The Greatest Deception

We'll turn your Bibles, please, to the book of 2 John. It's really a letter, but I like calling it a book because it's so short.

We'll read the entire letter of 2 John for the preaching this morning, which will be from 7 to 13, verses 7 to 13, but we'll read the entire book once again.

So please stand when you have that for the reading of God's Word. The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom

I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who love the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever.

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, in truth and love.

I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father.

And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.

And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.

For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.

Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the

Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

The children of your elect sister greet you. God bless the reading. Now the proclamation of His word. Please be seated.

You know, we recently had the emergency declared no longer emergency by the

CDC, the Centers for Disease Control. They say COVID is no longer a major health emergency.

We had this virus that spread across the world, and is still out there at some level, but it's no longer, according to the experts, a major health emergency for us.

But there is a virus of sorts that is out there in the world. And it's out there in every part of the world.

And it affects every human being who's ever born in this world, or ever been born, or will be born, until Christ returns.

It's one that you're born with. You cannot avoid it. And it's one that, if you're not cured of it, will bring you to eternal destruction, to death.

But a death that COVID could not even imagine. There's no light case in this.

Everyone who has this virus will die of it. And it begins with this. It began a long time ago.

If there's some controversy over where COVID started, there's no controversy where this one started. It started in the garden, and started with these kind of words.

Did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? The name of this virus is deception.

Deception. And it begins just with this, and it began way back then. You can read of it in Exodus, in Genesis chapter 3.

Did God actually say? Did he really say this? Did he really mean this?

Let's poke some holes in it. Let's take it apart a little bit. Did God actually say, and it has spread ever since?

Well, I have a name for people who don't think that this virus is real, who don't acknowledge its danger.

I call them Sark deniers. To piggyback sort of on modern terms that are used pejoratively against people who deny whatever you believe in.

Sark, from the Greek word for flesh. Sark in Greek is flesh. So Sark deniers.

By this I mean what the Apostle John is telling this church they need to protect themselves from.

A Sark denier is one who denies that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. It's just that simple.

That's the virus. That's the, did God actually say? Could God have actually done this?

Is the word of God that we have in Scripture so clear? Really that clear? Well, its name is deception.

Second John would have us protect ourselves from this by walking in truth and love.

And we spoke about these the last couple of weeks. This is the third and final in this short series in the letter of Second John.

Truth. The truth that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and died for our sins and rose again.

That's the truth. Now there's much more truth in the Bible. There's much more truth to the Gospel. We can go on and on for this for a month of Sundays as the expression goes.

But in this letter of Second John, that truth is very finite. He's very specific.

Walking in truth. You're walking in the truth that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Which means he lived as you and I live.

He had bones like you have bones. He had a nose. He had a mouth. He had eyes. He saw.

He smelled. He got tired when he walked. He got hungry. He needed rest. Jesus Christ came in the flesh.

That's the truth that protects us from deception. And then love.

We spoke about love in some detail last week. Love meaning to look upon the object of that devotion as something infinitely precious.

And recall that the Apostle John tells us to look that way upon one another. We walk in love.

Not that I'm precious in and of myself or anybody else in this room is. But you're looking at that work of Christ and this church that he has brought together.

And what it means that we together proclaim the Gospel. Particularly the truth that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.

And now the Apostle beginning at verse 7. We're going to go from verse 7 to the end of this letter.

He states his purpose in writing. Why was he so focused on truth and love?

Walking in the truth of Jesus Christ's human bodily existence. Always God.

Fully man. Never compromising the two. But his focus is here on the humanity of Christ.

And here's the reason for it. His purpose. The reason he focused so much on this truth.

And love. Verse 7. You see we have this core tenet of our faith.

The basis for our hope. Is the physical, the bodily, the flesh and blood, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You see we hold that he came once in a body that God prepared for him.

That's Hebrews chapter 10 verse 5. And he did that to deal with our sins. And he will come again in that same body to finally save we who eagerly await him.

We believe we've been saved now by faith. Paul says to the

Ephesians in chapter 2. And says to us in Ephesians chapter 2. That you've been raised with Christ.

That you've been seated with Christ. We believe by faith, by having been saved, that we are raised now.

And we believe that we will be saved by way of our physical, bodily, flesh and blood resurrection.

That's only possible if Jesus Christ came in the flesh. And he was physical, he was bodily, he was flesh and blood.

Because we're going to have a resurrection like his. Do you see how important this is? Do you see how deception wants to break that down, wants to pick away at it for you?

