State of the Church in Asia Minor (Selected Verses)

Kootenai Church

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Good morning, everybody. Great to see everybody. So fun to be in the house of the

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Lord, be able to hear his word and just be around the saints. It's amazing to come to a church like this in North Idaho.

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I've been to churches all over the place and it just, this place really is amazing. Thankful to be here.

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So we're in the book of 1 John and we're gonna be kinda doing a little bit of a review because it's been, feels like an eternity since I've been here last and wanna be able to do a little review and then jump into chapter two, verse five.

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And the title for the message today is The Evidence of Obedience. The Evidence of Obedience, so we'll be looking at that.

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But before we get started, let's just have a word of prayer. Father, we love you and praise you. We just thank you so much that you're an amazing

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God, that your sacrifice on the cross paid it all for us and that by believing and trusting in you and repenting from our sins, we can have eternal life.

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And what an amazing thing that is to think and that we have this hope that we're looking forward to that is concrete and sure and that we don't have to worry whether it's gonna happen or not.

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We just praise you for that. We just think about the scriptures and an amazing book that we have in front of us and the freedom to be able to look into it and understand it and read it and study it and just to be able to share our faith with everybody.

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What an amazing thing that is. We just thank you so much, Lord, for all that you do in our lives.

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Just pray that you'll go into this teaching, that you'll give us understanding and clarity as we look at these things and issues in the scriptures and that we'll go away edified.

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We thank you now in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, we've been looking at 1

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John, as I mentioned, and we've gotten through chapter two, three and four, somewhere in that range.

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But like I said, it's been a while, so I wanna just kinda do a little bit of review and kinda broaden out a couple things that I wanted to just cover, mainly on the background.

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If you remember, 1 John was written around 90 AD, 90 AD, and it was written to Christians in Asia Minor.

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So if you're looking at Israel straight on, Asia Minor's up here, modern -day Turkey. So Israel, Asia Minor, modern -day

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Turkey. And the purpose was to address the false teaching that was happening in Asia Minor and to the churches that are in that area.

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And so John is writing to that, but it's also to edify the saints.

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He's writing to Christians that were experiencing a variety of different things in the church there, persecution and false teaching, and they had been scattered.

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So you can see that in 1 John as the purpose as you read down through it. And I don't know if you remember this, but John was written from Ephesus.

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That's where he wrote this book, was from Ephesus. And it was the place that was, the

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Temple of Artemis was located there. And it was one of the seven wonders of the world. And so it was a pretty predominant place for false teaching.

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And there was a syncretism of the gospel that was happening between all the religions. And so there was a lot going on.

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The church was being impacted in definitely a variety of ways. And the book of Acts, I think, gives us insight into this a little bit on Paul's third missionary journey to Ephesus.

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Acts was written about 63 AD, so 1 John 90 AD. So not too much longer after this,

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Acts passage that I'm gonna read. Paul gives instructions to the Christian leaders in Acts chapter 20, verses 29 and 30.

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And he says, I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

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And from among your own cells, men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

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So he says, I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in.

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We know something about wolves in North Idaho, don't we? I think, what are the characteristics of wolves?

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Any thoughts, any experts out there on wolves? What are some of the characteristics of wolves?

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Let's get that out there. Certainly, we have some opinions about that, right? They're cunning, very much so.

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They're stalkers. Say that again? Oh, they're an apex predator, absolutely, yes.

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They're hunter killers, aren't they? I mean, they are vicious. They have incredible speed.

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They have incredible endurance. Lover of darkness. There you go.

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I love that. And when they see their prey, right, they pursue after it with great veracity.

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They just go after it like no other. And so, one of the things

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I've noticed about wolves also is that they're very organized. They're very organized structure.

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They're like a social status in the pack, right? Just like the organization of a church where we have pastors and elders and teachers and so on, wolves also have a hierarchy within the pack, okay?

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They don't just go about these things arbitrarily as they're doing this. When the pack is hunting, they like to get the herd on the move.

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They like to get it on the move. Why do you think that is? Why do they wanna get the herd on the move and scatter them?

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Why do they wanna get them going? Create confusion?

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Find the weak one. There you go, find the weak one. And when they do that, right, they get them off to one side.

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They get that one weak one or slower one off to the side. And what happens is they surround them.

