Walking in Truth and Love Pt. 4 – Excludes Some from Fellowship

Well, if you have not yet, please turn in your Bible to the book of second John, the second epistle of John the Apostle. And as you do, I'm going to just read through the whole letter real quick, because I know sometimes it can be that when you're parsing things down to words and phrases, some people might struggle following along with that. So I'm going to just hit you with the whole letter if you have it handy. And then I will hit a couple of things with highlights as I read this, because today is very important what John says, and it's important to catch it as following what was just said before it. The Elder to the elect lady and her children whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all those who have known the truth because of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever.

Grace, mercy and peace will be with you. From God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. In truth and love. I rejoice greatly that I have found some of your children walking in truth as we received commandment from the Father. And now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.

This is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment that, as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it. Then it gives the warning. For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver, an antichrist.

Look to yourselves that we do not lose the things which we worked for, those things that we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward. Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. And that gets us caught up to today. So John is writing to these folks, and we know this already, that the theme of this letter, or my theme of the letter that I see interpretively, is that it is about walking in truth and love.

And he has already spoken to both of those about the children walking in truth. And he's also spoken about love being commandment, keeping. So the truth informs the love. It is safe to say, and maybe I'm going to say this might be the first time you've ever heard this, that walking in truth and love is a doctrine. That's a doctrine like omnipotence, is a doctrine like Hamartiology is a doctrine.

Well, so is walking in truth and love. Maybe you. This would shock you. I might ruin your lunch. But marriage is a doctrine.

These are things that the Bible has specific didactic teaching information on. And when the Bible teaches a thing, that thing is a doctrine. And the reason I bring that up to you is you might get the idea that doctrines are those things that systematic theologians handle and that come along in theology class and those kind of things. You think of doctrine as maybe more technical things. But no, just being faithful to the truth itself is doctrinal.

I've said it before that I'm not sure Paul or John would be welcome as pastor in many churches because they speak so straitly and so firmly. Years ago, I criticized somebody from the pulpit. A friend was visiting our church, a dear friend who's still my dear friend. He was visiting our church and he's a Christian and a mature Christian. And I had criticized someone from the pulpit.

I don't mind telling you who it is. It was Joel Osteen. I was criticizing Joel Osteen and his theology from the pulpit. And my friend cornered me carefully. He was respectful, he wasn't mean or anything.

And he cornered me and said, you shouldn't speak out loud to a whole congregation about a brother like that. And I said, I agree with you. I totally agree with you. I'm not sure Joel Osteen is my brother. Anybody that thinks the Mormonism Jesus is the same as orthodox Christianity, Jesus has to be questioned in their Christianity, right?

If you don't believe what the Bible says about Jesus, now, Osteen would claim to, but the thing he doesn't do is say that people who don't believe that aren't Christian. So I have to ask, do I have to call a false teacher a brother? That's what you will be challenged with today. I'm not saying it for effect. I'm not saying it because I think we're better and we have a corner on the market of truth.

I'm not saying to condemn for the sake of condemning. I'm saying that to stand for truth, you have to stand against error. You have to. And heresy is rampant and more now than ever. And I'm going to say some maybe hard things this morning, but I. I hope you understand that it is not loving to preach a false Christ.

If you preach a false Christ, you don't love people. And let me tell you this. No matter what your intentions are and your goal, and however noble your goal are, how much love you think you have noble intentions, and sentimental love don't make a false Jesus save people. A false Jesus cannot save people. And the Jesus that John is warning about has come in the flesh.

He is the God, man. He's the Christ, he's the Messiah, he is God's anointed one. And anybody that says something different than that is not your brother. And not only are they not your brother, John is going to tell us how to treat them and how we respond to non brothers to false teachers. Very strong language from John, you might think, well man, John sounds like a Baptist preacher.

Well, I hope so because I want to sound like John. I want to say what John says. Let's pray. Father, as we open this letter again, I'm going to ask, as I always do, that we would see what you have to say here. And there are things in this text that are absolutely confrontational and if it's not too much to say, confrontational to us.

This is not just for people at other churches or outside of our church. This is for us too. We have to be careful. These warnings are for your people of all time. And we'd ask Father that as we see the warnings, we would heed the warnings.

And because we do, because we try to do what your word says, we would be faithful, you would be honored, and we would be safe. And we'll thank you for that. In Jesus name, amen. So we are in verse 10. I've got us caught up by reading the text.

It may be a foregone conclusion. I have a lot of dumb obvious things that I put in our notes today, like false teachers bring false doctrine. I'm saying that because over the years I noticed this. I remember when I preached the book of Jude, I remember saying something along the lines of there are wolves. And I say that because I really truly feel just this week, this weekend actually just this last three days, I saw something that tells me someone might not be able to discern wolves or not.

