Confessing Christ & Denying Antichrist | 1 John 4:2-3

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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Okay, turn with me to your Bibles and 1 John chapter 4.

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We'll start in verse 1. 1

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John chapter 4 beginning in verse 1. God's Word says,

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Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

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By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess

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Jesus is not from God. This is the Spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

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Amen. So a lot of the focus for today's sermon, you'll see from the title, which is

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Confessing Christ and Denying Antichrist. There's a both -hand, both -and dynamic here, like we've seen repeatedly throughout 1

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John, and so that's going to continue. We're going to you're going to see that continue to play out.

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And as a reminder, again, when I read Scripture, please follow along in your own Bibles so that you can tell when

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I'm Scripture, and I'm adding my own commentary more easily.

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Now, last few times we saw that the word spirits here, in verses 1 and 2, primarily they refer to men, either men who are from God, who have the anointing of truth and of God's Spirit, or they can refer to men who are not from God, but are

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Antichrist and have the spirit of Antichrist. We're going to explore what that means more today.

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And in order to understand Scripture and apply it correctly, we must mature in the constant, continual practice and exercise of discernment, right?

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It is absolutely foundational to the Christian life, and this is what makes us wise as teachers and mature in knowledge.

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For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an immature infant, like Hebrews 5 13 says.

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But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil, like the next verse says.

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So, we understand that we test, we discern, we inspect, examine every spirit or person in order to judge whether they are from God or from Antichrist.

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That is what we discern for, to identify where a person, who a person belongs to.

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What do they believe, right? What do they confess, which reveals their belief, unless they are hypocrites, of course, but eventually the truth always comes out, one way or another.

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Do they confess Christ, who has come in the flesh, and his word, his doctrine, or not?

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Or not? And it doesn't matter what that not is. It doesn't matter if it's Buddhism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Roman, Romanism, Eastern Orthodox, Orthodoxy, it doesn't matter what that not is.

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It's all the same. It's not from Christ, because only the

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Christ of the Bible, of his word, is the true doctrine of Christ.

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Now, in order to discern biblically, we must know how to think logically.

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That's critical to this whole process. Logically, consistently, systematically, and agree with Scripture.

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This is why we practice the analogies of Scripture and of faith. It's taking the use of logic, so that we can compare

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Scripture with Scripture, and ensure that our understanding does not contradict other passages, because God is not the author of confusion.

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It should not contradict, and if it does, there's something wrong with our interpretation.

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And the analogy of faith, of course, by which we deduce sound doctrine from the Scriptures. We deduce sound doctrine, just like Christ himself deduced the resurrection from the tense of the verb, saying,

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I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, not I was. So, and we therefore, we conform ourselves to Scripture, and to logic, which is how we get sound doctrine.

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By making and deducing proper, logical contrasts, distinctions, and applications.

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By making and deducing proper, logical contrasts, distinctions, and applications.

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Right? And that's all Jesus did when he would interact with others. If you see, if you study the

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Gospels, and the letters, the whole Bible is full of this very thing.

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This is how we must do theology. This is how we must understand the

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Bible, because this is what Christ taught, and his apostles, and his Word teaches us.

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Namely, one of the most important being, an example of this being, the law and Gospel distinction.

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Right? The distinction of law and Gospel. We don't conflate or confuse law and Gospel.

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We distinguish them. Yes, they have common ground. They have things in common.

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They have the same source, for example, God, but they are different. They are distinct, and we must distinguish them logically, so that there is no contradiction, or conflation, or confusion, which you see a lot of out there these days.

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Not just, I mean, yeah, in the world, the world is full of confusion and contradiction, but even in churches, and this is where we must be discerning, and do things

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God's way, according to his Word. Very, very important.

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Now, I also want to clarify something that one of our our dear sisters brought up last week to me.

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So, there was, it was, it was regarding what I quoted in Luke 11 23.

