Written Against Anitchrists

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.

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John, Chapter 20, verses 19 through 31. On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the

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Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. And after He said this,

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He showed them His hands and sighed. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again, Jesus said,

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Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. And with that,

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He breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven.

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If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven. Now Thomas, called Didymus, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when

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Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them,

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Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into His side,

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I will not believe it. A week later, His disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them.

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Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Then He said to Thomas, Put your finger here.

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See my hands? Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.

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Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God. Then Jesus told him, Because you have seen me, you have believed.

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Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not recorded in this book.

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But these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the

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Son of God, and that by believing, you might have life in His name.

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In the name of Jesus, backstories. Now when I was a kid, the

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Star Wars movies came out. Now I totally nerded out on them. Star Wars was the thing.

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In fact, I had one of the very first flashlights designed to look like a lightsaber.

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It was terrible. You know, I remember having epic lightsaber battles with my friends.

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Now one of the interesting things about that movie, I actually had the supreme joy of actually seeing it at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood when the movie came out.

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And man, when that movie came out, oh yeah, yeah, I mean, it was so loud, so epic. I've never seen anything like it before.

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And what's weird is it starts off, you know, how those, you know, starts off, right?

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And then it says Star Wars, and then comes those scrolling words, right? And the first Star Wars movie said,

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Episode 4, A New Hope. And of course, after watching the movie, there's a lot of buzz.

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Episode 4? 4? 4? Why is it 4? Right? And so as I grew up, you know, when

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Episode 5 came out, and then Episode 6, I mean, the big buzz was, well, what's the backstory?

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Because there's these epic characters in there, most notably Darth Vader. If only you knew the power of the dark side, right?

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And so you wanted to know the backstory about this Darth Vader character. Well, when my son was about my age, the next series of Star Wars movies came out, and they gave us the backstory.

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So, backstories are very important, and I'm going to actually blend, if you would, our epistle text and our gospel text together, because there's a lot of backstory going on, and I'm going to fill you in on a little bit of the details.

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Now, to help you out, I'd like you to open up your Bibles to 1 John 2, verses 18 -26.

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I'll give you a second to get there, because when you read the commentaries on the epistle of 1

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John, it's absolutely hilarious. All of the scholars kind of weep and grind their teeth together and complain bitterly, because this letter that John wrote apparently has no discernible outline to it.

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And so what's really funny is that nobody can quite figure out what John is doing. So it's the weirdest thing. John explains the reason why he wrote this letter in the dead center of it, which doesn't make any sense, because every good professor and teacher knows that you write your thesis at the beginning, and then you have your supporting paragraphs, and then conclusion.

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John apparently did not go to American schools. So you've got to remember he's a product of the first century. Let me read to you his thesis statement regarding this epistle so that we can get you some of the backstory.

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And then when you see the backstory, all of a sudden this thing's going to come to life. So here's what he writes. Children, it is the last hour, and as you've heard that Antichrist is coming, and oh yes he is, so now many

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Antichrists, small, plural, they have come. Therefore we know that this is the last hour.

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They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they are not all of us.

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But if you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge, I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

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Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?

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Now remember those words, who is the liar? It's actually referring to a very specific person and a false teaching, but we'll get there.

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So he's calling him a liar, and he's calling him an Antichrist. So this is the Antichrist who denies the

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Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the

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Son has the Father also. So let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the

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Son and in the Father, and this is the promise that He made to us, eternal life. So I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.

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Ah, so there's our thesis statement, right in the middle of this epistle. Why did John write this epistle of 1

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John? So that those who are trying to deceive you would not. And he calls them liars and Antichrists.

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Now let me tell you the back story. There was in Ephesus a man by the name of Serinthus, a very evil dude.

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In fact, if we were telling our story, he would be the bad guy. Now, before I tell you more about his story, let me tell you about how

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John came to be in Ephesus. You're thinking, John's a good Jewish boy. When we see him in the book of Acts, he's in Jerusalem.

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How is it that he ends up in the city of Ephesus, which is in Asia Minor? Well, it's real simple.

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Remember the Emperor Titus? Well, actually, he was an emperor while he was doing this, but he was commander of the armies of Rome.

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They came to Israel and they had had it with these zealots who kept killing

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Roman soldiers and their duplicitous ways and the fact that they would not submit to Roman rule and authority and were always trying to subvert it.

