How to Know that You Know God: The Test of Perseverance in Sound Doctrine Part 1 - 1 John 2:24-29

0:41Welcome back to this chapter, which we began quite some time ago, looking at the tests that John lays out to determine whether you are in the faith. How do you know if you know God? We're trying to answer this question, the various tests. How can you be sure that you really know God? And in the context, John is wanting to give these churches that he's writing to an ability to test and see if others are in the faith, specifically those false teachers, as he calls them, Antichrists, have come and circulated around. And he wants to equip the church to be able to recognize true and false teachers and to even test. themselves. He does a marvelous job of exposing the false teachers and false converts at the same time of reassuring true believers. It's just a simple masterpiece what John does.

1:47We've already looked in this chapter at the test of obedience. The one who truly knows God is the one who obeys Christ's commandments and lives as He did. Very simple test of obedience. And there's the test of love. You want to know who really knows God? They love people like Jesus did. Very simple. Then he gave the test of spiritual growth. We looked at that. There will be spiritual progress. Those who are really born of God grow up.

2:15And then he set forth the test of worldly affections. Those who don't know God set their minds upon the things of this world, which are passing away. But those who do know God set their affections upon heavenly pursuits. And then there is the test of doctrine, which we looked at last time. There are certain elements regarding the person of Christ, doctrines, teachings regarding the person of Christ that are objective and out there. And those who believe affirm that Jesus is the Christ, and they believe in his unique relationship as God, eternal God.

3:00God the Son, and that unique relationship as the only begotten of the Father. And so it is through this test of doctrine that we began looking at last time, or we looked at last time. Today I'm going to add another one, and that is the test of perseverance, really the test of perseverance. How do you know who really knows God? Well, they persevere. They don't just persevere in the faith, but they persevere in a couple particulars of doctrine. The doctrine that we mentioned last time, they continually affirm that Jesus is the Christ. They continually affirm that He is the Son of God, thus deserving worship as even the Father Himself deserves worship. These are the ones who persevere in sound doctrine. Those who go out from the church, those who do not persevere in this sound doctrine, do not really know God.

4:00The Antichrists that John mentions were once part of the church. As he says in verse 9, they went out from us, but they were not really of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be shown that they are not of us. The revelation of false converts is that they depart from sound doctrine. But those who persevere in sound doctrine truly. Do you know God because the true doctrine comes from him?

4:36Last time we looked at the teachings of the Antichrist or Antichrist theology. Remember in verse 22, who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Antichrist theology has been in every generation since then. The apostles began proclaiming the name of Jesus, and then counter to that, almost immediately coming out of the church were those that said, No, he's not the Christ. Or let's nuance this, let's think differently about him. He's not the Christ, he's really not God as we think of him. And there came up all these different philosophies and theologies, all denying that Jesus is the Christ and denying his unique relationship with the Father. That is Antichrist theology. And throughout the ages, there's been all kinds of strains, all kinds of variations, but they come back to these two major principles.

5:38And then look at what he says in verse 23. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father. Whoever denies this bayoun, this part of this Trinitarian relationship, whoever denies the Son does not have the Father. And the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. The one who's confessing the Son. That's the one who is in this unique relationship, Father and Son. This is the one who communes with God. This is the one who is in the fellowship of light, as he mentioned in chapter one.

6:17And then the question comes out of this: okay, the one who is confessing the Son, this is the one that has the Father also. Instead of being a people who are denying the Son or redefining Him, let us be a people who are confessing him. And that's what John wants us to be. That's what John wants these churches to be. Look at verse 24, as for you, but as for you, as if shifting gears, he is saying, contrary to those who went out, those Antichrists, as for you, now I want to speak to y'all. That's what he's saying. As for y'all.

6:59As for you, as for you. And he begins to answer this question. How does one keep a good confession? How do we, in light of all that's going on, how do we maintain a good confession? How do we keep confessing? Well, that's what our passage is about this morning. Let's read, beginning in verse 24. I'm going to read to the end of the chapter. Verse 24, as for you, let That abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. This is the promise which He Himself made to us eternal life. These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you. As for you, the anointing which you receive from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him. Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.

8:23Well, there were many pressures coming against the churches of John's day, intense times of persecution. John lived through them all. The Bible speaks over and over of times when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Why? Because sound doctrine espouses a lordship of God's Christ that brings all the nations to one point, and that is to bow before Him. And in every generation, there are those who simply do not want to do that. And so it is very easy during such times where the forces against Christ mount so aggressively, and certainly in John's time had launched several massive persecutions. John had lived through them all. He saw his brother James killed right out, right early in the apostolic period. He saw all his friends come and go. And yet here he is remaining proclaiming the Christ that he knew.