How do we protect ourselves? John's purpose in writing, he says, because many have gone out.

In verse 7. Your ESV says, for many have gone out. It means the same thing.

Here's the reason I'm writing. Why do I want truth and love? Because deceivers have gone out. And here's how we protect ourselves from them.

You see, only a few years after Jesus' coming and his resurrection and his ascension, there were those who went out like missionaries.

Zealous missionaries. And spreading this so -called gospel that denied that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.

Many have gone out, he says. Many have gone out into the world already.

Just a few years after the Lord returned to the Father. You see,

Satan's apostles are everywhere. Those going out and spreading this message, spreading this deception.

Trying to bring this virus into all of us. Or I should better say, trying to not let you be inoculated against this virus that you're born with.

This deception. This idea that Jesus Christ isn't really who the scripture says he is.

These sark deniers. The great deception. The docetists back in the day, these were enemies of the gospel that came very early.

You recall, docetist is from the Greek word doceo. Which means, it seems. And what they said is that Jesus Christ only seemed to be flesh and blood.

So it's like, did God really say that he would come in the flesh? Did he really mean that in Christ he became man and that as man he died for man?

Now here's something to bend your mind around they say. Jesus Christ only appeared to be flesh and blood.

He only appeared to be a man. And then John had the Gnostics who came in.

The many who've gone out. Did God actually say something so wonderful as the gospel and make it so simple?

Oh, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Is that it?

Could salvation to your eternal soul rest on something so simple as that?

Oh no, you poor little country bumpkin. No, no, no, no. There's so much more you need to do.

So much more you need to understand said the Gnostics. And say today. Then they put a friendly arm around your shoulder.

They guide you gently towards the inner sanctum where you can learn the real secrets of God. Those things that are between the lines.

Those things that are in the numbers that the letters stand for and all that kind of nonsense. And for homework, if you want to know where this arm around your shoulder leads you so gently and so friendly, read

Ezekiel 8 when you get home tonight. Ezekiel 8. And you'll see where this leads you.

Did God really say? Did God actually mean? Is it really that simple? John the

Apostle doesn't mince words. Such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist. He goes from the many to the one.

The one or the ones that were there in the elect lady's church. That one or each of them was the deceiver, the

Antichrist. Not Antichrist like the beast coming out of the sea in Revelation 13. John doesn't have any of that in mind here.

Those are true. That's another subject. What he's saying is many have gone out and the one that you have here in your church, that's the deceiver.

That's the Antichrist trying to deceive you. Did God actually say? And he's

Antichrist. He's against Christ on this key point that he came in the flesh.

I'm going to repeat it over and over because John is so focused upon it. It's the point of this whole letter is to know this, to believe this, to hang on to it, to protect yourself from deception by making this the bulwark of your faith.

It's so important. Paul or excuse me.

Antichrist is this one or is those ones who come and teach something other than this bodily physical life of Jesus Christ, his death and his resurrection.

And be that in that mode to be in that teaching is to be Antichrist, the

Antichrist. And today, to name only two, we do have huge cults that believe something like this, that believe in Antichrist gospel, if you will, the

Mormons and the Jehovah's Witness. And simply on this, we're not going to take it all apart, but simply on this, that they believe that Jesus Christ was somehow created, that he had a beginning.

And if he had a beginning, that he's not the Jesus who was prophesied by the prophets. He's not the Jesus who the disciples walked as.

He's not the Jesus that they saw raised up and go back to heaven on the cloud in the same body in which he walked, in the same body in which he died, in the same body in which he was resurrected.

That's important. That's crucial, because you, if you believe in Jesus Christ, will be raised in a resurrection like his, which means in his body, oh, perfected, and sin all gone.

But that's another subject. We wouldn't have time in the afternoon to cover all that.

The importance of the flesh and blood, physical life of Jesus Christ. And we follow like that.

This is the key. And this is the protection we have against that kind of deception. How did they not recognize them?

If this church was founded by the Apostle John, as many commentators believe, how did they not recognize these antichrists and these deceivers?

Well, it's because Satan masquerades as an angel of light. He's attractive. Think of those cotton ball kind of puffy clouds on a clear summer, spring -like day.

And they're so beautiful, but they never disgorge anything worthwhile like water for rain.

Right? They're just good -looking. Good -looking and useless. But if they did disgorge rain, and if they were these deceivers, you know what it would be like?

It would be like that black rain that fell on Hiroshima after the atom bomb. Satan masquerades as an angel of light.