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If you turn with me there, in the Gospel of Luke chapter 11 23. So, in the

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Gospel of Luke, and there are other places where Christ declares this, but this is a useful place to go to, and you'll see why.

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Now, take note here, that while the Bible says this, in in Luke 11 and 23,

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Christ says, he who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.

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So, there's a very simple statement there that reveals an either -or.

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There's only two options, right? Either you are for Christ, you are with Christ, or you are against Christ.

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And unless you are with him gathering, you are scattering.

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You are opposing Christ and his mission, his work, everything.

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You're opposing him in every respect. So, that's a very clear, black -and -white statement.

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It's only one or the other. There's only two options. This is what is important to understand.

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Only two options. There is no third way. There is no other neutral ground.

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There is no other. It's not like, you know, what is that country that's always neutral? Switzerland. Neutrality doesn't exist in this situation.

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There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it whatsoever. None. There's no excuses. Nothing. Black -and -white.

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Literally, two options. However, now, if you jump further down, no, back, backwards, excuse me, the

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Bible also says this in Luke chapter 9, starting in verse 49.

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You turn with me there, we'll see another important statement that Christ declared about himself, about doing ministry.

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So, in Luke chapter 9, verse 49,

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God's Word says, and John the Apostle answered and said,

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Master, we saw something, someone casting out demons in your name.

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Note that. In your name. And we tried to hinder him because he does not follow along with us.

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Okay? But Jesus said to him, do not hinder him. Listen, for he who is not against you is for you.

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He who is not against you is for you. Wow. Now, I could preach a whole sermon on just these two verses right here, but I want to get some important principles drawn out of this because what you find here is

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Jesus is stating the exact same principle. It's the exact same principle that he stated later on.

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He who is not with me is against me. Only two options. And similarly, Christ states here, for he who is not against you is for you.

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Because there are only two options. There are only two options. And this is why it is so important to know logic.

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Because Jesus here, well, and everywhere, he is the master logician. He was brilliant in refuting the

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Pharisees and their arguments to entrap him. He was he was a master logician. We all should strive to be like him.

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Amen? So, we must think logically, consistently, because Christ himself here is illustrating another fundamental law of logic.

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Last time I talked about the law of contradiction, right? A cannot be both

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A and not A. It cannot be both A and something that is not A at the same time in the same respect.

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That's a contradiction. That cannot be true. There is another law of logic called the law of the excluded middle.

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The law of the excluded middle. And what this law says is that A can be either

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B or not B. So, what does that show you? There's only two options, right?

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The law of excluded middle shows that when there are only two options, there can only be one option of the two.

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Now, my loose translation of this law is you can't have it both ways, right?

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You can't have it both ways. Sometimes you just can't have it both ways. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too, right?

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And I never used to know what that even meant, but apparently what that means is you can't keep your cake that's so pretty and lovely and eat it at the same time.

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Either you preserve it and leave it nice and pretty and untouched by your hands and mouth, or you eat it, and then it's no longer pretty, right?

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So, one or the other. It's only one or the other. And this law applies to both verses.

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To both verses because in both verses, there are only two options. There are only two options.

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And both of these verses in Luke illustrate the same, they state the same logical principle or law.

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But they begin on opposite ends of each other. Whereas Luke 11, 23 says, he who is not with me is against me.

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In Luke 9, 49, he says, he who is not against you is for you, is with you, right?

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And there's so many takeaways from this passage as well. Because this also, this also militates against Lordship Salvation.

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Because in Lordship Salvation, it's all about, you got to submit and surrender all and throw everything away and follow

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Christ. But these guys, the Apostles, you see the

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Apostles tried to hinder others who are doing ministry without following Christ.

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And Christ said, don't hinder them because they are doing it properly in my name.

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And therefore, they are actually for us. They are for you. They are not against what you're doing.

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So, that's another important takeaway.

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It doesn't, following Christ does not look the same for everyone.

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It's not the same. You have to sell everything you have and go and follow after him.