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They said enough is enough and they sent the armies of Rome to Jerusalem and they slaughtered the

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Jews in total. They eventually surrounded

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Jerusalem, pummeled that wall to the ground, breached the wall, came in and got on the temple mount and they burned the temple to the ground.

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In fact, it was so epic of a scene that the gold inside the temple is described as flowing like a river out of the temple itself.

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Well, good Roman soldiers being good Roman soldiers, you don't want to let a river of gold go to waste. And so they made sure to get every last bit of gold out from the cracks of the cement and out of the temple.

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And in the process, they just so happened to raise the temple and just throw it off the temple mount.

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And there it sits to this day in a heap off of one side of the temple mount. Well, along with this, the

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Roman government decided that it would be a good idea to kick the

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Jews out of Jerusalem. And they did. That would include John, because at this time they viewed

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Christianity as kind of a sect within Judaism. The Romans didn't quite know what to make of Christianity.

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And so John finds himself out of Judea and he then traveled with Jesus's mother,

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Mary, to Ephesus. And remember, it was the Apostle Paul who planted the churches in Ephesus.

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He was the missionary to the Gentiles and he proclaimed the gospel. For years in Ephesus, in the

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Hall of Tyrannus, he had like a standing gig where he would go and tell everybody about Jesus.

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And thriving congregations sprouted up and grew. And then after Paul, by this time

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Paul is dead, John comes in and he's now the bishop, kind of the guy in charge of overseeing all of the different congregations of Christians within Ephesus.

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Well, now we come back to our bad guy. Our bad guy's name is Serinthus.

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Serinthus was a former Jew. He lived and grew up in Egypt and he lived in Ephesus at the time that the

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Apostle John lived and served there. Now Serinthus was an interesting guy. He combined

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Jewish ideas with what may be called kind of the beginnings of a heresy known as Gnosticism.

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Now if you've never heard of Gnosticism, I'll give you just kind of a very rough cut idea of what this is all about.

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It's based upon the philosophy of Plato and it basically says, matter, things you can touch, bad.

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Spirit, good. That's really simplistic, but that's kind of the idea.

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And so because they believe that matter is evil, the idea of God becoming flesh, yeah, that's like runs completely contrary to the way of thinking.

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And then this idea that we're going to all be raised again bodily and live forever in matter, you know, resurrected bodies.

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That's like unthinkable. So this is kind of that's kind of the idea of Gnosticism.

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So Serinthus taught, get this, he taught that Jesus was the physical son of Joseph.

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He denied the virgin birth. And Serinthus taught that Jesus was the

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Aeon of Christ or that the Aeon of Christ was united with Jesus at his baptism.

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You're thinking, what on earth is that? Kind of reads like a sci -fi novel. Well, think of it this way. If you're familiar with the

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New Age movement, they talk about this thing called the Christ consciousness, right? So the

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Christ consciousness is this kind of eternal spiritual concept idea that may or may not be personal.

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And so the Gnostics kind of thought the same way. So Jesus was the physical offspring of Joseph, Serinthus said.

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And when he was baptized, that's when the Christ united with him.

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And then the Christ left Jesus just before his sufferings and death.

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You're thinking, where is this guy getting any of this nonsense, right? And to kind of boot,

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Serinthus rejected all of the Gospels, all of Paul's letters, and he accepted only certain parts of the

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Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark. Now, keep this in mind, okay? Serinthus is teaching this at the exact same time that the apostle

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John is in Ephesus. They're in the same town. Now, Serinthus never met

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Jesus. Serinthus could not tell us what Jesus looked like. He had never even heard

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Jesus's voice, had never heard Jesus teach a single parable, had never witnessed a single miracle that Jesus accomplished.

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But Serinthus believed that he knew who Jesus was and what Jesus's message was better than the apostle

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John. And he opposed the apostolic teaching through the apostle

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John and gathered a following of his own there in Ephesus. It's absurd if you think about it.

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Now, one of the church fathers, whose name is Irenaeus, let me tell you a little bit about this guy.

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He wrote a very long book against heresies. And in there, he tells us a little bit about Serinthus.

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And you're wondering, well, where did this guy get this information from? Well, let me give you Irenaeus's pedigree, if you would.

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So while John is in Ephesus, he's discipling people.

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And one of his disciples is a gentleman by the name of Polycarp. You may have heard of him. He actually was martyred for his faith in Christ in his 80s.

