I will ask if you turn back to 2 John, and we will look at the first half of last Sunday
evening before we celebrate the Lord's Supper together.
One of the important themes of the small letter is love and also truth, and John speaks about
both of them. We know that truth is very important, because knowing the facts that we have in
life affects our lives, doesn't it? Facts affect how we live.
Stupidly, I finished last week's sermon, crowing that Corrie would have the harder
second half of this letter to preach on tonight, but I did not check the facts that Corrie
was going to be a way preaching in a la pool this weekend, and I didn't check her preaching
diary. I smugly got that wrong, and Corrie smugly sat thinking that he's got that wrong,
and he wasn't having to preach that sermon.
We are looking at a slightly different aspect to what we looked at last week, where we spoke
about the importance of love and loving one another in the truth. This comes to a slightly
more difficult section, because he's dealing with people who have come into the church
and who want to deny that truth. It is interesting, isn't it? The cry goes out today very much,
what is truth? We live in a society where truth is very pliable. It's up for grabs.
The world you live in and the world I live in is a world where more than ever we can't
speak about truth as being something that is exclusive and something that is revealed
and something that can be known. We need to address that as believers. How do we address
that as believers? How do we speak into our society? How do we speak into our community?
How do we deal with those who don't believe the truth of the Bible or who don't see the
truth of the Bible as being significant for them?
Because the great deception very much today is that there isn't such a thing as absolute
truth. You can't speak about absolute truth, at least not in moral terms, maybe in scientific
and biological terms, maybe not so. But even today, so today we find that at best what
we have is people declaring their own truth, my truth, being true to ourselves is what
might, that is the, if we can talk about absolute truth, that is the absolute truth, being true
to my own feelings to how I feel about myself. It's the ideology of expressive individualism
coming out where the self is very much the high priest of this ironically fundamentalist
religion. And no one can challenge anyone's personal right to self-identity in any kind
of way. Someone can say that they're a barn door and you can't challenge that truth that
they believe that they may be a barn door. And we do suspect when that's the case that
the horse of truth has truly bolted from that particular situation. Yet we know also that
self is important. It's not that we deny or decry the self. Self is very important. And
we are created beings, created in the image of God. But the only true perspective that
we can have of ourselves is through the lens of divine truth and through what John declares
as being of primary importance when he speaks here.
But truth is something that is up for grabs today and we do ask the question, what is truth
in a digitally imaged AI conquering age? Now, you may think you're unaffected by that as
a Christian, but I suspect none of us are. I suspect it's a challenge we all face. Even
when we come to the Bible, it's a challenge maybe we face. Maybe we look at the Bible
and we say, well, there's some really difficult parts in the Bible. I'm sure it was applicable
back in the day, but now not anymore. And we pull back from some of the truth that the
Bible itself doesn't say is interpreted in another way. Or we look at what science has
revealed to us today and the fact that there's a greater corpus of truth as it were today
and it casts doubt on some of the truth of the Bible. Or maybe we're even tempted when
we share our faith to say, well, this is what's true for me. This is what I've found to be
true and it works for me, which is not false, but it maybe plays into that whole sense of
self-expression and finding truth that fits and is convenient and works for me. It might
not work for someone else, but it is true for me. Yet here, John is absolutely adamant,
the Apostle John, that there's one irrefutable truth for all people and it has massive implications.
And that's why this beloved Apostle, the Apostle of Love, the one who speaks more about love
than anyone who was closer to Jesus in that way than any other disciple, he speaks so
strongly against those who deny the truth that has been revealed through the apostolic
foundation. And he obviously in verses one and two, he speaks a lot about truth. And
then in verse seven, he declares what that fundamental truth is that he is so keen to
defend against false teaching that has come into these early churches that denies this
truth. He said, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess
the coming of Jesus in the flesh, such a one as the deceiver and the Antichrist. So God,
the Son, coming in the flesh, the incarnation of Jesus as God's Son is this irrefutable
truth that can't be denied and can't be soft-soaked and can't be changed. And there's multiple
truths that cascade from that particular fact of Jesus coming in the flesh.
And John is adamant as an apostolic witness that it's incontrovertible that if you lose
that fact of the Son of God, the divine second person coming in the flesh, living, dying,
being raised and ascended back to heaven, if we don't believe that God in Jesus Christ
walked on this earth as a person, then we have moved from the foundation of Christianity.
We can't call ourselves Christians if that is not something that is fundamental to our
understanding and our belief. It's what's declared in Scripture. It's what the focus
of Scripture is. It's what all the gospels point towards. It's what the Old Testament
prophesied. It's what the New Testament epistles look back to. It's evidence truth. It's
lived-out truth. And it's truth that can be denied. People can be deceived from it.