They might not think that there are wolves. And I always have to remind us, all of us, that when the wolves come, they come in sheep clothing, so you're not going to see them as wolves. And when the apostles and the New Testament writers like Jude tell us that, hey, there are going to be evil people who creep in and try to mislead the flock of God, that it is not safe for us to say, whoo, man, that is scary. I'm glad that doesn't happen here. I'm really glad there aren't any false teachers on the Internet.

Verse 10, the opening little phrase. It says so much. It's five words in English. I don't know how many words it is in Greek. If anyone comes to you now, he's going to go on to say and does not bring this doctrine and conclude the thought.

But I want you to catch the first phrase. If anyone comes to you. This is telling us that the false teachers, those deceivers that John mentioned are coming. This doesn't say you will find them out there in your daily lives. No, they're coming for you.

If anyone comes to you, I want to put something in your noodle if you'll take it today. If the math wasn't what it is, the ratios weren't what they are, you might get the idea that there are lots and lots of good teachers that we should listen to and receive only a few bad ones. If that were true, this text would be talking about the good teachers. It doesn't say many good teachers have gone out. The warning is many deceivers.

Now why am I emphasizing this to you? Because there is a good chance mathematically that a teaching you're hearing of someone coming is deceptive. There's a good chance. The odds are good. If you were a gambling person, you shouldn't be a gambling person.

But if you were a gambling person and you were going to bet that teachers coming through the door were false versus true, I mean, assuming, you know, I would assume that, you know, my mentor and myself, that we wouldn't just let somebody come in and teach without having vetted them thoroughly and understood their doctrine. Right. But the idea is that there are many deceivers out there and there's this text is telling us they are coming to us. My question to us is, do we recognize? Do we see it?

Do we have it in our frontal lobe? Are we thinking through it? The idea that that might mean there are more deceivers than truth tellers, the fact that the warning is against the deceivers and it isn't a commendation for the truth tellers. How about when Jude says, I wanted to write to you about our common salvation. That's what I wanted.

That would have been great if there were a lot more good teachers than false. We could be talking about our common salvation. But. But I have to tell you that the wolves are out there and they are the ones coming. Do you see it?

False teachers have goals. In order for them to reach their false teaching goals, they gotta go get support from cheap. Whereas you contrast that with true teachers. How is a true teacher found in the Kingdom of Christ? They're raised up, they're mentored, they grow to maturity.

They're not novices, they're not new to the faith. They grow in wisdom and they learn. And then the church calls them and lays hands on them and says, this is a true teacher. That is not a teacher coming. That is a teacher going, coming, growing out of the organic life of the church.

So teachers that are coming, our antenna should be up. Our radar should be up. That doesn't mean I'm not a fan of discernment ministries that just talk about all false doctrine. I'm not a fan of that. I'm not saying I always say it this way just to help you.

Bereans are looking for truth, not error. And I say that to you so that if you think all you're ever doing is looking at counterfeits and not exalting the truth, that's not healthy. So here, I'm not saying only look for deceivers. I'm not saying close your mind to maybe a biblical teacher or a missionary that might be worthy of your attention. I'm not saying that.

But I am saying the warning of the Scripture is that they are coming. And the evidence that they are coming or the evidence you should beware is what comes next and does not bring this doctrine. What doctrine? The doctrine that was just said before that you can't separate Christ and His Father, that Christ has indeed come in the flesh, that Jesus is who he says he is. And if somebody comes to you and says that doctrine divides, you might say, like I said last week, amen.

Because we need to divide from people who don't have the right Jesus. This is a fundamental. This is a simple doctrine. If anybody comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, this is not about us going out. This is about what's coming in.

And I have to tell you, folks, the thing I'm about to say right now, don't take it personally, okay? This isn't about you and it's not even about me. It is a psychological fact that our brains, human brains, are lazy. Do you want to know the evidence of that? If I ask you, what is two plus two?

What is the answer to that question? You said four. You didn't do the math of four. You didn't say one. There's one.

Two. There's two. Okay, one and then there's another one. That's two. Okay?

Now I have a two here and a two here. And I'm going to take these two and. And I'm going to add them to these two and those together I can now say is 1, 2, 3, 4. You did not do that when I asked what two plus two is. Do you want to know why?

Because it's in your brain in the spot where you don't have to think about it. You want to know why? Because your brain wants everything in the spot so it doesn't have to think about it. Now, the psychologists would tell you all the reasons for that. They would say evolution got us to the point so that we don't have to have a cognitive overload when we're attacked by a wildebeest or whatever's trying to kill us.