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And Polycarp, he discipled Irenaeus. So Irenaeus is one of these guys, he's got a great pedigree.

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He was taught the faith from Polycarp. Polycarp was taught the faith from the apostle John. We know this with certainty.

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So now Irenaeus is the one who tells us about Serinthus. And here's what he writes. He says, there are also those who heard from Polycarp that John, the disciple of the

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Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving that Serinthus was within the building, rushed out of the bathhouse without bathing, exclaiming, let us fly, lest the bathhouse fall down upon us, because Serinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.

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Yeah, well, these are the days before they had cold and hot water running inside of your home.

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And so if you wanted to bathe, which was, you know, I think at least you had to do it once a year, you'd go to a place, you know, that was had public baths and Serinthus was in there and John was so incensed, he couldn't even stand to be in the same, you know, under the same roof as this guy.

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Now, Polycarp himself actually had a face -to -face meeting with another heretic by the name of Marcion.

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Marcion was one of these guys who kind of basically believed what he wanted to believe in the apostolic teaching.

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And Marcion, upon meeting Polycarp, asked him, do you know who I am?

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And Polycarp says, oh, I know who you are. You're the firstborn of Satan. These are great stories.

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Anyway, so this is all backstory. Okay, so you got that? Okay, so mark well, friends, this is always the way that heretics think and operate.

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They think they know better than the apostles. These men and women, they are enemies of the truth.

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They are corruptors of the truth. They're children of that liar, the devil. Now, that's the backstory.

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You got it? So John, when he's writing this letter that now is in our Bible, he's writing it to the churches so that they would not be deceived.

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And the one he's writing against is Serinthes. So now go back to 1

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John 1, verse 1 from our epistle reading. And what does Paul say?

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Not Paul, John. Second time I've done that. John, here's what he says. That which was from the beginning.

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Sentence number one is literally like, John, it's like the bell has rung.

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Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And John is coming out of his corner going boom, boom, boom.

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Just knocking him down. Because this first sentence, that which was from the beginning.

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Jesus is the eternal son of God, which is completely contrary to what

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Serinthes teaches. He's not mixing words. He's not going to play nice with Serinthes.

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He's coming out swinging and swinging hard. So he's basically saying, I'm speaking of Jesus who did not have his beginning from Mary, but was from the beginning.

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That's a good way to put this. And then John continues, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

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Who is this nonsensical dude, Serinthes, who thinks he knows better about Jesus than we do?

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I touched him, is what John is saying. Right? And now you think back to our gospel text.

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Our gospel text says this. On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the

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Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Little note.

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Isn't that great? These are the disciples. Notice it says they're cowering in fear in an upper room because of fear of the

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Jews. When Jesus is arrested, his closest guys, the guys who he spent all of this time investing in them, and they knew exactly who he was, and they confessed him as Lord and God.

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As soon as trouble shows up, these guys scamper away into the darkness like cockroaches.

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And Jesus' words are not, You lousy bunch of... You know, what are you thinking?

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You know, you left me high and dry. Right? He's not thinking that way at all. And Jesus isn't coming for retribution.

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He's already bled and died for all of their sins. And so his first words to them are, Peace be with you.

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Peace. That tells you about Jesus, right? But back to our story. So when

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Jesus had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. What did John say in his epistle?

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That which we have seen, which we have touched. Right? So then the disciples were glad when they saw the

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Lord Jesus, and said to them again, and he said to them, Peace be with you, as the

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Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.

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Now pay attention to this. The Father sends the Son. The Son says, even as I have been sent by the

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Father, now I am sending you. That fancy word that we use all the time, apostle, it's from a

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Greek word, apostolos. It means one who is sent. The apostles are sent.

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There are no apostles today. Okay. Now remember in the

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Great Commission, this is kind of a little off note to the side here. Great Commission. Jesus says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

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Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them all that I have commanded you.

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Right? Do the disciples accomplish that task of discipling all nations?

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Did they make it to Australia, New Zealand? No, they did not, did they?

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To the Habuku tribe somewhere in Brazil? No, not at all. But see, the thing is, is that when

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Jesus commands them to disciple all nations, the disciples are still discipling all nations.

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They are doing so through their writings. Because Jesus said of the disciples, if anyone who listens to you, listens to me, the one who hears you, hears me.

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Where can you go today to find out about what the historical Jesus said and taught and did?