People can disbelieve it, but it's revealed for us as historical objective truth that
is fundamental to our faith and to our understanding of ourselves, of God, of this world that we
live in and of this salvation message. So in this truth that John is speaking about,
he realizes a couple of things. Well, there's a couple of them, unstated realities that lie
behind the statement that Jesus came in the flesh, and then he makes two statements about
why that's so important. And the two unstated realities, if Jesus comes in the flesh and
all the teaching that comes from that, it is the reality that sin is a personal and a
universal disease that needed God the Son to come to deal with. That's the biblical diagnosis
that we have of the world in which we live and of our own hearts before God. It is,
don't remind us of this morning, and it's often what we repeat here. It's our distance
from God. It's our rebellion against God. It's our turning our backs on God, our Creator,
recognizing that from the beginning of Scripture. That is what kills us. That is what is killing
us. Ultimately, it's not global warming. Global warming may well be happening. There
may be many reasons behind that. But that is not the ultimate reality of what's destroying
this world. Because death, according to the coming of Jesus Christ and the reason He came
is a spiritual problem. And it's the reality that brings us into judgment from God, because
death is what ultimately separates us from God of life. And that is why Jesus comes.
We have no answers to that. We have no answers to the... We have no ultimate answers to the
atrophying of the created universe, nor do we have any ultimate answers to our own death.
The world we live in has much beauty and much amazing reality and much relationship and
much love. But there's also deep, deep shadows, deep brutality, deep darkness, deep evil
that we are unable to deal with. Not only in society, but in our own hearts, we recognize
that. Now, we can be deceived to think otherwise. We can ignore that fact by just sticking our
head in the sand and getting on with it, or we can attempt to self-solve that problem.
But Jesus coming is in response to what God has revealed is the problem for humanity and
the problem for the universe. And so, this truth that God had to come on our behalf cannot
be denied. It can't be minimized and regarded as insignificant. It's this desire for God
to relate to these people who abandoned Him, who can't find a way back to Him because of
their sin, that drove Jesus Christ into the womb of Mary, into the stable to become flesh,
to live and experience a death like no other. And John knows that. John recognizes that
Jesus coming in the flesh was so significant because His death is substitutionary and He
experienced an infinitely dense punishment on that cross, on that three hours. He takes,
He subsumes, He takes all the sin of all His people and the wrath of God and the power
of darkness and hell on that cross in our place. He becomes, He becomes our substitute.
God becomes human in order to be a substitute on our behalf. And in His unique resurrection,
back to life and love, He shares with all who believe in Him that same life and love.
And the question is, how we understand that, how we live that and how we share that today
in a world that doesn't have the foundational truths? How do we do that? That's an important
question that each of us need to ask ourselves. How do we take that truth and make that relevant
in a society which maybe doesn't even begin with the foundation of believing in God in
the first place? How do we get them to that place? And how do we share that truth meaningfully?
And we need to recognize that it would be a very strange message to make up. And that
might be our starting point. Why would anyone make up this message?
So there's these two unspoken, as it were, fundamental realities that lie behind John
saying that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and railing against those who denied that.
And so what He does, He says a couple of things. He says, in verse 8, watch yourselves so that
you do acknowledge what we have worked for but win a full reward. And then He says in
verse 9, everyone who goes ahead and does not abide in the teachings of Christ doesn't
have God. Now we know that that was a message to that early church, family, house church
probably in Ephesus, around Ephesus at the beginning of the New Testament. But it remains
because of the living word of God, an ongoing and significant message for ourselves. To
be vigilant, He says to us this evening, old Christians, young Christians, new Christians,
whoever we might be, we are to be those who watch yourselves spiritually, to be alert,
to be those who recognise the danger of drifting from that truth, slowly and perceptibly losing
sight of the significance and importance of what Jesus has done and why that matters.
And maybe with the passing of time, you think it becomes less significant. Well, it happened
such a long time ago, how can it be just as relevant? And He warns against that. And we
know that the Bible in many places warns us not to grow cold, not to lose our attachment
to Jesus Christ, not to stop praying, not to move on to anything else, because He says
that to live in the light of that truth enables us to know our reward in heaven. Now, the
whole concept of reward is very difficult because we immediately associate reward with
earning something that we deserve it. But really, biblically, I think the idea of reward
in heaven means simply that as we stay close to Jesus, as we regard as important in our
lives, what Jesus knows is important and what He values, what weight we put on following
Jesus and the truth of Jesus in our lives will be recognised to the degree we lived
it in heaven. Christ values that as important and it will be reflected in how we spend eternity.
I don't know what that looks like, no idea whatsoever. But as we have depended on Jesus,
Jesus recognises and sees that that has eternal value. There's weight living that. There's
a weightiness about living close to Jesus Christ and keeping that truth in our hearts.
