The Dangers of Denying His Deity

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Transcript:

Well, I’ve got a list of people for you this morning, and after I read the list, I want you to see if you can tell me what they have in common. Okay, you ready? Nero, Caesar of Rome, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Henry Kissinger, Prince Charles, Charlemagne, Napoleon Bonaparte, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jacques Chirac, Martin Luther, most of the popes, and Barney the dinosaur.

Okay. Unfortunately, with some of them. What else?

Okay. Especially the last one. Yes, all sinners.

Okay. What else? Anybody?

Anybody? Okay. I compiled this list when I started looking through this week some of the people in the past who have been accused of being the Antichrist. really couldn’t believe somebody put Barney the dinosaur on the list although at my house there are days when I wonder oh was he not sent here to torment us yeah these are these are the list and I don’t pretend that these are all the people who’ve ever been accused of being the antichrist but these were these were on various people’s lists at one point I really did just to be honest with you I really did believe it was Prince Charles but uh based on what I’ve seen lately not enough people like him.

And I’m sorry, I don’t mean that as bad as it sounds, but the way we understand the Antichrist, he’s going to come in to just worldwide acclaim. And I’ve heard polls where there’s a significant proportion of people in his own country who just as soon Queen Elizabeth passed the throne on to Prince William instead of Prince Charles. So I question whether it could be him anymore.

But people have spent a lot of time and speculation trying to figure out who is going to be the Antichrist. Who is it? And as I said, I used to be one of them. I don’t worry so much about it now.

I do still believe that there’s what the Bible calls the man of sin who’s going to come. I do believe that there will still be an Antichrist revealed, but I think we spend too much time worrying about who the Antichrist is. If you believe, as most of us do, in a pre-tribulation rapture, then we’re going to be long gone before we realize for sure who it is.

Quite honestly, we need to be more concerned about the spirit of Antichrist, at least us in our day, we need to be more concerned about the spirit of Antichrist than we do the identity of Antichrist. Because not only is the spirit of Antichrist among us today, but he’s been among us for at least 2,000 years. If you’ll turn with me to 1 John, 1 John chapter 2 this morning, I want to look at a few verses that talk about the dangers of denying his deity, the deity of Christ. You see, far from this list and the other lists that I’ve seen, there are some other people who I think have gotten it right. Pat Robertson, as much as I try to distance myself from him because of some of his charismatic ideas and that whole messy thing about wanting to kill the president of Venezuela.

At that point, I thought, Pat’s just kind of losing it. But he got it right, I think, when he identified some major Protestant denominations in our country. He said the spirit of Antichrist is within them, and people just got into an uproar.

How dare he say something like that? Well, the Bible says something like that about people and groups of people who deny the deity of Christ. It’s right there. And we have some major mainline Protestant denominations in this country who, even if the whole church denomination, whatever you want to call it, doesn’t say Christ isn’t really God or the Son of God, a significant portion of their people do, and they allow that to go on.

I’m thankful that I can say without hesitation that if I got up here and began preaching that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God, you all would vote me out of here today. And you’d be right to do it. Get somebody in here who has a right, who has a reason to be up here preaching.

One of the vice presidents of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary caused a ruckus when he identified the World Council of Churches as having the spirit of Antichrist. Well, when they were telling people that there’s some doubt over whether Christ is the Son of God and we should look for the Holy Spirit in all the world religions, yeah, I’d say that’s in line with what John is talking about here. He says in John 2, verse 18, little children. and he’s not just writing specifically to little children.

If you’re unfamiliar with John’s writing style in his epistles, he writes to his fellow believers. He’s an older man by now. He’s the last surviving of the 12 disciples and he’s lived to a ripe old age and he’s writing back to them and most of these people are going to be younger than him chronologically and almost all of them are going to be younger than him in the faith.

