Sermon Manuscript W ALKING IN THE L IGHT : E XPOSITORY S TUDIES IN F IRST J OHN “Knowing Our Enemies” (1 John 2:15-27) • Sept. 2, 2001 • Dr. Doug McIntosh, Sr. Pastor Review and Introduction This morning we turn our attention once again to the first letter of the Apostle John. If you will recall, I said when we first began this series that John was the first great mender of the tears in the fabric, if you will, of the early church. By the time he wrote his letters, some of the most serious false doctrine that has ever been propagated was being propa- gated by a group of people that I have been calling the revisionists. They were attempting to revise the original message of Christ and the apostles and twist it into something new and grotesque. That brings an expression into First John that you read over and over again. John recalls his readers to what are “the things you heard from the beginning.” John says that the solution to the basic ills that plague Christians is not newer and trendier truth, but the oldest truth of all, the truth that goes back to Jesus and the Apostles. Now there are three reasons why you and I ought to be concerned about this. For starters, the very same kinds of heresies are being spouted today, and so we need to be able to recognize them because they’re so current. Another reason we need to hear what John the Apostle has to say to us today is because every day people we know are being drawn in by the seductive aspects of this teaching and destroyed spiritually. A third reason is be- cause we can easily be drawn into it ourselves. This morning what John wants to tell us is how to recognize our enemies. There’s very little he could say that will be more valuable to us, because we aren’t likely to resist our enemies unless we know who they are. Let’s read this section of the word and keep our eyes peeled for the two enemies that he describes here. I begin at First John 2:15. PAGE 1Scripture: 1 John 2:15-27 15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. 18 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us. 20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. 21 I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. 22 Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. 23 Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Fa- ther also. 24 Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that He has promised us—eternal life. 26 These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. 27 But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him. Defining the Believer’s Enemies Did you catch the identity of the two enemies that John wants to warn us of? The first is what I am choosing to call... The enemy system The enemy system is what John calls “the world.” You see it referred to in verse 15: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” “World” is a term that needs careful explanation, because there is a built-in problem with it. I first of all need to define what the world isn’t. What it isn’t The world isn’t anything that you and I can see. It isn’t our planet; it isn’t the physical world that is all around us. It is not the people that are in the world. Remember what Je- sus said, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). That’s a ref- erence to the world of people. God loves the world of people. We are told repeatedly that we should love it, too. Yet here, we are told that we are not to love the world. The mean- ing of “world” in this context has to be a reference to something entirely different, and it is. What it is That’s why I identified it as the enemy system. It is a way of thinking, a point of view, a PAGE 2false teaching that is built on deception. That’s why John writes in verse 26, “These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you” (1 John 2:26). The world is a deceptive system that essentially tries to get you and me to believe one critical thing: we are supposed to ignore God and His truth and live as independent enti- ties in the world. The world system puts me at the center of everything. You can see why this is so dangerous. It’s what we want to believe. It’s what we come into the world believing. And it’s what the world system, the first and most dangerous enemy of the believer, consistently reinforces at every turn. John says that if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. I think you can see on the face of it that this is an ambiguous statement. The language “the love of the Father” might mean, “the Father’s love for me.” Or, it might mean, “my love for the Father.” These can be easily tested by plugging them into the statement. The first mean- ing would be, “If anyone loves the world, the Father’s love for him is not in him.” That seems a bit of a stretch. It would convey the idea that the moment a person became de- ceived by the world, the Father stops loving him. I find that a notion that Scripture con- tradicts at every turn. God’s love for us is not conditioned upon the current state of our spiritual health. And aren’t you glad? On the other hand, the second idea would mean this: “If anyone loves the world, his love for the Father is not in him.” Most of the people who have considered this agree that it is this second idea that John has in mind here. The moment I began to put myself at the center of things, I turn my back on my love for the Father. They are literally in opposite directions. They are mutually exclusive. What we have here is a rough equivalent to what Jesus said in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” That’s why loving the world system is so lethal. If your love for the Father has grown cold, my friend, this is highly likely to be the reason why. And where does this enemy system confront us? In three areas, according to verse 16, through the things that are in the world system: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. The world’s contact points with us are through what we crave, what we admire, and how we want to be admired. We want the things that satisfy our bodies, the things that appear beautiful to us, and the things that make others admire us. Every human temptation boils down to one of these three. I know this, not only because of this text, but also because of the temptation of Jesus. These are the three exact areas that Satan placed before the Lord Jesus. He invited him to make Himself the center of things in three ways. He suggested that he turn stones into bread (the satisfaction of the flesh); he showed Him all the kingdoms of the earth in a moment of time (the delight of the eyes); and invited Him to leap from the pinnacle of