There's a weightiness that brings with it its own reward because there's value in remaining
close to Christ. So there's this encouragement, this challenge to be vigilant or to watch
yourselves. And also, the second challenge is not to run ahead. Everyone who goes ahead
and doesn't abide, so you've got two things going on there. We're told not to run away
and run ahead of that teaching and find something new or something flash or something more modern.
But we're told to remain. We're told to stay in that truth. We can't move out. There's
lots of ways in which we're to move forward. We move forward in the truth of Jesus Christ.
We're not to run ahead of it to maybe some sophisticated truth that leaves the gospel
and the message of a crucified and risen Savior in the cupboard. We are to progress in our
knowledge of that, but we're not to run ahead away from it. We're to remain in that truth.
And we will continue to encourage you to remain in that truth because we need to remain in
that truth, all of us. We need to be founded in it because it's what gives us life and
hope and security and fruitfulness and direction and blessing. So John then is totally uncompromising
on this truth. And he calls those who move from that truth of the truth of the incarnation
of Jesus and all that goes with that. He calls them in verse 7, he calls them deceivers who
do not confess the coming of Jesus in the flesh. So there was this group in these early
churches that moved away from the apostolic foundations of the truth and who maybe said
things like, well, the body's evil and flesh is not good. There's no way God, the Son,
would have come in the flesh. Maybe someone like God came and lived in Jesus for a while
but then left him before he died. You don't need someone to die and across to forgive
your sins because, well, the flesh is all going to be destroyed anyway. We need to look
for some kind of spiritual enlightenment ourselves, get into a higher spiritual soul plane that
we can find ourselves. And it doesn't matter too much how we live because, well, the body's
just going to be destroyed. And we're not going to care too much for other people. We
just need to find this higher level of spiritual enlightenment through intellect and through
knowledge and through insight. That is kind of the teaching that seemed to have become
prevalent. Jesus didn't really, God didn't come in the flesh and we can really look after
ourselves and save ourselves. And John is damning of these deceivers, he calls them,
because they've moved away from God's own diagnosis. And we might not find exactly
the same kind of heretical teaching in the church, but we do find similar kind of thinking
among a lot of people today, isn't it? What is sin? You know, we're not really quite so
bad. I'm sure we can earn God's favour, we can do our best and God will accept us. And
I do, I'm as good as the next person. All these kind of things are all related to that.
Now when that happens in the world, well, we can't expect anything else in many ways,
can we? But when it happens in the church, we need to be super strong in arguing against
that, especially if that becomes a message that is preached from churches that Jesus
Christ didn't really need to come in the flesh. And he certainly didn't need to die
in a cross. That is just cosmic child abuse. And we can move away from such old kind of
thinking. And yet, it doesn't answer the primary questions of the reality of your hearts, the
reality of sin, the reality of death, and a lack of assurance about being right with
God and moving forward into eternity. If we don't need Jesus Christ, if we didn't
need the cross, then let's just take the wine and the bread and just let's just eat,
drink and be merry and enjoy it just as a slapstick meal together and not something
sacramental and precious that reflects the person of Jesus Christ. So he calls them deceivers,
but it's worse than that. He calls them anti-Christ. Such a one as a deceiver and the anti-Christ.
And it's strong, strong words. Because remember, this was the time before the New Testament
canon had been complete. We've got great privilege and we've got great blessing from
having a complete scripture, Old and New Testament, right to the end of Revelation. But this
is before the end of the New Testament canon. And the apostolic message, the apostolic teaching
and authority was fundamental to these new churches. And it was so significant that
people held on to that teaching because it was what then became the inspiration for scripture,
those who had been witnesses of Jesus and who had this message to declare and to preach.
But at this early stage in the church, lots of messengers came around with a different
message. Now, in the New Testament church, when teachers came to a house church or a
new church, they were to generally be invited into people's homes. They were to be given
hospitality. They were to be listened to and their message was to be shared. But John
Heavis saying, no, don't bring them into your home. Don't show them hospitality. Don't
take them into your house. Don't receive their teaching. Don't even greet them because they
are anti Christ. They are bringing a message that will destroy, it will not heal and will
not bring life. These were wolves. They were in competition to the apostolic message. They
were after power and control and they were engaging in spiritual abuse. Oh yeah, it's
not a new concept, spiritual abuse and church leadership goes right back to the New Testament.
And he says, don't welcome them nor their message. Don't give them that respect that
they seek. And we have a duty in our lives and in our understanding of the truth, not
to partner with those who preach a false message that moves away from the gospel of Jesus Christ
and the incarnation of Jesus Christ as God the Son who died to atone for the sins of
His people and who rose again to offer eternal life. It's why we can't partner with churches
who would openly teach and preach a liberal theology that moves away from the traditional
understanding of the apostolic fathers. And that has nothing to do with being separatist.