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They surround the one. So they really can't get away. And they don't just all dive in at the same time.

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There's like two predominant ones that will go in and subdue the animal.

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And then the other ones, the younger ones, will go in and out and then start to attack that way.

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So it's very structured. And one other thing that they do is that wolves bring their children along.

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They bring their children along so they can learn how to do this themselves, okay, as they're watching the males and the females and the adults go after their prey.

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This is how they do it. You know, and I find that very interesting because it says that in Acts there that wolves were among the flock.

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These kind of predatory influences were among the flock.

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Can you imagine that? I mean, people that you may look at and see sitting right in their very midst and you don't even know they're wolves.

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That to me is very much terrifying. Wolves organize with other like -minded individuals.

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I think that's true. And they strategize on how to bring down their prey. And I think in this example, it's how to bring down the church.

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How to bring down the church. And the thing that strikes me about it too when

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I was talking about the children is when you have wolves within the church, what are they teaching their own children?

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What are they teaching their own children? Is it to follow after the Lord and trust him?

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I don't think it is. I think it's how to disrupt the church. I mean, we teach our kids everything about the

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Christian faith and we want them to follow after Christ. Well, wolves do the opposite of that, don't they?

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So it's something we have to consider here that they're training up another generation of hunter -killers.

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Turn over to 2 Timothy chapter one, if you will. You know, a wolf can't change their nature, right?

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They can't change their nature except for one thing. Except for one thing.

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What is that? The gospel of Jesus Christ, right?

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They can't change their nature apart from the beauty and majesty of the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Over time, they begin to manifest their true character, though they distort the truth.

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It says in Acts, speaking perverse things in order to bring chaos into the church. It seemed to work because Paul writes this in 2

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Timothy 1 .15. Look at that verse, 2 Timothy 1 .15. You are aware of the fact that all who are in Asia, this is where Ephesus is at, all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are phagellists and homogenies.

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You may remember that Paul was writing this book from a Roman dungeon. He was writing to Timothy to encourage him to be strong in the faith of adversity as he was ministering in Ephesus where John wrote 1

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John. And then he says this in 2 Timothy 1, starting in verse five.

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For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother

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Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well.

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For this reason, I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

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For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.

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Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me, his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our

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Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which

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I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. For this reason,

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I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed, for I know whom

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I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.

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Retain the standard of sound words, which you have heard from me in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.

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Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.

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That's a pretty good reminder to Timothy, and it's clear. Stay grounded in the teaching you received and emulate the faith that you have seen, you know, in your mother and your grandmother.

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Think about that for our own kids. I hope they, you know, look at all of us and start to emulate, you know, what we are doing in following after the

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Lord, because a lot of times young people, you know, they wanna try things out. And I say, why do that?

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I've already done all the wrong things. You don't need to encounter that. But we're supposed to emulate that.

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And here's the reason why. Because in Asia Minor, he says, where you are ministering, all have abandoned the faith.

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All have abandoned Paul, and of course, the message of Christ. That's what he said. All of them have abandoned, that's a lot.

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So I just wanna say application here a little bit. The message

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Paul delivered to Timothy is definitely applicable today, isn't it? Paul tells Timothy to rekindle the gift of God within you.

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Rekindling it, build it back up. But we're in difficult days as well. We may not have been scattered throughout

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Asia Minor, but we are certainly facing difficult days where we need to focus our faith back on the scriptures if it has been taken off at all.

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And to focus our minds, you know, stir up our minds, in our minds, the focus of the

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Lord. To be bold in the face of adversity, no matter what is happening around us today.

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Because it's not the God that created all that we see asking us to do the same thing today.

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Maybe there are those here that need to rekindle their faith or anyone listening online.

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Maybe there needs to be a focus there. I don't know, God knows. But here's the thing.

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Did you know that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives inside of you?

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Isn't that amazing? I can't even fathom that. Like, okay, how does that happen? But it does.

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And it's an amazing gift that he's given us. And just because of that, you know, you look at what's happening in our world today and, you know, we shouldn't be ashamed of standing up for the truth and the gospel that is within us, right?

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We don't need to be ashamed. You know, the church is becoming more and more persecuted all the time, isn't it?

