Abiding in the Triune God of Truth | 1 John 2:24-26

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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Okay, so, I did want to give a little update to last,

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I think it was last Sunday, was the last weekend for the Winterfest.

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And so I did get a chance to go out, I took the girls with me, and we just handed out some gospel tracts.

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It was nice, it wasn't packed with people, but there was a good number of people there, so we did manage to hand out some tracts.

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And so just be in prayer for those things. We should also just seek prayerfully opportunities for evangelism, and to share the gospel, the truth, with others, and invite folks to church as well.

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And I want to start out with a warning, and this is kind of a continuation from last week's message.

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I touched on a few things about the new year, and one thing that really happened to me recently

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I wanted to share with y 'all, because this is kind of a warning that I wanted to have us all be aware of.

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You know, social media has become very, how do you say it, very, it's just a reality.

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It's there, and we all have to deal with it, on some level, it's there.

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And there's a lot of temptations, obviously, on social media. And one of the things that I noticed was when

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I open up Facebook, for example, and a lot of times stuff will pop up that the algorithms think that you'll like, right?

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Some, how to build this, or something cool, or whatever. And so I'm like, okay, that's cool, so I like it, and then

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I follow, there's an option to follow that channel, or that, you know, whatever page, or whatever it is, and it gives you the chance to follow or subscribe.

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And so I started doing that, and then a few months later, I'm like, there's some illicit stuff popping up on my feet, and I'm like, what is this?

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I didn't sign up for this. And so I click on the channel, it's like, oh,

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I realize what happened. So they show you one thing, but then when you click on their channel, they've got other stuff on there that's not so clean, and fun, and harmless.

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So that's a very dangerous tactic that, you know, we just want to be careful with.

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It's like this foot in the door thing, where it seems all innocent at first, and then you start looking at what they're really about, and that's not really the case.

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So just be careful with what, you know, the stuff that you follow or subscribe to. There are some stumbling blocks there that you might want to look out for.

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So you might want to check the actual channel first before you try to subscribe on there. So yeah, that was an interesting lesson learned there, but that's going to increase.

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The temptation, the deception, all of this stuff is going to continue to increase as the devil knows his days are numbered, and he's going to try to continue to foment the great falling away, that great apostasy that 2

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Thessalonians talks about in other places in Scripture. Right, so, but that being said,

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I nevertheless want us to take great comfort and joy, beloved brothers and sisters, as we continue in 1

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John chapter 2. This time, let's go back to verse 20 to kind of set up the passage here.

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I'm really excited to share these things today. In 1

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John chapter 2, verse 20, and I'll be reading from the

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Legacy Standard Bible. We also use the New American Standard versions.

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In verse 20, so we're going to make real good use here of the analogies of Scripture and of faith.

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Okay, so a lot of Scripture that we're going to be cross -referencing. And so let's start with verse 20.

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God's Word says, But you have an anointing from the Holy One already, and you know already.

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I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it already.

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Notice there the emphatic reassurances, okay, that the Lord is continually giving us here.

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And it's going to be important later on. And because no lie is of the truth.

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Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, the one who denies the

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Father and the Son. Everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father either.

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The one who confesses the Son has the Father also. As for you, who is he talking to?

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All of you who are anointed by the Holy One to know and believe the truth.

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Believers, Christians, let that which you heard from the beginning abide in you.

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If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the

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Son and in the Father. Again, the reassurance, the restatement there.

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And this is this is the promise which he himself made to us. And which is why we know it to be true, because it's

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God who promises us. And even though we may be faithless, he remains faithful because he cannot deny himself.

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As 2nd Timothy 2, 13 says. And this is the promise of eternal life.

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Like 1st John says, Amen. So powerful, very powerful set of of promises here that and warnings that the

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Apostle John is giving us law and gospel. Now, the

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God breathed Apostle John continues to draw out the implications of the doctrine of the

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Trinity, as you can see here. And these implications are important for all believers to know, as you can tell.

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You know, previously he would address fathers or children or specific subgroups of believers.