Right? That's what the evolutionists would tell you. But no, we have it because of sin, the noetic effect of sin. We don't want to think. This is why the Bible is replete with warnings to think.

Put your brain, turn your brain on, have this mind in you which was in Christ Jesus so that you can think the things of God. Why? Because we don't want to. So don't take that personally. It's both a scientific fact, but theologically it's also true that we don't like to think through things that we want shortcuts, that we would rather someone else do our thinking for us.

This is why there are false religions, because people say, well, he's educated, he must be a good teacher. Oh, he was ordained. He must be smart. I'll let him do my thinking for me. We are all capable of this at all levels.

You trust your mechanic, you trust your doctor, you trust your taxman. Do you? These are the ideas that we are looking for someone to do the cognitive work for us. It's just a thing. And I'm saying it here because how would you know whether the false teacher has false doctrine or not unless you know the true doctrine Unless you are aware, unless you have it in you.

This same author that we all love, John 3:16. This is the same guy writing this. John doesn't boil everything down to 3:16. He's also saying, people will come to you. Many deceivers are going to come to you with false doctrine.

They're bringing the false doctrine to you. You don't have to go find it. They'll come to you. I used to think about the Jehovah's Witnesses a lot in this context where they would knock on doors. Doors.

Well, now the rectangle just got smaller. It used to be the size of your front door and this is the size of it now. False teachers are coming, they're prowling. They're hunting, they're looking for followers and they don't have this doctrine. And he says very clearly we are to know the doctrine.

We're supposed to know that if something is not Christian because somebody says it's Christian, truth is biblical truth only. We have changed our priority in modern times that Christianity is about Christians. Do you ever hear anybody say Christmas is about the children? It's all about children. That's the most important thing.

Christmas is about the children really? Because it's not called children. Miss. No one's ever two and two'd that one. It's not called kidmas.

Now I'm gonna ask you, what is Christianity about grown up children or is it about Christ? So if you get him wrong, you don't have the entity part, right? Very important to see. So if anyone comes to you, I'm suggesting to you they will and are. I'm telling you right now in this room.

They're coming to you right now, all over the place. You have to wonder if I'm one of them. If you're smart. They're coming at all times and they are coming without the doctrine of Christ. They're coming with something else.

They're coming with a promise of happiness, a promise of meaning, a promise of fulfillment, a promise of a wonderful life, a promise of prosperity. Whatever they're coming with, they're bringing you something that is not this doctrine, the teaching, the true teaching of Christ. What is our response to that? To be open minded. Right?

Because you can't be condemning, you can't condemn people. It is judgmental to say that somebody might be a false teacher. That is critical. You're supposed to be open and non judgmental. Do not judge.

The Bible says it so clearly. Do not judge. Right? Isn't that what we're supposed to do? Not if you finish the sentence.

If anyone comes to you without the doctrine, what are you supposed to do? Well, the supposed to do is a not to, and that is do not receive him into your house. Wait, I thought we're supposed to be open minded, that we're supposed to be welcoming. What happened to charity? What happened to hospitality?

These are known false teachers, or at the very least they're not known true teachers yet. Right? They haven't earned the right to be called a true teacher. They haven't been vetted. And incidentally, there are methods for vetting people.

The ordination process, a local constituted church, a congregation that that qualifies a man or at least sees his qualification given him or a call from the Lord. God has Ways of raising up teachers. I already mentioned it before, but here, what I'm trying to tell you is if somebody does not have the qualification or the credential to have been received as a true teacher, you need to keep your antenna and guard up and not receive them because they might be a false teacher. So you have three kinds of teachers. True teachers, false teachers, and the one.

You don't know who it is yet, true or false, he's one of the two. You just have to figure that part out. So what you don't do is receive that guy in the middle until you know he's on the side of truth. But what we're taught as Christians is we need to be welcoming, we need to be open, we need to seek unity. We need to love anybody.

The names we. You've heard it so much. We can talk about Dr. Walter Martin and Hank Hanegraaff and all those guys. Only us with gray hair know who that is. And talk about those guys over the years who would talk about, in essentials, unity, right?

And the other things, charity. And they talk. You say that so much that I don't know if you've noticed, but the essentials now are an area of charity, meaning you don't have to hold to the essentials anymore and we'll still call you a Christian doctrine is under attack right now. Do you want to know why it's under attack right now? I'm not saying I have the devil's playbook at my house, but I am telling you that if I were the devil, don't say, some of you might say, well, if I were the devil, do you know what I would do?