9:39The one that he said in verse chapter 1: what was from the beginning, that which we heard, that which we saw with our eyes, and have looked upon that is whom we're declaring. And it got costly. He saw the cost of proclaiming such a Christ. And when the opposition gets so painful, and certainly, as John had experienced and had watched generations go through, during such time there's a temptation to deny the claims of Jesus. Just think today, just think how many pressures of the church, or just think how many pressures we would relieve if we simply reinterpreted some portion. Of Scripture, especially those difficult doctrines. Just think how much pressure we could ease, how much we could get out of if we simply just reinterpreted some of the words of Scripture. Well, that was alive and well in John's age. I think many of the heresies that we're going to see in the second and third generation largely come out of a response to some of the persecutions and the demands that serving Christ calls for. And out of that, those who don't want to serve that kind of Christ or those who are ashamed of such a Christ begin to knock off some of the rough edges, begin to nuance, begin to reinterpret.

11:18Jesus said, there's going to be people proclaiming all kinds of different Christs. Certainly, we see that in our age. But the question comes down to us today: how do you and I confess and keep confessing the Christ revealed in Scripture? How do we do that? How do we not allow our confession of Christ to be hijacked? How do we confess and keep confessing in the face of our times? Well, that was the question that John is answering. For trying to answer to the church. And there are four actions in these verses that I just read: four actions that you can do to ensure that you will persevere in sound doctrine. Four actions. Four actions so that you can persevere in sound doctrine. And that is really the test. Do you really know God?

12:26Are you persevering in the truth about Him? If you know Him and are intimate with Him, there are certain objective realities involving His Son that will show up. And listen, you can deny Christ on two levels. In theory, there are those movements that theoretically, no, He's not the Christ, theoretically, no, He's not the Son of God. But then there are those movements, no, practically, He is not Christ. I'm not going to allow Him. I may profess that He's Christ, but not allow Him to be. I may profess Him to be God in the flesh, but really give Him absolutely no worship as such. So there's, you can deny, you can develop an antichrist mindset, whether in theory or in practice. But the four actions that I'm going to speak to you about are will ensure that you persevere in sound doctrine.

13:26And as I was going through my notes this morning, I realized. I'm not going to get through it all. So I cut it in half. So this morning we're just going to look at two of them. Two of them. John does a wonderful job in these verses of laying out the practical implications of all that he has proclaimed in the Gospel of John. He touches on rich theology. In fact, in this passage that I just read, his pneumatology really comes to light, crosses the T's, and dots the I's regarding his view of the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of God. And so I want us to make sure we take time. He touches upon rich theology, but it's all in a practical context so that his people can continue to profess and confess and keep the good confession. So I took five years to get through John. What's one more week getting through 1 John, right?

14:34So I'll be looking at the first two, the first two. How to persevere in sound doctrine? Well, the very first, by meditating upon it. How do you persevere in sound doctrine? Well, number one, by meditating upon it. Look back at verse 24. As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. Let the word of God abide in you. Let that which you have heard from the beginning, let it abide in you. Let it be abiding in you. Let it be remaining in you. Let it be staying in you. That's the command. That's the imperative in this fashion.

15:21As for you, in contrast to those who deny and departed from the faith, you be confessing. You confessing. You let that abide. The idea of abiding here is that they are to be continually calling to mind that which they had heard from the beginning in such a way that it would affect the way that they live. Listen, what you meditate upon, what you think upon, shows up in actions. If you think upon garbage, if you think about the wrongs, if you think, if you dwell upon the worldly things, it's going to produce a worldly outcome.

16:06But on the contrary, let that which you have heard from the beginning, what he's speaking about from the beginning, he's talking about that apostolic proclamation. The church, they heard, why did they first come to Christ? Why did they first come? Because they believed the testimony of the apostles. Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, lived among us, a man. Incredible authority, God Himself among us. We have seen Him, we have testified to Him, we saw Him go to the cross, we knew Him to be the Messiah, He is the Messiah who went to the cross for the sake of His people, and then we saw Him come out of the grave. That Christ, and He invites all people to come into an intimate relationship with Him. And you need to get rid of the sin in your life. How do you do that? By looking upon the one who is pierced for your iniquity, and so that there the door to a relationship with your Heavenly Father is opened, and there and only there can you have a right relationship with God. And the proclamation, that is what you have heard from the beginning. And listen, we never grow old, we never outgrow those things. Let those things continually dwell in us that God loved you this much. Listen, there's a lot of reasons to get discouraged and depressed in life, right? Just let this truth keep coming back to you. That which you have heard from the beginning, let that keep abiding, let that keep remaining in you.

