Lord and to grow in maturity. That work that we did, be careful because the deceivers are out there and we don't want to lose all that hard work. And that is what I said way back in the intro when I said, I'm always struck by people who seem to be solid, seem to be established, who are easily swept away by false doctrine. I don't know, because the teacher is charismatic or it's some new thing or a book or a fad or. And that goes both ways.

It goes positive ways or negative ways. This book is going to change Christianity and make the whole world believe. And this book is going to ruin Christianity and it's going to undo it completely. And these people who fall into the sort of fads out there, especially now with the Internet. So this is saying, you watch out so that you don't lose or take a step back in the progress of the work of the gospel, of the foundational truths and the promotion of those truths.

This is. If you follow deceivers, you are going to lose the most fundamental and precious thing you have as a church or as individuals. If you listen to any teacher without testing what they say as to whether it's true, without being careful that it's in accordance with Scripture, if you do that, you're going to lose. That word lose here is very important. It's the same word translated, you all know it.

The one verse I know, almost everybody in this room knows is John 3:16, that whosoever believes will not. What is the word perish? That is the word here that's used for loose or lose. I mean the word that's used, the Greek word that's used for lose here is the word perish, the word destroy. The word, the word to lose, to destruction.

So the idea, it's hard to translate, but it'd be that we do not destroy or cause destruction to the things that God has done with us so far. That we can, in fact, that we need to be hearing this as a 25 year old church. We need to stand for truth and not deny the truth and destroy what God has done these 25 years. That is a really good application. So if you listen to the deceivers and you had made progress in your faith, you had made progress moving forward and you listened to them, then you have the potential to lose what God has already done with you.

Or in other words, forfeit the blessing associated with it. Again, it's not salvation, it's. It's. By the way, that it could be that a church or a whole group or an individual abandoned the faith completely and they were never saved, right? That's very possible because John did say that, that they went out from us because they were not of us, right?

So I'm not talking about the fact that false converts can lose something they don't actually have. I'm talking about true believers here. This is not about them losing their salvation. By the way, another word related to that is Apollyon the Destroyer. You've heard that name, right?

Well, that's, that's a noun, kind of form of this, this word for destruction and for losing. And then he says instead of that, this is the actual purpose clause, right? Instead of that, instead of look to yourselves that we do not lose the things we worked for. Instead of that, but that we may receive a full reward. Instead of losing, instead of seeing destruction, instead of there being loss, there's gain, a full reward.

And I have to tell you again, back to my saw. I'm warning my sovereignty people, which I'm one of them, right? We're all together in that. And that God is sovereign. He gets all the credit, he gets all the glory.

We have no power. We can't earn our way to him, we can't add to our salvation, we can't contribute to the things of God. We're not able to do that, right? We all say that so much that when now a time comes for the word reward, we say, well, no, I can't earn anything. Oh, yeah, you can.

This is a word for wage. It's a word for what's deserved. And God rewards faithfulness. And maybe sometimes we don't work and be obedient and move in our faithfulness because we have this idea that it doesn't matter anyway. Because God's going to do what he's going to do instead of saying, the God who's going to do what he's going to do, who sovereignly saved me by my grace, also said in the same book that says, by grace you're saved, that you're saved unto good works.

And I want to do those good works. And I expect that if God wants me to do those works and he says I can receive a full reward, that that's a good thing for me to pursue. That you're not arrogant, you're not proud for trying to get the reward from God. You're saying, if God wants to honor faithful people and that makes God happy, to honor and reward faithful people, well, then I want to be a faithful people. That's me.

I want to do that. Not for arrogance or pride or so you can get something from someone else. That's the way our world thinks. But no, to earn the honor of the Lord and your obedience, not to gain your salvation by earning, you can't do that. Salvation is a grace alone, through faith alone.

But that when you are saved, when you are his, instead of following the deceivers, you follow the truth. You're anchored in the truth. You're walking in the truth. Then you can say, I expect God to be happy with that. Not.

