1 John 2:21-23, Know the Truth from Lies | Adult Sunday School

Good morning, everybody. Hope everybody's doing well. Enjoying the summer? It's.

Always nice. Too hot? What? I always just think of January when it's that hot. You're waiting for winter? I grew up in northern Minnesota, so I'm not really waiting for winter. All right, let's get started.

We'll have a word of prayer and then we'll jump into the Word. Father, we love you and praise you and just thank you for the truth of your Word and the Scriptures give us a guide to living our lives well.

And thank you for the cross and the ability to come to you, Lord, and fellowship with the saints and understand who you are and what you're about. Thank you for the opportunity to get into your Word and to study and to just get to know you better and to glorify you.

In Jesus' name, Amen. All right, we are still in 1 John. We're going to be in chapter 2, verses 21 to 23 this morning. So if you turn there, we'll get to that here in just a bit. But I just wanted to talk a little bit about the truth this morning.

The Premium on Knowing Truth and Rejecting Lies

There's a premium to knowing the truth. There is knowledge and there is truth, but not all truth leads to the Savior. That's for sure. There's consequences of a lie. That's what we know. There's far-reaching effects to that when you embrace a lie, especially when it comes to heaven and hell.

These are eternal consequences, aren't there, to following a lie. And knowing the right kinds of truth can keep you out of danger. But where do you find reliable truth? The philosophers will tell you it's from all the old men of old, right?

Socrates and Plato and all of those. And it's man's ideas, man's philosophies, man's way of looking into truth, and they leave God out of that. That's not a reliable source of truth at all. When you start with man, that's not the place to start, is it?

When you look inside and say, this is my source of truth, that's not where you want to go. Because it always leads us into some kind of a ditch somewhere when we start with man's truth. I mean, Colts finds truth in all kinds of places.

The Quran. You see the New World Translation for the Jehovah's Witnesses. The New Age Bible, A Course in Miracles. So many different places that you find that people are looking for truth, but it's in the wrong places.

It's not in the reliable sources. Because if you follow the gods of those sources, it actually leads you into the lie rather than into the truth. That's the difficulty that we face with following that kind of truth when it's false.

We find truth in God alone, don't we? God of truth, and in Him there is no lie at all. John said that Christians have never have to wonder about the truth because it continually abides within us. How does it do that?

It abides in us by the Holy Spirit that is within us. The truth should be believed and obeyed and lived out in obedience every day. We will see today that there's an emphasis on knowing the truth. This is what our passage is about today.

And it's not just knowing the truth, it's also defending against the lie. We have to defend against the lie. So our passage is 1st John 2, 21 to 23. So if you're there, let's just read it. Verse 21, I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father. The one who confesses the Son has the Father also.

So there's some things that we need to know about the Lord Jesus Christ and about this passage. And one of the first things that John says is believers know the truth. Believers know the truth. What does it mean to know?

We talked about this a little bit early on where in John, the first part of it, he says in verse 1 of chapter 1, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and touched with our hands concerning the Word of Life.

To know is to experience Christ, to understand Him from that level. You've seen it, you've experienced it, you've witnessed it in your own life. And that's what John's trying to get across here. They knew the truth.

It reminds me of the exchange with Pilate, doesn't it? John 18, 37, at the end of that verse, it says, everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. And then in verse 38, Pilate said, what is truth? That's always at the source of everything, isn't it?

In our faith and in our life. What is truth? It's a good question. How would you define it? Someone came up to you right now and said, what is truth? What would you say? Truth is Scripture. What else?

Is there anything else? What is that? Scripture alone? Absolutely. Jesus Christ, I am the truth. Absolutely. I love that. I love John MacArthur's definition of truth. He defines it this way, truth is that which is consistent with the mind, the will, character, glory, and being of God.

I love that definition because it encompasses so much in there. We know we have the Holy Spirit for this reason. It guides us into all truth, doesn't it? John 16, 13 says that the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth.

Truth is preeminent. But how does the Holy Spirit guide us into all truth? How does that happen? Any idea? Testifies to the Word? Yeah, absolutely. When we read his Word, the illumination of that Word comes into our minds and thoughts, and it interacts with our soul.

We can read other books about the Bible that are not truthful. We can gain some knowledge and understanding of it, but we always have to come back to the fact that it is not a hundred percent truth. Everything is not truth.

Another thing we have to know about Christ is we have to know the truth about Christ, don't we? This is what the passage is talking about. We have to know the truth about Christ. When we read the Gospels, we can see that many people viewed Christ as just a man.