I would make a political mess in a country so that people are preoccupied with politics, preoccupied with who they differ from, preoccupied who isn't like that, with who isn't like them, and just get completely overwhelmed by those things. And then I would sneak in the back door when all of them are busy doing that, and I would start undermining true doctrine so that the people they think they're believing, the people they think are teaching them correctly will teach them falsely. They'll just accept anybody that agrees with them in those areas, even if they don't agree with them in the fundamental areas. I always talk about during COVID people were sending me stuff all the time, and one person sent me something, and they literally said, you should be saying what this guy is saying, okay, this guy. They sent me a video of a guy talking about the way I'm supposed to think about those things.

You should be saying what he's saying. I just want to go look him up. Who's the guy? If he's, if he's a good teacher, if he's saying the truth, I'm listening. The very first video I found was him and his wife, co pastor, saying they raised a woman from the dead.

Now I'll just ask you my church that I love, are you glad I didn't talk like that guy? These are the things we'll do because he agrees with me. He thinks like me. He thinks like me about family, he thinks like me about government, he thinks like me about kids, he thinks, he thinks like me. So he must be a true teacher.

Those are not Christianity. It says do not receive him and then it says into your house. And this is the part where I take a moment to go back to that elect lady and her children idea that this book could either be to an actual individual lady and her biological children or it could be to a church. And there's a disguising of the concept of church with the word lady because of persecution. So that anybody sees the letter, doesn't think that that is a gathered group of people.

Because the Romans were starting to not like that Christians were assembling. So this might have been a sort of covert operation to call a church a lady, you know, and to cover. So in either case, the application, in this case, this is the one place where I say there is very specific application. In either case, it ends up being the same thing. But I do want to zero in on it and point out, point to it.

Because if it's your house, if this is an individual lady, if John is writing to an individual Christian lady and dealing with her family and her children and some of her children walking. In truth, if someone comes to you without the doctrine of Christ, John is saying to that lady, you don't even let them in your house. And you say, well, that's no big deal. What's the big deal with that? All Jews open their home to every other Jew.

Hospitality is built into their DNA. In the first century, saying don't have someone in your house would have almost by itself been blasphemous. Hospitality was a given. And so when John says this, it's a big deal. If he's saying this to an individual lady, don't.

This lady would have already had her whole life and her whole culture been ready to take care of those people and meet their needs. This would have been a matter of fact. So saying don't have them in your house is Serious. Now, on the other side of that, this also means to guard the pulpit. This means careful in your church.

This would go even to things like the book studies and the things I always appreciate. Valerie asks me, hey, do you know this author? Are you okay with this book, our Awana program? Is it all great teaching? No.

So what do our Awana leaders do? They compensate for that. So we're always guarding the teaching of the church. It's supposed to be my job, too, in oversight. But the idea is we don't just say the Christian and they're good guys and look how they tell jokes and they got good graphics or whatever.

We don't receive them into our house. We don't give them a platform. We don't promote what they say. We don't sign off on what they do. We'll talk about that in a moment.

Our friend John Radeen, you know him, John Rodin said to me at my ordination, at the installation service we had, he whispered to me, and you know his voice. Those of you who know him know his voice, right? He whispered to me in that grumbly voice, john, guard the pulpit. Right? He said that.

Well, funny part of that is he called me John. I let him get away with it. They don't let a lot of people get away with that because I'm Johnny and not John. But I appreciated that he said that. I appreciated that he said, I always remember the story.

Years ago, this was a series. We had a guest speaker who got up and he did his thing and he taught. And one thing he said from the pulpit was, wasn't it amazing that John the Baptist did all he did without being regenerated. And he said that because he was such a hard line dispensationalist that he couldn't have been regenerate yet because the Holy Spirit hadn't come. So his dispensationalism precluded anybody before the Pentecost being regenerate.

And I'll never forget, I learned a valuable lesson from my mentor that day because Pastor Heinrich got up in there and said, with all due respect, we disagree completely with what our brother just said about John. Oh, that's. You don't want to do that because you're going to hurt his feelings. Do I care more about his feelings or do I care more about the truth? So do not receive them into your house.

This idea is do not to use our modern language, platform them. Do not give them a voice. Do not give them opportunity. This comes down to the biblical doctrine of separation that There is a difference between true and false teachings, true and false teachers, and even true and false churches to where you have to separate yourself and not be joined with darkness. You can't just say, well, here's one easy way I can have more unity with more people is I can take those doctrines, like the doctrine of whether Jesus is God or not.

If I just take that doctrine and put it aside, I just gained a whole bucket of friends. Yeah, you did, but you lost Christ.