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This time he's addressing all everybody. And there's also a flashback here.

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If you spotted it, you'll notice that there's a flashback, a blast from the past, so to speak, all the way back to the beginning, quote unquote.

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And that's the pun intended. If you'll get my meaning here, hopefully to the beginning of John's letter.

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So if you turn back with me to chapter one and verse one, you'll see what I'm talking about. So in chapter one of of John's letter here, we will see some familiar words.

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Starting in verse one, because that which was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and touched with our hands concerning the word of life and the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life.

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Same promise there, which was with the father and was manifested to us.

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And what we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also so that you may also have fellowship with us.

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And indeed, our fellowship is with who? The father and with his son,

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Jesus Christ. There is again that pairing of the father and the son. And these things we are writing so that our joy may be made complete.

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And this is the message we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light.

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And in him there is no darkness at all. No antichrist deceptions or lies at all.

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OK, so there's a parallel restatement here of a lot of what John is emphasizing throughout his letter.

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Notice his style. OK, he John, he tends to jump back and forth between subjects.

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And often for emphasis, like I mentioned, and repetition, because there are important matters that God wants us to remember.

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And we will continue to see this throughout the rest of this letter as well. Now, as I mentioned,

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John is also addressing all believers, not just some. And not just pastors, not just those who are mature.

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Rather, we attain maturity as believers by abiding in the things that John is writing to us.

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In the doctrine of Christ, the son and of the father.

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Because we have an anointing from the holy one. And he will say that you don't have any need that any man teach you because of the anointing, that knowledge that we have.

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And so. As our gracious Lord and master says for truly, truly,

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I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, keeps my word, abides in my doctrine.

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That's what word often means. Doctrine. He will never see death ever.

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That's John 8, 51 from the Lord himself, Jesus Christ himself.

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And this gospel doctrine and promise of eternal life, as you saw, he restated it throughout the letter in the beginning of John's letter and here as well.

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The promise of eternal life, which is the anointing. It's the anointing of the gospel of a knowledge of the truth.

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That God himself gives us is once again, why does how does he give it to us?

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Because Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

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And I give them eternal life. Right. We don't earn it ourselves.

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I gave them eternal life. Why? Because they believe my words and faith is a gift from God and they will never perish ever.

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Why? Because God so loved the world. All the believing ones.

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That he gave his only begotten son, that who those believing in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

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Right. There's a system here. God is not a disconnected God of of truths and falsehoods or inconsistencies and gaps.

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There's a system here. It's all connected. Right. So God gives us eternal life by faith alone.

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One of the fundamental truths of the Reformation. Right. So that's from John 10, 27 to 28, the

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Gospel of John. All of this is by grace through faith alone, not by the

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Antichrist lies of works salvation. Right now, this brings us to the next important point.

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What does it mean to abide in the son and in the father?

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What does abide mean? What does abide mean? Well, if you look up and this is where one thing we want to keep in mind.

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When you look up a word in a dictionary for the Bible, you want to look up a biblical dictionary.

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Right. Because words change meaning. Language changes, as you can tell. People the word the word man means something different today than it used to mean.

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A man used to mean X. Is it X, Y or X, X, X? You know,

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X, X, X, X chromosome. You have certain organs that makes you male testosterone, those things.

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That's what a man means. Nowadays, people don't know what man means.

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It's all this perversion and ungodliness going on. But so we want to look at a biblical dictionaries that considers the context of how the words are used originally in the in the

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Bible. And so if you do that, you will find that abide means to stay, to stay in, to stay in a given place, a given state, relation or expectancy.

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Expectancy. OK, an expectation. And the apostle is telling us an expectation, abide in the sun.

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That is an expectation that we are to abide in him and continue in him. Consequently, it means to continue.

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Right. Continuance. To not fall away. In other words, to continue to dwell.

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To dwell in. Endure, to endure to the end. Be present.

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Or to remain, to remain in, to stand, to stand fast.

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Or to tarry for and to take heed to, to take heed to.

