Exploring the Intersection of Truth and Love in Second John

Hello, and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast, where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.

My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to this podcast.

I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen you in the word of God.

Now, come along.

Let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here today.

All right, we're going to go ahead and start our Bible study here this evening.

If you have your Bibles, turn with me to the book of Second John.

If you don't know where that is, there's an old joke, it's after first John.

So I guess you got to know where first John is.

And over second John is second John.

It's a really big book, not really 13 verses.

13 verses.

A very, very short book of the Bible.

But just because the book is short doesn't mean that it's not important.

Obviously, we know that there.

There are a lot of truths that we can glean from every book of the Bible.

And here, Even in these 13 verses, we can take a lot with us.

And when we were studying First John, I hope that you can remember the main thought.

The main thought in First John was really one word, the word fellowship.

The Greek word is koinonia, but it's the idea of fellowship.

And remember, First John, he was saying this.

You have to start with faith to have fellowship with God.

And fellowship with God then grows through the outpouring of fellowship with others and obedience to God.

And that obedience to God meant to serve others and to love others.

And so there's that equation of, look, if I love God, I will love others.

If I don't love others, there is a problem with my love for the Lord.

And so that's First John.

And it speaks of the confidence that we can have in knowing God, in a personal relationship with him.

And so, Second John, does that have an overall thought?

And I would say yes, it does.

As we read through this and as we study this, we're going to see, really, there's.

There's two.

Two words that I think that we can sit on and.

And rest in, and that is truth and love.

So we know that the Bible tells us to proclaim the truth, to live the truth.

The Bible also tells us to live with love and to treat others with love.

And sometimes what we can do within our Christian walk is to either overemphasize one and then underemphasize the other, or just forget about one or totally neglect the other.

And so what we're Seeing here in two, John is.

The Lord is speaking through the Apostle John.

And there's a lot of debate on who he is writing this letter to.

Because as, as you well know, the Bible isn't necessarily written to us as the immediate hearers.

Right?

I wasn't there 2,000 years ago.

So there's an immediate hearer of the book of the Bible.

Now, the Bible is written for us and by extension to us.

But we have to understand context when we go back to Scripture.

So who is the Apostle John writing to?

Well, verse one tells us that he is writing unto the elect lady and her children.

Now, some scholars debate on who this elect lady is.

Some scholars believe that this is a specific lady in a church that is basically not the pastor of the church, but hosting the church within her house.

Because as, as you well know, back then, at that time, they didn't have great big cathedrals and they weren't meeting in mega churches back then.

The church was meeting in homes.

That's how it went.

And so in this case, there are some commentators that would believe that this is a specific lady, a saved lady there with her children, and the people of that church were meeting in her home, and she was to address this to the church.

She was to give this to the people of the church.

Other people, other commentators believe that this was written to the church with basically a code word like the lady is the church.

And so there, there are two interpretations of that, but either interpretation for both of those paths would have the same application when we talk about what we're talking about.

And so we don't need to spend a lot of time on that.

If you want to know my personal take on it, I personally believe that it's a specific lady there in her home.

But again, I, I don't necessarily want to get caught up in the weeds and all that.

All I want us to say is this.

What is he talking about here?

What, what's he going to be addressing these people?

And he says, the elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth.

And so he speaks of his love.

He professes his love to them.

And, and I want you to see those three words.

After he says he loves them, he says, whom I love.

In the truth, anytime we see love, we, we see, biblically speaking, within the context of our faith, we see love that's always married with truth.

And, and so what we can see here in this case, he says, I love you in the truth.

I love you in the truth of God.

That's why As a pastor, I can get up in front of the church and say, I love you.

And you say, well, you don't know me.

You don't love me.

Well, I love you because I love you in the truth.

And the truth of God is that we are to love our neighbors.

We are to love those that God loves.

And so what does he say here?

He says, this lady who I'm writing to and her children in this congregation, I love them in the truth, and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth.

And so what does he say here?

He says, those people who follow the truth of God, the way, the truth and the life, those that follow Jesus recognize the testimony of this lady, of her children and of the church.

And so the writer of the book is John.

He identifies himself as the elder, and that speaks to his spiritual authority as an apostle.

And as he writes this, he implies that, hey, look, I know you, and I love you, and all of those that have met you love you.

And so if this is an individual Christian, he is commending her testimony along with the testimony of her children and by way of extension, those that are meeting within her home.

And so whether or not it's a symbol or a literal interpretation of who this lady is, he's speaking of the testimony from this verse here.