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That's not, that's not what Jesus meant. That is not what

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Christ meant. We have to always remember that. This is what logic helps us do, right?

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Because we have to keep in mind that Jesus told others to go home. Don't follow me, but go home and tell others what

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God did for you. So, this is very important.

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Very important that, that, that we, and this is an important thing to keep in mind as well.

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When there are only two options, when there are only two options that contradict each other, only one can be true at a time.

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Only one can be true at a time. When there are only two options that contradict each other, only one can be true at a time.

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That's exactly what Jesus meant. You are either for me or you are against me.

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And to put this in more modern parlance, to address the confusion of our feminist, you know,

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LGBT transgender culture, you can only be one of two things.

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You can only be a man or a woman. Man or woman.

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You cannot be both. You cannot be some weird hybrid. You are only a man or a woman.

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Period. There are only two genders.

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God made them male and female. That's logic.

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That's logic. That's the law of the excluded middle. The law of the excluded middle refutes transgenderism.

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It refutes LGBT and all this homosexuality stuff. That's, that's, that's a satanic logic because it's contradictory.

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If you say that you can be a man or a woman, you are denying your own humanity, your own manhood or womanhood.

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You're contradicting yourself. And if you're confused about that, all you have to do is look in the mirror and you will find out very quickly what you really are.

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So I'll leave it at that. But 1st

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John chapter 4. So going back now to 1st John chapter 4, this passage also demonstrates for us the law, the same law, of the excluded middle.

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Why? Because every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ who has come in the flesh, is from God.

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But there's an and here. And every spirit that does not confess

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Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the

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Antichrist. So there we see the exact same law being applied.

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Only two options. You either come from Christ, from God, and you are with him.

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Or you do not come from God. You are not from God. You are from Antichrist.

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The spirit of Antichrist. That's it. Black and white.

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And this might jog your memory a little bit. How the apostle, the entire letter of 1st

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John is full of these excluded middles. Where John presents one of two options. Either you walk in the darkness or you walk in the light.

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There's no middle. There's no via media. There's no third way. Either you're saved or you are not.

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There's no other way. No other option. Amen? So this is why it's important for you all to continue to ask questions and to provide feedback.

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Because this is helpful to draw things out in the sermons and to help it make things clear for you all.

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So we understand that there are many false ways of relating to God.

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Because Jesus himself said there are many, many roads that lead.

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The road is wide and narrow that leads to destruction. Right? And many false prophets have gone out into the world.

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Like 1st John says. So turn with me to Acts chapter 20 and verse 26.

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Acts chapter 20 verse 26. We're gonna see some more important examples of these principles.

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Acts chapter 20 verse 26. God's word says,

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Therefore I, Paul, testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all.

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Why does he say that? For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God, the whole counsel of God, the whole decree of God, the whole plan of God.

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Be on guard. There you go. Be on guard. Be discerning for yourselves and for all the flock.

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Just as 1st John says. Among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood.

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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 selves men will arise speaking perverse things.

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Why is that? To draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be watchful.

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There you see again. Be watchful, vigilant, discerning.

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Test every spirit to see whether it comes from God. Remembering that night and day for a period of three years, night and day,

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I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is what

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Hebrews 5 says is what? Is solid food. Solid food.

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Which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who have been sanctified.

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Amen. This is in part why we must have our powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

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Because the devil and Antichrist are master counterfeiters.

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Disguisers. I don't know if that's a word, but disguisers. They disguise themselves.

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And the most dangerous Antichrist and falsehoods and lies are the ones with the best costume, with the best disguise.

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The one that looks the most holy, the most pious sounding in language and appearance.

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And it's no wonder it should come as no surprise to us. For even Satan himself disguises as an angel of light.

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Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore, it is not surprising if his ministers, his

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Antichrist, his false prophets, his followers also, in other words, all of those who are not with Christ.

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That's everybody else. If his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness.

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But in particular, it's those who disguise themselves as Christians, as Christian pastors and so on.