And I'm going to stress it again, I really do believe that the place where this happens most now is on the Internet. That we don't have itinerant preachers going door to door. They don't have to go door to door. They can do it from their living room or grandma's basement or whatever and get online and tell you what to think. I can't tell you over the years.

I mean, I'm a complete nerd. You know this Judah and I are both full blown, full fledged nerds that know computers inside and out, like how hard drives work. And like we're complete, full geek. And from the advent of the computer, from the very beginning, I could tell you without question, the Internet is exactly where the false teachers go. I could tell you that the false teachers figured it out.

We do not need to go door to door. We don't have to sneak into a church and pretend to be a good teacher. We can just simply get right into their home. They'll invite us, in fact, because we'll just put the word Christian in our titles and they'll think it's great. In fact, what if we throw a name that most people like, let's throw a MacArthur in the title of our message.

And they'll think we're just like MacArthur. It's so easy and so tricky. And we two plus two it and say, oh, Christian is good. Now it does say, do not have them in your house, do not receive them, do not take them into your house. And then it says, nor greet them.

Again, back to the hospitality idea. Why do I separating greeting on itself on its own there, Put it on its own so that we can take this home with us. A greeting is as close to something called co signing as we can get. When you greet somebody, biblically speaking, I'm talking about this word greet and the idea of what John is saying, not what we use because we will say greetings and then put. You all know this, right?

I always use the our government as the example, with all due respect to the gentleman from Arizona. And then what Comes next. Complete disrespect. You know, we use formalities all the time. You say in a courtroom, your honor, do you really honor him or her?

Right? Or would you say in a letter, dear so and so, who I'm about to say I hate, then why'd you put deer on the front of it? That's just because what we do, greetings in our day are like that. We think of greetings cards, we think of seasons greetings, we think of a little handshake. But like what I said before about receiving someone into your house, John is going all the way with it.

So let's say the false teacher comes to your door, like a Jehovah's Witness or LDS member, right? And that person's at your door and he's talking to the lady, the individual lady. He's saying, they're not. They don't believe the true doctrine. They don't bring this doctrine.

They don't bring the doctrine of Christ. So what do you do? You don't receive them. But then what comes next? It says, don't even greet them.

Now does that mean you slam the door in their face? Well, I hope you're not rude, but I do. I have said this. You don't have to do what I'm about to say. This is Pastor Johnny talking, okay?

This is absolutely me applying this text, and it's my way. I might be wrong about it. So don't do what I do unless you have the same conviction. But I will tell almost every false teacher at my door when we're done talking and they're about to leave. I make it a point.

I go out of my way to say, I cannot wish you well on your journey. I don't want harm for you. I want you safe. But I can't wish you success. I say that.

Why? Because I don't want to greet them and say, here's my hand. Hope things go well for you today. I hope you deceive my next door neighbor into believing a Jesus that can't save them. No, I care about my neighbors, too.

I'll never forget. It was one of the saddest but best interactions I had with the Jehovah's Witness. This lady, she was probably in her 80s, she had a walker. She literally used a walker to knock on doors. And I asked you, are we doing the same thing for truth that they do for a lie?

Because she was walking the streets in the heat and came to my door, sweet lady. And I was telling her, I actually told her, I don't usually engage at my door like this because I don't want to. I don't want to waste a lot of words. And I. And I told her, I usually only ask one question, and I do only ask one question.

I ask, is Jesus a true or a false God? That's my question. That's my one question. I ask Jehovah's Witnesses, is Jesus a true or a false God? Because your book says he is a God and Jesus himself says there's only one true God.

So. So if he's not the true God, what other kind of gods do you have left? False ones. Right. So that's what I always say.

Same thing. In fact, I say it sometimes I have to think, make sure I'm not just saying it out of habit and not saying it for real. And I told her that at the door. And I said to her, I would like to have more of a conversation with you, but I find it usually to be fruitless because the people I'm talking to from your religion don't really know the Bible. So if I start quoting scripture and you start quoting scripture, I don't think we're gonna get anywhere, because that's what usually happens.

You start turning pages. And I said, I wish we could have that conversation. But I found that they. People in the. From the kingdom halls and then the Watchtower Society don't know the Bible.

And she said, well, why would you say that? She was hurt by it. She was still sweet. She wasn't fighting, but she was hurt. And I said, what's the book of Colossians about?

And it got quiet, just like it did in here. What's the book of Colossians about? The whole book. What's the book of Hebrews about? The whole book, not one verse or two verses.

And I said, you can answer me. I could give you a summary of both books, the entire books. Some books, like First Corinthians, I can give you an outline of the book. I can actually talk to you about what's in the first three chapters and then what in 5, 6, and 7, and talk about those subjects and how Paul navigates those. And you say, yeah, you're a pastor, but everybody's should be able to do some version of that to be able to, like, know a little bit of the life of Jesus or to know what the overall prophecies of Isaiah are saying.