So he says in verse two, for the truth's sake.

Again, you're seeing how many references the truth.

Just in these first two verses, he's referencing truth.

Now he's going to get to what he believes the truth is.

And I think all of us would know he's speaking of God and God's Word.

And so he says, for the truth's sake, which dwelleth in us and shall be with us forever.

And so he's speaking here to this understanding that as a believer, we have the truth.

We know the Bible says that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

Sanctify them by thy truth.

John 17:17, thy word is truth.

And so when he's referencing truth here, he's speaking specifically to this understanding of believing in Jesus and believing in His Word.

And so he says, for the truth's sake, which dwelleth in us and shall be with us forever.

And there's so much that we could take there in the context of our faith.

One, the truth lives within us.

When we believe in Jesus Christ, we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us.

And we know that the Holy Spirit guides us and leads us to all truth.

But also we see the eternality of God's presence with us when he says, and it shall be with us forever.

The truth does not change.

That's what he's saying here.

He says, the truth just doesn't change because of your circumstances.

The truth doesn't change if your culture changes.

The truth doesn't change if you're in a house, church, or a church with a building in town.

The church isn't based upon a truth that morphs and evolves over centuries.

The truth is the truth.

The truth will be true forever.

The Bible says, sanctify them by thy truth.

Thy word is truth.

Other passages of scripture say this, that the flower withereth, the grass fadeth, or it's the other way around.

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of God stands forever.

And so when we're talking about the church and when we're talking about what we do within the church, and we're talking about what we teach within the church and how we live within the church, the question would be, what?

What's the truth?

What are we living by?

And.

And again, in our world today, there's a lot of people that will say, well, my truth is this.

That's.

That's a red flag, okay?

Be very, very cautious of when someone says, well, because of my experiences, this is my truth.

Well, they could be meaning the right thing.

But many times when people say my truth, they say this basically, well, this is what I believe to be true, but you might believe something else, and we could both be right.

Well, that's.

That's not objective truth.

And the Bible says that there is an objective.

And so what does he say here in verse 2?

He says, for the truth's sake, which dwelleth in us and shall be with us forever.

So the truth is forever.

And we who have the truth as believers will stand in that forever.

And so many people today think that truth changes from generation to generation, from.

From stage to stage.

But the Bible tells us, and the Bible professes that the truth will be with us forever.

And it does not change.

The Bible says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And so what is he starting with here?

He's starting with this fact that he loves her, and he loves her in the simple fact that there is this con.

This.

This whole idea of unity that comes with the truth of God living within them.

It's the same principle that we find in the book of Ephesians.

One Lord, one baptism, one faith, one spirit.

And so he's talking about this unity that can be found in the truth.

So.

So really, true biblical love can only come through having the truth within our minds and within our hearts and living out that truth in our life.

So first John is connected, right to second John, because remember, first John talked about loving God and loving others.

Well, that's only good if that's based in truth.

Because if I say I love you, but I don't love you in truth, and my truth might change and your truth might change.

There's no standard of righteousness.

There's no standard of holiness.

There's no standard of objective truth.

And so that's what he's talking about here.

He's basing this all in the truth.

Now you say, why is he so focused on the truth here?

Well, you're going to understand by way of context that he's going to get down here and he's going to warn her that there are people that are slipping into the churches that are trying to teach false doctrine.

So he says, be aware of the truth and stand in the truth.

Why?

Because that's what you're going to need to stand for here as a church.

And so he goes on to say, verse 3, Grace be with you, mercy and peace from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.

So there's so much here in these first three verses about truth and love, truth and love.

Here he just gives a salutation and greeting.

He presents basically the standard greeting that we see in many of the New Testament letters dealing with mercy and peace and grace.

And I think that's a good example for us to greet each other with.

I think we should greet each other with not just by word, grace, peace and mercy, but also by action, grace, peace and mercy.

And if we greeted people truly with grace, not just by what we say, but with what we do, a lot of the greetings and the interactions that we have with other people would be different.

Often sometimes I think that when we think about grace and mercy and peace, we think about not standing firm in the truth.

Because if I.

If I came up to you and said, well, I'm going to have grace with somebody, I'm going to have patience with someone, I'm going to have peace with someone, I'm going to have mercy with someone, someone might be tempted to think, well, we might overlook the truth then, because you can't be gracious and truthful at the same time, right?

Well, the Bible says that we can be.

The Bible says that we can have truth and love, we can have grace and truth at the same time.