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You're seeing that day in and day out. And the only antidote to that,

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I mean, what else can we really do today? In our political climate, what else can we really do, you know, other than preach the gospel?

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I mean, we can vote, we can do some things, but ultimately, our responsibility is to preach the gospel to a dying world and to, you know, hopefully snatch one or two from the flames because this train has left the station.

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And, you know, you're not gonna stop the end times or whatever we're going through. It's gonna happen and we do the best we can, but the gospel is where we need to be residing.

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You can see that the church and the state of the church in Ephesus and the surrounding areas of Asia Minor are facing some difficulty.

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Fast forward to 1 John. Look at, if you flip back over to 1 John there, if you go to chapter two, verse 18, chapter two, verse 18, it says, children, it is the last hour.

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And just as you heard that Antichrist is coming, even now, many

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Antichrists have appeared. For this we know, that it is the last hour.

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They went out from us, but they were not really of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us but they went out so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.

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The end times Antichrist is coming. That's what this verse is talking about.

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But also, there are already many Antichrists out into the world. What is an

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Antichrist? What's an Antichrist? Any thoughts?

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Someone who sets themselves in opposition to Christ and his work. Excellent.

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Anything else? Denies that Jesus Christ is a savior.

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Amen to that. They deny that or that he came in the flesh. An Antichrist, yes,

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Cornel, say that again because that was good.

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Because Christ is the living word of God, people tend to undermine that. That is true.

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And I look at it as they preach a different gospel. They literally replace the true gospel with something else.

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And that's an Antichrist. Someone that does these things. We have many

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Antichrists today, don't we? Stirring the pot all around the globe against the brethren.

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Can you give any examples of modern day Antichrists? Can you think of any? I'll take names.

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The Pope. There you go. Yeah, it's an Antichrist system.

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And an office. Joel Osteen, a lot of word of faith preachers that preach a false gospel of health and wealth and prosperity.

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Sleepy Joel. Okay, yeah.

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That's a good point. He mentioned that we need to be concerned about people infiltrating the church and caring for them and asking them about their faith, essentially, to make sure that they are in Christ.

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It's a sobering thought for sure. There are many Antichrists.

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I mean, you think about JWs, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Mormons, or different faiths that teach a different gospel than we have.

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There's many Antichrists out there. And our focus should be noted on the scriptures to be able to identify that.

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John said, they went out from us. And who is John referring to in the us?

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They went out from us. In this case, it's not the church of Asia Minor. He's talking about the apostolic section of it where he was with the apostles.

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They went out from us. We'll be talking about that a little bit more as the time, the section we get to that goes on.

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But this doesn't change the fact that they were among those that believed. They were among those that believed.

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And it's possible, even in a church like this, that there are wolves among us.

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And that's why I think it's so important to pray for our elders and leaders all the time, for leadership, and being able to identify and manage our church here so this doesn't get torn up by any wolves in our own midst.

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They look out for us, and we pray for them. That's for sure. You get the picture, anyway, that this letter was written from Ephesus is an important letter to the readers.

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Asia Minor had much opposition to the faith. And do you remember the heresy that we talked about in 1 John? What was

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John writing about in 1 John? What heresy was he addressing?

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Do you remember? Gnosticism, early form of Gnosticism. I don't know if you know where that started from, but many people and many writers believe that Gnosticism was birthed in the mid -first century, and it was attributed to Simon Magus, a

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Samaritan sorcerer in the Book of Acts. The early church fathers referred to him as the originator of all heresies,

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Simon Magus. So impressive was his reputation as a miracle worker and teacher that the

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Romans erected a statue in his honor, dedicating it to Simon, the holy

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God. That tells you something. That tells you something.

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What is Gnosticism? We talked a little bit about it in the past. Can you remember that far back?

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It was like months ago. Probably not. Can anybody tell me what

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Gnosticism is? I mean, it's difficult, because I feel like Gnosticism's like a shapeshifter.

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Yes, yes.

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Yes, it comes from knowledge, and it's a secret kind of knowledge. Yes, exactly. That's one aspect of it, for sure.

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Anybody else? Yeah, that's

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Panentheism. Yeah, that's a little different, but it's along the lines, they just mix a lot of these thoughts in there.

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Yeah, anything else? Yes, yes, exactly.

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The deity could not be in human form, because essentially material matter is evil. The physical fleshly world is evil, but the spirit is great.