As a matter of fact, if he’s the last remaining disciple, everybody else is his child in the faith. Everybody else is younger than him in the Christian faith. And so he writes to them with this term of endearment and says, little children, it is the last time.

These are the last days. And I shared with you, I think, Wednesday night where people say, well, they were saying it was the end times 2,000 years ago. It was the last time.

They were saying Christ’s return was imminent 2,000 years ago. And where is he? And I had told the professor when I was in college, well, if he said he was coming back soon 2,000 years ago, it’s even truer now, isn’t it, that it’s going to be soon.

And folks, I hear it said all the time, and please don’t be angry with me, please don’t run me out of here for saying this. I hear it said all the times, definitively, we are in the end times. Folks, we might be in the end times.

I personally don’t know that for sure. I know the Bible says no man knows the date or the hour. I know it also says that we can discern the times and seasons, but I know people have been confused by what they were looking at around them for 2,000 years.

I’d prefer to live as though Christ could come back at any moment and work and plan as though it could be another 2,000 years and focus on what he’s given us to do in the meantime. But when he says here it is the last time, he means this is the last age. God’s timetable as far as redemption has been fulfilled here, it’s the last time.

As ye have heard, and as ye have heard, that antichrists shall come, even now there are many antichrists. Boy, that ought to be frightening, huh? There are many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time.

They went out from us, but they were not of us.

for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us but they went out that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us and under severe persecution under severe persecution not only from the Roman government but also Jewish leaders Gnostic teachers all sorts of they had pressure on every side and it wasn’t just the government some people had been persuaded to give up the Christian faith it was easier for them when the government wants to kill you when society wants to kill you, when your own family wants to disown you, then it can become a very tempting prospect to say, you know what, maybe I was wrong about all this, and to walk away from Christ. And so what he’s addressing here is that there were people among the churches who had said, yes, we’re Christians, we believe in Christ, we trust Christ, they’d made professions of faith, they’d probably even been baptized, but at some point down the road, the world got a hold of them, and they said, you know what, this is not for me, and they walked away.

And it wasn’t like we think of today, where people fall in and out of church, slide in and out of church. And folks back then being a Christian cost you something. And you had to be either all in or all out.

Folks, as much as I cherish our religious freedom in this country, sometimes I think the best thing for the church would be a small dose of persecution because it would cause us to get serious about are we all in or are we all out. But he said there were some people who had decided here I am all out. I’m not only rejecting the church, I’m rejecting Christ, I’m going to go back to my old way of life.

And John says, they went out from us because they never were part of us. They appeared to be part of us, but if they had been part of us, if they had been believers, if they had been brothers, they would still be with us. And what this is saying, folks, I’ve studied extensively on the subject and I do not believe you can lose your salvation.

Once you are truly saved and born again, I do not believe you can lose your salvation. But I believe for a time you can appear to be a Christian. But if you are a Christian, you will be a Christian until the end.

If you’re in Christ, you’ll be in Christ until the end. You can give the appearance of being a Christian for a time and then drift away. And many people do that.

Now, maybe they’ll come back. We never know. If they are, I believe they’ll return.

But he says, if they had been of us, they would have no doubt continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest. It would show who they truly were on the inside that they were not all of us. And the problem was some of these people became the very teachers he’s going to talk about in just a moment.

because it wasn’t enough just for them to slide out of church and say, we’re done with this. They began to actively teach against the gospel and to persecute the church themselves. See, it’s not just a matter of Brother Phil.

You’re back now, so I get to pick on you. No, I use Brother Phil as an example because I think we’d all say, no, he’d never do that, so you know I’m not accusing him. It’s not just a matter of Brother Phil saying, I’m not going to church anymore.

It’s a matter of Brother Phil saying, I’m not a Christian anymore, and I’m going to argue against the gospel and tell everybody why they’re wrong, and I’m going to teach this other wrong idea that Jesus was never the Son of God, and I’m going to persecute the church at the same time. So they would leave and go out, and they weren’t just leaving the church. They were becoming false teachers.