17:44Look at what he says. Look at the reason, he says this back of verse 24. As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If, if, now he's going to tell you the reason: if what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will. Will abide in the Son and in the Father. So, how do I abide with the Son and the Father? I mean, that's an intimate relationship. That's that fellowship of light in the first chapter. I mean, how do you and I get swept up into a fellowship of such proportions that it is an intimacy on level within God Himself between Father and Son? How do I get swept up into that? Well, he tells you: if what you heard from the beginning is abiding in you, guess what?

18:34You will also abide in the Son future. If it remains in you, see, the Word knows what it's doing. As we keep the Word, guess what the Word does? It keeps us. We don't have to know all there is to know about God to be in a relationship. We just need to meditate, privilege His words, let His words meditate or be in us, remain in us. Let the Word abide in you. That specific word, which you have heard from the beginning, that apostolic testimony. Listen, there's a lot of religions that have come and gone. There's a lot of religions that have come and stayed since this time. And John's saying all of them. Cut them off. Here is the command: go back to that which was announced at the beginning. And if that is dwelling in you, guess what it's going to do? It's going to keep you in a relationship, in an intimate relationship with your heavenly Father and Son.

19:51Remember, Joshua, I read this just a few minutes ago. Joshua chapter 1, Moses has died. Joshua's about to have to lead the people into the land of Israel. A generation of people that wanted to kill Moses at one time. And God says, Look, I'm with you. I am with you. And you will give these people possession of the land. And then he tells them in verse 7, only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. Success, Joshua, is going to be based upon you not turning from the right or to the left.

20:43And I don't know about you, but I find that quite daunting. If I was Joshua, I've got the law of God on one side. I've got the people who wanted to kill Moses on the other side. And I'm going to lead them into Moses. Land. And then God is telling me, do not turn from the left or the right. I have such a memory problem that that would frighten me. Some lay out that there's 613 commands. I don't know how many there actually is, there's debate on actually how many there are, but do not turn from the left or to the right. I find that quite daunting.

21:23But then he says this. Very next verse, chapter 8. I mean, verse 8 of chapter 1. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success. So here, Joshua, you be talking about this book. You let this book of the law not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. Now, that's something, okay, now I can apply my mind to that. Okay, focusing in on the word, studying the word, meditating, letting it rattle around in my being, and to such a degree that I actually talk about it, not just going off in a corner, reading something, check the box. I mean, somehow think that relationship with God can, well, I read that, check the box, and then you go on. No, it's about meditating. The times in the word is to bring the word fresh to your mind, the times in. Church is to bring the word fresh to your mind so that your mind dwells on it, so that your heart considers it.

22:39And as you meditate on it day and night, as you speak about it, think about what church is, right? Talk about it. What are we doing here? We're talking about these words. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written. Ah, so the way that I do not turn from the right or to the left is to meditate on it.

23:06You see, the word knows what it's doing. You meditate on it, you let it fill you, and it will take you where it wants to go. Joshua's success was dependent ultimately upon meditating upon the truth. And then the meditating on it would lead to obedience, which would lead to success. But his meditating was a meditation that was to bubble up over into speech. Now, look at the promise of this. As for you, let that abide in you, which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. Verse 25: this is the promise which. Which He Himself made to us eternal life. This is the promise. You want to go back to one of the basic things that He promised us in the Gospels is eternal life. But the Greek says it like this: And this it is the promise which He Himself promised to us: the life, the eternal kind, the eternal, life with the quality of eternal, of the eternal. It's not just about duration of days, it's about a quality, a vigorous, a vigor, a liveliness that makes life here and now worth living. You can have that eternal quality of life now through the meditation of that which you have heard from the beginning.

25:03What an interesting thing that John shows us here. We participate in our own preservation by meditating upon his word. We participate in each other's preservation by meditating on the word, by bringing the word out. I've got to tell you something about my great baseball days when I was 13 years old. I remember stepping up to bat one night, taking a swing at the ball, tipped it, and it hit me somewhere in the chest or neck or someplace.

25:56And the just bounced off. And the umpire looked at me, you okay? And I swooned. I went down. I wouldn't say I passed out, but enough to go down. So they called the took me to the emergency room. And after a lot of inquiries and studies, the ER doctor said, you know what, young man, you need to eat food. Eat food? He goes, yeah. And bottom line is, he asked me, when's the last time you ate? I couldn't remember. Certainly not that day. Sometimes I'd get so excited about whatever I was doing that I just rush off and not eat. I couldn't even remember if I'd eaten the day before. And so the doctor's like, you know what? Very simple. Just eat some food.