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It's all right. The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology notes this.

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It says, Gnostics were perceived as leading Christians astray by manipulation of words and the twisting of scriptural meanings.

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I think that's what Gnostics do. They take, when I say shapeshifting, they take a lot of different thoughts and ideas, and they mix them all together into one like cauldron of faith, and they do change the words and the meanings.

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Definitions are different, and if you're not paying attention, the subtlety of it can lure people in, and I think that's where we have to be on our game to identify it.

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John wrote this gospel to dispel that idea the

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Gnostics had by presenting the true God of the universe.

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I mean, you can't stop that. The true God of the universe dispels all that, but Gnosticism is a mixture of various beliefs, like I said.

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This mixture, the damaging part of it, like any false teaching,

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I think, is there's some truth with some error, and it's sometimes hard for people to discern what that is.

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You know, you see that a lot in our world. Yeah, exactly.

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Most false teachers do that, right?

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Yes, false teachers do masquerade their teaching in some truth. They camouflage it because they can't come into the church and just boldly start preaching heresy right off the bat.

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They mix it in with a lot of different things, and I think that's true.

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When I was in a church in Coeur d 'Alene that split, that's what was happening.

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They were bringing in false teaching in a subtle fashion into the church, and I remember this because it was hard to identify.

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It was hard to identify because some of it sounded right, some of it was off, and you know, you're like, well, where's the falseness in this?

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And it was really confusing, and it caused a lot of damage into the church because of this, but ultimately, you know, the truth rises to the surface, and you know, there had to be a split in the church because of what was being brought in, you know?

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But it took a while, and people, even after we left, were unable to see the falseness of it and stayed.

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Yeah. My chance, Coeur d 'Alene Bible Church. Yes. The emergent church.

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The emergent church stuff, exactly. Yeah, the emergent church teaching does that. It mixes a lot of different beliefs, and they mix truth and error all the time, so that's a struggle.

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Smooth words and flattering speech. Exactly, yeah.

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Yeah, I spent probably, after that split, I spent, man, countless hours just researching that movement because I couldn't understand it fully at first, and it just took forever to get down to the nitty -gritty, and here's why it's wrong.

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And, but it was, the light bulb went on at that moment because what happened was

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I realized the church that I thought was this big really only was about this big in the world.

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Yeah, because there is a lot of churches that buy into this kind of teaching. So tell me, why is

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Gnosticism dangerous teaching? Why is it dangerous? We see it today everywhere, so why is it dangerous, though?

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Denies the person and work of Christ. I mean, can it be any more basic than that? Yeah, it gives people a false sense of security.

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They think they might be saved. They might know the truth when they really don't know the truth. That's what

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Rick was saying. I think that's very true, but when you deny the deity of Christ, isn't that tear down the whole gospel?

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Honestly, I mean, that's it. You deny Christ and there is no faith.

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I mean, what are we doing here? I mean, to me, that's the heart of it.

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But it also denied that the physical matter was evil, right? So creation, all that God said was good, they're saying, no, that's evil.

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I mean, that's destructive. That's destructive on every level. And it removed the responsibility from people to do good.

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If the material world is evil, then I live in the material world, so can't

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I just do anything I want and I'm fine because that's expected? The spiritual world is good. It takes personal responsibility away from us.

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And I just think that's wrong. So do we see any modern day Gnosticism creeping into the church or society today?

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Yeah, yeah, they do.

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That is a good point. One of the things in Gnosticism is they base it on secret knowledge.

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You know, it's just not available to the masses. You know, it's kind of like in Catholicism, only the

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Pope and the leaders can know that knowledge. But there's a lot of other organizations in society that do the exact same thing.

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I think of organizations like all secret societies do this. It's all based on secret knowledge.

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You know, you gotta rise up to know these things. You know, I think of Freemasonry. If you're familiar with that at all, it's not talked about too much, but it is a system that, you know, takes people along the path, but, you know, the lower levels really don't understand what the higher levels are doing.

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And because of that, you know, they get deceived into thinking this is a Christian organization and something that they can be a part of and that is good because their motto was, we're making good men better.