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Whose end will be according to their deeds. Whose end will be according to their deeds.

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That's 2 Corinthians 11, 13 through 15. So this is something that we all need to be aware of, because this is the battle that we find ourselves in.

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The daily battle. The most pernicious, the most destructive heretics and false teachers and prophets are the ones that most look like they are sound.

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Like they are sound. And this creates another layer of compromise to the equation, because people become reluctant to call them out.

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Because they're so popular. Because everybody loves them. They're so famous and influential and popular.

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And so people don't want to give bad publicity to that, because you're going against the world.

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You're going against the flow. It's funny how they forget the

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God they serve. What did Jesus do the whole time he was here? He was going against every aspect of society at the time just about.

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Not all of it. He wasn't a radical. He wasn't talking about, you know, denying manhood and womanhood and that kind of stuff.

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He wasn't a liberal, obviously, but he contradicted the religious leaders at just about every level.

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Because they were wrong. Because they contradicted the truth. So that is the situation that we find ourselves in.

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And this is partly why people don't do this. They don't name names and call out false teachers just like Christ and the apostles did repeatedly.

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And just as we are commanded to do the same. To be on guard to discern the savage wolves disguised as sheep.

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So that brings us now to another sad reality.

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Because now there's more complexity added on on top of that.

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And that is that people who are in error are often completely unaware of their own biases and imbalances and false doctrine.

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Because they are self -deceived. They are under self -deception.

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That is very often the case. So even though they might think that they are in the truth, walking in the truth, when in reality they're the opposite.

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Why? Because they do not discern. They do not discern truth from error, good from evil.

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They all too often assume that their errors that they hold to, their traditions, are biblical.

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They assume them. Instead of carefully investigating them. Instead of discerning them and all things, like the

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Bible says. Instead of testing every spirit. Every spirit.

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Just like the word says, that includes our own spirit. Every spirit, every person, including ourselves.

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What did Paul tell the elders at Ephesus? Be on guard for your own selves and for the flock.

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Right? It's everybody has to do this. And Jesus further warned us in Matthew 15 verse 13.

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If you turn with me there in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 15. This is important to, this is a helpful principle for us to recognize false teachers.

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When you see somebody try to affirm both things, you can tell that they are likely not from God.

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You cannot have it both ways. You cannot, you cannot promote Christ and ungodliness and Belial and Satan at the same time.

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And you see a lot of that in popular influential teachers and preachers and pastors all over the

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TV. Matthew 15 verse 13.

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Our Lord Christ says, every plant, every plant which my heavenly

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Father did not plant, shall be uprooted. Let them, the

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Pharisees alone, they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.

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Both will. It's where we get the phrase, the blind leading the blind from.

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From the wise words of our Savior. So this is just an incredible passage once again with multiple takeaways.

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Notice verse 13 says, every plant which who planted my heavenly

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Father did not plant, shall be uprooted. Well there goes free will.

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There goes the thing, the idea that we think it's up to us to believe and be saved.

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Christ just said, only the plants that my

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Father planted will not be uprooted because only those belong to Christ.

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And here you see that it's not just the followers, but the teachers themselves are often blind.

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Not always, but oftentimes that is the case. They are blind themselves. They are in darkness and have no light, no discernment.

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Even though they claim to come from God and to have knowledge of God, but they are false because they contradict

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Christ. They contradict his word. They contradict his law, his holiness, his law, and his gospel.

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There's many ways to contradict Christ. Many ways, which is what

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Christ repeatedly said. And this is also further why

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God repeatedly and emphatically commands elders or pastors to be on guard and discerning for yourselves and for all the flock.

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There is no ifs, ands, or buts about it because they are out there and oftentimes they come up from within the church, even from within the local church.

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And this is a matter of primary importance of spiritual life and death, eternal life and death.

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This is the stuff that damns souls when you contradict

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Christ and you are not from God and you teach others to do the same, to reject him.

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We are nevertheless all, however, commanded to prioritize the constant practice of daily discernment of God's truth.