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There's no other place that you can go except for the apostolic writings. That's the only place you can go.

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So they are still discipling to this day. So that commission that they had to disciple all nations, indeed, on the last day, men from every tribe of every human clan will be there, be represented on that last day in the great cloud of witnesses, those who've been brought out of the great tribulation, brought to penitent faith.

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And they were all discipled. You and I were discipled by Peter, by John, by Paul, by James.

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We're all being discipled even right now because John is discipling us. So think about that.

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He's the one who sent. Is Serinthes sent by Christ? Yeah, I don't seem to remember him being sent.

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Do you? No. So he says to them, I am sending you. And when he said this, he said, and breathed on them, receive the

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Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you withhold forgiveness for many, it is withheld. Now Thomas, one of the 12 called the twin was not with them when

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Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said, unless I see his hands and marks of the nails and place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand in the side,

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I will never be leave. Silly Thomas, silly.

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Jesus sent them to tell him that he was raised from the grave. His response should have been amen.

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Hallelujah. Instead, he says, no, I'm not going to believe. So eight days later, that would be on Sunday.

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Again, Jesus is raised on Sunday. Eight days later, it's a Sunday. So Sunday night,

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Jesus appears and it says this to Thomas. Although the doors are locked, Jesus came and stood among them.

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And notice what he says, peace be with you. And then he says to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands, put out your hand and place it in my side.

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Do not be disbelieving, but be believing is a good way to translate the Greek there.

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Thomas answered to him. My Lord and my

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God. And that is exactly who Jesus is. He is God.

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Now, does Jesus rebuke Thomas for claiming that he's

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God? No, here's what he said. Jesus said to him, have you believed because you've seen me?

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Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

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And see, that's the thing. I and you, we all have something in common with Serenthis. If Jesus were to be walking down the streets of Grand Forks, maybe shopping at Walmart, looking down the spaghetti aisle or something, right?

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We wouldn't recognize him as Jesus. We'd have no clue that was him. I've never seen him.

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Have you? No, I've never seen him. I have no idea what he looks like.

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I have a suspicion that a lot of the church art out there is a little bit dodgy. I'm just saying, okay?

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I don't think he looks exactly like that. That's Norwegian Jesus. And I think

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Jesus was a Jew, okay? Right? Okay.

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Sorry, I just had to make that point. So we don't exactly know what he looks like.

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But here's the thing. Because of the testimony of John, of Matthew, of Mark, of Paul, we all believe that Jesus is

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Lord and God. And here Jesus is saying to us who have never seen him, who've never put our fingers into his nail -scarred hands or into his side, you are blessed.

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And Jesus' words of peace to the disciples also come to you. Peace be with you. You believe.

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You trust. And so that's the idea. Now let me weave in a little bit from our epistle of text.

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I'm kind of switching channels here. Let me read again. That which we've seen, that which we've touched, the life was manifest, and we have seen it, and we testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the

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Father and was manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you.

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So that you may have fellowship with us, John writes. That's right. John's writing to you.

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It may not be Serentis who is harassing you and teaching contrary to the apostles now.

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The name always changes, but the motive's always the same. I don't believe that the apostles had it right.

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I've got a better word than John. I've got a far more accurate word than Matthew.

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My insights and speculations are far closer to the truth than what we would get from Luke and the book of Acts or that ornery guy,

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Paul. And so come, let me tell you my great ideas about Jesus. They're so much better than the apostles.

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And people who think and act like this, run. Run. But believing the disciples and their testimony, the ones who were sent, we have fellowship with them.

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We truly do. And we have fellowship with the Father and we have fellowship with Jesus Christ, his son.

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So John says, we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. So this is the message that we've heard from him.

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And we proclaim to you that God is light. In him, there's no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth.

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But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. In the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin.

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All of it. Jesus bled and died for all of your sin. And then we have these words that are very familiar to us.

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If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Why does John write these words?

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Well, we learned from Irenaeus that Serenthes and his Gnostic buddies, they basically believed in something called the spiritual sense.

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And they believed that they were being saved by their superior spiritual knowledge. It's called gnosis, right?

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And so they claimed that they can do as they pleased. And they can do so without being contaminated by sin.

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In fact, some of Serenthes' buddies went so far as to basically praise men like Cain, like Korah, and praise

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Judas, and to regard them as being gifted with superior freedom of thought and intrepidity of action.