And so he says it here in verse number three.

He says, hey, we are here greeting you on behalf of God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, the in truth and love.

The emphasis here is that we do everything in love, but we also do everything in truth.

I want to take you back to another verse that again, parallels this thought back in the Gospel of John.

And I hope that you've seen how much the Gospel of John parallels first John, and you're going to see how it parallels second John and third John.

Now, why would that be the case?

Well, two reasons.

One, same spirit is inspiring the same human author.

And so obviously there's going to be similarities.

And so back in the Gospel of John, Gospel of John, chapter one, I want you to see with me another reference to Jesus, as it says in verse 14.

And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.

He's referencing Jesus.

We know that.

Full of grace and truth.

So the emphasis here is that Jesus, in his earthly ministry and in his character, he is full of grace and truth.

So it is possible for us as Christians to be full of grace, but at the same time be full of truth.

And oftentimes we have different people that struggle with both of those things.

Sometimes we have people who err on the side of grace and are not ever willing to call out truth.

Right.

Well, I want to be so gracious to this person, so I'm going to stumble all over myself to accommodate that person.

But at the same time, I'm never going to tell them the truth about their life and about what they believe and about what the word of God says.

And so we can, in the guise of grace, overlook truth.

But at the same time, there's many, many people that struggle with grace, but they're all about truth.

And they're gonna.

They're not gonna hold anything back.

And there's gonna be.

There's gonna be no grace in their speech.

There's gonna be no tactfulness.

It's all gonna be condemning and saying, well, you're wrong.

You messed up, so this is your problem, and this is where you need to get better.

And.

And so again, the Bible says that it's not always just about truth, void of love and grace.

And so it's marrying the two together with an appropriate nature, just as Jesus did with grace and truth.

Jesus never compromised truth in his teachings.

There was never a time where Jesus overlooked sin and a Lot of people think that he did.

A lot of people go back to those stories.

Jesus never told someone to just keep going and living their life the same way they were living.

He was always go and sin no more.

It was always pointing someone to truth.

Think about his interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well.

There it was.

It was a calling out truth, but doing it in love.

And so Jesus never compromised grace, but he never compromised truth.

And I think as Christians, if we follow his example, we can do the same.

And so when.

When we have a person that says, well, you know what?

This is what I'm dealing with, and this is my struggle, and this is what I'm thinking.

We can, in love and in grace, still tell the truth.

And so he's going to explain how we do that.

Because there is a time and a place where truth is going to overflow and get to a place in our life where we might need to separate ourselves from someone so we can still have grace and love, but separate ourselves from what they're doing, what they're saying, what they're teaching.

And that's what he talks about here in this passage.

And so John writes verse after verse with these two favorite topics.

Grace or love and truth.

Love and truth.

And so let's go to verse number four.

He says this.

I rejoice greatly that I found of thy children walking in truth.

And so it's John's joy that he sees this lady's children walking in the truth of God.

Now, again, the analogy could be that he's happy that the whole church there is walking in the truth.

But nonetheless, there's joy in this elder, the spiritual leader, seeing people follow in the truth of God.

And no doubt this woman was passing along the truth to her children.

And that's a model for all of us to pass along the truth.

And.

And so that our children can walk in truth, so that young Christians can walk in truth, so that all of us can walk in truth.

So he says it, it brings me great joy to see the children walking in truth as we have received a commandment of the Father from the Father.

And so he is reminding her of the commandment that was mentioned by the Lord.

And so this is John's pastoral heart coming in and saying, hey, it brings me great joy to see those who I care about walking in truth.

And I can tell you that brings me to see a Christian growing.

There's nothing in the world that brings me more joy than to see someone walking and changing in the truth of God.

I mean, I. I can tell you that one of the things that gets me up in the morning is thinking about how people can be changed by the power of the truth of God, by the power of the Spirit.

People that we thought would never be changed are now serving God and being in ministry.

When someone comes up to me, just not too long ago, someone came up to me, and I was praying for a specific ministry to be started, but I didn't know who to ask, and I was too afraid to ask because I didn't know who would ever want to deal with something like this.

And a dear brother walks up to me and he goes, hey, I've been really praying about something, really thinking about this.

And I didn't tell him what I was praying about, but obviously God did.

And he walked up and he says, I've been really wanting to get involved with this thing.

And I'm like, there is no way.

That was just an amazing thing to see that.

I was so excited in that moment.

I was leaping for joy inside.

I was like, this is amazing.

