Many Deceivers in the World

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If you take out your Bibles with me and turn to 2 John, I know it feels like it's been a long time since we began this study, and so some of what I said before I'm going to reiterate, and I do want to mention that I had said that I was going to do screens with these lessons, and I've just decided not to do that right now.
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I did screens for 2 John, but as I was putting 3 John together, I don't see really how it's going to enhance the lesson as much as it did.
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When I do my academy lessons, they're more outlined.
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There's more note-taking and things like that, so it's a little better for that.
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If you like the screens and you want me to try and continue, I will, but I just like to preach, and sometimes mediums like that can actually get in the way.
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And so, for the rest of 2 John, I'm just going to let the message be the message.
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So, we're going to read through the text.
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It's only 13 verses, so we can read the whole thing, and then we're going to pray.
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It begins as this, The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever.
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Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, in truth and love.
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I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father.
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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.
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And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments.
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This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.
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For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.
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Such a one is a deceiver and the antichrist.
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Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.
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Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God.
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Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.
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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.
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Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink.
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Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
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The children of your elect sister greet you.
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Father God, I thank you for this opportunity to preach.
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And Lord, so many important subjects find themselves in such a short amount of words.
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So, Lord, even now, I pray that.
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Your word would.
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Truly come alive.
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That we would understand the truth within it.
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And that we would be moved toward a closer conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ because of it.
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Lord, I am grateful.
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For your word.
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I pray that I would preach this word without error.
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That you would keep me from error.
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For Lord, I'm a fallible man, but your word is infallible.
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Because you are infallible.
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I pray now that you bless your people at the hearing of your word.
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Open hearts, eyes and ears.
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In Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Because of Thanksgiving, where we took a Wednesday night off.
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I don't know how long it's been since we began this letter.
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And I'm not sure how many of you were actually here the night that we began the letter.
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So, for the sake of simple consistency and reminder.
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I just want to tell you, we have already looked at verses 1 through 6.
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And the book as I have outlined it, really breaks into two parts.
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The first six verses, I called the value of truth.
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And the last verses from verse 7 to verse 13 is the danger of deception.
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Very quickly, I just want to remind you of some of the things we learned last time.
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And then we will move rather quickly to verse 7.
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And then slow down for the rest of tonight.
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It tells us that it was written by the elder.
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We identified that as John.
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The same one who wrote the gospel of John.
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And the other epistles that go by his name.
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And the book of Revelation.
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It says it is written to the elect lady.
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And I said in my last message that that is somewhat of an ambiguous statement.
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We don't know if that's referring to an individual or to the church.
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And I will say this, even since that message.
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Because I'm still studying as I go.
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And as I continue to study to prepare to preach.
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I continue to hear arguments on both sides.
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And sometimes I'm moved in one direction.
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And sometimes I'm moved in another direction.
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So, if you want to know whether it's an actual woman or if it's the church.
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Depending on what day it is is going to determine the answer that I give you.
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I truly don't know.
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And I think there's good arguments on both sides.
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As I said last time, I tend to almost want to think that it is a lady.
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It mentions her sister.
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It mentions her children.
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It seems to be speaking to an individual.
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And if we pair this with 3 John.
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3 John is specifically written to a man, Gaius.
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Who we're going to learn about the next time we come together.
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Gaius is a wonderful character in Scripture.
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He's spoken about as being this wonderful man of hospitality.
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And so, it would make sense if this is a parallel speaking to a lady.
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So, could it be a lady? Absolutely.
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But could it be the church? Yes.
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Because the church is the bride of Christ.
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Is she the elect lady? Yes.
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And are her children those who are in the church? Yes.
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And so, I feel bad for not just taking a stand and saying I know it's this.
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Because I don't know.
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And when I don't know, I tell you I don't know for the sake of safety.
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Tomorrow night, in fact, I'll give you a little side note.
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Tomorrow night, I'm teaching my last class in our hermeneutics class.