And behind the good looks and the eloquent words is sheer darkness and death. So he warns.

He warns them. He warns the church. He warns them that they might lose their reward should they go on like this. Verse 8,

Watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.

Now, I'm not going to delve into the doctrines of rewards and salvation. We're just going to leave that aside.

John says that you may lose your reward. And what John says here should be enough to raise our hackles.

Now, commentators are quick to point out, and so I should be too, that salvation is not a reward.

You cannot lose your salvation in this way. Salvation is not a reward. It's a gift of God.

He's talking something other than that. Salvation is a gift of grace.

It's earned by Jesus Christ and him alone. And he says he will never leave or forsake you. But what can be lost, and how can it be lost?

Well, one man wrote this, and I think this is really good. So the reward for your works, how can that be?

You know, Jesus Christ, if we're out proclaiming his name, if we're working in his name, how could it be that we lose our reward?

Well, I have to ask you, what reward can there be if we are preaching a gospel that is any part of this deception?

If we are not firmly grounded in what the apostle John says is going to protect us from this and from losing our reward?

If we're preaching anything other than Jesus Christ came in the flesh, the word, Christ, eternal

God, the second son of the Trinity, or the second person of the Trinity, the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

You see, if we proclaim anything other than that, what reward would Christ give us? It's a false gospel. It's not a true gospel.

You see, we have a message to proclaim, and if we compromise here, if we allow anything other than a fully human savior to have saved us, if we entertain

Jesus as anything other than fully God and fully man, as foolish as that is to the world, we are deceivers and antichrists.

And what reward would God give if we proclaim the gospel wrongly? This doesn't mean we have to be a scholar every time we go out.

This doesn't mean we have to be perfect and can't make mistakes. But we have to believe this message that John says is the protection, the human existence of God in Christ Jesus our

Lord. So watch yourself, church member, because if we proclaim anything other than that, if we allow any deception, however innocently we proclaim it to get in, it's all hay and stubble and it will not survive the refiner's fire.

So watch yourself, says the Apostle John. Be sure in your heart that you know and believe in the bodily incarnation and resurrection of God the

Son, Jesus Christ. This is what will protect you from deception. No matter how much we delve into the details of Scripture in some of these series that we're in, as Pastor Brian goes through the

Gospel of Luke, as Pastor Connolly goes through Isaiah's prophecy, no matter how detailed it is, and it should be, there's a lot to pull out, there's a lot of teaching that is necessary as we go through those.

But we never contradict this, that God sent his Son, his eternal

Son, his never -was -not Son, to become flesh, just like you and just like me.

We can't venture past this basic. This is the core, the sophisticated people, the sophisticates bend and twist it.

Look at verse 9. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have

God. We could stop there and say, those are strong words, those are scary words.

We should look and say, anyone going on ahead, we'll talk about that in a moment, does not have Christ, does not have

God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. Truth is the key there.

Whoever does not abide in the truth of the teaching of Christ, the teaching about Christ, what the apostles testified about Christ, what the prophets looked ahead for about Christ, whoever goes on ahead of that does not abide in that teaching, does not remain in that teaching, does not immerse themselves in that teaching, does not have

God. The word for goes on ahead has the idea of someone stands over something, and in this case it's

Scripture. It's more than just not teaching it accurately or dealing with the text honestly. We all make mistakes, even we who deal with it honestly, we can make errors.

But what John's talking about here is to leave the Scripture behind, to stand ahead of it or even over God's word, as do the

Gnostics and the Deucetists in their denial of the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. So how do they run ahead of Scripture?

Well, let me ask some questions, some rhetorical questions.

Could an apparition, as the Deucetists said Jesus was, could an apparition crush

Satan's head or have his heel bruised? Think of Isaiah chapter 53.

I ask you, could a phantom bear our griefs? Jesus Christ bore our griefs because he engaged them.

He was faced with them, he was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin. Could a phantom have done that?

Could a specter have wounds by which we are healed? Again, going back to Isaiah, by his wounds we are healed.

Did God prepare a body for some sort of a science fiction AI being? Where did

Thomas put his hands when Jesus said, put your hand in the hole in my side or see the holes in my hands?

Where did Thomas put his hands? And just what was it that the Pharisees wagged their tongues at if not the physical body of Christ on the cross?

If you're the son of God, get yourself down from there. If he was a phantom, if he was a specter, if he was an apparition, they never would have done that.

You see, to deny that Jesus Christ came in the flesh denies even more. It denies his deity, it denies his godhood.