God's working in your heart.

And so that type of joy.

And I think we could stay there for a long time.

But that type of joy is the type of joy that all of us should be having when we see other people walking in the truth of God, sometimes in our flesh, it's judgmental.

Well, really, they're probably not consistent.

Really, they're probably just putting on a show to other people.

That should not be our first take.

Our first take should be joy when other people are walking in the truth of God.

And that's what we see here.

He says, so, hey, I'm joyful that your children are walking in the truth.

And then he says something further here, very interesting.

He says, as we have received a commandment from the Father, what is this?

Well, what is this commandment?

Well, he says exactly what this commandment is in verse five.

And now I beseech the lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.

He brings it back to, if I'm following the truth of God, it will be manifested by loving one another.

So he says, hey, I am excited to see your children walking in truth as they receive the commandment of God.

And what is that commandment of God?

To love one another?

That's that.

That's that commandment that was given, I mean, among many other commandments.

But we know that the greatest commandment in Matthew says this, to love God with everything and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And so he says, hey, I've called you to love one another.

So the proof of God working in my life is a desire to love other believers.

And that's what he says here in this case.

And so he goes a little bit further.

He says, I beseech the lady.

Now what does that beseech mean?

He means, I beg you.

He says, don't.

Don't forget about this commandment.

Don't forget about this.

Even though I see people walking in the truth, even though I see your children walking in truth, don't be tempted to forget about this commandment of loving one another.

And so John knew that even though there were people walking in the truth, they needed to be reminded why?

Because as humans, we always can fall back into the trap.

I mean, just because I love my neighbor yesterday, that doesn't mean I'm going to love my neighbor today.

And so what he's saying here is this, be vigilant.

Be aware that we all can slip back into the flesh and not follow God's commandment in this.

And so, because it's so essential, we have to repeat this over and over again to love one another.

To love one another.

But again, he says it in truth.

And so the proof or the manifestation of our love for God and our obedience to God should, should and will be measured by how we love one another.

You want to know what Jesus says about that?

You can go back to John, chapter 13.

Again, another reference back to the Gospel of John.

John, chapter 13, verse 35.

This is Jesus speaking to his followers in his earthly ministry.

And he tells them something very interesting here.

He says, by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples.

He says, you are.

You want people to know that you are my disciples if you have love, one to another.

And so if we want the world to notice a difference in who we follow, if we want the world to know that we are truly disciples.

And by the way, all that word disciple really means is a follower, a learner.

If we want people to know that we are disciples of Jesus Christ, what does he say to do?

Well, make sure you're in church every single Sunday.

Well, that is a good thing.

Okay, but he says very clearly that we could be in church and still not prove to other people that we are his disciples.

We.

We could still, we could be serving in a ministry, but not do what he says to prove to other people that we are his disciples.

So here it is not Pastor Josh's words.

This is Jesus's words.

He says, you Prove to other people that you are my disciples.

How, if you love one another.

And so that's the same thing that he mentions in First John.

First John, chapter 4, verses 20 and 21.

And so he says in verse 5 to this lady, you're doing a great job.

I commend you.

You have a great testimony.

But don't forget to follow what God has commanded us to do.

Verse 6.

And he says, and this is love.

So he says, look, follow the commandment, by the way.

This is the commandment, by the way.

This is how you follow the commandment.

You know, there's a lot of times in.

In my life that I've heard people get up and say, you need to be a good Christian.

You need to follow God.

You need to obey his Word.

But what does that look like?

Well, that's what John is doing here.

John is painting a picture.

He says, you need to follow the commandment.

And this is what the commandment is.

He's very specific, and then he's very specific about how it looks to follow that commandment.

Verse 6.

And he says, and this is love that we walk after his commandments.

This is the commandment that, as ye have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.

So what does he say here?

He says this to show love for other people.

It doesn't mean you just have to, like, look at them in a different way.

The way you love other people is by loving him more.

And the way that you love him as.

As.

What does it say?

It says that this commandment that ye have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.

Verse 6.

And this is love that we walk after his commandments.

So we love God.

The way we prove our love to God is by loving him.

And by loving him, we will love others.

And so essentially, it's this.

Loving others is not something that we just have to try harder in.

It's loving God so much that it's the natural outpour that we love others.

And so it's this.

If I'm sitting in front of the church and I'm looking out at individuals and I say, you know what?

And I'm not saying this, okay, this is completely hypothetical, but I am a heart.

I have a hard time loving other Christians.