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Right. So it means to abide in, to remain in, to endure in, to believe in and continue to believe in the words of God or in John's words, that which you heard from the beginning.

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Right. By his spirit and his means of grace.

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Right. Now, let's not misunderstand. I don't want to.

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I don't want us to misunderstand what the Lord is telling us. OK, we ourselves do not abide in the triune

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God, in the son and in the father by the anointing from the Holy One, the Holy Spirit, by our own efforts.

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OK, it's not like, you know, you got to pick yourself up by by the bootstraps and you better stick around or else, you know, if you if you let go, it's over.

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No, that's not what the Bible teaches. It is all by God's spirit and means of grace.

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Now, do we have a part to play? Yes, of course. We have a part to play. That's what John is telling us.

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Abide in him. However, that abiding is not simply something that we do on our own.

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OK, it is all by God's spirit and means of grace. And we therefore must rightly understand the all important distinction between our justification and our sanctification.

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Between faith and works, between law and gospel.

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Right. So and what our role is in these stages and what

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God's role is in all these things, all these things that John is writing to us.

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Right. So let's let's let's go ahead and put the foot down here.

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As I've been, you know, we've been doing for the past several weeks now, our salvation.

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And specifically our justification, how we are made right with God, how we are reckoned perfectly righteous before God is entirely, entirely by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, based on the ultimate authority of Scripture alone.

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The five solas of the Reformation. Right. All of which is God's gracious gift to us.

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Like Paul says, if perhaps God grants them repentance, these people who are opposing us, they are all gifts.

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We can't earn them. You can't earn a gift. OK. Otherwise, it's no longer grace and it's no longer a gift.

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Good works contribute nothing to our justification, to our salvation, but rather result from it in our sanctification.

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That's the next stage that takes place after our justification.

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Right. And there's different kinds of sanctification. Right. There is the instant sanctification and then there's progressive sanctification, which is lifelong.

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That's a lifelong process of whereby, like the catechism teaches us, we more and more grow unto holiness and righteousness and more and more die unto sin and crucify the flesh.

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Right. So sanctification.

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And it's like Jesus said, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

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So good fruit, good works only come from a tree that has been made good because we're all bad trees.

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Right. We're all we're all we're all tainted. We're all corrupted by sin. We're all guilty and Adam, both legally and naturally by our sinful original sin.

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And so Christ has to first declare us righteous by his work.

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And then the spirit must regenerate us for us to be good and therefore be able to do good works.

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So now, but this is also why the

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Bible says to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

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Work it out. So does that mean that it's entirely you have nothing to do in your sanctification?

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No, we do have a part to play in our salvation. Now, again, salvation means different things.

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You have to be careful here. It's not specifically talking about justification. OK, justification.

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We don't have any role to play in that. We simply receive it by grace through faith. But working out our salvation in our sanctification is an ongoing process with fear and trembling.

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For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure.

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Right. That's Philippians 2, 12 through 13. Now, this is a balance.

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We have to balance out these doctrines and make sure that we're not compromising, confusing or conflating the two.

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This is what the Roman Catholic Church teaches. They teach a confusion of justification and sanctification.

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So you have to be made righteous, declared righteous, not by Christ alone, but by our works and sacramental penance as well.

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And that is false doctrine of Antichrist. That is a false gospel.

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So we Christians then are primarily sanctified by God's truth, by God's word, by abiding in the truth of God's word.

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Not by works, as Jesus said. What did Jesus say in John? I think

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I misquoted this 17. I think it's John 17, 17. Sanctify them by your truth.

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Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

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And for their sakes, I sanctify myself. That is, set myself apart that they may also be sanctified by the truth.

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The truth is the primary means by which we are sanctified. Now, good works are, as I said, they are the fruit.

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They are the fruit, the result, not the cause of our sanctification.

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However, like we just read in Philippians 2, there's a qualifier here.

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We have to qualify things carefully, make proper distinctions. We have to rightly divide the word of truth.