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Not just discerning the truth, right, but discerning the truth from the antichrist lies of the world and of the false antichrists that creep into the church and the distortions of the

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Christian faith and avoid the prideful pitfalls of the church at Laodicea, of the church that said,

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I am rich and I've become wealthy and have need of nothing. But in reality, they did not know, they did not realize that they are wretched and pitiful and poor and blind and naked.

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Ouch. Why? Why was that? Because they lacked discernment.

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They lacked self -awareness to see their own error and sin. They lacked the ability to discern the word of God and they did not test every spirit.

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Revelation 3 .17. That's why this is so important because that's one of the worst situations, that is one of the worst predicaments you can put yourself in, to lack self -awareness, not even be aware of your own state, condition, or sin.

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We need to identify these things in ourselves and in others and respond accordingly, either repenting when we sin or growing in truth and in the faith, in a logically consistent faith.

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And to that end, I would highly encourage and commend every one of us to read

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Gresham Machen's book, Christianity and Liberalism. There you see another law of the excluded middle that Machen very, very well laid out in his book.

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Christianity and liberalism are two completely different things. They are not the same thing.

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Christianity is one thing and liberalism is a totally different thing because it is antichrist.

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It's either or. They are not the same and reading sound doctrine like these works helps us to sharpen our powers of discernment, our senses.

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Now, I want to reread 1 John chapter 4 and we're going to dive into a couple of concepts here that this passage reveals to us, specifically regarding repentance and confession.

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So back in 1 John chapter 4, verse 1, the word says once again,

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Do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

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By this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God and every spirit that does not confess

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Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist of which you have heard that it is coming and now it is already in the world.

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So the legacy standard Bible, I'm afraid, kind of is not that clear in drawing out the meaning of the passage.

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So we kind of need to clarify some things here. Starting in verse 2, it says,

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By this you know the spirit of God. This is not so much an indicative as it is a command, an imperative.

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So in other words, it's more meant to indicate by this know, by this know the spirit of God.

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Or to phrase it as an indicative, by this you will then know the spirit of God.

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You will understand. Note that as well, know, understand, knowledge, or know by this the spirit of God.

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And what is that? It is this, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

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Now that's another kind of a mistranslation there. It's every spirit that confesses

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Jesus who has come in the flesh. It's Jesus and his doctrine, not just his incarnation, is from God.

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The spirit that confesses Christ and his word, his doctrine, is from God. And every spirit, every and any spirit without exception that does not confess

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Jesus himself is not from God, but instead denies him, is against him.

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We have to take it a step further because that's what Jesus did. If you are not with me, you are against me.

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You are denying me. So that's what this is illustrating, what this is showing us.

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Now what does it mean to confess Jesus Christ who has come in the flesh? What does that mean?

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That word confess is a very interesting one. It's a compound of two words, homo and logos.

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Homo and logos. So it's homologate. And here it means specifically to profess publicly, to profess publicly, to profess in a manner accessible to or observable by the public, by somebody outside of yourself.

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Other people can discern it and see it. To confess here means to demonstrate, right, to demonstrate visibly or publicly, in other words, that you are sent to agree with sincerely without hypocrisy or reservation something that is understood.

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That is understood. In this case, Christ himself who has come in the flesh to live, suffer, and die on our behalf.

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Christ and his gospel. Christ and his doctrine. By this, no.

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By this, we know. It includes the incarnation, but it's not limited to just that.

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Okay, that's what's important to understand as well. In other words, then, to confess here means to profess what you believe, what you truly believe on the inside.

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And the Latin word being faith, fides or faith. It is to understand and agree with Christ.

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Simply stated, a true living faith that outwardly demonstrates itself and not a false dead faith like what

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James 2 talks about as well. And you'll note again the conjunction where 1st

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John tells us that, and every spirit without exception that does not confess

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Jesus is not from God because they are denying him.

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In other words, they do not profess his doctrine because they do not believe it.