I have a hard time loving you because of X, Y, Z.

Well, that's.

That's.

That's normal.

That's in our flesh.

We don't like to love people that aren't necessarily loving us.

And I'm not saying that that might be the case for You.

But for me, sometimes the struggle is I. I have a hard time loving somebody because of whatever reason.

Now I don't just look out there and go, well, man, I just really need to try harder to avoid the thing that annoys me.

Or I need to maybe just wake up on the other side of the bed.

Or maybe I just need to wake up and read my Bible more because I just can't love these people.

Well, biblically speaking, what does he say here to do?

He says, if you want to love other people and walk in that path, what do you do?

You just turn to God and love him more and more.

And as you love him more, the natural outpour will be that I want to obey him.

And what does he tell me to do?

To love others.

And so my obedience is proof of my love for him and my love for people is proof that I love him.

And so there's that connection piece there.

And I think so many times, for me, it's this, well, I gotta just try to find a way to get around the struggle that I'm having loving this person.

And so counterintuitively, it's not about looking at that person more.

It's.

It's about looking to God more and be able to drive that love forward for that person because you're loving that person because you love God.

And that's exactly what he says here.

He says, so if you're ever tempted not to love somebody, don't look at them and try to paint them in a better picture.

Like, well, maybe this or maybe that.

Like, love God more.

If you love God more, the desire will be to love that individual in Christ.

Now again, the naysayer might say, well, then what if there's a person who is against God's word?

What if there's a person who is.

Who is opposing me and opposing my ministry?

Well, he's going to get there in verse number six because he said.

Or verse number seven, because at the end of verse number six, he says, hey, you've heard this commandment before.

Walk in this truth.

Walk in God's commandments.

Obey him.

You, you know the verse John 14:15, if you love me, keep my commandments.

And so the idea here is this.

If I love God, it's not a burden to obey him.

It's only a burden to obey God when I don't have strong love for him.

That agape love, that, that, that choice love, that love that desires to have a selfless sacrifice and not a selfish desire.

So that's what he says.

There in verse six.

So now what happens if there's going to be people that sneak in?

He's warning this church to be aware of what is coming.

He says verse seven, for many deceivers are entered into the world.

So it kind of seems weird that he would put that in there.

He just gets done telling her love, people and truth.

But again, remember that word true.

Because he says when there are people that are against the truth, we are not obligated to love them.

Now I know that many people say, well, isn't, isn't, isn't Jesus's teaching love our enemies?

Well, of course we love our enemies, but we love our enemies by truth, right?

We don't love our enemies by condoning and accepting their wrong.

What we do is we love them in truth.

And so it says in verse seven, for many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.

And so he says, there's going to be some people that are going to come in and try to deceive you away from thinking about the truth, believing the truth.

And so we see in this specific context the false teachers are, are someone who is teaching a different Jesus.

They're teaching a Jesus incorrectly.

And in, in this specific example, it's those who don't confess that Jesus is actually come in the flesh.

We just read John, chapter 1, verse 14.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And so the prevailing false teaching was something called Gnosticism.

And I don't want to go down that rabbit trail too far, but if you want to know more about Gnosticism, you can look it up, or I could talk to you about it.

But essentially at the core element of Gnosticism is that there's the secret knowledge that the average person cannot understand.

And you have to be illuminated, you have to be changed.

And when you understand this higher knowledge, you'll know that Jesus was not a man in the flesh.

Jesus was actually just a supernatural creation of God that came and was visibly there, but not necessarily physically there.

And that was supposed to be the secret knowledge that only the Gnostics had.

And so that was actually spreading inside of the churches at the time.

And there were many Christians who were being deceived by that.

So the warning was this, there are going to be people who preach a different Jesus.

In this case, that he did not come in the flesh.

He says this, these people that teach Jesus wrong, in this case preaching that Jesus did not come in the flesh.

These people are, as it says here, a Deceiver and an Antichrist.

Very interesting to think about when he says that, because he says, he says there's going to be false teachers who are coming.

And those false teachers are not just, hey, they're a little dangerous.

Just watch out for them.

He says, no, they are deceiving you and they are Antichrist.

Meaning this.

They're against God.

They're.

They're opposing Jesus in every single way.

And so John has in mind the deceiver of his day.

But I think all of us can take in mind the deceivers of our day.

And ultimately the source of all the deception is Satan, right?

He's the great deceiver.

He's the father of all these lies.

And so in this case, we know that we have to be aware, even as we're dealing with love and truth, we have to deal with false teaching within the church.