the temple so that everybody could be impressed when the Father rescued Him (the pride of life). When these things become desperately important to us, we have turned our backs on the Father. We are not loving Him at that moment. So the enemy system is the world, that system that pushes God aside and invites us to make ourselves the center of everything. Now, let’s turn our attention to the second en- PAGE 3emy John mentions here... The enemy soldier John has a particular group of people in mind when he talks about the enemy soldiers. He is writing to a group of churches, probably in the region that today we call Turkey. He is a spiritual father to them, and feels a great responsibility for their spiritual welfare. But his friends have been infiltrated by a group of false teachers, and he describes them in an exceptionally interesting way. Notice first his terminology. In verse 18, he writes, “Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.” He calls them antichrists. His model In doing this, John tells us that there is a standard—a model, if you will—for the enemy soldier. An influential figure is going to come into the world at a strategic moment, a fig- ure that he calls the Antichrist. He is described in the prophetic books of Scripture as a deceiver and false prophet. This person is the model for all the enemy soldiers that have ever plagued the church of Jesus Christ down through the years. You will notice that John says, “It is the last hour.” In saying this, he reflects the con- sistent New Testament point of view that the world has been living on borrowed time since the cross. Once God declared to the world His view of human rebellion by placing the sins of the world on Christ, and everybody knew just how seriously He took the way of thinking that is put forward by the world system, it was clear that it was just a matter of time before He brought history as we know it to a close. The fact that He has now waited two millennia before doing that testifies to two things about God. It testifies to His patience, and it testifies to His love. Peter said that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. It is still the last hour. But the stage is now set for Antichrist, and has been set for a long time. This great relig- ious leader is the model for deception, and he has lots of people who are taking the same approach he will. His method The enemy methods are to overwhelm by sheer force of numbers. “Many antichrists have already come,” John says. False teaching is everywhere. Deception has lots of practitio- ners. And these particular practitioners of deception that he has in mind are using a won- derfully effective form of deception: they are claiming a connection with the original message at the same time they are denying its value. These people had apparently spent some time in the church in Jerusalem, but had become disgruntled and made their way north to propagate their poisonous point of view in other places. They would go to a city like Ephesus or Smyrna and say, “We have the straight scoop for you. We were part of the original apostolic church in Jerusalem. We know all the apostles personally. We’ll give you the pure essence of the message.” But instead of the essence, they gave a twisted version. In verse 19, John answers that kind of claim. He says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but PAGE 4they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.” They aren’t missionaries from us, John says. If their point of view was really sympathetic with ours, they would still be here. They left, but not as our representatives. This verse is twisted quite often into saying that because some people left a local church is proves that they weren’t Christians, but you can see in the context that is not at all what John had in mind. It is highly likely that these false teachers weren’t Christians; but the issue at hand is their teaching, not the state of their souls. All he’s getting at here is that these people should not receive any credence on the basis of their association with the apostles in the past. They aren’t teaching apostolic doctrine now, and that is what is dan- gerous. Enemy soldiers are like that. They tell people that they have special knowledge and in- sight, and it is wise to listen to them. But what they have to say is deceptive. That leads us to ask, “Exactly what were these people saying, and is their message still being re- peated?” His message The message of the enemy soldier is given beginning in verse 22: “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:22-23). The central message of the false teacher is a diminishing of the Person of Christ. False teaching places Jesus on a lower plane of worth than the Father, and removes the reality of His humanity. Now this seems a little peculiar to us. We live in a world where there are lots of attacks on the deity of Christ, and that seems understandable. We have no parallel for God be- coming flesh, after all. It seems totally unlike anything else in our experience. But what we easily miss is that attacking the humanity of Christ is equally devastating. The heart of the Christian message is that God became flesh. So much is bound up in that. Please understand that the Christian message is not that a man who was exceptionally good aspired to deity and because He was so good he made it. That is exactly the oppo- site of the Christian message. We preach not that He became heroic and was elevated, but that as God the Second Person of the Trinity stepped down into our world to become the Christ, God’s Messiah. Almost every Christian virtue reflects that simple fact. That’s our model for love. God loved the unlovely; we should, too. That’s our model for missions. God sought out rebels; we should, too. That’s our model for Christian virtue. God humbled himself and became obedient; we should, too. If you take the humanity of Jesus out of the Christian message, you don’t have a Chris- tian message anymore. The message that Jesus is the Christ is the heart of what people must believe to be right with God: • These [signs] are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the PAGE 5Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name (John 20:31). • Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who dwelt in Damascus, proving that this Jesus is the Christ (Acts 9:22). • When Silas and Timothy had come from Macedonia, Paul was compelled by the Spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ (Acts 18:5). • Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God (1 John 5:1). • Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who