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God uses certain works that he works in us, such as participating in his means of grace, and the spiritual disciplines of prayer,

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Bible reading and study, and also reading sound books from sound teachers and pastors and stuff, and biblical preaching, one of the primary means of grace as well.

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Biblical preaching as secondary means to our sanctification, because they are means by which we receive what?

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The word of truth, right? That's why they sanctify us, because when we read the

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Bible, when we study the Bible, when we listen to biblical preaching, we are receiving the word of truth and that sanctifies us, right?

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So that's why the

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Bible also commands us to exercise yourselves toward godliness, kind of like Philippians 2.

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Exercise yourselves towards godliness, towards sanctification, towards holiness.

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That's in 1 Timothy 4 .7, okay? Now, I really want us to internalize what

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Martin Luther similarly warns us about. To beware then of trusting in your own contrition, in your own remorse, in your own sorrow, or attributing remission of sins, forgiveness of sins, to your own sorrow.

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It is not because of these that God looks upon you with favor, okay?

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It is not because of these things, but because of his son and what he has done, that he looks upon us with favor.

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That was my addition there. I complimented Luther there. Now, this is

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Luther continuing. Because of the faith with which you have believed his threatenings and promises, in other words, his law and his gospel, right?

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And which has wrought that sorrow in you, okay? In other words, he's saying that this sorrow comes as a result of believing, okay?

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Therefore, whatever good there is in penitence, in sorrow, is due not to the diligence with which we reckon up our sins, with which we work ourselves up into sorrow, but to the truth of God and to our faith.

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All other things are works and fruits which follow of their own accord, and which do not make a man good, but are done by a man who has been made good by his faith in the truth of God, okay?

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Amen. So that's powerful words from the reformer Luther there.

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And it's similar to that hymn, you know? What's that hymn?

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By Augustus Toplady. Oh gosh, I'm drawing a blank there. If I remember,

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I'll bring it up. So there are many similar scriptures, okay, that teach us these same things all throughout the

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New Testament. Very similar ones. One particular passage, if you turn with me to 2

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Peter 3, seems to parallel much of what the apostle

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John is teaching us here, okay? 2 Peter 3, verse 14.

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And I encourage you to follow along with me in your

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Bibles. I forgot to mention this. You know, sometimes I like to add stuff, like an inline commentary, drive -by commentary as I'm reading the

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Word. And so I don't want people to think like, oh, he's adding to the Bible or something. No, I'm not, you know.

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Just so that you're aware of that. So I encourage you all to follow along with me in your own

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Bibles. Now, 2 Peter 3, verse 14, all right? Therefore, beloved, since you are…

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So who is he talking to? Everybody. All of us believers. Since you are looking for these things…

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Now, these things is referring to verse 13, God's promise of the new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

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This is the same promise of eternal life that the apostle John is telling us about. Now he continues,

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Be diligent to be found by him in peace, spotless and blameless.

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In other words, to abide in him. And consider the patience of our

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Lord our salvation. Just as also our beloved brother

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Paul, the apostle Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable…

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Now, I wonder who's that talking about? Who is 1 John referring to? Remember? Antichrists.

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They do what? They distort. They deceive. They lie. They disguise themselves as agents of righteousness and their gospel as a true gospel, which is in reality not a true gospel, because it contradicts, as they do also the rest of the scriptures.

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So they twist scripture. They twist the gospel and the law to their own judgment and destruction.

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Now, if you all recall from a few weeks ago, that should sound familiar, right?

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What the apostle Paul himself said. Again, this is why I was saying we're going to exercise here the analogy of scripture, comparing scripture with scripture, and of faith, comparing the doctrines of the

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Bible based on what the scripture says. Like 2

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Thessalonians 2, 11 -12 says. We read it a few weeks ago.

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And for this reason, God sends upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they may be judged who did not believe the truth, they did not abide in the

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Son, but instead took pleasure in unrighteousness. Right? That's a parallel passage.

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They are distorting scripture, twisting scripture to their own judgment and destruction. So now, verse 17 continues in 2

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Peter. You therefore, believers, beloved, knowing this beforehand, because you know it already, right?