And again, I use Brother Phil’s name because we know that wouldn’t happen. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. Folks, when it came to the, it doesn’t mean they had exhaustive knowledge of everything in the universe.

It doesn’t mean they were omniscient and knew everything. Because if Christians are supposed to know everything, folks, you and I fall far short of that, do we not? I’m not a good Christian if I’m supposed to know everything.

When it came to the gospel, they knew everything. They knew the truth. And he says, you have an unction from the Holy One.

Unction is one of those words that is incredibly hard to define. Because it’s an urging, it’s a stirring. And in other words, they were stirred up by God.

And even that doesn’t begin to cover what an unction is. I’ve read before where preachers in days past would talk about having an unction to preach. It’s about the best way I can describe it, because we call it a calling.

Folks, I never heard God’s voice audibly telling me, go preach. It wasn’t just a feeling on my part, because there are days that you feel like there would be a much easier job somewhere than this. It’s not just a feeling on my part because I told you all my plan was to go into teaching and politics.

It’s more than just an idea. It’s something where God grabs a hold of your soul and impresses on you that this is what you must do. And I can’t be on that.

It’s hard to describe. But he was talking to them and said, you have an unction from the Holy One, where God has compelled them to do what he expected them to do, and they knew all things. They’d been compelled to remain in the truth, and they knew the truth.

I have not written unto you, verse 21, because you know not the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. He tells them, John says, I’m not writing to you to correct you because you don’t know what the truth is. I’m not writing to you to explain what the truth is.

I’m writing because you do know what it is, and you need to be reminded to stick close to the truth, to stay in the truth, and to reject those who are outside the truth. And he says here, who is a liar, verse 22, who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ. He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father, but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.

Now some of you will see in verse 23, there are long lines of italics in there, and maybe some words in brackets. If you’ve ever wondered, when you see words in italics in your Bible, those are words that were added, not in the sense that somebody made them up, but in the sense there may not be a separate word that indicates that, but they need a that in there to make it make sense in English, and it’s implied in the Greek text or implied in the Hebrew text, but not specifically spelled out. So it’s not something somebody made up, but it’s not something that’s spelled out in so many letters in the original text.

The reason they put this large portion of this verse in italics is that there are people today who still doubt whether this verse should have been in there. They say it’s missing from such and such manuscript. It’s missing from this copy.

Folks, some of the best copies have it in there. As far as I’m concerned, it should be in there, and they were right to put it in. And I don’t know about the italics.

I think they should take the italics out. But they were trying to be transparent with what should and should not be in there. Now, why am I telling you this?

Because I’ve seen that for years, even as a child, and wondered, why are some things in italics? Why is this whole verse in italics? And some of you may have footnotes in your Bible, depending on the translation, that tell you this verse or this portion of this verse shouldn’t be in there.

Folks, I believe it should be. I believe they were right to leave it in there. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father, but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.

Didn’t Jesus say something along those lines? I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by me. Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning.

If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye shall continue in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life. He’s not telling them to remain in the truth as though it’s some sort of work by which we earn our salvation.

But what he’s saying is that one of the evidences of being saved, one of the evidences that you’ve been born again by faith in Jesus Christ is that you will remain in the truth. He said that’s an evidence of your being in the Son. And this is the promise for those who are in the Son and in the Father, eternal life.

eternal life. So here he talks about those who rejected the truth he talks about those who rejected the truth and he encourages them, he challenges them to remain in the truth themselves the truth specifically that he’s talking about here and he spells out here and in other passages throughout this letter where he talks about the spirit of antichrist he talks about people who would deny that Jesus is the Christ or that Jesus had come in the flesh and there are people just as there were then there are people today who deny that Jesus Christ came in the flesh or that Jesus was the Christ. These two things are very, I mean, they’re absolutely important toward the gospel, that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and that he was the Messiah of God. Folks, if he did not come in the flesh, then the crucifixion was just an illusion, a mirage, and he couldn’t have saved anybody.