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And you know what I ask the students to do in hermeneutics class? Early on, I ask them to write down a passage that they have trouble understanding.
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And turn it in.
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Like second or third week, they all have to turn in a passage they have difficulty understanding.
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And week eight of the eight week class, we take all of these practical lessons that we've learned and we apply it to those passages.
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Well, I was going through the passages today to prepare for tomorrow night.
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I was putting them in screens, getting them ready to go through.
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And I realized there are some doozies.
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And I should have known because nobody is turning in John 3.16.
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Everybody wants to turn in those passages.
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What is the sin unto death in 1 John 5? That's one of them.
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And that's a difficult question and it's one that people have wrestled with.
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And these are a lot of these things.
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So even though we can know the truth of Scripture, we can know the central and principal truths that even children can understand.
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There are passages that make us go, this is difficult.
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And I think by design, there are things that should make us want to dig deeper, want to go further, not just everything on a surface level.
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And as modern Americans, we tend to want to be spoon-fed everything.
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We tend to want to be simplified.
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We don't want to have to do the hard digging and go through the hard questions.
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So when you ask me later, is it the elect lady? Is it the church or a lady? I'm going to tell you what I feel like in that moment.
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But the focus is not on the audience as much as it is on the dual subjects of love and truth.
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He says this several times.
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In fact, the word truth is mentioned five times in the first four verses.
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I mentioned that last time.
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He loves in truth along with those who know the truth.
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The truth abides in them, those who know it, and the truth will be with them forever.
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We talked about that last time.
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And we said this.
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The truth is both a principle and a person.
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The truth is what is true, but the truth is also bound up in an individual.
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Jesus Christ, He didn't say just that He came to proclaim the truth.
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He said that.
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He said to Pilate, I came to bear witness to the truth.
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But He also said to His disciples in the upper room just a few hours before that, I am the truth.
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So He says the truth is not just principle, the truth is personal.
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And the person of the truth is Jesus Christ.
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And one of the things I did not mention last time, at least I don't think I did, is that in verse 3, John actually makes a little note here that we shouldn't miss because it's going to come up in our lesson tonight beginning at verse 7.
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In verse 3, he says grace, mercy, and peace be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son.
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Now you may say, well there's nothing special about that statement.
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Everybody knows Jesus is the Father's Son.
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And that is true in one sense.
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One of the great proclamations of the New Testament is Jesus is the Son of the Father.
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But the reality is this.
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John, by adding that little note into what he's writing, is actually beginning an argument that he is going to complete further down.
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Because one of the issues that the church was facing at this particular time in history, much more so, I think, than any other time in history, was the question of who is Jesus exactly? And moreover, the question was, what was Jesus? The question of what was Jesus, because there were those who thought that Jesus was not really a man.
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Some believed that he was just a spirit taking the form of a man.
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They didn't believe in the incarnation, as we think of it at Christmas time.
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What do we celebrate at Christmas? Incarnation.
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What is the word incarnation? It comes from the Latin carne, the word for flesh, right? And the idea that the word became flesh.
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Well, John is making a point.
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We are sending our grace, peace and mercy from God and from his son.
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Jesus Christ is the son of God.
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And he is his son in truth.
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It is true that Jesus is the son of God.
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You ever stop and just think about how wild it is, some of the stuff we believe? Like, honestly, if you sat down and you looked at what the Hindus believe, that's just out of there.
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It just seems crazy, right? They think millions of gods, some of them are elephants, and some of them have multiple arms, and there are just all these weird things.
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And I'm not making fun, I'm just saying, if you look at it from a distance, it looks really weird.
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And then you go to another religion, and you start looking at the Mormons.
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The Mormons believed that God was once a man, lived on a planet, and because of his adherence to Mormon teachings, he was able to himself become a god and propagate his own universe.
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And that's the universe you are in.
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And if you are good enough and hold to Mormon teachings, you too can become a god.
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I would be the worst god.
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But you can become a god.
