The Blessing of Apostasy

The Apostles’ Warning About Those Who Went Out From Us

Going to say, and I fight through. Particularly, the Antichrists have come out from us, from us, from us. They would have us, but that they all were not. The rest of the chapter we see that they were denying truths about Jesus Christ.

We read all of 1 John. We see that they were sort of influenced by Gnosticism. They may have denied the physical incarnation. That's why John starts off at the beginning of 1 John. He talks about how the same is possible.

We handled him. We saw him. We heard him. Jesus' incarnation was real. He wasn't just a phantom, etc., etc. And we see that they denied certain truths. But they went out. They continued to call themselves disciples of Jesus.

Even though they were in those earliest generations, yet the clarity of God's truth is not going to... God is so clear that men rebel against it. They find in religion a means of filling their own stomachs, of making themselves rich, and very frequently false teaching is a part of that.

Though I hasten to mention that there are men who are so desirous of religious authority over other people that they will bypass houses and things like that because they want... because someone is maybe, you know, makes a... teaching is necessarily going to be in line with the Word of God.

But these men had gone out. They had gone out of the church and were now causing problems from outside because when people leave from a fellowship, when people leave our profession and they go someplace else, there are many people in the congregation that are...

I remember some of you. I remember seeing Rick down there sitting over to this side, as I recall, at a Catholic church in Long Beach in August of 1990. Some of you young folks are going, wow, yes. August of 1990.

Remember that? I was debating... I was doing the very first debate that I did, about 104 or 5 of them ago, in the name of Jerry Maddox. Jerry Maddox, one of his claims to fame was he was the first ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America to convert to Roman Catholicism.

That was his claim to fame. It's still sort of his claim to fame. He's no longer an Orthodox Roman Catholic. In fact, he's sort of now in a little bit with Mel Gibson and that group of folks that are more Catholic than the Pope is.

But there was someone who went out and look, these people who convert to some other religion, they really like to pump up what they were in their former... debate certain men... this type of... to see people say, well, you know, I was a deacon in a church once, and now they're an expert on Christian theology or something like that.

And you start digging in, and one of them was a youth minister. The blessing of the apostasy. Well, that's more in the way of background as to what we were talking about this morning. They went out from us, and there's a purpose in the division.

In order that it might be manifest that they all were not of us. But if you were listening this morning, if you were listening carefully, and I know that some of you listened very carefully when I said, who is the sinner?

We don't do public confession that way right now, so you don't want to avoid that. But he was listening. That's a good thing. Who is the liar? You notice I just sort of lightly skipped over. I hope you saw it.

I hope you got it this afternoon. Well, we did sort of touch on part of it. Having church and the leadership remains focused upon God's Word and is committed to God's Word, what's going to happen? False teachers have to leave.

They are going to recognize that due diligence is being taken to make sure that what is being taught is truthful, and therefore they are going to leave. And so there is a blessing of apostasy, and that is the false teachers need to leave.

There needs to be a division between truth and error. If they're allowed to stay together, that's not a good thing. That's not a blessing on a church. Sadly, we see a lot of this in church. Things they say is, there is such confusion in the church that I'm in.

You know, some of the leaders say this, some of the leaders say that, and we're so narrow-minded, we're no earthly good. We're so broad-minded, we're no earthly good. Because different things are being said from the pulpit.

You hear the truth, but you're supposed to be. Secondary maturity allows for differences of opinion, but what we're talking about, the very nature of the gospel, or who Jesus Christ is, there needs to be clarity.

And so there is, in essence, a blessing when you have a church where the truth is so clearly proclaimed that those who deny it, they will stick out like a sore thumb in the conversations even during the fellowship meal.

So there is a blessing of apostasy in the sense that you don't want the reprobate to be so comfortable in a church that they can just sit there. A blessing to apostasy in the sense that if someone's coming along and teaching these things, we're going to recognize that, and that's a good thing.

The Church’s Need for Clarity Between Truth and Error

Any church where people are being raised in the faith and they're being taught what the truth is, those types of people. See, so often, I'm doing what I do, every single time, and so all of this explains to Manu why he just ignored the context of that particular verse.

And that's exactly what took place. And so you have to, you're thinking apologetically. You missed something that's happened so many times, and yet it was years down the road. He knew about it from the apologetic perspective, but it was years down the road that all of a sudden I was reading it once again, and I had translated this thing, and then all of a sudden it hit me.

He made Himself of no reputation. He emptied Himself. That's a reflexive pronoun. This is something Jesus does Himself. This is voluntary. I had studied the text many times before, but I had never seen...

Well, here's a text like that. 1 John 2 .19 is the classicus locus. It is the classical text to go through. This in Hebrews 6, in regards to the subject of apostasy. And so your mind is already looking for that, and yet if you stop and think about it for just a moment...

For if they had been ex haemom, of us, from us, they would have us together as the people of God. Be out there doing what in salvation, which is such a work that He brings us together, He joins us to the body, and that's where we want to be.

If we want to sever ourselves from the people of God, if we don't want to be where the Word of God is being proclaimed, there's a problem. When the Spirit of God works in the life of a person, we want the Word of God to be shown upon our lives.

We want to hear sound teaching. We want to be around other people who are on the same path and experiencing the same struggles. We want to have their encouragement, and we want to give encouragement to them.

They would have remained with. We've spoken about them and participated. See, get to see that they're seeing the same Word-centered worship that we have here is taking place. That there is this harmony, this unity, this...

The church all around this world, because I've seen Christ is building His church, and the same Spirit that is here and makes us hungry for the Word of God is all around this world, and it is a supernatural thing, and I've seen it.

I've also been to a lot of places. There just wasn't the same type. Myself, so I can sort of... I see you paying attention, and I see you wanting to know what the Word of God says. Then this... On the study of the Word of God, press on, and we're going to continue to study through Hebrews.

This isn't a signal that... I was scared to death the next sermon to hear everything he has ever wondered about the New Covenant and the relationship with the Old Covenant answered in one sermon, so I'm scared to death, so I'm not sure when I'm going to get back to it, but we're going to keep trying.

We're going to keep plugging on. The tremendous blessing to be in this... To see... To see bricks... Folks who've been here for a long time, but then to see the folks that haven't been here as long, and yet...

You see that continuation, that desire is part of the... Himself. Titus chapter 2. Jesus Christ is purifying for Himself a particular people who are zealous for good deeds. The reason that we abide, the reason we remain, is because God is glorifying Himself.

The Father has given a particular people to the Son. The Son will save them perfectly. It's all to God's glory. We can never sit there and pat ourselves on the back. And yet, the great blessing is that we get to see perseverance in giving us that...

Partaken... The cause... If they had... And seeing that each one of us serves in the way that God has ordained through that gifting of the... There are things that... We are fitted together... With us in seeing the ministry of the Word as the center...

Central aspect of our worship. If they had truly been of... In... Go off on their own... There is something about truly loving His... Mistaken... Commit... The second place... Say it in a... But sometimes...

Sometimes truths shine the brightest... Against the darkness... From them... And they're concerned... And they're hurt... And there are feelings of hurt when someone leaves the fellowship. We all... And there's concerns because...

People... But the confidence... Confidence in those... Explain... Something that normally is... Something that... Committed... The Apostle John and those in that church to whom he wrote... Which shines a light for us and helps us even to understand...

Difficult and sometimes... We see apostasy around us. When we see those...