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They do not truly believe it even though they might claim to believe it. A man might say he has faith, but if there are no works, if there is no outward demonstration, visible demonstration of that faith, we can't know.

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And that faith may be, in fact, a dead faith, not a truth -saving faith, but a false profession, a hypocritical profession of faith.

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So, in 1st John chapter 2 verse 22 similarly says, tells us, who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the

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Christ. Same thing, you are denying him. This is the Antichrist, the same enemy, the

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Antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Everyone who denies the

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Son does not have the Father, but the one who confesses the Son has the

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Father also. It's not just the incarnation. There you see again, he's talking about the doctrine of Christ as a whole.

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It's a, it's a, what's that word? I forget the word for it, but it's a part that represents the whole.

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Now, previously, we also saw in chapter 3 of verse 22 of 1st

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John that keeping his commandments is not just about doing right and not doing wrong, because it first starts with knowing right from wrong, with discernment, with a discerning faith that believes the truth, that both believes the truth and rejects the lies.

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Again, because if you do not reject the lie, you do not have the truth. You're contradicting yourself otherwise if you claim both.

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The law of the excluded middle, remember that? So, and that is also why repentance illustrates or demonstrates this, because repentance is a form of discernment and of, it's an application of the law of the excluded middle, in a sense.

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It is a rejection of our former lies and the newfound acceptance of truth. That is saving repentance.

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Repentance unto life by which we believe the truth and reject the lie that we may have held to before.

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And the Baptist, the reformed larger catechisms, I'll read the

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Baptist version, has a question about repentance. What is it? What is repentance? Or the way they render it is, what is repentance unto life?

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The answer is that repentance unto life is an act of God's free grace, wrought in the heart of a sinner by the spirit and word of God, by his means.

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By it, sinners recognize, discern not only the danger of their sins, but also the filthiness and repulsiveness of their sins to God.

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Understanding that in Christ, God is merciful to those who repent.

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Sinners suffer such deep sorrow for and hate their sins so much that they turn away from all of them and turn to God.

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Purposing to walk continually with him according to this new obedience in every way, in every way.

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Now, this is a very comprehensive definition.

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In fact, it's a little too comprehensive and all -encompassing.

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And we need to make an important distinction here because repentance, biblically speaking, is referring to the change of mind, the internal change of mind that God brings about in us.

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It is internal and it is not a work. The stuff that, because again, we have to understand that in the

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Reformed faith, repentance actually follows faith because it is an ongoing process of purposing to walk in all the new ways of obedience.

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So they define repentance in a more comprehensive sense, but biblically speaking, it is referring specifically to the change of mind, metanoia, change of mind.

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Now, that does not mean that nothing follows repentance because the

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Bible says, repeat it clearly, you bear fruit in keeping with your repentance, your initial change of mind.

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You bear fruit. You demonstrate to others that you are saved now.

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You confess Christ. These are fruits of our saving faith and repentance.

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And similarly, when we sin now, we repent. We repent.

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We don't wallow in it. We don't continue in it. We repent from sin and we confess our sins to God who is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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So as believers, we continue to repent in our sanctification, which follows our justification.

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So now that we are saved, we grow. We learn. We mortify sin and put it to death in us.

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We deny our flesh. It's a process. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

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And that's what this question illustrates. It's the fruit that follows repentance.

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Now, to finish up here, what is what is the spirit, the singular spirit of Antichrist, of the

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Antichrist in verse three of 1st John 4? Does it mean the same thing as the spirits in verses 1 through 2?

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Is it also referring to a man or a man? The answer here is no.

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So we have to be careful here. The word spirit does not mean the same thing in verse three.

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It refers to a zeitgeist, a zeitgeist or a spirit of the age.

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It's a mindset. It's a worldview, a mindset that is

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Antichrist, that is of the Antichrist. You can even say that it is in allegiance to Antichrist.

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It's an allegiance, the spirit of the age. And you see a lot of scripture that draws this out, like the mark of the beast.