26:53You know, sometimes you can get so low. I mean, physically, this happens to me even now. Sometimes I'll get up and freak. Get to eat. And sometimes I can get so low. I don't know if you've ever been there, but you just feel like you run out of gas. I mean, just this, and you don't care what happens. I mean, you're just kind of like, okay, I don't need money to eat. I mean, I really can get low physically. And at such times, you know what I need to do?

27:24I need to eat something. I need to participate in my own preservation on a physical side, right? Well, spiritually, you apply that. I have spiritual low points like that as well. And I know many of you do too, because I'm your pastor. Feelings of quitting, feelings of exhaustion, feelings of shortcomings. And it seems like, regardless, you've got all these things going on, and you know the tasks are too great, and you see your own inadequacies to take care of things, to do anything, really, much of any kind of value. And at such times, you can enter into a real hole of depression spiritually. What do you do with that? What do you do at times like that? Is there anything that can pull us out of that?

28:28Well, yes. Let that abide in you, which you have heard from the beginning. Your mind is on something it shouldn't be on. Let God's word, let it remain in you, and you will, the word will preserve you. I mean, it's this incredible tension between God's sovereignty and our responsibility. God gives us the word so that we will meditate on it. God gives you faith so that you will believe. But you've got to believe. He gives you the word, he may give you food, you've got to eat it. And therein is the strength, eternal life, the kind of life that is of eternal character, that you saw Jesus live, that you're seeing in John after all these years, after all that he went through, after all that he witnessed, after all the loss, after all, here he is, just as vigorous as ever, just as looking forward to the day of Christ's return as ever. Where does that come from?

29:45Let that dwell in you, which you have heard from the beginning, and it'll take care of the rest. So, how do you persevere in sounding? Doctrine, number one, by meditating upon it. And number two, by recognizing the threat to it. By recognizing the threat to it. Look back at verse 26. These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you. These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive y'all.

30:31That's the reason for the writing. John saw a real threat to the church. What was the threat? Look back. There are those who are trying to deceive you. The threat to the church then, the threat to the church now is being deceived. Being deceived. There are those who are actively trying to deceive you, trying to mislead you, leading you astray. That's the threat. You need to understand, if you're going to persevere in sound doctrine, you have to have a real understanding of what the threat is to sound doctrine. And the threat that you and I are facing, the threat that the church then was facing, was being deceived.

31:25That's the deception through the ages. What is the objective? Of war. What is the objective of war? Well, the objective of war is to change the way your enemy thinks. That's really the objective. It's about bringing your enemy around to your way of thinking. That's what war is about. That's what conflict's about, right? And whether you do that on a military campaign, well, we're going to bring you around to our way of thinking, and we just out-muscle the person, right? That's just one aspect of war. War is about changing the way your enemy thinks and changing the culture that produced the thinking of your enemy. That's what war is about.

32:20And if the Antichrist can get the church to think like Antichrist, the battle is won. You don't have to decimate buildings. Just get us thinking like the Antichrist. Denying Christ his rightful place over humanity and denying his unique position with the Father. If you can get us to deny that, we've come around to His way of thinking. And that's the threat in John's day, in our day. How does the Antichrist think? Well, he denies that Jesus is the Christ. He denies the unique relationship between the Father and the Son.

33:10And the deception through the ages has been about reinterpreting Jesus. That's been the game plan from the very beginning. In John's day, dealing with all these pre-Gnostic theologians, which is going to develop in the second and third century, the Gnostic ways of thinking. But in John's day, what the churches were being told were: here, take off your apostolic glasses and put on another set of glasses and understand Jesus that way. We have a higher sense. We have secret knowledge. We have a higher knowledge. I've already mentioned to you a couple of these that were contemporaries with John. We won't go back into it a whole lot, but you remember the teaching of Cyrinthus. He taught that Christ was purely spirit. He was purely, that Christ wasn't physically human, he was a spirit, and that Jesus was human. And Christ, at Jesus' baptism, came upon him, but then just before his crucifixion took off again. Christ never reached. Came to earth, not in the apostolic sense. And then there was the teaching of Basilides. He taught that Jesus didn't suffer. He was a man who did a lot of miracles.

34:46But Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry his cross, and Simon was transformed by Jesus so that others thought that Jesus himself was carrying his cross, and Jesus was over there laughing at the whole ordeal as Simon went to the cross, and the cross everyone thought that it was Jesus. Grossly different versions of who Christ is. And that's what they're dealing with. They're dealing with this, whether in theory at this stage or whether just in practice. We don't like the demands that we don't like Christ's morality. We don't like his exclusiveness. We don't like some of the demands that him being over us requires. And so we deny him, whether in theory or in practice. That's what was happening. But you take it on down through the ages.