The Bible says, without the shedding of blood, there’s no remission of sins. If he didn’t have real blood to shed, he couldn’t be a real savior for real sinners. So he had to come in the flesh.

And if he wasn’t the Christ, if he wasn’t the Messiah of God, then he wasn’t sent here by God, he wasn’t the Son of God who came to pay for our sins. Folks, anybody can get themselves killed, as I’ve said to you on many, many occasions. But only the Son of God could die for our sins and rise again on the third day.

Folks, if he wasn’t God, what he did for us doesn’t matter at all. Because I could tell you quite honestly, I try, I try very hard to live a good life. I try very hard and fall short.

I admit it. I try very hard to do what God expects of me. But if I were to be nailed to a cross, as Jesus was, and I were to shed my blood, and I were to be pierced as Jesus was, and do all of that, folks, it wouldn’t even begin to atone for my own sins, let alone yours.

Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross works if and only if he is both the Son of God and man. If and only if he is God and man in one. And so the very attack on this idea of who Jesus was and his coming is an attack on the gospel.

Because the gospel is very simple. It’s not about what you can do. It’s not about how much you can give, what you can earn.

If I just do enough things, if I just earn enough points, then God will overlook the bad things I’ve done. He’ll forgive me and he’ll let me into heaven. Folks, it doesn’t work that way.

We’ve all sinned against God, and even if we never sinned again, all we’d be doing is doing what the law requires. I’ve given you the example before, that if I were to kill somebody and come before the judge and he says, what do you have to say for yourself? And I said, I promise from here on out I will never kill anybody else as long as I live.

Should he let me go and say, oh, that’s good. Folks, does that make up for the fact that I killed somebody that I didn’t kill all the rest of you? No.

If I’ve told a lie and I promise not to lie ever again, all I’m doing is the right thing from here on out. It doesn’t change what I’ve done before. The good we do can never erase the wrong that we’ve done.

And so the Bible says that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, died for my sin and for your sin to pay the penalty that was due and take all the punishment that we were owed because the Bible said he would. He was buried and he rose again on the third day proving that he was the son of God who was sent to pay for sins.

And why did he do that? The Bible says that salvation now is by grace through faith. God is able to give it to us as a free gift we don’t earn or deserve because Christ earned it.

And Christ paid for it on our behalf. And it’s ours simply by faith. Not the good we do, but by believing that Jesus Christ died in our place.

Folks, the gospel is very simple. He was our substitute. But to deny that he was God in human flesh, to say that he was anything other than God in human flesh, is an attack on the very core of the gospel, because the gospel doesn’t work if he wasn’t who he said he was.

And so John writes with great clarity about what people should have been concerned about with people who were teaching that Jesus Christ was not God in human flesh. And I’ve gone round and round on this a little bit this week. There may be some of you in here today.

Not many of you, as I’m looking out and know most of you and what you believe, but there may be somebody in here today who doesn’t buy the idea that he was God in human flesh. We may have friends and neighbors who don’t believe that. I don’t know specifically that he’s calling them the spirit of Antichrist. What he’s talking about here are people who teach and promote this idea.

Because, folks, it’s my every hope, just as I believe it was John’s and all of the apostles and Jesus’ hope himself, that people would be brought to the realization and the belief that he was God in human flesh and would trust him for forgiveness of sins. But he does warn against people who teach this. And it’s a warning to me and it’s a warning to you because there are people in our world, not just people around us who happen to believe that he’s not God in human flesh, but ladies and gentlemen, there are people around us in our world who teach and promote the idea that he is not God in human flesh.

You could go to religious meetings this morning in Fayetteville and probably sit under the teaching of a so-called pastor who does not believe Jesus Christ was God in human flesh. And some of you, and no, I don’t have names for you. I don’t know any for sure.