The Lord said to my Lord, as Jesus put it, the Lord said to my Lord, and he asked, if David calls him

Lord, how is he his son? What did Jesus Christ say about himself? Before Abraham was,

I am. And they understood what he was saying. He was saying, I'm God. That's why they tried to stone him for that.

Before Abraham was, I am. When John tried to fall at the angel's feet in the book of Revelation, the angel said, you must not do that.

But when he fell at Jesus' feet, the Lord said, fear not. I am the first and the last and the living one.

I died, and behold, I am alive forever, and I have the keys of death and Hades.

Now this is all denied, brethren. This is all taken away as our protection.

If Jesus Christ is not God who came in the flesh.

This is the truth that John rejoiced to see in their lives. This is the basis for love in which we must walk as well.

We don't love an image as if the Lord accomplished the cross with a hologram. We love a Savior who set aside his place in heaven.

That's Philippians 2, 5 through 11. He set aside his place in heaven and actually came and dwelt with man.

Got tired like we do. He got his feet sore like ours would be from so much walking in sandals.

He got tired and he slept. He got hungry and he ate. He faced temptation, yet lived without a trace of sin.

You see, God saved you by the man, Jesus Christ. And that man,

Jesus Christ, according to the Apostle Paul, is the only mediator between God and man. The man,

Jesus Christ. And so we need to remain clean. We need to guard ourselves from this error that is all around us in the world.

We need to not be ashamed of the foolishness of this idea that God became flesh.

And that we believe that this flesh and blood man died for my sins and went into the grave.

And three days later, God raised him up in flesh and blood. And the apostles saw him go back to heaven on a cloud in that same body.

We need to remain clean and free of deception. At least guarded against deception by believing these things.

And take no part in the uncleanness. This is for the church.

The house was a church. They didn't have buildings like we do today. You're free to invite people into your homes.

And some of us have friends or family members who hold to heretical, deceptive, anti -Christ doctrines.

Don't some of us have Mormons who are good friends? Or Jehovah's Witnesses? Or even Jewish people who don't believe that God became flesh or sent his son?

No, you can open your home to them. The house that John is speaking of is the church. Don't let them into the church.

By walking in truth and love, we guard ourselves against this diseased doctrine of Jesus being anything other than man or God.

But we don't let them come here and teach you. Even if they said words that were the same words that Brian Conley or I would say to you.

If they don't hold to the doctrine, they're out. Now, we would rejoice to have one of them here.

To hear the gospel. To sit with you in the pews. To have fellowship with you in that sense.

But not here. Not proclaiming these falsehoods to you. This is what John is saying.

You notice what he calls their doctrine. Wicked works. Something far worse than error is wickedness.

And why is it so grave? It's because of this. Because to say that in Christ God became something other than man or that he ever, ever was less than God is to call

God a liar. It takes away any basis for the truth that we must live in or the love that seasons us.

Were we to sanction such teaching here, we would take part. And taking part is a familiar word, koinonia.

You know, fellowship halls are often called the koinonia hall. That sort of thing. It's to participate. It's to actually immerse yourself in it and say,

I'm a part of this. And he calls it wickedness. Now, we would praise

God if a modern docetist or Gnostic came here to hear some Sunday. We would count it

Christ's goodness giving us the chance to proclaim to their ears and God willing to their hearts the true gospel.

But we would not allow them to teach. We would deny them the Lord's Supper. The pastors here would reject their application for membership.

We would not take part in their deceptive or anti -Christ teaching. John says,

I have much more to write to you, but I'd rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face -to -face so that our joy may be complete.

The children of your Lex sister greet you. I would love to have time to go on and on about talking face -to -face.

I'd say how much better it is to meet in person and take away the texting and the emails and all that, but that's just because I'm old.

I was just raised that way. But the idea here is that John wants to be in their presence and to encourage them in this way.

And make the joy complete by seeing them walking in truth and love. And founding them and strengthening them in this one doctrine that is so important that all else flows from it.

And this one doctrine where the deception, this virus that is everywhere can't even get in the door.

Because if you can't get past this idea that Jesus Christ is Lord and came in the flesh and was resurrected in the flesh, we can't break down all the rest of the things that we hold to, the rest of our doctrines.

This is ground level basic. You see, there's an infection out there and we do need to guard ourselves against it.

Not with masks, not with vaccines, not with social distancing, not with boosters.

But by walking in God's truth that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and the love that it produces.

And by that we are protected against deception and antichrist errors.