We're Christians. It's our book. And she. She was stunned by that. She was stunned that I said that.

And then when I asked her, and it Got quiet. I said, this is what I'm talking about. You and I are not speaking the same language. So I'm just going to ask you go deal with Jesus whether he's a true or a false God because your religion says he's not the true God and that would make him a false God. There are no non true, true gods.

It was tough. That was a tough one because she was so sweet. And I'm certain that if I had opened my house, we would have had a wonderful conversation, might have even become friends. But I could not co sign on her error. By the way, she's lost.

However sweet that lady was at my front door, she's not saved. So what good is me being super duper nice to her and never saying anything? I don't want to talk about religion. That's a personal thing. That what you hear all the time.

Faith, spiritual, that's personal. Don't talk about it. So the greeting part of this to me hits hard. The idea, because I want to be nice to everybody I talk about all the time. I'm an introvert who's acting like an extrovert.

My dad was just like that. My dad is an introvert who acted like an extrovert. And one time at work, I always remember this story because it cracks me up and it's so true. In fact, you can ask, you can ask Becky if what I'm about to say is true of my dad because she knows him. They would say this of my dad.

They would say John and they would call him John. He allowed it. John. I'm sure that if the devil walked up to you and talked to you that you would talk to him because you think he's friendly and, you know, outgoing. And my dad said, no, I wouldn't.

I mean, I'd have to say hi. It would be rude not to say hi. My dad got me with that. Like, you have to be cordial so he would show manners with the devil. I don't know if that's true or not, but I always loved that my dad said it.

The idea that those people saw my dad as courteous and cordial and open, you know, and that's true of us too. But in our culture, sometimes, and we may not see this, that kindness, that courtesy, sometimes we might be using that as a mask to not engage in truth things. We might not want to hurt anybody's feelings. And so we just. It's not, it's not becoming to talk about your religion.

It's not becoming to say, you who are at my door or you, false teacher, trying to get support from my church. It's not becoming to say we differ on these things. You do not believe in the true Jesus. We have all kinds of priorities, like unity and growth and money and prosperity and all these happiness, meaning, purpose, all those things. We have all these priorities.

And I just think that sometimes we miss. Because he's saying, if they don't have the doctrine of Christ, you don't even give them a high five. You don't have to go as far as I do on that, where I try to make it known that if you and I differ, I need to tell you that we differ and that I'm hoping that your mission fails. I absolutely say that you don't have to do that. But I'm telling you, when you see people who have been deceived by false teaching, when you see people who have spent lifetimes away from the Lord, I've seen a lot of people get saved later in their life and regret their life not serving the Lord, maybe in even teaching falsehood.

Think of Mike Gendron who visited with us, right? All those years he spent Catholicism promoting Catholicism. Of course God forgave him of all that. But you wouldn't say, or he wouldn't say, I'm glad I did all of that. He regrets that he did all of that.

For he who greets him, John goes on to say, shares in his evil deeds. Wow. Wow. Maybe I just need to ask you, instead of me trying to convince you, maybe I just need to ask you, do you agree with John, do you agree with John that receiving false teachers and or greeting them is tantamount, equal, similar to contributing to their evil deeds, do you see that when John says, if you treat false teachers as though they are a part of the kingdom of God, as though they are Christian, as though they are with us, of us? If you treat known false teachers as one of us, first of all, you receive them in your house, or you even greet them, you even show some level of support or hospitality verbally to them, that you are guilty of what they are doing.

This is hard. I have to tell you, when you talk about biblical separation, and biblical separation has levels, it's personal separation from sin, it's personal separation, separation from walking with the scornful. All of that is true too. But it's also ecclesiastical. It's also at the church level that you have to guard churches and maybe even associations from error, that we are not, for the sake of unity, allowed to compromise truth.

It is not loving to compromise Truth. We have to get over that in our head. That is something that's pounded down our throat because we need allies. This world is against us. This world hates us.

And so what we do is because we feel alone, because we feel attacked, we look anywhere for allies. We who would join us in the fight. And someone comes along and says, I'll join you in the fight. And you know, we're in the fight for Jesus, right? Well, we're in the fight for humanity.

We're in the fight for happiness. We're in the fight for politics. No, no, no. I'm in the fight for truth and for Jesus. I'm in the fight for the advancement of the gospel.

I'm in the. In the fight to. To preach and teach the Bible to the lost and dying world so that those people would become children of Christ and become disciples. That's the battle I'm in. And we might be trying to find allies of people who are not our allies.