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Just like 1 John says, you know already, because you have the anointing already, by which we know the truth already, that which you have heard from the beginning already, be on your guard, lest you, having been carried away by the error of unprincipled men, men who lack truth, sound doctrine and principle.

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They are contradictory. They are immoral. They are antichrist. Fall from your own steadfastness.

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Remember that warning, the falling away apostasy. Men shall fall away from the faith.

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But grow instead, grow in the grace and knowledge, that knowledge, that anointing of the gospel of eternal life, of the word of God, of the whole counsel of God, of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In other words, abide in that which you have heard from the beginning, in the doctrine of the

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Son and of the Father. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity, eternal life.

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Amen. And that amen was in the original. I know I like to say amen, but I will definitely amen to that amen.

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So now do not be deceived. Do not be deceived.

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Therefore, based on all of these warnings that we keep hearing from the apostles, all of them by men who appear pious, they appear holy and pious, but are untaught, unstable, imbalanced men.

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Okay. And I want to point out a specific example in the man by the name of Count Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von

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Zinzendorf. I know that's a mouthful. It's German, I believe. Count Zinzendorf for short.

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I mean, that's not even that short, but Count Z. Maybe we might call him. So Count Zinzendorf was the founding bishop of the

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Moravian Church. Okay. This man had a very authoritarian temperament, very authoritarian, and a hyper -pietistic compulsion.

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Okay. Which led to sadly many imbalances, extremes, and excesses.

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Just the thing that the apostles are warning us about here. He advocated a very rigid form of pietism, a very legalistic form of it.

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And what pietism does, just to refresh your memory here, is that it downplays objective truth and doctrine in favor of subjective experience and emotion.

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And in this case, in the case of Count Zinzendorf, it goes to a dangerous extreme of inappropriate sensuality and a rigorous monastic -style mystical type of worship.

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His followers practically lived in church every single day. I mean, they were always in church. They had no time to live their life.

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Seven days a week, they would be in church, singing for hours, very similar to a monastic lifestyle.

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And it's a very imbalanced view of the Christian life because it lacks balance and sound doctrine that the apostles are telling us about.

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But he was very famous for saying very pious and holy and good -sounding things.

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Here's a sample of those things he is known for saying. Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.

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Well, sure, amen, right? That's all well and good. That's good stuff. Another one.

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Only atheists attempt to comprehend God with their mind. Okay, well, now there you see that's the pietism coming out, right?

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How else can you comprehend God except with your mind? There's no other way to comprehend

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God, okay? This is the pietism. And again, pietism seeks to comprehend, seeks to experience

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God by experiences, by emotion, by some kind of emotional output, you know, crying and all of these things and those types of things which are not necessarily wrong in themselves, but we experience what is eternal life?

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Eternal life is to know God. And how do we know God? With our minds, by renewing our minds, right?

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It is how we know God. And it is how everything else follows, by knowing

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God, having the anointing of the truth of God's word. So that was a not so good one, but it's a popular saying.

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And then here's another one. I have one passion. It is he, only he.

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Well, that sounds very good, right? Very, very pious. Very pious man.

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Another one. I am destined to proclaim the message unmindful of personal consequences to myself.

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So this guy's bold. And they were very bold. They were very evangelistic. They went out to do missionary endeavors and stuff like that.

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And Wesley, John Wesley, was very influenced by these Moravians when he was in the ship.

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He was fearing for his life and these Moravians were just there praying quietly, not really fearing for what happened to their lives.

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And so, okay, that's all well and good. And the last one here.

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Missions, after all, is simply this. Every heart with Christ is a missionary. Every heart without Christ is a mission field, right?

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So there's a, you know, and some of this we have to be careful with because not all of us should become teachers.

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Like James says, there's a balance here. Let not many of you become teachers.

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So we have to be careful, even though we are all indeed called to be salt and light to the world, to be salt and light to our neighbors, to our coworkers, to our schoolmates, our teammates, all of these different contexts that we participate in.

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We should be salt and light. Now, so it all sounds very pious and holy and good, right?