Just a man. They didn't recognize him as anything special. We have the same issue today, don't we? People think that Jesus was just a man, nothing really cool or different about him at all. They look at him much like Isaiah did in Isaiah 53, 2, when he says this, in Isaiah 53, 2, for he grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of parched ground.

He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should desire him. There's nothing unique and different. He wasn't kingly. They viewed him as just a man. And I think this is driven home in Matthew, in chapter 13, verses 53 to 58.

I'll read this for you. You don't need to turn there, but I'll read it. Now it happened that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed from there, and he came to his hometown and began teaching them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?

Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas and his sisters? Are they not all with us? Where then did this man get all these things?

And they were taking offense at him, but Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household. And he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.

You can see the humanity. They viewed him as just a man. They were wondering who this was. I like to watch hockey. Winning the Stanley Cup, every person gets to take the cup to their hometown or wherever they want to take it.

And many of them do go to their hometown. And it would be like you would hear someone say, you know, that's Sally's son. He wasn't that good when he was growing up. How in the world did he win the Stanley Cup?

This is the same thing that Jesus, it's the same case. He's the carpenter's son. How in the world does he have all this knowledge and wisdom and understanding? Where does it come from? Right? Where does it come from?

Listen to this in John 7, 5. For not even his brothers were believing in him. This is what the way it is in the world. This is what's happening all over the place. When people see Jesus, they just see flesh and bones like the Gnostics did instead of the deity of Christ.

But when you really recognize and look at the majesty and deity of Jesus Christ, it's amazing. It's amazing. The Bible says that we need, we have to know the truth that Jesus is God. Not just a man. We have to defend that truth against all of the lies that are out there.

The Bible says that he's God. We can see that. Hebrews 1, 8. We probably learned that a couple years back. A couple years back. Hebrews 1, 8. But of the Son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever.

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. John 1, 1. He was fully God and fully man. Says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then down in verse 14, what does it say?

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word was God and he was flesh. This is a direct hit on the Gnostic teaching that Christ didn't have a physical body, but he did. And he was fully God and fully man.

He's also the Creator. John 1, 3. He's all things came into being through him, is what he says. Hebrews 1, 10. And you, Lord, in the beginning founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands.

That's amazing. John 10, 28. Others acknowledged him as God. Thomas answered and said to him, to Jesus, my Lord and my God. You see these examples in Scripture that the Lord is God. Jesus is God. And I think one of the greatest ones that I know of is in John chapter 12, verses 38 to 41.

I know Jim covered this in his series on John, but it's one of the passages that you can use to defend that Jesus is God. It's probably the clearest example of that that we have in Scripture. John 12, 38 to 41.

And basically it comes down to this. I won't get into every detail of it, but it comes down to this, that John is quoting Isaiah. He quotes Isaiah 53, 1, and then he quotes Isaiah 6. And in the very last verse there, 41, that he's talking about, he says this.

These things Isaiah said because he saw his glory, and he spoke about him. Well, the question becomes is whose glory did Isaiah see? Well, let's read it. Isaiah 6. I'll read this for you. In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, with the train of his robe filling the temple.

Seraphim stood above him, each having six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And he called out to another and said this, Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. That's the Jesus that Isaiah saw. Now, when you look at that, and you think, oh, on one side he's just a man, but then you read these passages like this and see the majesty and the glory of the Lord Almighty.

It's amazing for us that we can know this truth, that we can defend this truth in our everyday lives, because it is our life. God is our life. We also have to know that the church is the defender of the truth, right?

Right here, the church needs to be the defender of the truth, because in 1st Timothy 3 .15, it says that the church is the pillar and support of the truth. The pillar and support of the truth. What truth are we upholding?

What truth is it? Think about it. Truth about the gospel? Truth about scripture? It's truth about the gospel. It's by faith, and not by works. That's what the world would teach you. It's by works. You can just be a good person and live that life.

It's the truth about election. God chooses us. God chooses some for salvation, and man responds. That's the message that the scriptures teach, not the lie that man chooses God. There's nothing in us that would propel us to seek after God.

That's the lie. Truth about heaven and hell, all that. Truth about marriage. Between a man and a woman only, there's nothing else. You can't marry your dog. Maybe the world would think that, but you can't.

Truth about who we are, male and female, that's what it's about. The church is to uphold this, and we're to be that pillar and strength of the truth. And it's hard now to find that in just any place. That's why what we have here, I say it every time I feel like what we have here at Kootenai is unique.

It's different because it's uncompromising. We want to defend that at every cost, and we're not ashamed to come and say, this is what it is, because the world doesn't want to hear that. That's okay. It doesn't change the fact that it is the truth.