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I remember a few years ago at the Callahan parade that we're doing this Saturday.
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By the way, you'll see some Mormons this week.
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There's a big Mormon influence out there in Callahan.
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And there's a float that goes by.
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It says, you can be married in heaven.
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That's what the float said.
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Because the whole idea, the whole promise of Mormonism is that you can enjoy celestial marriage, which is that you get married to your wife, y'all die and become gods and propagate your own eternal universe.
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And you get to be God.
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And you say, that's crazy talk, that's wild.
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I agree, but I want you to, for a moment, just consider the fact of what we believe.
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We believe some very amazing things.
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Now, I'm not comparing them to Mormonism or Christianism or any of those other things, because those things are untrue.
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But I am trying to just remind you that what John is saying, when he says, we are giving you grace, mercy and peace from God, that's the one who created all things, and His Son.
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It's an amazing truth.
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God's Son came into the world, and God's Son is the eternal second person of the Trinity, He who is in Himself, God in the flesh, came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief, Paul says.
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It's an amazing truth.
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It should just knock us out of our socks when we think about the reality of how powerful what we believe really is.
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And the most amazing thing is it's true.
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And that's John's whole point.
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It's truth.
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It's not like the Hindus or the Mormons who are holding on to a false belief.
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But it is the truth.
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And it is the only truth that can save.
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So, he goes on in verse 5, I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we had from the beginning, that we love one another.
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He ties truth and love together.
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I mentioned this last time.
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He ties truth and love together.
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And why? Because truth and love are inseparable.
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If you have the truth, but you do not have love, what does the Bible say? It says it's not enough.
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1 Corinthians 13, If I knew all mysteries, and can discern all things, but have not love, I am nothing.
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I remember one time years ago, this was the most cheesy thing in the world, but you will remember it, because cheese sticks.
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We had a young, not a young man, he was older than me, but he was a man here at the church, and he loved to give children's messages.
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We used to do this like five minute children's message in the middle of the service years and years ago.
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And he would love to get up and talk to the kids.
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And one of them he gave was, he said, I am a Christian.
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Christian is Christ I-A-N.
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And he said, the I-A-N stands for I am nothing.
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For without Christ, I am nothing.
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And I don't know why, that's been 20 years ago almost.
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And I still remember that little just reminder.
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And every time I read 1 Corinthians 13, without love, I am nothing.
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So that just sort of reiterates to me, because without Christ, I am nothing, but without love, I am nothing.
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Because Christ is truth, but Christ is also love.
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You can't separate one or the other.
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And as we said last week, or however long ago it was, truth without love is brutality.
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But love without truth is hypocrisy.
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It's pretend.
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Love without truth is pretend.
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So John is telling us, that truth and love are inseparable.
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Why does he focus so much on these two things? Because now, beginning at verse 7, we are going to get to the real focus of the letter.
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And the real focus of the letter is this.
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There are people out there, who don't have the truth, and don't have love.
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And guess what? They are in the church.
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There are people in the church, who don't have truth, and don't have love.
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And so, this really is, I think, his reason for writing.
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Even though he wants to let his audience know, how much he loves them, and how much he values the truth, and the love that they have, and the common foundation that they have on the truth and love.
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He's pointing to the danger of deception.
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Notice what it says in verse 7.
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For many deceivers have gone out into the world.
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Now before we even get to the next part, because really we are going to key in on the next half of verse 7.
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Just notice what he says there.
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Many deceivers have gone out.
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I don't know if you remember this, but when we first started this series, I gave a lesson on an overview of each book, talking about the author, the dating, and the theme.
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I know Matt, you weren't here for that, but a few others may.
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Steven, I don't know if you were here for that, but it's been a few months ago now, because of all the holidays and stuff.
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But the theme of this book, we talked about, and we talked about the author.
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We also talked about the dating.
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And I said that I believe this book was written much earlier than is the consensus among scholars.
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Most scholars who hold to what's called a post-70 dating would put this book around the year 85.