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It's a mark of allegiance to Antichrist, either knowingly or unknowingly.

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You can unknowingly sign your allegiance over to the devil and to Antichrist without realizing it because you might be deceived.

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You might be self -deceived or deceived by the devil who blinds and hardens the minds of the unbeliever, which prevents them from believing the truth of the gospel.

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So this is where we also practice the analogy of scripture in 1st

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John 2 .18, where it similarly says, children, it is the last hour. And just as you heard, that Antichrist singular is coming, even now many

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Antichrists and false prophets have appeared. From this, we know that it is the last hour.

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So John is essentially restating what he said earlier. And but he distinguishes the various enemies of God and of his people.

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There is the one Antichrist, the capital

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A Antichrist singular, who had not yet come during the New Testament era.

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And I encourage you to go back to the previous sermons that I preached on Antichrist because this is referring primarily to the papacy, to the succession of men who claim to be in the place of Christ on earth, but also referring to the spirit of the

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Antichrist, which was and is still operating in many Antichrists and false prophets who seek to undermine churches by attacking the pure doctrine of Christ and his gospel and by destroying the faith of believers.

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Even now, like 1st John says, even now, they are all ultimately on the same team.

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They work for the same boss, right? Antichrist can be worldly and religious deceivers.

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They can be both who push the same spirit of Antichrist, which is really the spirit of the world and of the devil, and try to bring it into the church to entice our flesh and draw people away from the truth, right?

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There are false prophets whom Christ warned about who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are savage, ravenous wolves, like Matthew 7 15 says.

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While the Antichrist is the representative head of his kingdom of darkness on earth, not to be confused with the devil, right?

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Because the Antichrist himself is an agent of Satan who's coming as an according with the working of Satan, according to 2nd

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Thessalonians 2 7. So then, beloved, these are very important things that we all need to internalize and practice in our everyday lives.

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But for a final word of encouragement, turn to 1st John chapter 4 verse 4, because right after all these important warnings and instructions and commands that the word gives us, that the

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Apostle gives us in this God -breathed letter, he follows up in verse 4 and says,

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You are from God, little children, beloved. You are from God and have overcome them, all of them, already.

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The false prophets, the Antichrist, all of them. Because what? Why? Because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.

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And God's people said, Amen. Take heart and be comforted by this precious promise, beloved, your gospel promise.

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He is greater than everyone who opposes him. Everyone. And by virtue of us believing the truth and rejecting the lie, that is overcoming all of them.

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Because we belong to God. You are from God. So take comfort in that, beloved.

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Let us bow then with a word of prayer. Our precious heavenly

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Lord and Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for your awesome law and gospel.

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Lord, help us, Father, to understand these important distinctions and contrasts in your word.

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These logical principles that you have elaborated so clearly in these places,

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Father, in these scriptures. Help us, Lord, to take comfort in knowing that, yes, the lie, those who hold to the lie do not come from you because you are the

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God of truth and you must be worshiped in spirit and truth, Father.

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But help us to take comfort that we know, we can know that we are from God because we believe in your

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Son, in the doctrine of your Son, who has come in the flesh to die, to live a perfect life and die a perfect sacrificial, propitiatory sacrifice on the cross, where he has lifted, he has been lifted up to draw all those you have chosen to save, all those you have planted,

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Lord. You have planted each and every one of us who trust in you, Father. Help us, Lord, to also have this law gospel balance and to repent when we sin, to mortify our sin, and to not allow those things to discourage us from continuing to trust in you for our salvation, our justification, our assurance, and our growth in holiness,

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Lord, and to continue to practice discernment so that we may better identify truth and error,

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Father, to understand your word more fully, more logically, consistently, and systematically, and likewise, to more boldly and clearly be able to see and refute the lies that are ever present with us within as well as without the church.

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Thank you, Father, for these precious truths, and we ask these things in Jesus' almighty name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorne Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety has applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorne Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thornecrownministries .com,