You're not demanding God. You don't demand anything of God. Everything you do to God is all request. Okay? You can't tell God what to do.

But the idea of Lord, I tried to be faithful, I tried to walk faithfully. Doesn't Jesus pray that I did what you sent me to do? And we're supposed to be Christlike. We're supposed to be Christlike and obedient. And if we, instead of falling for deception, walk in the truth, we stay anchored in the truth, we stay anchored in the commandments, then we're going to be okay.

And we can expect God to be pleased and to smile, say, those are my people. I love rewarding my people. I love when my people stay faithful, even in the midst of challenges. Well, then he separates, or at least says doctrine separates. And some people don't like that.

That doctrine divides. But look at what the verse says in verse nine. Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, it says, that does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. Now, I want to be careful here because obviously we're historical theological Baptists, or we try to be.

Not that I'm all that theological, but sometimes there's a tightrope. You're walking a fine line because you want to keep the truth of Scripture plain and clear. Like Charles Spurgeon said, the way some preachers read feed my sheep, it should read feed my giraffes. The idea being that the truths are so high up that nobody can reach them. And Spurgeon says you need to bring those down here where sheep can get them.

Right? So that's Spurgeon's idea. It's a neat idea. And so there is in one sense where you're walking as a teacher and even as a student where you. You need things to be plain, you need them to be digestible.

I might even say the word simple. But then there's a problem, is that we can get addicted to simple. And that if something comes that's complex, requires some thought, some actual intelligence, some actual work, some actual study, when that thing comes along that you need to exert some mental energy to understand, we are also supposed to grow in those things, too. The Bible is very clear that we're supposed to understand these things. In fact, the Bible rebukes people who don't.

When I say doctrine of Christ here, I kind of mean all of that. When I think John says the doctrine of Christ, he said just a little bit ago what the deceivers reject, that Jesus came in the flesh. I said to you that that's a fundamental. And that is actually kind of simple, right? It's kind of basic to say that the Son of God became a man and died on the cross and rose again and will come again.

That's pretty basic to say. But if you dig in to your Christology, which was my first class in seminary, I thought my head was going to explode. When you dig in to what it means that God became a man and somehow he didn't compromise his Godhead. He was 100% God and 100% man, and that that man is the anointed one promised in all of the Old Testament future, pointing Scriptures and Jerem, Jeremiah and, and. And Isaiah, and.

And then you see that, oh, wait, it goes all the way back to Genesis. That the very creation story has a promise of this coming one. And, and not only that, he's called the last Adam. Wait, what does Adam have to do with the first time? And now you start digging.

There's a lot of detail and theology associated with Christ. And again, some of it might be less crucial. There might be things that are up for. Like when Christ said from the cross, when he said, why have you forsaken me? Was he actually forsaken?

Or did you. Did he have the sense that he was forsaken? And you say, why? Why does that matter? Because some people say that attacks the doctrine of the Trinity.

So yes, there are details and there are questions, and not all the questions will be answered. But what we have in our day is people saying any kind of doctrine or theology is just proud people trying to know things. And that's all you are. You just want to be a scholar and an academic, and all you want to do is be smarter than everybody else. Just give me Jesus and the basic simple gospel.

It is not supposed to be either one of those. It's supposed to be both of those. So if all your doctrine makes you lose Jesus, your doctrine is no good. And if all you have is what you think of Jesus instead of the clearly defined Jesus in the doctrine, your faith isn't any good either. So I hope you see this, that when he says, whoever transgresses that word transgresses is literally to put your foot over.

So there's a line. That side is false, this side is true. Transgress would mean. That's what it means. That word literally means foot over or something like that.

So you, you violate a barrier, you cross over when you shouldn't cross over. So whoever crosses over from the truth, the accepted truth that Jesus is the son of God, into error. And what the deceivers say, they do not abide in the doctrine of Christ, the teaching. This is the word. That word is.

Or didaskalos. That word is where we get the word didactic teaching. That's what that word means. So if anybody crosses over and believes the lies of the deceiver, they are not in the. They do not abide or remain in the doctrine of Christ.