Spotting the Lie and the Spirit of Antichrist

We also have to know how to spot a lie. That's kind of the passage. In verse 21, look at that again. We have to know how to spot a lie. Verse 21, I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

No lie is of the truth. In the context, the lies that are being talked about are the lies of the Gnostics, that Jesus wasn't God, that he didn't have a resurrected body, that he didn't come in the flesh.

That is the lie. But how do you spot a lie? How do you spot a lie? There you go. Amen. We do need to be so deeply rooted in the Scriptures. We have to have that deep knowledge, and we have to be about it all the time, because it becomes then easier to spot that lie.

Like I'm in banking, and one of the things they give us is a book on all the all the checks from all over the place. And you go over those, so when you get a check in, you can look at it, look at the the type font, you look at the paper, you look at every last component of it, to be able to discern whether that's a fake or not.

And when you know it, you can just look at it and go, yeah, that's that's not right. There's something wrong there. This is the same way it is with the truth. We know the truth so deeply, so intimately in our lives, that when you can spot a lie, when someone brings up something that doesn't correspond with the truth, but the truth's under attack everywhere you go.

It's under attack. John 14 6 says this, and I think this is one of the main reasons why it is under attack. It's because I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father through me. It is exclusive.

The world doesn't want to hear that. You know what the world wants? They want an Oprah God. They want an Oprah God that says, oh, Jesus isn't the only way to God. This is what she said. That's an Oprah God.

She also said that there are many paths to God. Well, yet that's not what we read in Scripture, is it? The world loves that concept. You can't tell me that I just need to follow Christ because that's too exclusive.

That's too confining for me. It's just not the way to go. But John 10 1 gives us a different story. It says in John 10 1, truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.

You see, you can't come to Jesus in any other way but through Christ. You can't climb up to heaven any other way. You have to know the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ. You have to embrace that and make it a part and fabric of your very lives.

And so he's the cornerstone of our faith, isn't he? Without him and the cross, our faith is really in vain. There's no reason to come here. But that's not what the Scriptures say. The Scripture says he is the truth.

The Scripture says he did come and die on the cross. Scripture said he did come to guide us into all truth. We have that truth within us. One other thing we have to know about the truth is we have to know where to find truth, don't we?

We have to know where to find truth. I mean, you think about where truth comes from. Where does the world find truth? Any ideas? TV? CNN? I don't know about that. We're going to have to think through that one.

Where does the world find truth? Their hearts? Follow your heart. Follow your interest. Do what makes you feel good. That's one of the ways that they find truth for sure. What else? Sources of truth for the world.

Satan? Yeah, there's definitely worshipers of Satan out there. Drag queen story time. It's very popular, isn't it? Yeah, that's offensive in terms of just how conflicting it is with the truth. You see that?

Yeah, that's a good point. The world does suppress the truth in unrighteousness in so many different ways. When we think about the fact that Christ is truth and our lightning rod for it, there's nowhere else to go.

I mean, you see truth everywhere. People trying to find truth and so many other things. I mean, I think of the psychics that are out there. There used to be a hotline, you know, when I was a kid I remember some hotline.

You call this psychic and they'll tell you the future and everything that you need to know. You know, you talk about fortune tellers and scriptures and you hear these things. I mean, the cults have all different kinds of places that they find truth and it's just contrary to that.

Finding truth, though, in the wrong places can be catastrophic, right? Like, I think of just where it leads you. It doesn't lead you into the path of righteousness and into a relationship with the Lord.

It leads you away from that truth. But isn't that what the lie is? Isn't that the spirit of Antichrist behind these false teachings? Is to lead you away from the truth so you are lost and stumbling around in the dark?

Because there's no way that Satan wants you to find the truth and walk your life for the glory of God. That's not what what he wants. He wants to destroy you. That's one of his names, right? The destroyer.

Satan wants to destroy your life. He wants to take it out. But it's catastrophic. Let's see. One other thing we have to know. We have to know who the liars are. We have to know who the liars are. Who is the liar?

It says, in verse 22, sorry, who is the liar? But the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the Antichrist. The one who denies the Father and the Son. So we have to be able to discern who the liars are.

And in this case, right, we've been talking about it. It's the ones that deny Christ. And it is, you know, the Gnostics. That's what we've been talking about. But a liar is someone who preaches something that they know to be false.

They know to be false, but they declare it to be true with the intention of deceiving someone. It's not this that you know some kind of knowledge or simply get facts wrong with the intention. You're not attempting to deceive somebody.

That's if you just were wrongly taught somehow. But it's the Gnostic teaching that really knows, you know, what they are doing deep down. They know. Proverbs 17 .4 says, a liar gives ear to a destructive tongue.