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Remember the first century? Jesus is born, not in year zero, because there's not a year zero, but he's born somewhere around that beginning point.
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He dies somewhere around 30 to 33.
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And then within the first 20 years of the church, nothing's written.
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But then around 48, 49, we start seeing the first books of the New Testament being written.
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James and Galatians and some of those early letters are written.
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And then through the 50s, it's like gangbusters.
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A lot of the New Testament is written through the 50s.
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And then into the 60s, we get more.
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Anything that happened after AD 70 would be, in my opinion, I don't think anything was written after AD 70, but anything after that would have been well past the time of most of the apostles, because most of the apostles are dead by AD 70.
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In fact, John is the one who lived the longest.
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So if John lived until 90 or so, or he lives that long, it's possible that this book is written then.
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But again, me and I can tell you why later, but I really believe it was before 70.
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But either way, whether it's 68, 69, or whether it's 84, 85, we're still only talking about a 20 year difference.
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Notice John says, many deceivers have gone out already.
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We are 2,000 years removed from this event.
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This is within 50 years, give or take, of the death of Jesus, and many deceivers are already in the world.
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Doesn't that just blow your mind that there were already Benny Hens, and there were already guys like that in the first century? Oh yeah, Benny Hens faults.
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Don't look surprised, because I've got a whole list of them.
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You've got your Kenneth Copelands and your Benny Hens, and you've got your Todd Whites, and you've got all these crazy guys.
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They're there.
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They're pulling legs and lengthening legs, and if you don't know what that is, it's one of these little tricks that faith healers do.
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A little false trick.
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These guys are there.
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Many deceivers.
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But here's the thing.
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The thing that they were deceiving about the most was about the person of Jesus.
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Who is Jesus? Honestly, it's still today.
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There's still whole movements, whole denominations that have a false Christ.
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I just talked about the Mormonism.
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They have a false Jesus.
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Islam has a false Jesus.
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But notice, he keys in on a specific theological anomaly.
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Notice this is what he says.
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He says, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.
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Okay.
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What is the significance? Well, there is a system of thought.
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It's very prominent in the East, and it is called dualism.
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Now, there are different types of dualism.
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There is balancing dualism, which is what we see in a lot of the Eastern religions.
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You've seen the yin-yang symbol, which is the idea of the positive force and the negative force.
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The energies are supposed to balance one another.
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In fact, if you ever see somebody go to acupuncture, they get the needle stuck in them.
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The whole idea of acupuncture is that you have energy channels going through your body.
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They're called meridians.
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And the goal of acupuncture is to cause those meridians to open up energy channels in the body to allow a balance of energy.
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If you have a problem with your heart, they'll come right here to the heart meridian, which is right there.
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And yes, I know where it's at.
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Don't ask me why.
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And they'll start putting needles on the heart meridian to try to balance the balance of energy in your heart, or the lung meridian, or the gallbladder meridian.
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Don't ask me why.
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I can tell you later.
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But I do know where they are.
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But their whole system is based on the idea of balancing dualism.
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Two forces, yin and yang, positive and negative.
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Well, there are other types of dualism.
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And one of the dualisms in the ancient world, which was picked up by the Gnostics and others, was the idea that the spiritual realm was all good, and the physical realm was all bad.
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In fact, there were those who believed that the God of the Old Testament was bad because He created the physical world.
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Doesn't that make sense? If the physical world is bad, God created the physical world, Yahweh.
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Therefore, He's bad.
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How do you determine a man's character? By what he does.
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If he builds something that's bad, he's bad.
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If he creates a world of material and materialism, and it's bad, well, materialism is bad, but material itself being bad.
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So the idea of dualism in that sense was Jesus could not have come in the flesh.
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Because had Jesus come in the flesh, He would have adopted the evil, corrupt nature of this world.
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Does that make sense? Therefore, Jesus had to have been only spirit.
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And everything that the people saw was like a phantom or a spiritual body.