And then it also says very poignantly and right to the heart of the matter, do not have God. Paul uses that word of the Ephesians, that before they were saved, they were without God in the world. And the word he uses there is the word atheist, literally without God. That is not the word here, but the concept is here, this One is they do not have God, they do not possess God, which I find that actually beautiful, even though it's a negative and it's a warning. I like the idea that those who do follow the Lord, those who do love the Lord.

Actually, God is their God. Remember when God says, I will be their God, that's loving. That is touching. God doesn't just say, I am the God and you will bow down to me. He says that too.

But he also says to his people who love him and love his son, he's theirs. That's why we can call him Abba, because he loves us. So he's saying here, if you don't abide in the doctrine of Christ, you don't have God, so don't listen to the deceivers because you'll lose God. It's a very strong warning, very poignant. And then he says, oh, this is so good.

The same language, same word. It's one of the first words you learn in Greek, by the way, is echo. The idea of have he who abides in the doctrine of Christ, he who remains in it, instead of listening to the deceivers. There's a lot of them out there, and they're out there deceiving. If you do, if you listen to them, you'll transgress, you'll violate, you'll cross over and you'll leave the faith and you will lose God or you didn't have God.

They're saying that they did not have God, they did not possess God already. So it's probably indicating if you listen to a deceiver, that you might not even have ever been a Christian. But here he says, he who does abide in the doctrine of Christ, who says the truth, who agrees that Jesus is the Son of God that comes in the flesh, who says that he's the Messiah, who says that he. He's the chosen one, the Savior, the king, all those things that the truth says of Scripture, whoever does abide in that has both the Father and the Son. I know it's cute sometimes when we try to help little children, you know, have Jesus in their heart or pray to Jesus.

But I want to emphasize that to be doctrinally sound, especially parents, when you're leading your kids or grandparents or great grandparents, when you're leading your children, you don't have to smack them around and correct their doctrine all the time. You don't need to beat them into submission. But I do think it is helpful to help when you understand their level of competency and understanding the precision of doctrine. Because this says we should want and desire to stay faithful in order to have the Father and the Son. And I think that's important.

I think John is connecting those two, the patriology with the Christology or the wheeology, the Sonology. And I think he's connecting them, saying there are people who think it is only necessary or they only have to care about the Father. And he's saying, if you deny the Son, yes, of course you deny the Son, but you also lose the Father. Do you see that? That if you deny the doctrine of Christ, you don't have the Father like you thought you did.

That you can just be a religious person that believes in God or a higher power. But when you narrow the focus now, you get zeroed in on Jesus himself. You believe what the Bible says about him. You accept that reality for your own life. You put your faith in him, your confidence in Him.

You believe the truth of scripture, that Jesus is who he said he is and his Father loves him. And in order for me to glorify the Father, I will glorify the Son. If I live like that. Here's the promise of John. You get both.

You don't lose the Father. You get the Father, you also get the Son. You have him. He's yours. Jesus is mine now.

I don't own him. He can't. I'm not his boss. You know what I mean by that. But he is my king.

He's my Savior. Personally, if you deny that, you also lose the Father. There is only one real God. You know this, right? Jesus says it in his high priestly prayer in John 17.

This is eternal life. That they know you, the one true God and the one you sent. There's only one God. You can't have a Father without the Son in Christianity. And we need to be careful not to so be.

Jesus loves me. This I know, and childish rather than childlike, that we only care if we have Jesus because we should want to have a relationship with the Father through Jesus. There's lots of texts that talk about this. John says it, if you abide in my Word, you're my disciples indeed. Right?

That's what Jesus says. Paul says that husbands are to love their wives so that he can cleanse her with the Word by the water, with the Word. So that the idea is that a good husband brings the Word into his family and his wife and his people he loves. How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your word.