35:53And this politically correct Jesus has emerged over and over and over. Over again. In the Middle Ages, the idea was to take off your glasses of scripture alone and put on the authority of human tradition. But it really wasn't just about human tradition, it was really about politics. When Constantine comes to Christ or allegedly comes to Christ, he lays the foundation for later the whole church-state relationship, which will plague the church, really enlarged throughout history until the founding of the United States.

36:41It's a major corruption of the church. But it's all about adopting a politically correct Jesus that kind of fit with the whole. And listen, by the way, politics corrupts everything, it corrupts everything it touches. The way history is written, politics corrupts. Our education, you can be sure politics corrupts it. Even our science today, you let politics get in there, and wow, it can corrupt it. We can't even tell the difference between a live human being, we cannot tell the difference between a male and a female.

37:31That is not science. That is politics. Politics. It corrupts everything, and it certainly corrupts theology and Christology. Politics will corrupt your view of Christ because Christ has been offensive in every generation, his own generation. You're not the Messiah. Take about 200 years ago, look back at the 20th century. The lie comes down and it sounds like this: take off your provincial glasses of scripture and put on the glasses of science. And it becomes, you become not able to even come to the table to discuss quiet if you think anything of scripture that would take priority over science.

38:37Look at the Scopes monkey trial. That happened about 100 years ago. Go back and actually read, don't read what history has written about it, especially in. Go back and actually read the transcripts from the proceedings, and you will find. An intolerant, tyrannical mindset that says, You can't even consider the thought that the Bible is true. How absurd is that? And then, as history is written about it, we get far and far away from the real issues. And even today, it's but go back and read the actual transcript.

39:23And today, today, the same lie of a politically correct Jesus, it sounds something like this: Take off your whiteness. Take off your white privilege and look at the Christ through the glasses of the oppressed. That's the world we're living in, right? Listen, scriptural interpretation has never been about the privilege of the reader. It's about the privilege of the words of the king. And we would take our stand denying the privilege of anybody that would use scripture to their own advantage. But be careful. The rhetoric of today is: put on another set of glasses and let's look at Christ. And what you're going to end up with is a Christ that is not the Christ of Scripture. And there Is no love in that Christ.

40:36That Christ creates tension instead of forgives it. Yeah, scriptural interpretation has never privileged the reader, but it's always been about privileging the words of the king. I read a law, a piece of law that was written early in the Middle Ages. And it was like, you know what the penalty was for messing up the words of the king, misrepresenting his words? It was death. It was death. It's only in our own crazy times that we seem to be so cavalier with words or the way we read our Constitution or the way we read anything. We somehow think that the reader has all the privileges in the world and there is absolutely no law except for the law of ourself over everything else.

41:34No, we're to read the Bible through the lens of first century Judaism and the Greco-Roman culture and context in which it was given. And the words meant something then and they still mean the same thing that they meant the day they were written. And we are to read, we are not to privilege ourselves or any people group. We are to privilege the words, the text. We are to privilege that which we have heard. From the beginning, and John wants us to recognize, and the moment you stop privileging the text, you're going to find yourself very quickly with a Christ of an antichrist thinking rather than the Christ of Scripture.

42:25Well, that's just my second point. That's why I thought I'd cut it off, and I need to. There have been, there will be many versions of Antichrist theology until Christ appears. And they basically boil down to these two elements: a denial that Jesus is the Christ, a denial of the relationship between Father and Son. And I'd say in this church, largely, we're not going to deny that in theory, but we might deny it in practice. Denying ourselves, picking up your cross daily, is going to become the exercise of the church. Loving like he loves is going to call you to die to yourself over and over and over again. And he demands our worship because he is God Himself. That's the kind of affection we are to give to Him. Him.

43:32Well, this practice of righteousness is synonymous with persevering in sound doctrine. So, how do you persevere in sound doctrine? By meditating upon it and recognizing the threat. And let us let that just dwell in us. Let that word, those beautiful gospel words that have been proclaimed over and over. You don't need to move beyond that. Let that which we've heard from the beginning dwell in us. And it'll keep us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, it's your goodness that we come before once again. It's your words. May we always privilege your words. Father, let us not be ashamed to say what your word declares.

44:28Let us not be slow to confess our sins to you and confess our sins to one another and right the wrongs which we have been party to. But let us never, ever dismiss or set aside truth, the words that you've given us. For it is through those words we are connected to you. Please help us. Have your way in us. Please forgive us. In Jesus' name.