Double agents. And I want you to catch he who greets him. Did you see that? Who is John writing to? He's not just writing to pastors.

He's writing to anybody that would greet the false teacher. And I said this in our Sunday school class. Who did Paul say had been fooled by the false teachers? Was he condemning the pastors of the churches in Galatia or is he condemning the Galatians? Does he say, O foolish pastors, or does he say, O foolish Galatians?

Christians are responsible for their own discerning of truth. That doesn't mean they are solely responsible. God gave teachers. But it is very easy to let someone else do the math, to let someone else do the heavy lifting. You remember in the book of Hebrews when the author of Hebrews says to be hospitable because he says that again, hospitality is supposed to be built into our faith and into our lives.

And he says in the book of Hebrews to be hospitable because you don't know if you're entertaining angels or not. Do you remember that? Now, there are many people, and it's okay to think this. That means that. Think that.

That means that there are heavenly hosts that take on the form of a human like we see in the New Testament, in the Old Testament. And those are the people going around. And you're supposed to entertain people because you don't know if the person in your house is an actual angel from heaven. It's okay to think that. But to me, the more likely interpretation is there are itinerant preachers at the spread of the gospel in the first century to where there's a lot of preachers and there's people going around doing church planting and teaching and preaching and discipling and serving people and being a part of the move of the gospel.

And that person who comes into your home, maybe with a group of people, you might not know that person is a messenger of the gospel. And that by you supporting them and entertaining them and showing hospitality to them, you are helping them in their work to promote the gospel. That's what I think it's saying either. Either way. The one thing it does say is that it's possible that a good teacher or angel will slip into your house and you better be good to him.

Right? But it's also possible. John is not saying that here. He's not saying, be hospitable, greet everyone, treat everyone as a Christian, innocent until proven guilty. No, it's be discerning because you're not sure whether or not they're true.

Yet in order to accept someone as a brother, they have to be known to be a brother. They have to have a profession. That's why I like being a Baptist, because we have baptism, we have church membership, we have things that say and a path to travel to show and give testimony of what and who you are in the faith. I appreciate that, but I don't know about you, I don't want to help anybody in their evil deeds. It says if you do this, if you greet, if you receive, if you support, if you endorse, if you co sign false teachers or false teaching, you are guilty of false teaching.

You're an accessory to use modern language. And you say, well, no, I'm not. I'm not an accessory. I'm not guilty of what they do. I'm just trying to be nice to them.

Well, I'll just say to you, take that up with John.

Over the years, I've only heard one time that I remember. It might have happened other times, but there's one time I remember I can count on one finger the times somebody has said I am not doctrinal or not doctrinal enough. But do you want to know how much over the years I have heard? Why is this so important? Why do you have to teach those things?

Do you have to teach election from the pulpit? Why is that? Why do you have to talk about church discipline over and over again? Doctrines. That's why I said truth and walking in truth are doctrines.

Over the years, so many people have said, what's the big deal? How big of a Deal is this. I remember that in a discussion on election, how big of a deal is this? And my answer at that time was, it's as only as big as how important the glory of God is, because God gets all the glory in election. No one ever says, can you spice it up a little bit?

Give me some more participles, man. Come on, man, give me some more. Give me some more word diagrams. It's always the other way. You're too doctrinal.

Tone it down. The very first thing I do with someone who spends any length of time at our church is try to get them in a discipleship program. And that discipleship program is not how to dress for church. It's not what your favorite song should be. It's doctrinal.

It's a systematic theology. Basic doctrine. Receiving and greeting false teachers is equal to doing what they're doing by being a false teacher, signing off on what they're doing. The Bible says that, John says that. And I would say if you have it in you, there's lots of people.

If there's a spectrum of people's ways of thinking about such things, you go all the way on either end of the pendulum. On one end of the pendulum is everybody is a Christian, even people that don't claim to be a Christian, and I'm going to treat everybody like a brother, and we're all children of God with no qualifiers. Then you go the other way, where these folks are on the hyper end of the discernment end, which is there are no Christians. We're the only ones. We're the only ones that have it figured out.

We're the ones that know the truth. Listen to us. Our denomination, our website, our teachers, our books, our podcasts. We are the ones that have it right, and they have a monopoly on the truth. So if those are your ends of the pendulum swing, somewhere in there, there's a lot of people at varying grades and degrees.

You might be leaning this way, like, oh, I don't want to be divisive. I'd rather find unity. Ah, me too. Life would be easier for me too, if I didn't have to fight for doctrine. Can you imagine if all I had to do is be a goofy, silly jokester, maybe bring my guitar up here and have fun with you.