This is how you show that you Abide in the true doctrine, the doctrine of Christ, by yielding to the Word, by looking to what God says in his Word, not looking to your feelings, not looking to what the. Whatever wind of doctrine is going on out there, whatever the. Whatever's happening in culture, whatever the most famous book is at the time, instead of listening to potential deceivers and actual deceivers, you can go right to the Word itself, right to the Word, and hear from God Almighty himself and abide in that doctrine instead of the doctrine of deceivers, instead of transgressing. You have God and you have the Son. You have the Father and the Son.

I'll say this as I close, I get in a lot of discussions, and by the way, I've been sharing the gospel with quite a few people outside of the church, and I've noticed something I've seen in unbelievers that I've also now kind of seen in believers that I'll just hit it to you with a little bit of warning. Don't ever be flippant about scripture. I see even, like people in group texts. Please don't ever include me in a group text. But people in group texts using Bibles to attack Bible verses, to attack each other.

Like, what about this verse? What about what Jesus says there? What about what Isaiah says there? And they're using the verse like a little rock they could throw at people. Don't be flippant about the Word.

I said to someone this week, again, I'd been through a thing with a young man and he was struggling with some issues, and he had happened to providentially called me at the exact right moment I've told this story before. He called me at the exact right moment that I had just studied. And I had like six verses on the tip of my brain that I was ready. I just looked at them. It was like on a Tuesday, and I was going to teach them on a Wednesday.

So I was ready to go. And he called and he was in trouble. And I said, here, write these verses down. They're right now fresh on my mind. He started writing them down, said he did, and he was struggling really bad and he was in crisis.

And he said, oh, this is so helpful, Pastor. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Well, it was not a whole week later. Like five days later, I get the same call from the same guy. And I said, okay, well, tell me.

Review for me what you got out of those verses I sent you. And do you know what his response was? What verses? So five days earlier, in his crisis and his worst moment, one of his worst moments, he calls his pastor and this guy, what else did I have to give him but the Word? So I gave him the Word.

Five days goes by, he's in crisis again. He didn't even look at those verses. And I told him, you might not like that. I said this. I told him, maybe you shouldn't be calling me anymore.

I don't have anything better than the word of God. I don't have anything else. I'm just a guy. My opinions are like everybody else's. Unless they're gods, they're worthless.

So if you call me and I give you the word of God, you better take it. Because you're not going to get anything better on earth than the word of God. So please, in the future, if you're going to ignore me giving you scripture, don't call me. Do you want to know why I told him that? I told him it.

Later. Later. His life is great now. Later I told him. Do you want to know why I said that to you?

Because I'm accountable for what I give you. I have to answer. If I just throw my opinions around there. I have to answer for what I thought would help one of Jesus sheep. And I thought the Word would help one of Jesus sheep.

And if I give that to you and you're ignoring me, I'm now accountable. You walk away the same. I walk away saying, I failed, Lord. Now, I know I didn't fail, but I have that burden. Like, what else am I going to give him?

I love him. I want him to get right. Don't be flippant about the Word right now. John just told us a very basic thing. There are lots of deceivers.

And deceivers can function really well if you don't know the truth. They don't have to work hard. Sometimes people will follow just about anything. The old saying is true, that if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Well, stand on the truth of God.

Trust the word of God. Get into it. Saturate yourself in Bible study. Take advantage of the times at church, where we're opening Scripture together. I wish you were here Wednesday night, man.

The discussion was powerful. The ladies and what they were saying over adversity and trusting the Lord in it. Because we're just talking through the Word. Let's pray, Father. It's so clear what John is saying, that there are people who think there's a Christianity without Jesus.

I trust, Father, that no one in this room thinks that. I think we all believe that the real Jesus came and is who he said he is. And I'm just asking, Father, that we would not fall to deception. Maybe it's safe to say and pray that we would not be the deceivers. Maybe we need to guard our hearts in truth so that we don't accidentally or purposefully deceive.

Father, we want to be people of the truth. We want to trust the truth incarnate. Would you help us do that? Now we ask in Jesus name, amen.