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Now, quick, quick test.
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Are there times in the Bible where spirits show a physical appearance? Well, I would say this.
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Are there times when God presents Himself in a physical appearance? We would say Isaiah 6.
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We could say Genesis 18, when Yahweh came and ate with Abraham under the oaks of Mamre.
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I believe that was Jesus, just to be clear.
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But the point is, there are times when there are spiritual manifestations of a physical presence.
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So that in and of itself is not bad.
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The idea that God, through the Son, could come as the angel of the Lord, or come as Yahweh eating with Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, or being a burning bush, or whatever.
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That by itself is not wrong.
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What's wrong is that ain't what happened in Bethlehem.
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You see, the whole point, what's funny is, we're here at Advent time, and this is completely an Advent message, because the whole point of 2 John is if you ain't got an incarnation, you ain't got a gospel.
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If you don't have a physical flesh and blood Jesus, then you don't have the Jesus of Scripture.
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Understand, that's the heart of what he's saying.
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He's saying, and notice what he says, he says, these are the deceivers.
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They've said that Christ does not come in the flesh, and they are not only deceivers, but they are antichrists.
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Now, to clarify, the term antichrist does not always refer to what some people believe is that one central figure at the end of the age who's going to come and be the powerful governmental leader of the last days.
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And that's a particular, specific end times view.
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I'm not going to ask how many of you are dispensationalists, or maybe you came out of dispensationalism.
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Dispensationalism has this view that there's going to be one man who comes at the end of the age, he's recognized by John as the beast in Revelation 13, recognized as the man of sin by Paul in some of his writings, but specifically, he's almost always called antichrist, and it's capital A.
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When they say antichrist...
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How many of you read the Tim LaHaye books? Did you read them? Remember, what was the name of the guy who was supposed to be...
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He had one of them real dark names, like Damien or something, but he was the antichrist in the book.
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And he was the guy.
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That is not the reference John is making.
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We just need to be clear.
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John is not talking about any type of eschatological person who is leading a world government.
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He is simply saying this.
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If you deny that Jesus came in the flesh, you are against Christ.
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The word anti can mean one of two things.
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The antichrist is a prefix, antichristos.
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If you look at the word anti, it can mean in the place of something.
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And that's the whole idea of the big A antichrist, the person who sets himself up as Christ, right? So that can be that.
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Or it can simply mean against something.
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The antichrist here, he's saying that if you say Christ hasn't come in the flesh, you are against Christ.
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You cannot say that you are on His team if you don't believe this about Him.
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So what does he say in verse 8? Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.
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Now, ultimately, we need to be reminded that the Bible throughout calls us to watch ourselves.
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We see this all through Scripture.
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There are warnings.
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And some people get confused about that.
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In fact, recently I had a person ask me about the warning passages of Scripture.
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I ended up doing a podcast about it because I wanted to answer them, but I thought the question was worth other people hearing, so I did it on the podcast.
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But the question was about these warning passages.
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Why, if we have security in Christ, why all these warnings? And that is a very good question.
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I don't have time to flesh it out tonight completely, but understand this.
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Part of what causes the perseverance of the saints are the warnings of the danger of falling away.
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These warning passages are put there to remind us of the danger of going back.
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What does Hebrews over and over say? Don't return.
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Don't go back.
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Don't trample under the foot the blood of Christ.
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Don't do that.
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Watch out for that.
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And here John is using that same type of urgent language to say to his hearers, watch yourselves that you don't let false teachers into your life.
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And that's when he takes us to verse 9.
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He says this.
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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, and if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting.
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For whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.
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That's a powerful thought.
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Did you have a question? Okay.
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I'm going to read from my notes on that.
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I actually did bypass that.
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I wasn't trying to.
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I just noticed I read over this.
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Let me read the paragraph I have written because I think it will be helpful.
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The Bible is filled with warnings for believers to not fall into deception.
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This is often confusing in the light of the security of the believer.