If that's all I had to do, my life would be way easier. Why do we make these stands for truth if it's hard? Because we want to align with Christ. So find yourself. If you're on that spectrum, maybe you're somewhere on there where maybe you're right.

Exactly balanced, which you say. I am looking for brothers in the Lord. I'm looking for allies. I'm attentive. But when I find someone who claims to be a brother of the Lord, I'm going to do some work and make sure they're a brother or sister in the Lord.

And by the way, I am going to make known what I am in that interaction. I am going to say truth things. I'm going to say Bible things. This is what I think. This is what I think Scripture teaches.

One last little note is First Corinthians 13 that charity that love, hopes and believes and bears all things idea from 1st Corinthians 13 is for known Christians, not for just professing Christians. It is for people who have a testimony, who have proven that they're Christians. By the way, it's for sure, not for the outside world. Some people think that that charity that Paul is telling us in First Corinthians to have is for unbelievers. No, the charity is that if you are interacting with a true believer, somebody with whom you have a relationship, somebody with whom you're accountable, who maybe you go to church with, then charity is the call of the day in that situation.

Because you know them, because you know their testimony, because you know their desires, they've given evidence that they want to please the Lord. So you give that person charity. But this idea that anybody that calls themselves a Christian, I have to believe all things, they call themselves a Christian. That is not the application of First Corinthians 13, John. If it is the application of First Corinthians 13, then John is contradicting that.

That's how you know it's not the application of John of First Corinthians 13.

We need to guard truth. We need to not be seeking out so much information that we turn off our discernment. You need to be careful not to join questionable movements for sure, or false movements for sure and questionable movements until you know this applies to individuals in your life and your family. I've seen this before lots and lots of times where people let their children go to churches that are known false churches and say, well, at least my kids want to go to church and now the kid doesn't serve the Lord. Happens, happens.

Not yoking with unbelievers, not getting yourself in a bind because someone claims to be a Christian, joining with them in endeavors that require you to be faithful, you to be Christian. And you say, well, what if I don't know their doctrine? What if I don't know? It's almost like, Johnny, you're expecting me to figure out what their doctrine is? I'll ask you.

You in this room, there's a lot of second Amendment people in this room. How do you handle a gun if you don't know it's loaded? All guns are loaded. That's the only right answer. All guns are loaded.

That is the mindset of somebody who handles guns correctly. Every gun is loaded. And by the way, you can even see the men who know this because you'll see them, even with things like spray nozzles. Are nerf guns, not flag people. They'll keep the barrel away from people because they have it so ingrained in them that every gun is loaded.

Now I ask you, how do you know whether someone's a true or false teacher if you don't know that gun's loaded? You need to figure that out. It's not okay to treat it as not dangerous. Truth is very important. And truth is right now on the chopping block in our culture.

Truth is being attacked at every corner. Truth is being blended with culture in a way that I've never seen before. I've never seen it like this before, that if you say right now there's a future for Israel, somehow you're maga. Where now people are actually leaving biblical churches because of those matters. Oh, our church likes Israel.

Our church. We're not friendly to Muslims. You wouldn't let a Muslim come in and teach at your church. I guess I don't want to be a part of this church. These are things that are happening in our culture.

And I ask you, how do you discern those things? Doctrine. That's how you discern them. Know your doctrine. Be biblical.

Say the things that the word says. Say the things that John says. Say the things that Paul says. Know them. Be saturated with them.

So there's someone comes along to you and says, well, I think what Jesus is, is a good moral teacher. They haven't read the New Testament. Or I think everyone can be saved. Even people that don't accept Jesus, they haven't read the Bible. Do you know a Pope said that not long ago?

He says that atheists can be saved. That's false teaching. And you might say, but I love the idea that everybody could be saved. Be careful. Truth is truth.

Not everybody's going to be saved. We're supposed to want what God wants, not what we want. And His Word tells us what he wants. And when someone comes along and has doctrine that is not in accord with his word. Now that you know it as a discerning person who knows the word of God yourself, you're not going to fall for it.

You're not going to two plus two it and say well he said Christian so I don't have to think about it. Nope. What do you mean by Christian? What do you mean by saved? What do you mean by the anthropos?

If you want to throw some Latin out there, let's pray. Father, help us be discerning. Help us be faithful as individuals in our homes with our kids and our grandkids at church and even in our culture that when we join with others who might be Christian that we work out our faith and talk it out and lovingly decide and figure out if we are indeed brothers and if we are that we would join arms with brothers even that aren't a part of our church. We just want to do this right. We want to be discerning.

Thank you for the instruction. In Jesus name amen.