We have to be so on guard for that.

And in the advent of technology today, we are living in that season as the Bible says, that we are always ever learning, but never coming to the truth.

And, and so we are in a society today that you can be, if you want to be, you can be bombarded with a bunch of different, what we would call truths, people's truths.

But I would be very cautious, and I hope that you're very cautious when it comes to the intake of any teaching.

And the first test, as we talked about in First John, the first test is what is their teaching about Jesus?

There are many other tests that follow that, but I would say that the very first test that you can match someone up to to see if they're a deceiver is what do they preach about Jesus Christ?

And in this case, he says that is the test.

And if they're not preaching the right Jesus, if they're not preaching Jesus as the word of God presents Jesus, they are a deceiver and an Antichrist.

So in this case, John is warning the church against false teaching, specifically in the context of who, who Jesus is and what he has done.

They have the spirit of the Antichrist.

It's already been mentioned in, in First John, Chapter 2, he mentioned that already.

Now, this isn't necessarily the Antichrist, and that's something for another day that we can study.

But what he says is that the spirit of Antichrist has always been here and all the spirit of Antichrist is just something that's against Jesus.

Now, I, I can't sit up here and tell you all the different teachings that are Antichrist, but what I can say is this.

If it's not the authentic version.

It is Antichrist.

It is a falsification of the truth of Jesus.

So there are a lot of people out there that will teach about Jesus.

Paul even warns, but they're teaching a different Jesus, not the Jesus of the Bible.

And, and so I caution you about that.

Just because someone says the name of Jesus, that doesn't mean that they're preaching Jesus.

Just because it's portrayed like the Jesus that we understand, it's, it's not if it's not the one that's mentioned in Scripture.

So I had to be very careful about this because this is actually one of my, like, everyone has their soapboxes that they want to stand on, right?

We all have those.

And you know, some of our soapboxes are everyone's soapbox is, is important to them.

Right.

But I think I can justify this one.

Right?

I, I think that it's, it's one of my pet peeves.

When someone comes up and teaches something that it sounds Christian adjacent, it sounds good.

There's some morality there, there's some religious feeling there.

There's actually maybe even a spiritual experience that happens, or at least an emotional experience that can be tied to a spiritual experience.

But if you get to the core of it, if you get to the specifics of it, there isn't the truth of Jesus Christ in that.

And the Bible actually says, please, please, please hear me out.

The Bible actually says to test all spirits, to test every single spiritual experience that you have.

Why?

Because the Bible says that there can be other spiritual experiences that are not coming from God.

And so we have to be so careful about that.

And that's why a lot, I, I, I will get a lot of flack because a lot of people think that I preach against emotions.

I don't preach against emotions.

I have emotions.

I cry with my children when we watch little kitty movies and the little, you know, animal falls down and it's hurt.

I get, I have emotions.

Emotions are a good thing.

Biblically speaking.

Emotions are given by God.

But the Bible never says that emotion should drive our truth.

It's the other way around.

Our truth should drive our emotions.

And if we wrap everything up in our Christian life and our spiritual experience to an emotion, there could be a much easier path to deception if we're wrapped up in emotion.

Because a deceiver can be very emotive.

It can really appeal to our senses.

And so what I would tell you is this.

There could be a moment in which you feel like something is good sometimes, if we watch a pastor online and he's animated.

There's nothing wrong with being animated.

But animation and conviction and confidence does not equate competency in the truth of God's word.

So the only test is not, wow, he tells really great stories, or.

Or he's very entertaining.

The only test is we go back to the Word of God, and if it does not align with the word of God, it could be a great message.

When it comes to being a motivation, but a motive.

The Bible does not say that pastors and preachers should be motivational speakers.

There should be some motivation, but the motivation should not be coming from me.

The motivation should be coming from the Word of God and the Spirit of God.

And so we come back here and he says, okay, those are deceivers.

Anyone that's preaching something different than Jesus.

And then.

And so then he says this verse 8, look to yourselves.

And I think that that's interesting here because I think a lot of times when we talk about the inside of the church, we talk about false teachers.

We always think outside.

We always think like the bad guys outside those other churches.

Those was other people on the Internet.

But that's going to be that, okay?

There's always going to be false teaching out there.

There always has been and there always will be.

The Bible says that there will always be false teachers.

There will always be the spirit of the Antichrist.

There will always be people that preach different Jesuses.

Okay?