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But we must remember that just because we are saved does not mean we do not have the responsibility to persevere.
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And what we do while we are saved is still of value.
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And we can lose reward.
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We can lose the value of what we're doing.
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And I put the passage, 1 Corinthians 3.
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You remember 1 Corinthians 3, what Paul says there? He talks about building on the foundation of Christ.
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And he says some people have built with wood, hay, and stubble, and some have built with gold, silver, and precious stones.
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And he says when it comes time for the judgment, all that's going to be burned up.
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And the one who had wood, hay, and stubble is going to suffer loss.
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I think the whole idea of suffering loss there is the same idea John is talking about here.
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It's not necessarily referring to the loss of salvation, but certainly the loss of the valuable things that have been built up.
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And also the blessings here.
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We have built up things here.
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Now, I'll give you a picture, maybe a picture that might help you.
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Imagine if Mike and Andy and I went crazy, and we started preaching a false gospel.
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Or let's say we allowed another person in, and he was preaching a false gospel, and we weren't doing anything about it.
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That would damage what the Lord has built.
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We would be bringing in something that...
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I hope you know I caught myself there.
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We haven't built anything.
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The Lord is the one who builds a house, right? We haven't done anything.
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But God uses all of this, all of us, to build His kingdom here.
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And all it takes would be one person to come in and start teaching that false doctrine, and without it being addressed, it could easily destroy all that has been worked for.
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Oh, a little leaven.
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Leaven's a whole lot.
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So I think that there's an eternal consequence, but I also think it has a temporal consequence.
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And so when he says that, when he says, what we have worked for, I think there is a sense in which there's a temporal side to that.
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But an eternal as well.
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Could be, very much.
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Yeah, if you want to go back to verse 1.
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Okay, so looking again at verses 9, 10, and 11, I wanted to spend a few minutes, and I know I've used a lot of my time tonight, but I wanted to spend a few minutes on verse 10, because verse 10 is one of those passages that sometimes is used, and I'm not sure we use it correctly, but it's used in regard to how we deal with people who come to our door.
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I mentioned this when I was getting you guys prepared to go through this.
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I said, do we think verse 10 has any application to like the Mormons who come to our door or anything like that? Before we answer that question, I want to first deal with the immediate context of this.
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Because we don't live in the first century, we can't often contextualize what's happening in our own mind.
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Like for instance, if a missionary came to town, we might, one of us, open up our home to him.
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Right? Because he may need a place to stay, we may have an extra bedroom, we let him stay with us, we feed him, we take care of him, while he's here, he preaches in the church, and then he sends on his way.
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I mean, we've done that with some missionaries in the past, we've done that with some ministers in the past, right? We had, just a few months ago, we had Rich Ceplita was here.
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He taught on Wednesday night, and he stayed with Gary and Cindy.
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So that's a good example of something that is not altogether common today, but was very common in the first century.
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Because what's interesting is that early in the Christian history, there were itinerant ministers who would go from place to place preaching.
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And we see this in Acts, right? Philip was essentially an itinerant preacher.
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He was going about preaching the gospel.
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How do you think he survived? Well, he had to survive at the generosity of those who took care of him.
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Of course, God is the one who is causing that, but God is sovereignly bringing him to places where he can stay and be taken care of.
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So it became very common in the first century for you to open your home to outsiders.
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Do you remember when we did the Christian ministry class, Miss Jackie? Remember what we said hospitality means? That's right, it means lovers of outsiders.
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See, we often think of hospitality like when Mike and Deborah have us over for dinner, or when Stephen and I went out to lunch the other day.
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That's not hospitality.
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Even though it's great, we love it, that's fellowship.
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Hospitality is actually opening our doors to outsiders.
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The word phyloxenous.
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You've heard the word xenophobia? It means fear of outsiders.
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It comes from the same Greek foundation.
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Phylo means love.
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Phyloxenia means love of outsiders.
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And that's the word that's translated as hospitality.