I haven’t been here long enough to know for sure what everybody, what each clergyman in town teaches. But in a city this size, I mean, the statistics are on my side that there’s somebody. And you could go to a religious meeting that way.

Folks, you can turn on your TV and you can listen to celebrities, not necessarily the people that we turn to for spiritual advice, but we turn to them for life advice, who deny that Jesus Christ was God in human flesh. Folks, we shouldn’t be taking any kind of life advice on how to live, on how to be close to God, about how to be spiritually whole, about any of these things from people who do not believe that Jesus Christ was God in human flesh. We need to turn off some of the TV preachers.

We need to turn off some of the talk show hosts. We need to quit listening to what some of the celebrities say in the magazines. I’m not telling you to go get rid of your TV, although you’d probably be okay if you did.

We got rid of our satellite, we watch a whole lot less TV, and we hadn’t suffered for it. But I still do enjoy things on occasion. But folks, we need to be very careful who we’re listening to.

I’m not holding myself to a different standard either. Do I not say on a regular basis, don’t just take my word for it, read it in the scriptures for yourself. Don’t I say that?

We need to be very careful who we’re listening to and not just think, well, they’re not talking about religious things. It’s okay. Folks, we should not be taking life advice from people who deny that Jesus Christ was God in human flesh because of three things that John warns us about them.

Teachers who deny the deity of Christ, teachers who deny the deity of Christ believe and spread lies. Folks, if it is the truth, as we believe it is, if it is the truth that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh, then the opposite would be a lie, wouldn’t it? And incidentally, I believe it can be demonstrated and may talk about it in here at some point, some of the evidences for why we believe Jesus is God in human flesh, evidences even from outside the Scriptures.

I know we’ll get to it at Senior Saints when we continue through the case for Christ. But there’s good reason to believe he’s God in human flesh. And if that’s the truth, then the opposite of it is a lie, and to promote that is to promote a lie. I don’t know about you, but I don’t tend to take life advice from liars.

Do you? If I started lying up here to you, if I started telling you lies out there when we’re visiting before and after services and different times during the week? You wouldn’t really listen to me, would you?

If I called you up, Brother James, every day next week and said, there’s a tornado coming, you better take shelter, and you ran and took shelter, and nothing came, and nothing came, and you look out and the sky’s just as clear as it could be, and I did this several times, you wouldn’t take it seriously, would you, when I called back? No. And he says here that who is a liar but he that denieth Jesus is the Christ. and there are people, I’m not saying it here, but there are people who are unclear on this.

In case any of you are, let me explain this. Christ is not his last name. Christ is a title.

Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah, which means anointed or chosen one. So when it says Jesus is the Christ, folks, they’re not talking about his last name. They’re not talking about some new age concept that he’s the Christ that we all are.

There are people who believe that we’re all a part of Christ. We’re all Christ ourselves. No, it is a very specific statement that he is God in the flesh whom God sent to pay for the sins of his people. It is a direct identification of Jesus Christ with the one who was spoken of and prophesied of in the Old Testament.

He says, who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ. Folks, we shouldn’t listen to teachers, whether they’re religious teachers, spiritual teachers, any kind of teachers, who deny the deity Christ because all they’re doing is believing and spreading lies. And quite honestly, you know, I do not watch Oprah, I assure you this. But I have been in places where Oprah is on, and I know that she has some guests and lifestyle gurus who are on there who deny that Jesus Christ was God in human flesh.

And some of them have good ideas about how to manage your money, how to keep your purse cleaned out and organized, and they have some good ideas. But ladies and gentlemen, they teach so much more beyond that. And I just want to caution you on how much you listen to people who deny the deity of Christ, because if they’re liars on that big issue, it doesn’t matter what else they do get right.

Just like with a man’s salvation. He can believe all the right things, but if he believes the wrong thing about the gospel, it doesn’t do him any good. There are a lot of things that somebody can get wrong and still have the gospel right, still believe the truth about Christ dying for us and paying for our sins.