So we can look out and try to identify false teachers, but the number one thing that we should do is look within ourselves to look inwardly and say, okay, where is it coming in here?

Is it coming into my life?

Is it coming into my study?

Is it coming into our church?

Is it coming into our small group?

And be aware of that and be vigilant.

He says, look to yourselves that we lose not those things which we have wrought.

By that we receive a full reward.

Meaning this.

Don't miss out on the truth.

If you miss out on the truth, there are things.

It doesn't mean that we lose our salvation, but it does mean that we could lose out on our full reward of walking with Christ in obedience because of the fact that we are deceived.

Now there is a problem, a huge problem if deception seeps into the church.

Because as we well know, there could be people within the church who are not believers.

Those unbelieving people that come in the church can fall into that deception and actually be not saved because of the deception that falls within the church.

I personally don't believe According to Romans 8 and many other passages that we can lose our salvation.

But I do know that we can lose our reward in our salvation, meaning we can lose the benefits and the blessings of walking in the truth.

And so he says, here, look to yourself so you don't lose those things that have been given to you by the way of spiritual gifts and spiritual teachings so that you can receive your full reward.

And I think that's something to think about.

I think that for all of us as Christians, we don't want our joy to be stolen.

We don't want our effectiveness to be stolen.

We don't want our, our Christian walk to be limited and hindered by false teaching.

I hope we don't.

And so he says, look to yourselves.

And so the first thing that we do, the first thing that I do when I think about false teaching is I don't look around the church and go, I wonder who's listening to all those weird videos online.

I'm going to be like, show me your Internet history.

You probably all know I look, I start with myself.

I protect myself in the power of God and the truth of God.

I pray for my family.

And then obviously, if all of us do that, and hopefully as the pastor and spiritual shepherd of the church, then I'm concerned about the flock.

But, but I could be so concerned about the flock not finding false teaching that I could be deceived, thinking that I'm where I need to be and I could fall into the.

Anyone can fall into the trap of being deceived.

We have to be so cautious about this.

And so we see verse nine.

He says, whosoever transgresseth sins and abides not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God.

And that's an interesting verse.

You know, there, there is a lot of interpretations of that verse.

And so what we could see here is this to, to deny the.

And I think this is going back to the transgression of not believing in the true Jesus.

Okay?

Because I think in wave context, he's continuing the thought.

So whoever transgresses and abides not in the doctrine of Christ, meaning there is no way to find salvation if you do not have the proper doctrine or teaching or belief in Jesus Christ.

There's.

There's no way that we can have true fruit unless we have the true Jesus.

We.

We can't have a church that goes, well, you know what, they don't really preach the right Jesus, but they've got a lot of.

Really, there are a lot of people are getting saved.

You know, if they're not preaching Jesus properly, it's, it's not true multiplication, it's not true growth, it's not true fruit.

So what is he saying here?

He's not saying that whoever sins at all isn't a Christian.

He's saying whoever transgresses and not and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, they don't have God in their life.

It isn't God driving their life.

It's something else driving their life.

He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.

So if you want to have a relationship with God, what is he saying?

He says have a relationship with Jesus.

That's, that's how it really works.

You have to preach Jesus to know God.

You have to preach Jesus to have true fruit.

You cannot have the wrong doctrine of Christ and believe that God is going to do work in our midst.

You know what?

There's a lot of people out there that will ask me, well, Pastor, do you think that this church over here or this belief system over here are true Christians?

And I don't want to get down into the weeds of, of every single person who is in that church is not a Christian.

Well, all I say is this.

If they have the right view of Jesus Christ, I can at least say that they're believers in Jesus Christ.

If they believe in Jesus in the proper way, biblically speaking, they might be wrong about a lot of other things.

But if they believe in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation, they are Christians.

They are believers.

They are saved, but they're, they're.

I would say this.

Is everyone within the Baptist church saved?

And I would venture to say no.

I'm probably sure that there are people that are deceived into believing other things that are going to save them.

And so trying to get caught up in these big swaths of, are, are these people saved?

Are these people saved?

Well, if their church is preaching something anti Jesus, I'm going to say it's not a good church to be involved with.

It's not a good religion to be involved with.

I think people can be saved in spite of wrong teaching around them.

We know that.

We know that.

There's examples over and over again of people that are in the wrong church.

But they see, they read the Bible themselves and get saved.

And hopefully they learn that that's a church that they need to separate from.

And so I'm, I'm going to get to that point here.

And, and I think that will probably end with just kind of whetting the appetite for.

For next week.