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But it is at the core. There are other ones,

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Skull and Bones, if you've ever heard of that one, George W. Bush and his father belonged to that. Skull and Bones, it's a

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Harvard created institution. Or Yale, excuse me, yes,

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Yale, thank you. You know, the Illuminati, I mean, it started in 1776.

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Yes, Cornell. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.

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I like that. Cornell said any perversion of the gospel always is there to support it or condone it, their bad behavior.

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Is that accurate? Good. So the Illuminati, Illuminati just means enlightened, right?

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And so it's, again, it's a system of organization started in 1776, go figure, right?

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By a gentleman in Bavaria, you know, there's the Rosicrucians, there's, you know, the

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Knights Templar, the New Age movement, Catholicism, Emergent Church. There's a lot of different ones out there that you see bringing this kind of teaching that it's not known to the masses.

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You have to go through a process of enlightenment, okay, to discover, like, the divine spark that's in you.

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Okay, that's just wrong. It goes against everything that we believe. Gnostics found their belief in the spiritual, not the physical, as we talked about, because to them, the physical world was evil.

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Some of those who held this view were called docetics. The word docetic is the

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Greek, and the Greek means to seem, to seem. So Jesus only seemed to be real.

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He wasn't really real. That's their mindset. He only seemed to be real.

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It was a way to deny the deity of Jesus Christ. They have a hard time, though, proving this, because what about the resurrection?

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I mean, Christ had a physical body after his resurrection, so they have a tough time doing that.

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A physical body was resurrected. I sat with a person one time during a business meeting.

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We went out, we're sitting in Starbucks. I remember this like it was yesterday. And we were having a conversation about business and everything and what was happening in our world and what was going on, and somehow,

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I don't really remember, but the discussion turned to the faith. And I said, we were talking about just how she became, her faith, my faith, and that type of thing.

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And she goes, yeah, she goes, I don't really believe the world is real.

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I believe it's an illusion. I mean, you're like, how do you deal with that?

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I believe that, and I go, I said, so you sitting here, you're not really here?

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And she said, yeah. I'm just an illusion, right?

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I was thinking if I had a hammer at that moment, might have been different. She might have thought it was real, right on the pinky.

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But it kinda stopped me because it's hard to imagine how someone can get to a place of deception like that.

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But she had said she'd been through a whole process in the new age of just focusing on these aspects of her life.

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And you can see the result of false teaching and what is happening with the

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Dosetics, right? She took on the belief of the Dosetics, really is what she did.

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That the material body only seemed to be there. Yeah, that was a shocker for me.

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I didn't really know how to respond, honestly. I was like, you're not really here? All of my training has not prepared me for this.

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So really, in 1 John 1, Jesus is the antidote to false teaching, we talked about that, right?

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Jesus started the way to quickly address the Gnostics. I mean, we're addressing his humanity in 1

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John, his deity, the fact that he created all things. There's no one like him.

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John started this way to quickly address that. I mean, when you say there's no one like him, he said in John, destroy this temple and in three days

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I will raise it up. He was speaking of the temple of his body and being crucified, he said, you kill me, he said, and it's no problem.

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I will raise myself up. I mean, how can that be? If you're not deity, how can that happen?

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I mean, I'd love to have that skill. If I die, just raise myself back up, it's no problem.

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But the thing I like about 1 John is that you can see that John's impact of being with Christ changed his life.

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It changed his life. I mean, any encounter with Christ where you're saved and you have the

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Holy Spirit living inside of you, John says that he proclaimed the truth in verse, what is it, two there.

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Christ, to know Christ is to proclaim Christ. That's what you do when you're a believer.

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You share the gospel, you get engaged, you're talking about it all the time, you proclaim it, you get involved in it.

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And that's what John did. And the reason why, he said, is so we can have fellowship with one another. We can have fellowship with one another.

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We can be here together today and talk about the scriptures and just enjoy each other's company because there's no animosity with like -minded believers.

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We have that unity of the faith that I don't even know you, but I love you kind of a mentality.

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And that, to me, is what the faith does. We proclaim it so others can have fellowship with us.

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We want them to be part of our body. And then we talked a lot about contrasts between true and false converts in 1

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John. False converts, verses six, eight, and 10, if you look at that, verses six, eight, and 10 in chapter one, it all starts this way.

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If we say we have fellowship in verse six, in verse eight, if we say we have no sin, verse 10, if we say that we have not sinned, and then what's the next part of it?