And I think that is, it's an illustration for me. It puts it in my mind. It's destructive. A lie is destructive and it hurts people. And that's really what we're getting at here. But what is the lie that we're talking about?

We're talking about the denial of Christ. There are many in the churches who do not believe the truth about Christ, right? We see that. Ligonier did a survey in 2020 called, The State of Theology. And in that, they found that 52 of adults do not believe that Jesus is God.

52%. That's just general. And then this statistic, 30 of evangelicals agree that Jesus was merely just a great teacher and he wasn't God. Professing so-called evangelicals say that Jesus wasn't God.

30%. That's kind of a big number. You take it all across, you know, all the churches in America. They say that they love, love, love Jesus. But when it comes down to the obedience side, it's easier to deny Christ because there's no conflict, right?

If you tell somebody that Jesus is the only way, what happens? People come at you, don't they? They come at you. They don't want you to say that, oh, there's only one way. And it's sometimes easier for them, I guess, to say, hey, you know what?

Many paths to Jesus. I don't really know. It's kind of like the emergent church movement. We're just still having a dialogue about Jesus. And we're never really landing one way or the other on, you know, whether he was God or not God.

We're just gonna keep talking about it and maybe someday we'll figure it out. That's what they were teaching at the time for the emergent church and that's still going on today. But when it comes down to giving up some things, this is not what they want to do.

So the lie here in this verse, it says the Antichrist is the one who denies Jesus, isn't it? They deny Jesus. They have the spirit of Antichrist working in them. That's what it says. So what does it mean to deny the Father and the Son?

What is that? What does it mean to deny the Father and the Son? Denies the deity? So what's that? They what? They neglect who they are? So if you, the Father is God, right? We know that. The Son is God.

If you deny the Father's deity, aren't you also denying the Son's deity? If you deny the Father and Son, you're denying the deity of Christ no matter how you look at it. This is what they're denying. So I want to talk a little bit about what does it mean to deny Christ?

What does that mean? How do you? To deny Christ. What is that? Yeah, the New Apostolic Reformation does that. They believe that they need to do some kind of work to bring Christ into the picture, and that definitely is a way of denying them for sure.

I mean, this is the things that you see all over the place. What's the word deny mean? Go ahead, sorry, Peter. Right, absolutely. Yeah, he denies that he's come in the flesh, that he is sitting at the Father's right hand.

Absolutely. No one comes to the Father except through me, John. Yeah, if you don't do that, you're denying him. Absolutely. What does the word deny mean? Does anybody have any thought about that? Reject Christ?

Yeah? Any thoughts? To deny is really to contradict. That is to deny what someone else has said. It's to contradict it. So when they deny that Jesus is the Christ, they are contradicting the truth of Scripture, that he is Christ.

You can't have it both ways. They're denying it. We talked about the docetus when I introduced the study of 1 John. It's a kind of a spin-off to the Gnostics, but the Docetics, I don't know if you remember this, but the word doceticism means to seem, and they said that Jesus only seemed to have a human body, but he wasn't really real.

He was more of an illusion. That's a contradiction of what the Scriptures actually teach, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and became flesh, and dwelt among us.

That's a contradiction. So he was fully God, and he was fully man. That's the bottom line. So a question, can a believer who knows Christ still deny him? Can a believer who knows Christ deny him? That is a very good answer.

What was Peter's denial of Christ? What's that? Was that a denial? Was he saying that Christ wasn't who he said he was gonna be, or who he was, I should say? Right, right. So he wasn't denying him as the Lord and Savior, he was just denying him as someone he knew, right?

That's a difference. I think someone that's saved understands the faith of Christ. I mean, you think about where we are with so many different decisions that we face in our lives. I mean, it's certainly, we're under, we can be under a lot of pressure to deny our faith, can't we?

But I think, yeah, yeah, Peter did not have the Holy Spirit at that point. Yeah, good point. So the pressures of the world can put a lot of emphasis on this. I mean, I think of, I was thinking about this this week with everything going on, what happens during communist regimes is when they come in, they try to get you to deny your faith, right?

That's what they're trying to do. The hope and the ability to have, I don't know, just a better outlook on life, they're trying to destroy that very thing. Our faith, our hope, our life is all wrapped up in Christ.

And I pray for all of us, honestly, that we are not ashamed of Christ, that we never get to that point where we would deny him in any way, shape or form. Because Mark 8 .38 says this,. For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father and the holy angels.

We don't want to be ashamed of Jesus. No matter what pressures this world puts on us, I believe that the Holy Spirit inside of us is greater and can protect us against all of those deceptions and to help us to hold true to the faith that we have.