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Except for the, maybe the not so good stuff, the pious stuff. But what could possibly be wrong with him then?

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How could a guy that's so pious and holy be so, well, what's my problem? You know, am I just nitpicking here?

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Well, let's find out. Let's find out. To start out, for starters, he allowed women to preach, to hold office, and to be ordained.

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Okay, so, oops. Anna Nitzmann, Nitzmann, that's

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I think German, the leader of the single sisters, and that'll be, I'll explain that later.

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And later, Zinzendorf's second wife seems to have functioned as a bishop among the women.

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Okay, so that's a problem. Doesn't the Bible say, I suffer not a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, that a woman is to remain silent in church?

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Okay, now, so that already is big red flag, right?

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Red flag. What else did he do? That's not it, that's not, don't worry, it gets worse, okay?

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I assure you, it gets worse, much worse. So, he also took age -segregated worship to an even further unbiblical extreme.

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So, age -segregated worship is where, you know, when a lot of churches, what they do, when the sermon starts, they'll send the kids off to their own little age -segregated

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Sunday school. The little kids here, the not -so -little kids here, the high schoolers over there.

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And that's a form of separating the body of Christ from the worship of God, because when

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Paul is addressing children, he expects the children to be present. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, right?

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So, we don't hold to that, to age -segregated worship. But Count Zinzendorf took this to an even further extreme by organizing his followers to live in age - and gender -specific groups, rather than with their nuclear family, okay?

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So, the little boys would all live together, they would have a supervisor of some kind, and the little girls and the single women, that's what the single sisters is.

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The single sisters all live together. They literally live together. So, this was a religious commune, and it was very cult -like, as you can already kind of start to see.

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So, okay, that's not very good, not very good, very dangerous stuff here.

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He also over -sexualized Christian theology, worship, and hymns, okay?

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He had a very sort of hyper -sensual, what's called blood and wounds theology.

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A weird sort of fascination with, especially the side wound of Christ, where he was pierced.

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And it just, it gets pretty perverted. I don't even want to, you know, you can look this up for yourself, and you'll see it's pretty, it just gets not, it is not sound, okay?

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But now, you're starting to see there's a twisted consistency in all of this, because Zinzendorf proclaimed all souls, everyone's soul to be female, okay?

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Including men's. So, he said the souls of men are female spirits.

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Now, why did he do that? Presumably, it was to avoid the charge of homosexuality.

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When men worshipped, worshipped, quote -unquote, Christ, because they had a very sensual way of, almost like, you know,

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God is my girlfriend kind of thing, my boyfriend kind of thing. And romanticized, a very romanticized relationship with God, which is very dangerous.

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It's not biblical. And subsequently, the son of Zinzendorf proclaimed that men were actually female, actually female, and therefore eligible to be brides of Christ, individually.

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It's like, this is a straight -up cult. Like, how many brides does Christ have?

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One or many? There's only one bride, and it's the collective body of God's people.

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It's a spiritual marriage, not a physical marriage. And these guys blurred the line between the physical and the spiritual in a very perverse manner, sadly.

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So this guy sounds so pious and holy and good, right? And it's kind of like what I mentioned about social media, where these little channels will put something that looks good, but then you look at what they're really about, and it's like, oh my gosh, this is perverted stuff.

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I don't want this stuff. It lures you in, right? That's how cults work.

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Mormons, perfect example. They look very family -friendly, and look at me, and I had a coworker who was a

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Mormon, and he wouldn't drink and stuff, and one day he got so drunk, he started cursing and blaspheming, and I was like,

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I thought you were a Mormon, a good Mormon, right? But they don't have Christ. They don't have the true gospel, right?

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So it's all a facade. It's a facade. Now, that's why we have to be extremely careful with just because somebody says something good doesn't mean that they're sound, because the devil disguises himself as an angel of light and his ministers as ministers of righteousness.

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They will sound like us, right? But in fact, when you start looking at what they're about, when you start looking at the consistency of their life and their doctrine, it is not consistent with the word of God.

