1 John 2:22-29 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.

Transcription

1 1 1 John 2: Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also. 24 Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is what he has promised us, eternal life. 26 I write this to you about those who would deceive you; 27 but the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that any one should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him. 28 And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. 29 If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that every one who does right is born of him.

2 2 In last week s sermon, we touched on the beliefs of the Pharisees; I said last week, the Pharisees teaching was all about outward observance, and Jesus taught again and again that it s the inner person that needs to change and that the only way that s possible is if Jesus, who is God Himself, comes, by invitation, to live in that person, changing him or her from the inside. This sermon is a continuation of the last, and is the second of a series of three. The sermon next week will be the third of that series, a continuation of this one. I said last week that we Christians claim and believe that when each of us invited the living supernatural Jesus into our lives, to be our Saviour and our Master, it was the beginning of a new life that we were born again and I quoted Jesus when he said, I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. (John 3:3 NIV) The problem in the early Church was that some of those who had become Christians were trying to bring the old beliefs and teachings, and ideas from their previous lives in the world into their new lives as disciples. The fact is, that just won t work! Jesus said, No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; if he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. (Mark 2:21) As we know, first Peter, then Paul and others began to bring the good news about Jesus to the Gentiles, and in particular to the Greeks. When at the council of Jerusalem the early church was considering the right approach to these new Gentile believers, at one point, the ideas of the Pharisees about outward observance started to creep in, and there were many who wanted to tell the Gentiles they needed to be circumcised, and to be subject to the whole of the law of Moses, just like the Jews were! It was only a timely intervention from Peter that changed that decision that led others to question and discard ideas from their old lives that were actually incompatible with discipleship to Jesus Christ. If that decision had gone the other way if the Jewish Christian Church had been deceived, and decided that the Gentile believers had to take on all the rules and regulations of the Jews, the result would have been disastrous Christianity today would be an obscure sect within Judaism, instead of easily the largest faith in the entire world. Among the Greeks, many followed ideas from Greek philosophy, including the idea that the body was basically evil, and that only the spirit of a person had the capacity to be positively good. This is called Gnosticism. Many of the new Greek Christians would have previously followed those ideas. Some of these ideas had begun to sneak, unchallenged, through the

3 3 back door into their new lives and into the Church, partly through a teacher with strong Gnostic sympathies called Cerinthus. He was preaching his own private brand of Christianity so successfully that he won over some of the leading Christians. They finally left the Church to form a sect of their own. The first epistle of John, and especially the middle part from which our reading is taken, was written to protect the Church from what is called the Gnostic Heresy. The problem for these Gnostics was this: if all matter and everything to do with the body is evil, how do you explain the birth of God Himself in a body an event that is central to Christian belief? Not prepared to let go of those old beliefs from their previous life, they began teaching that Jesus and Christ were two different things. Jesus, they said, was just a man, until, at His baptism, Christ, who was a spirit, entered him. At the end, they said, Christ, the spirit, left him, the man Jesus, to die on the cross. So what were the results of this ridiculous travesty of the gospel? They taught that a person is a spirit, living in a body, and that the person s spirit is the only part of the person that has any value, the only part that means anything to God. From this, they argued that a person s behaviour was not important the important thing was a person s spiritual development. They re called Gnostics, because gnosis is the Greek word for knowledge, and they were teaching that what really matters is the amount of knowledge that a person has learned, the degree to which he or she understands the mysteries of God. They claimed they d achieved spiritual perfection, and were now incapable of sin. So it was OK for them to indulge in drunkenness and orgies, and anything else they chose, since for them all things were pure. All of this follows completely logically from those first assumptions about the body and the spirit, and about Jesus the man and Christ the spirit being two separate people. Now we can understand why it was that John says in his letter, at the beginning of tonight s reading, Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? The Gnostics were claiming to be uniquely close to God, and John continues, No one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also. The Gnostics were claiming to be sinless. So now we can understand why John says later in the letter, If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, God is

4 4 faithful and just, and will forgive our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. These ideas were also a problem in the Church at Corinth. So we can understand why Paul, among many attacks of Gnostic ideas, says in his first letter to the Corinthians, Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. (1 Cor 8:1b) So what s all this got to do with us? Phariseeism and Gnosticism were 2,000 years ago! You have heard me before quoting Ephesians: Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers, against the authorities, against the rulers of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Eph 6:12) In other words, there s a war on, between the hosts of heaven and the hosts of hell, a war between very real spiritual entities, going on in the world, and in each of our hearts and minds. So HOW did the enemy manage to smuggle into the Church, like a computer virus, pharisaical ideas that might have crashed the growing Christian Church at the council of Jerusalem, if Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, hadn t refuted them? And HOW did the enemy manage to smuggle into the growing Gentile Church, like a car bomb, the Gnostic ideas, that might have fragmented the early Church, if John and Paul, among others, had not exposed and de-fused them? It happened, fairly obviously, because some who became Christians did not challenge and change the old ideas, beliefs and ways of thinking they had brought with them into the new life as disciples of Jesus. And that problem is with us still today. For example: I was brought up in a family, and educated in schools, which, sometimes in words, sometimes by example, taught, that a person should be the captain of his or her own ship, independent and self-reliant. It was only some time after I accepted Jesus personally as my Saviour and Lord, that I really began to understand that the opposite is true that Jesus, must be the director of the life of the Christian. I ll say again, just to be clear, we re talking about the supernatural here. The Christian needs to become more and more dependant and reliant on HIM. I had to throw away those previous worldly ideas about self-reliance, and years later, I m so glad that I did. Anyone here ever been to New Zealand? (If you want accurate information about what it s like in New Zealand, ask them.) And for accurate information and understanding about the spiritual reality behind our human experience, what the heavenly places are really about, go to the one who was there since before the beginning of the world, our Saviour and Lord, beloved Master and friend.

5 5 Another example: about moral and spiritual issues, the world says things like, There are lots of grey areas. The bible shows us a different reality. Commenting on John s first letter, David Pawson, the great teacher and preacher, now in his 80s, wrote that: Both John s Gospel and his letters describe the Christian life with absolute contrasts. John s assessment of the world is in sharp contrast to the modern vogue of relativism, which believes that nothing is true or false everything is just an opinion. John, and the rest of the Bible, stand against that view. John draws a number of contrasts: life and death, light and darkness, truth and lies, love and hate, righteousness and lawlessness, children of God and children of Satan, love of the Father and love of the world, Christ and antichrist, and the biggest contrast of all heaven and hell. Such opposites give no room for a third way. You are either of one or the other, and there are no further options. Jesus said, No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. (Matt 6:24a) Jesus said, He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. (Matt 12:30) Not a lot of grey areas there So how about you? Are there worldly values or beliefs or priorities or understandings that you may have learned and adopted recently, or many years ago perceptions that are actually incompatible with the teachings of Jesus, and those He taught and discipled? Even as you hear the sound of my voice, is the Holy Spirit bringing to your mind those ideas or perceptions that sneaked through the back door into your heart and mind? Jesus said, You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Let s pray. Father, we give you thanks because you sent your Son Jesus to save from death and hell all those who truly accept Him. Father, we give you thanks and praise because through Jesus and through His teaching you revealed your true nature. Lord Holy Spirit come in power now, into the hearts and minds of your servants here; bring to our minds those deceptive worldly perceptions you would have us surrender to you, and exchange for Your truth. AMEN.