But if we get the gospel wrong, it doesn’t matter what we do get right. Second of all, teachers who deny the deity of Christ possess and promote the spirit of Antichrist. Possess and promote the spirit of Antichrist. Because throughout the book of 1 John, he identifies this very teaching that Jesus Christ was not God in human flesh with the teaching of the Antichrist. And folks, everything Satan does is a counterfeit of what God does. Everything Satan does is a counterfeit of what God does.

Or to try to twist what God does. And one of the best lies Satan has going, one of the best tools Satan has going is to convince people that Jesus Christ was not God in human flesh. Because if we believe that Jesus Christ was God in human flesh, then we have to start taking seriously his other claims. We have to take seriously that he died on the cross.

We have to take seriously that if he died, there was a reason for it. And if there was a reason for it, then you and I have sinned against a holy God. And the world doesn’t want to admit that, that we’ve sinned against God, because it might affect the way we live.

So it’s better to keep people in blissful ignorance. It’s better to keep people believing he was just a man. He was just a good moral teacher.

Yes, believe that Sermon on the Mount stuff, by all means. Believe that, the last shall be first and the first shall be last. Believe that, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. That’s fine, but he was just a man.

Folks, that’s exactly what Satan wants us to believe. The teaching of the Bible is very clear that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. And people listen from time to time.

Well, I’m amazed at what I hear sometimes from teachers. I’ve been involved in apologetics for a few years now. I got fascinated with Mormonism.

And I’m not going to talk about Mormonism right now, but got fascinated with that and began studying different religious teachings and how they squared up to the Bible. And started studying the arguments from the Bible against these things and started paying close attention to what different religious groups teach what different doctrines celebrities teach, and I’m amazed by some of these people and the things that they believe, that they’re Christ themselves, or that they’re a part of Christ, or that Jesus Christ was just a man. Folks, all of these things are designed to convince people not to pay attention to Christ, but to pay attention to the universe.

There’s a movie out that I wouldn’t recommend because it had some bad things in it, but there’s a speech that one of the characters makes in the movie where somebody says the universe is working all things out, and they said, who cares what the universe does? The universe didn’t die for your sins. And I thought, well, every once in a while, Hollywood makes a good point, I guess.

Folks, it’s the spirit of Antichrist to convince us that we need to put our hope in the universe, or that we need to put our hope in the new age, or in energy sources, or the power within, or any of these things. Folks, our hope is squarely in the resurrected Christ, who was God in human flesh and died for our sins, rising again on the third day to prove that he was able to do it. Folks, that’s where our hope lies.

Anything else is a lie from the Antichrist to convince us, because when he goes into the lake of fire at the end of the end, he wants to take as many people with him as he can. Such is his hatred for God. And finally this morning, teachers who deny the deity of Christ have no relationship with the Father.

Teachers who deny the deity of Christ have no relationship with the Father. There are many people who claim to speak on God’s behalf. There are many people who claim to speak God’s word.

There are many people who claim to love God and yet claim that Jesus Christ was just a man. Let’s get one thing straight. If we don’t go through the Son, we cannot get to the Father.

If we do not have a relationship with the Son, we do not have a relationship with the Father. That’s not me as a narrow-minded Christian saying that. That’s God himself saying that.

Because our sin had separated us from God. It wasn’t God who distanced himself from us. It was that we each and every one of us had sinned against a holy God, and our sin was unacceptable to Him.

Our sin was offensive to Him, and we ran from Him. We separated ourselves, and God in His mercy said, I’m going to provide a way back through my Son. And all sorts of religions promise us a way to God.

There are even people out there trying now to convince us that the Christian God and the Islamic God are the same God. That is absolutely untrue. All you have to do is look at their attributes.

their character. It’s like two people can have the same name. I have an uncle, and we heard on the news one night when I was in Oklahoma