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The lover of the outsider.
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And so one of the things that was done in the early church was as these ministers would come into town, they would welcome them in, and it wasn't just a greeting of, Hey, how you doing? The greeting was, come into my home, eat my food, sleep in a sleeping quarters, and preach.
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And so that being in mind, now read it with that in mind.
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If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting.
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Do not be to that person what you would be to a good steward of God's truth.
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Do not be to the false teacher what you are to the true teacher.
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Now apply that to today, it's a little harder.
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Because we don't have that same context.
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But there are applications certainly that can be made.
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I've told this story before, I'll make it very short.
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A couple of years ago, during Sunday school time, a man and a woman come in from the parking lot.
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And the man comes in and sits here, we're doing music or something, so I wave at him, I said hello.
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And when I was done, I walked over and I started talking to him.
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And he starts telling me that his wife was a prophetess.
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And that she had a word for the church.
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And they were ultimately saying, she needs to be given the time to stand up and proclaim her word from God to God's people.
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And I just said, that dog won't hunt.
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Not here.
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It's not happening here.
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Now is that lacking hospitality? No.
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That is doing exactly what John is saying here.
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We're not going to extend to you this microphone.
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We're not going to extend to you this platform.
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We're not going to tell you, yes, you may get up here.
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And it wasn't just because she's a woman, I'd have done the same thing if she'd been a man.
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I don't know what they're going to say.
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I had a guy come to my office one time.
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Now this guy was a member of the church.
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This was a long, long time ago.
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He came to my office and he said, God gave me a message for the church.
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I said, okay, what is it? No, no, it's not for you, it's for the church.
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We're not going to play 20 questions.
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Are you going to tell me what you're going to preach? Because you want to preach.
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You're asking for permission to preach.
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Are you going to tell me what you're going to say? No.
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Well, then you're not preaching.
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That ain't how it works.
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And he got upset, but that just is what it is, right? The role of the pastor and elders of the church is to guard those things.
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To guard the doctrine and the teaching of the church.
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And that's the beginning of what happens here.
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And if we were to see people in the church courting false teaching, it would be incumbent upon us to address that.
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Lovingly, but correctively.
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Like let's say there's somebody in the church that has gotten into some false book.
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There's a lot of them, I don't want to start naming books.
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And then they start getting other people to read the book.
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That might need a phone call.
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That might need a conversation.
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We might need to go to lunch and talk about why that book is not something that we ought to be preaching.
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Are you telling people what they can read? No, but we are telling people what they can disseminate in the congregation.
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And we are, as the elders of the church, telling people what is dangerous.
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I don't let my kids plant a snake pit because it's dangerous.
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And if I see a person reading something, and again, just name the crazy stuff that's out there, something has to be said.
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It cannot be welcomed here.
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That's the whole idea of this passage.
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It cannot be welcomed here.
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Now, with that all being said, let's think about the idea of the Mormon missionary coming to our house.
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Because this has been a contentious passage.
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Go ahead, Matt.
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No, we would accept that person.
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We are always trying to help people in that way.
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Absolutely.
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But if the person wanted to get up and proclaim or talk or share, that would be where we would draw a line.
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But absolutely, we welcome people.
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We encourage people.
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In fact, when people come to get their needs met physically, we encourage them to come in and hear the gospel too.
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Because we want them to not only get their physical, because we have boxes of food that we give them, but we also want them to hear the gospel.
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Absolutely.
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So, when it comes to the idea of the Mormons coming to our door, I have heard people say, don't open the door.
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Because of 2 John 10.
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It says, if anyone comes to you, does not bring this teaching, what is the teaching? The teaching, the truth about Jesus, the truth about God and His Son, Jesus Christ.
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If they don't come with the truth, then you don't welcome them.
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That's what it seems to be indicating here.
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And so some people would say, don't even open the door.
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And I'm not sure that that is what John is trying to indicate.
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However, I do want to say this.