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That's a direct quote. They also claim that since the soul attains perfection only by knowledge or gnosis, that it was actually required for people to do all kinds of evil so that they can attain perfection.

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No joke. The Gnostics actually taught that if you really want to be saved, you have to engage in all kinds of debauchery, sins of the flesh, so that you can have true knowledge of all things.

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Because you're saved by your knowledge, they taught. So this is the backstory. What does

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John say? If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us.

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Written exactly against what Serenthes and his buddies were saying. And think about this.

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When somebody tells a lie, when somebody deceives, they usually do so to gain an advantage over another person or to keep themselves out of hot water.

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You know, I remember one of my first memories as a child is that I used to sneak into the kitchen, take a kitchen chair, scooch it over to the counter, climb up onto the chair, and then

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I would reach into the cookie jar. And so one of my earliest memories is of me surreptitiously in the dark going through this procedure.

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And while my hand is getting ready to go into the cookie jar, on goes the light switch and the lights go on in the kitchen.

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And my mother then used my middle name. It's always a bad thing when my mom uses my middle name.

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And it went something like this, Christopher Michael, what are you doing? To which

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I said, I'm getting you a cookie. It was a great lie.

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It was designed to deceive. Deceive and make me look like I had nothing but love for my mother.

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But it was a lie. Well, the idea behind deception is that it's designed to kind of help the person telling the lie.

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But John here says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

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Self -deception is the worst kind of deception. What gain is there in self -deception?

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There's none, none whatsoever. There's no advantage to it at all. It is a miserable state.

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If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins,

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God, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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If we say we have not sinned, we make Him, God, a liar and His word is not in us.

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So every point along the way is designed as an arrow against the heresies, the false doctrine, the false teaching of Serinthes and his gang, who stupidly have exalted themselves above the apostle

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John and think that they have a better word to give the world. So John writes, my little children,

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I'm writing these things so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus, the righteous one.

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He is the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.

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Who has a better message to offer the world? Serinthes, who says, oh, you can engage in all kinds of sinful behavior and this is by the way in which you're saved because you're saved by knowledge and your knowledge isn't complete until you've committed adultery, until you've been so drunk that your lungs are being puked out of your mouth, right?

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Or the one who says, no, you are a sinner and this is sin.

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This is what it means to fall short of the glory of God that Christ bled and died for these sins. Repent and be forgiven.

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The one who appeared to us said, peace be with you because he had died for all of our sins.

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Who is it that's bringing us a better message? Serinthes or John?

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Who was sent by Jesus? Serinthes or John? Yeah. And John writes in his gospel.

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Now, Jesus did many other signs and he saw them all in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book.

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But why did John write his gospel? Here's what he says. These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the son of God and by believing you might have life in his name.

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That is real good news. But see the way of heretics, they always think they know better.

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And today's heretics, John calls them antichrist. Today's heretics, they say things like, come on, we live in the 21st century.

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We all have smartphones now. And you expect me to believe that Jesus was really born of the

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Virgin Mary? Really? Or that Jesus really rose bodily from the grave?

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Nobody comes out of the grave. It's just got to be mythology. And this idea of Jesus suffering for our sins, how barbaric is that?

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This is how they talk. You really believe, that makes God into a moral monster.

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What kind of God would do that? This is how they talk. But you know what they have in common with Serinthus?

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They think they know better than the apostle John and the eyewitnesses. They think they have a better gospel to give to us and it's no gospel at all.

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And like Serinthus, they've never met Jesus, but John has. So who are you going to believe? The one whom Jesus sent, who says that you are forgiven, repent, believe, be forgiven and live.

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Jesus was dead and now he's alive. He did speak peace to us.

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We touched him. We handled him. We put our fingers in his wounds, in his hands and in his side.

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We ate meals with him. We saw these signs. These things are written so that you might believe that he is the

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Christ and by believing have life in his name or the one who says Bah humbug.

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We know better than those silly disciples and those apostles. Come and follow us.

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We'll tell you what Christianity is really all about. Who are you going to believe? Because the same choice that the

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Ephesians had is the same choice we have today. As for me, I'm going to go with John.

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Just seems to make sense in the name of Jesus. Amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue NW, Oslo, Minnesota 56744. And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue NW, Oslo, Minnesota 56744. We thank you for your support.

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All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message.