But it says, if there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine.

So someone comes in the church or in your Christian life, and they don't bring the doctrine of Jesus Christ properly.

The teaching of Jesus properly.

What does it say here?

Remember, this is the same guy who in the same breath is saying, truth and love.

Love your neighbor.

Love, love, love.

So again, just being a loving Christian doesn't mean we overlook false teaching.

So this is the actual application of this.

This is how we marry truth and love.

This is, if there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house.

Now, again, a lot of people would take this verse.

Anytime we take a verse out of context, we can kind of get wonky ideas.

So does this mean, like, an unsaved person can't come into my house?

That's not what it's saying.

Remember, it's her.

The church is meeting in her home.

So it's in the context of receiving them in into the fellowship.

So he says, don't receive them into your fellowship.

Don't, don't.

Don't pull them in and welcome them in and say, oh, you can be part of us.

Neither bid him Godspeed.

Meaning the idea of, of not just agreeing with them, but actually promoting them.

Right.

If I tell someone Godspeed, I'm wishing well for them.

I want their endeavor, their adventure, their trip to go well.

So he says, if someone comes in with a false teaching of Jesus, we don't have to hate them necessarily as a person, but what do we do?

We don't receive them and accept them.

We don't join them and we don't promote them.

And so that's the same.

That's.

That, that's.

It's in the same teaching of loving and truth.

So the truth is that if somebody offends the truth of the gospel, we love them enough to tell them the truth and to not promote their false teaching.

So it's like my kid came up to me and said, dad, you know, and he has some weird idea about life, and I know that it's wrong, and I know that's going to lead him to danger.

I don't love him by going, well, son, that's a great idea.

Keep going after that.

So for me to love my child in that moment is to speak truth and not condone him and not say godspeed on this and not promote that and not receive that into the fold.

It would actually be the opposite to, to push on that and to actually to press and say, no, that's not true.

We are not going to promote that.

And so how can a person who is supposed to be loving deal with someone who's teaching false teaching?

Well, it says right here what we're supposed to do.

And so he comes to this idea here.

And we'll talk more about that next week.

And I think that, I know that we're at the end of the hour, but next week I want us to talk about how we properly deal with, with false teaching, because for sometimes we, we just like, we deal with it in anger and we actually.

And then we can respond wrong to false teaching.

And that false teaching can actually drive us to a place of fleshly reaction.

So I don't know if you've ever seen two Christians debating.

Happens a lot.

And that's cool.

I like debate.

I think we should debate.

But I've seen two people that claim to be Christian on a stage at odds with each other and yelling and screaming at each other in anger and bitterness and allowing fleshly reactions to come in because there is an opposition to what they believe to be the truth.

So there's actually a biblical way to respond to another person who has a false teaching.

And, and so I want us to.

I'm going to need a lot more time to deal with that next week because there's a, there's a, there's a whole thing with the idea of apologetics.

Some of you know that there's a couple different classes at our church that we're dealing with apologetics.

What's apologetics?

It doesn't mean that I'm apologizing for what I believe in.

Apologetics just means I'm defending actually what I believe.

So how do I properly defend what I believe without being combative and still living with love and grace?

Because he says, live with truth and love.

And so we're going to talk next week how we can live in truth and oppose other people who believe wrong things, but do it in a spirit of grace and truth.

And I think biblically, we can maybe even have people change their path.

And again, I think that one of the things that I have to be cautious of is, you know, sometimes as a pastor's heart, we want to accept everybody in, but there isn't a time and a place we can accept everyone in by way of preaching the gospel.

But there's a difference between saying someone can come through these doors and hear the preaching of the Word and having people come in, receiving them, promoting them, and allowing them to hold positions that are anti Christ.

And so I think that if we're all honest, that has happened within the majority of Christendom across the world.

If you look at many of the denominations, they have allowed partnerships that are not Christlike and therefore they are opposing the truth of God in the guise of love.

And so we're going to talk about all those unique dynamics next week when we come back.

So I will stop there and we will come back next week.

So I hope you come back and talk about that with me because it's a hot blood issue.

There are some churches.

I'm just going to be honest, okay?

I love you guys, but I gotta, I gotta be honest with you.

There are some churches who are willing to overlook sin because they say that they are loving and we can love biblically without overlooking sin.

And that's what we want to talk about next.

Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast.

I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.

If you would like to find out more information about our church or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org or find us on Facebook or YouTube.

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Thank you so much.

God Bless.

Have a wonderful day.