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If you don't feel confident talking to the Mormon, if you don't feel confident talking to the Jehovah Witnesses, and it will always be a pair of them, a pair of Mormons that come to your door.
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If you don't feel confident, don't open the door.
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Don't feel ashamed if you're not ready for that conversation.
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Because it's going to be heavy and it's going to be hard.
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But when they come to my door, I'm happy.
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Right? Because that's a conversation I want to have.
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In fact, I was driving home one day and I saw Mormons at my friend's house.
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So I pulled over and I walked up behind them.
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They're knocking on my friend's door and I'm standing behind him.
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I said, listen, he won't know how to answer your questions, but I do.
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Come out here.
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I said, come here.
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Both of you.
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Elder, 13-year-old.
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Come here.
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They look like they're five, right? And they got the elder sticker on.
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I said, come here.
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We're going to talk.
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And I wasn't trying to be rude, but the guy in the house, I know him.
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He's not going to answer you, but I will.
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So in that regard, you say the question of greeting and that.
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I don't think that John is telling us that we can't have an interaction with a false teacher.
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But our interaction is to be in the truth.
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I'm not going to welcome them in and talk about the Jesus that we both believe in, because we don't have a shared faith.
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One of the things I've always been impressed by Dr.
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James White is when Dr.
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James White does a debate with a fellow Christian, even if it is a fellow Christian that he disagrees with, if he believes the person is a Christian, he will call him brother, brother, brother, through the whole debate, even though they're debating.
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But if he has a debate with a Mormon or someone else like that, he will say mister or whatever, but it's not brother.
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And there's a reason for that.
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The person coming to our door with a false gospel is not our brother in Christ.
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And see, in the first century, it would have been almost impossible to know until they opened their mouth.
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They're not wearing an elder sticker.
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They're not driving a 10 speed, right? It would have been hard to know.
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So John says, here's how you know, love and truth, love and truth.
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If they're absent of either one of those, they're not from God.
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If they come in with love, but they're beating people down, then they're not of God.
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We're going to see that next time, because that's what happens in 3 John.
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In 3 John, he talks about a man named Diotrephes.
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And you know what he says about Diotrephes? He says, Diotrephes will not welcome the good teachers in, and he kicks people out of the church who want to.
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You see, that is a danger in the church.
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Diotrephes is not the model.
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He's the model of what we shouldn't be.
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But I get ahead of myself.
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We'll finish up with verses 12 and 13.
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Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink.
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Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face.
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Stoma pro stoma, Greek, literally means mouth to mouth.
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But don't take that too far.
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It just means to be right there with you.
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It's a pastoral statement.
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I don't want to know you only from a distance.
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I want to know you as brothers and sisters in Christ, so that our joy may be complete.
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And the children of your elect sister, which again, if it is a church, this would simply be another church.
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The children of your elect sister greet you.
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And it's a reminder to us that we're not the only one.
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If this is talking about a church, it reminds us we're not the only church in the world.
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Sometimes I think people get so captured by the idea that they have all the answers that they begin to draw that circle so tight that they're standing on one foot, that everybody else is out of the kingdom.
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It's like the old story of the guy on the bridge.
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I don't know if you've heard that story.
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Guy standing on the bridge, he's about to jump.
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He's depressed.
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Another guy walks up and he goes, don't jump, don't jump.
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Don't you believe in God? And the guy says, well, certainly I believe in God.
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Really? He goes, yes, I'm a Baptist.
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I'm a Baptist too.
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What kind of Baptists are you? I'm a Southern Baptist.
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Well, get out of here, you heretic.
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And he kicked him off the bridge.
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Because he was an independent Baptist.
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And that story could go longer.
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But you understand the idea.
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We draw the circle so tight that we're the only one standing in it.
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And we're standing on one foot.
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Can't be that way.
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There are many elect people out there.
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What's the distinction? Truth and love.
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Truth and love.
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And that finishes the book.
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How do we make the distinction? Truth and love.
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Let's pray.