There are consequences of denying Christ, that's for sure. Matthew 10 .32,. Therefore everyone who confesses me before men, I will confess him before my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 10 .33,. But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven.

There are far greater rewards, though, I think, than that, right? We're going to spend eternity with Christ. 2 Timothy 2 .12 -13,. If we endure, we will also reign with him. This is why we can get through the most difficult challenges in life.

It doesn't matter because one day we're going to be with him in eternity and it's going to be so much different and better. And even though we can't fully grasp that, that is our hope and that's what propels us through all of this.

Confessing the Son and Proclaiming the Gospel

The last thing I want to talk about is we have to know that what the world denies, we're to confess. Look at verse 23, Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father. And then this, The one who confesses the Son has the Father also.

To confess in the Greek means to literally say the same thing. If you confess, you're saying the same thing. What are we saying the same thing as? This is a hint. Saying the same thing as what the Scriptures say, right?

I mean, if we're doing that, we can't go wrong. There are many things in Scripture that we should be in agreement with, right? The truth of the Gospel. We should be in agreement with what that is, right?

Like, what is the Gospel? It shouldn't deviate from the Scriptures. I mean, we talked about, you know, all different kinds of things but, you know, adultery is wrong. We should agree with that, you know, homosexual marriage is wrong.

There's so many things that we agree with in the Scriptures. And I think of it like this, when we confess something, I think of it like when I was in business. There's this thing called the elevator speech.

You ever heard of that? The elevator speech? Someone goes, hey, tell me about your company. You're in the elevator, you got 30 seconds or a minute, what are you gonna say? You know, and I always focused on three words.

I focused on trust. Our company's trusted. You know, we work with a lot of people. We have a good reputation. We have an expertise, trust expertise. We have that expertise in technology. We understand, you know, how to do all the security sides of things in our business.

And then the last thing is relationships. We focus on relationships and we really work hard to do what we say we're gonna do, those kinds of things. That's an elevator speech. And I think about it with the gospel, right?

What's your elevator speech? If someone were to ask you right now, this very second, who is Jesus? Do you have something that's succinct? Something that is clear and concise and that you can hang your hat on?

That you don't have to waver about? And if you don't, you should think through that. And I've just put three words together to help you understand that. The law. The law. Everyone will face judgment someday, right?

Because we all have broken the law of God. If you've ever stolen anything, you're a thief. If you've ever lusted in your heart after someone, you know, you're an adulterer. The law proves that we are broken.

Then there's the Redeemer, right? The second word, Christ went to the cross. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He took our punishment so we could be forgiven. He rose from the dead. He defeated death.

And then our responsibility to repent, to trust, to believe in him, right? It's just a simple way. It's a 30-second, one-minute little thing that says, hey, here's what the gospel is. Because it's a way of staying faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's a way that you can convey it and confess it to the world because there's a great need for it. People need to break through the confusion that is in the world about Christ. And it's up to us to confess that and help them to understand who Christ really is and to not be ashamed.

Romans 1 16 says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. How come? For it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. It is the power of God. Wow. Saints, I think it should be a joy and a privilege to confess Christ.

It should be a joy. Think about what he saved us from. Think about where you're going to spend eternity. It's a joy and a privilege to profess Jesus to the world. He saved us from a life of eternal punishment, eternal torment.

He says the blackness of darkness forever. He saved us from these things so we can talk to other people. They need Jesus. They need to understand who he is. Hebrews 13 15 says, through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.

That is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. The fruit of our lips that confess his name. To the unbelievers today, the path to Christ isn't complicated. Romans 10 9, if you confess with your mouth as Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you'll be saved.

Jesus is Lord. He's not just a man, is he? He's the Lord of all. He's the God of creation. Confess him, repent of your sins and follow him. It is the only way. No matter what the world tries to say, it is the only way to heaven.

And for the Gnostics and modern-day deniers of the deity of Christ, repent of your lies about the deity of Christ because one day Philippians 2 10 says this, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow.

There's no escape. Every knee is going to bow. Any thoughts before I close? Yeah? Yeah. Job 38, where were you when I created the earth? And that's such a beautiful chapter there. I mean, it just, yeah.

Yeah. We don't really have the ability to question the Lord on what he does and how he does it, that's for sure. Yeah? Right. Yeah, you don't make Jesus Lord. He is Lord, that's for sure. Anything else?

All right, let's close. Father, we love you and thank you for all that you do in our lives. We just pray you'll go before this service, Lord, that everything we say and do would bring glory to you, that we would be able to take this truth, apply it to our own lives, go out into the world and share it with everybody that we possibly can because they certainly need to know and understand that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

In Jesus' name, amen.