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But wait, I'm not done yet. Y 'all thought that was bad, okay?

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And yeah, this whole romanticizing, because people talk about the

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Song of Solomon. Oh, look, and this is a picture of Christ and his bride. Well, yes, it is, but it's not literally a picture of Christ and his bride.

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The reason the Song of Solomon points to Christ and his church is because marriage itself is a mystery that reveals is a picture of Christ and his love for his people, the bride of Christ.

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It's because it's a marriage celebration, okay? It's indirectly a pointing to Christ and his bride.

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Not because, oh, it's primarily about Christ and his bride. No, it's primarily about a marriage celebration, okay?

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This is where we have to be careful not to over centralize the word in our relationship to God.

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It's very dangerous to do that. But like I said, he also compared the

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Holy Trinity to a family, okay? Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with that unless you mean what he means, okay?

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The father said he, Zinzendorf, is God. Okay, well, so far so good, right?

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God is the father, father God. Great, amen. We can agree to that. The mother, however, was the

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Holy Spirit. Okay, so now we got some problems, right? The mother was the

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Holy Spirit and he referred to the Holy Spirit primarily as she.

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Emphatically so, especially throughout the end of his life. This is a direct quote from him, okay?

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She is the third person of the Godhead, of the

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Trinity, okay? Not good, not good.

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That's not good. And now get this. Their son, their son, okay?

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The son of the mother and the father, the father and the Holy Ghost was

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Jesus. That's what he said, okay? Now, this can also lead to another

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Trinitarian error. It's a more modern one that has resurfaced called the eternal functional subordination of the son.

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Because the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is that all three persons of the Godhead the father, son,

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Holy Spirit are all equal. They're all equal. There's no submission of some kind of inferiority of submission of one to the other.

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They're all equal in eternity. Now, Christ, when he became a man, he submitted to the father in his earthly ministry because he became a man.

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Now, but the three are equally God. There is no eternal subordination.

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That's a heresy, in fact. And so while there is preeminence, the father is first, then the son, then the spirit, but not a subordination, a submission of that kind.

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And so that leads to other errors and heresies as if that wasn't bad enough.

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And the church of Christ, this is Zinzendorf's view continued.

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The church of Christ, the son's fair bride, was born in the Savior's side womb, was betrothed to Christ on the cross, was married to Christ in the

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Holy Communion, the Lord's Supper, and was thus the daughter -in -law of the father and the

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Holy Ghost. OK? I mean, just what in the world were you thinking?

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You weren't thinking. You got emotional. You got too emotional, and you started to romanticize your relationship with God.

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And that's what this stuff can lead to if we are not careful. So this is from a quote by J .E.

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Hutton. He wrote a massive book about the Moravian church. It's on the internet. You can look this stuff up yourself.

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We can all see the dangers of this. As soon as human images of spiritual truths are pressed beyond decent limits, they lead to frivolity and folly, and I'm going to add a little bit to that, and imbalances and false teaching, heresy even.

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And that was just the effect that Zinzendorf had at Harenhag.

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Harenhag was Zinzendorf's religious commune that failed. It didn't last that long because this stuff just got out of control.

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It got out of control. And the more freely the Moravian brethren used these phrases, the more childish they became.

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They called their commune the embracing of the man, and thus they lost their reverence for things divine.

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If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch, right? That's just wow.

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Unsound, okay? That is not sound. Let no one in any way deceive you, beloved, right?

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Be careful. Be careful. You know, and this actually, to bring it to modern times, there's a book called

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The Shack. It is one of the most blasphemous abominations spoken in the name of Christ I've ever read.

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If you read that book, I mean, it is despicable.

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It is such a disgusting pile of heresy. It's worse than Zinzendorf, but it's very similar.

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It's only a few steps removed from what Zinzendorf here is saying because in that novel, the author,

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I think his name is Young, something Young, but he portrays God as an obese black woman and the

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Holy Spirit as some Japanese woman. And Jesus is this carpenter with a big nose and he's kind of casual.