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Yet walk in darkness, it says in verse six. If we say we have fellowship and yet walk in darkness, we lie.

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It's part of the satanic lie that we can deceive ourselves or we know we are false teachers anyway.

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Verse eight, if we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse 10, if we say that we have not sinned.

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So all those things, you look at false converts. And that kind of, you know, gets to the heart of the matter.

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In chapter two, verse four, it says this. The one who says I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him.

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That's a very simple test of the faith. If you don't keep his commandments, 1

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John, we talked about this, says that you're a liar. It's a very simple test. We all probably know people who claim the faith, but walk a different path.

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It's easy to say I'm a Christian because almost anybody in America will say, oh yeah, I'm a Christian. But when it comes to the obedience side of it, that's where it all breaks down.

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This is summed up by a band called One Republic. This song, they play it everywhere.

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I mean, you may have heard it in a mall, sporting event or whatever, but it's called Counting Stars. Says this, the chorus goes like this.

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I feel something so right doing the wrong thing. I feel something so wrong doing the right thing.

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I couldn't lie, I couldn't lie, I couldn't lie. Everything that kills me makes me feel alive.

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If you say you have come to know him, but find pleasure in doing the wrong thing, you are a liar and the truth is not in you.

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You can't find pleasure in doing the wrong things. Right?

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If everything that kills you makes you feel alive, I'd say the world has got its hooks inside of you.

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We can't have that, can't have that. I know that's kind of a long review because we have three minutes left, but I felt like I needed to go back and cover that because we probably have new people here and it's been quite a long time.

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And I don't wanna take up too much time today, but next week we'll get into chapter two, verse five a little bit more.

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And talk about that verse because it's an amazing passage.

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And I just wanted to open it up. Is there any questions or anything that we wanna talk about in the next couple of minutes?

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Peter? Bring clarity to 2 .4

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and keeping his commandments and walking the line, balancing that out, every person's life.

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I mean, what commandments are we talking about? We're talking 10 commandments? Keep the 10 commandments?

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Is that what we're talking about? I don't think so, I don't think so. What's the two greatest commandments that Christ gave us?

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Yeah, love the Lord your God and love people. That's very simple.

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And to keep his commandments, it doesn't mean that you're doing this obviously as a way for salvation or any of that stuff.

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I mean, we're going to fail in keeping God's commandments, but I think God looks at the heart and I think he looks at our motives and our desires and the fact that we are trying to do these things and that in our human failures and flesh, sometimes we're going to mess up.

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But next day I get up, I try to do better. I don't stay the same.

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Yes, yeah, good.

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Very good, yes. Cornell said that a believer agonizes over their sin.

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And we don't find pleasure in doing it. When we sin, we know it. And I think that's a very good point because the unbeliever, they don't have that same thing.

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They try to cover their sin or hide from it where we just don't have that same issue.

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We agonize over it, confess it, move on, it's a new day. Yeah, anything else?

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Yeah, yes.

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Yeah, yeah, they're in the church with a profession of faith and they're unrepentant.

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Yeah, some could. I mean, you look at where they're coming from in Asia Minor, all the idol worship going on, so that's definitely true.

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Anything else? Yeah, yeah, and yeah, absolutely.

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Is joy the spiritual gift given to us as a believer? And that's absolutely specific to John.

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These things we write to so that our joy may be made complete. Right, being faithful and obedient, you just have that joy,

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I think that's very true. When you're following after the Lord, there's no sin encroaching on your life, you know, blatant.

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I think there is a joy in following after him and trusting him and being of the faith.

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Anything else? Let's wrap it up, let's pray. Father, we love you and praise you. Just thank you that you're an amazing

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God. We just go before us now in the meeting and just help us to glorify you and everything that we say and do.

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We thank you for 1 John and the way that he teaches and just the focus that he has on Christ and being able to show us how to discern true believers from false believers and to motivate us to live our faith in a way that glorifies you and helps us to teach others about you and that we might be able to share

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Christ with them, that they would see your glory and see your amazing beauty and the hope that we have in heaven and this world is temporary.

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All that we face here is gonna fade away and it's gonna burn, but we're gonna spend eternity with you and we just praise you for that in Jesus' name, amen.