is to come into the world (John 11:27). “The Christ” is the unique figure, the central Person of human history, who is sent into the world to redeem it. To deny that Jesus fits that role is to jettison the ancient message. That is the ambition of the enemy soldier. When someone pulls Jesus Christ lower from the exalted position that the Father has given Him, you are looking at an enemy soldier. John has to go to this trouble to focus us in on the message for a very important reason: enemy soldiers are not identifiable by how they look. Enemy soldiers look like good peo- ple. They have to. Who would give any credence to the teaching of a person who looked like someone dangerous or hostile? Nobody. Satan is subtler than that. John has to go to this trouble to focus us in on the message because enemy soldiers are not identifiable by how they live. Enemy soldiers live ostensibly righteous and godly lives. This is something we have real trouble with today. Jesus had a hard time getting this message across, too. He said that false prophets were like wolves in sheep’s clothing. They look like sheep. They act like sheep. They pay their bills. They give to the church. They are civic minded. They are friendly and caring. They perform what are apparently righteous actions. Jesus went on to say that they would be known by their fruit, which, as you know if you’ve heard me preach on Matthew 7, has nothing whatever to do with their behavior. Their lives commend their doctrine. But here, as in Matthew 7, the focus is on the mes- sage. That’s how you know false teaching. You examine it for content. All false teachers are nice, respectable people. It’s their message that stinks. John says, in effect, “If their message doesn’t agree with historic Christianity, disregard their virtues and consider them as enemy soldiers out to infiltrate the Christian community.” Now in every battle, of course, we are not alone. So John spends a goodly portion of his message here... Declaring the Believer’s Allies He mentions three of them. Obviously, we need to know these. It is a spiritually hostile world out there. We need to know what we have going for us. So what the three allies of the believer in the war for the truth? The first is... An anointing from God John mentions this twice. First, in verse 20: “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.” The second reference is in verse 27: “But the anoint- ing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that any- one teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.” In both PAGE 6references, the anointing that John is talking about is apparently something that keeps them from having to be dependent on the enemy infiltrators. He says that the anointing is responsible for their knowing all things, and that the anoint- ing teaches them, and the anointing abides in them and keeps them from needing people to teach them. Putting all these things together, I draw three conclusions about the anointing. First of all, the anointing is a person. Secondly, that the only person who can do what is said here is the Holy Spirit. And thirdly, that he probably has the leadership of the church in mind in particular. Anointing in the Old Testament was something done that was symbolic of the Holy Spirit. It represented a special empowerment for a specific spiritual task, and leaders were typically the people involved. Kings were anointed to lead their people. Prophets were anointed to speak God’s word to the people. What he’s doing here is telling them that they don’t need to depend on visiting false teachers to have a healthy church. Their leaders are perfectly capable, under the illumi- nating work of the Holy Spirit, to feed and prosper God’s flock. And in that sense, any local church with biblical qualified elders is capable of keeping that local church in touch with apostolic teaching. And that’s what John is trying to do. So our first ally in defending ourselves against the world and against the soldiers of dark- ness is the anointing ministry of the Spirit. An unchanging message Did you see his assertion there in verse 24? “Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.” That’s the key. Stay in touch with the message as it was preached from the beginning. Give the Son of God the preeminence He deserves. Recognize the centrality of Jesus. Exalt Him for His grace and goodness, and for His sufficiency. These false teachers may even have been extolling Jesus for His goodness; but they were not praising His sufficiency. In their view, He was not alone adequate to make humanity right with the Father. They did not, to use John’s expression, have the Son. John says that when you don’t have the Son, you don’t have the Father. There is a third ally that we have in combating attraction to the world and the messengers of false doctrine... An abiding relationship When we were back earlier in the chapter, I made the point that abiding in Christ is not something that is automatic in Christian living. You can be a member of the family of God and take your eye off the ball for a while and fail to abide in Christ. Abiding in Christ is something that people who are Christians are commanded to do. You see that here in verse 24: “Therefore, let that abide in you which you heard from the begin- ning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.” The implication is, “If you lose touch with the original message, you will also be out of step with the Son and with the Father. You cannot be intimate with them if you drift away from the original message.” God has designed it so that the only way to keep from becoming a casualty in the spiri- tual wars is to stay in close touch with Him and His truth. If we do that, we don’t need to fear any enemies. PAGE 7C OPYRIGHT © 2001 P. D OUGLAS M C I NTOSH . T HIS DATA FILE / MANUSCRIPT IS THE SOLE PROPERTY OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER AND MAY BE COPIED ONLY IN ITS ENTIRETY FOR CIRCULATION FREELY WITHOUT CHARGE . A LL COPIES OF THIS DATA FILE / MANUSCRIPT MUST CONTAIN THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICE . T HIS DATA FILE / MANUSCRIPT MAY NOT BE COPIED IN PART ( EXCEPT FOR SMALL QUOTATIONS USED WITH CITATION OF SOURCE ), EDITED , REVISED , COPIED FOR RESALE , OR INCORPORATED IN ANY COMMERCIAL PUBLICATIONS , RECORDINGS , BROADCASTS , PERFORMANCES , DISPLAYS , OR OTHER PRODUCTS OFFERED FOR SALE WITHOUT THE WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER . R EQUESTS FOR PERMISSION SHOULD BE MADE IN WRITING AND ADDRESSED TO D R . 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