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He's just sort of this casual guy. And I mean, this is total blasphemy, total blasphemy.

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It's so blasphemous that they don't even have names yet for these heresies that are in that book.

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But there's nothing new under the sun. And there is precedent here with some of the stuff that Zinzendorf was saying and saying that the

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Holy Spirit is the mother of Jesus. That's, I mean, did you forget that the

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Bible refers to God always as he? Always as he?

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That's not to say that God has a gender specifically because God is spirit, right?

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God is spirit and we worship him in spirit and truth. Like the catechism says, God is spirit and it has not a body like men.

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Christ, of course, does have a body because he has the God man. But God himself, the triune

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God does not have a body. Now, so that we have to be incredibly, we have to be discerning about these things.

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It's very, very dangerous. And, you know, this stuff is going to continue to get worse.

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It's going to continue to get worse. That's why it's in God's providence that we are dealing with Antichrist here because the

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Antichrist deceptions are going to ramp up. They're going to escalate. And a lot of people are leaving the

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Protestant church. They're joining Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and all these other cults as well.

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They're falling away in atheism and other things too. But that's why we must take heed to Peter's warnings against the untaught, unstable, unprincipled men that John, the apostle, has also been warning us about.

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And Paul, the entire New Testament, right? This time, and we'll conclude with verse 26 in chapter 2 of 1

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John. In verse 26, notice how the apostle continues to revisit that subject.

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He keeps coming back to Antichrist, to these deceivers and everything. He wants us to really get this and not forget it.

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Verse 26 says, These things I have written to you about those who are trying to deceive you.

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About those who are trying to deceive you. That's once again. He wants us to not be deceived.

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Like Paul says, let no one in any way deceive you. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, right?

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So beloved, that is what our big takeaway for today. And at the same time, even though immorality and iniquity and false doctrine and stuff will increase,

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God's spirit will also shine brightly through his true church. The true church will persevere because my sheep hear my voice, the voice of Christ, the voice of our

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Savior. So don't lose heart in spite of the great delusions and deceptions that are going to take place, that are taking place by virtue of Antichrist and the

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Antichrist, right? The Pope of Rome, the papacy, but also the many and the many

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Antichrist that 1 John warns us about. But I want to leave us with 2

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Corinthians chapter 12 in verse 7. Very powerful passage here that the

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Apostle Paul has encouraged us with.

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2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 7.

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Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations that Paul received, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself.

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Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that I might leave me. And he said to me,

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My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.

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Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

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Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions and hardships for the sake of Christ.

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For when I am weak, then am I strong.

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Amen. Right? So this is the power of God. His grace is sufficient. Unlike the doctrine of Antichrist, which says

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His grace is not sufficient, that you have to play a part to earn your salvation or to earn your favor with God, God's grace is sufficient to save us and to preserve us to the end.

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And that's why we must maintain that humility by continuing to abide in Christ and be assured, beloved, that Christ, He who began a good work in you, will bring it to completion to the very end, to that great day where we will be received in glory eternal life, the promise of eternal life.

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And that's what Jesus said. Believe, those believing ones will have eternal life.

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Amen? Let's go ahead and bow our heads with a word of prayer now. Our gracious, precious, heavenly

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Father, we thank you for the beautiful promises that you have given us, Lord, in your word.

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We thank you, Lord, both for your law and your gospel, rightly distinguished and applied, Father, in our life as believers now.

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We know that your law no longer condemns us, but rather sanctifies us, and it gives us encouragement to know that your

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Spirit energizes and equips us and empowers us to actively grow in holiness and in sanctification, and to die more and more unto sin,

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Father, and to our flesh. We thank you, Lord, for your blessings. We ask that you would stir us up and help us to stir one another unto good works,

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Lord, to have a heart for the lost and to continue to bring the truth to light in our every thought, word, and deed,

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Father. Help us to be diligent and stand fast to abide in you,

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Lord, and in your Son in this last and evil day. Father, we thank you, and we ask these things in Jesus' almighty, all -powerful name.

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Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is 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 Thorn Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.