I hope we can still love and understand and communicate warmly with such people. But it
is to do with our understanding of truth and its implications. And it's something that
we need to recognize in our own individual lives. I think particularly when we have such
access to online teaching, when maybe church isn't quite so significant to many people
and worship and learning under the word, maybe becoming less significant because there's
much better guys that preach online. But there's a danger of putting yourself under teaching
that it moves away from the apostolic foundations and the confessional standards that we regard
as so important and that are based on God's word.
So in conclusion, very briefly, John's strong words are a reminder to us of the foundation
of the gospel. And just lastly, and I think this is very, very important because John
sees it as, and it makes sense, doesn't it, that it's so important, that when we accept
this fundamental foundational truth that is revealed in Scripture about Jesus Christ and
about Him coming and about His substitutionary death on our behalf, it's the truth, it's
the only truth that unlocks true love. It's the only truth that unlocks true love. Because
what John is stating here as he's done, as we looked at last week when he talked about
the commandment we've been given from the beginning to love one another, and it's based
on the truth that's been revealed, the message they've had from the beginning. It is that
to genuinely love one another is, has a doctrinal basis. It is a basis in doctrinal truth. Two
true doctrine is always a walk into shared divine love. That's a really important point
to finish with. The truth that we believe, the truth that we confess, the truth that
we hold to, never stays on the page. It never stays on the page of Scripture. And I think
that comes across in John's closing words when he says, though I have much to write
to you, I would much rather not use paper ink instead I hope to come to you, talk to
you face to face. Because he realizes that doctrinal truth is primarily, it's primarily
relational. It always has been. Jesus Christ is revealed as the word, but is the word incarnate
to whom we relate and we have a relationship with through salvation.
Doctrine, if you have a doctrine or a belief that allows you to be divisive, proud, power-seeking,
superior or judgmental, it's not true doctrine, whatever it is. Whatever it is, it's not true
doctrine. You may assent and I may assent to the truth, but if it hasn't reached your
heart, it's not truth at all. Loveless, can I say something strong? Loveless doctrine
is hellish because even Satan believes in shudders, even the demons believe in shudder.
The written word can only ever go so far for us, even the Bible. We don't worship the Bible,
it's bibliography. We need the Holy Spirit to take the truth and incarnate it into our
lives, into our hearts so that we love other people the way Jesus Christ loves us. Doctrinal
truth is always there to change our hearts towards God. It's never a bare instruction
manual. The Bible's never that. If you think that's where the Bible is, you're way off
beam because it's relational truth that brings us into knowledge of Jesus Christ. Truth is
incarnational. It's the outworking of God's grace to us. John could see that. He could
see. That's why he was so, he spoke in such damnable terms of those deceivers because
they were divisive, they were separatist, they caused trouble in the church, they didn't
love their brothers and sisters, they just, they just caused havoc. For us, truth is
a face-to-face religion with the living God. And that's why we can talk about the pinnacle
of our relationship being in heaven when Jesus will wipe away every tear from our eyes. That
just speaks of a face-to-face relationship. We have honesty and openness and courage and
concerns that we share and that we live as people, not only before Jesus but also before
our brothers and sisters. That is what completes joy in our Christian lives.
Mere intellectual understanding of doctrine will not make you joyful. It needs to soak
into your heart and transform your and my lives. The gospel is a community of Christ
and His people around the campfire of truth. And that's the fullest, safest, strongest,
toughest and best place to live our life in Jesus Christ. And you are called to do that
in St. Columbus and I am called to do that. And if you're visiting with us tonight, you're
called to do that in whatever gospel community you're part of. And if you're with us tonight
and you're not a Christian, you're called and then commanded to come and know this Christ,
who alone is the truth revealed, who alone can deal with your death and your separation
from God and who alone can give you eternal life. It's the greatest message of all that
we'll celebrate very shortly. Let's pray.
Father God, help us to understand your truth, not as a flat doctrine, not as a way of separating
us in intellectual pride from other people or from other religions, but as an understanding
of the universe, an understanding of God and of our need and of His solution, which is
all of grace and all of goodness and love. And I haven't explained as much of that as
I should have. He just comes in great love to provide that way back. He says, I am the
way, the truth in the life. May we celebrate that through the Lord's Supper. And it may
be a meaningful sacrament to us as it reminds us of this truth, is the broken body, the
shed blood of Jesus as the sacrament He gives us because it's so critical and central to
our lives. So Lord, help us to enjoy that truth and know it and experience it in our
lives more and more we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.