The Doctrine of Christ

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Transcript:

Well, one of my more embarrassing ministry moments, and isn’t that a great way to start out this morning? One of my more embarrassing moments in ministry came a few years ago on a Sunday morning when I was doing announcements. And every year of the church I was pastoring in Arkansas, every year in the fall, they would have a cookout and a bonfire at the house of this deacon and his wife, who built a beautiful house when they retired up on a mountain.

and we’d go out there every year for a bonfire and I would ask her, because I knew that they were going to provide everything, the hot dogs, the fixins, the chili, all that stuff, hot chocolate, everything. I would ask her, though, just out of politeness, when I announced this, do they need to bring anything? And one year she told me, well, they just need to bring long handles.

And I thought, well, that’s a great idea. Some of you already see where this is going. Yeah.

It was in the fall every year. See, being in my 20s at the time, and having grown up in central Oklahoma, I didn’t realize Arkansas years spoke a different language. And I thought this was a great idea, because the year before, there was Benjamin, there were several other kids, and they were getting just a little too close to the fire when it came time to roast the hot dogs, and when it came time to roast the marshmallows.

And there were a couple of those long extendable campfire forks, but most of us were using these short little pieces of coat hanger and all that, and the kids were just getting too close to the fire. There weren’t enough of those long-handled ones to go around for them. So I start announcing that everybody needs to bring long handles to the bonfire and started talking about, hold on.

See, if y’all are from Oklahoma, how did I not know this? I guess. Maybe it’s a country thing more than anything.

I start going on talking about how, you know, we had kids almost burn themselves last year, so this would be a good idea to bring long handles. And I see a lot of confused looks from the congregation. And I start hearing snickering from the choir, which was nothing new, because I would embarrass myself a lot, and they’d laugh at me.

And finally I turned around to the choir and I said, what? What are you laughing at? When the guy said, you don’t know what long handles are, do you preacher?

I said, well, I thought I did, but now I’m guessing I’m not quite so sure. See, we were both talking about long handles, me and the Arkansasers, but I was talking about long extendable handle camp forks, and they were talking about thermal underwear. I had no idea.

And both would have come in handy on that cold night at the bonfire. But I still to this day have not lived that down. And those of you who are friends with me on Facebook will probably see from time to time somebody comment on my Facebook page about longhandles.

I have not lived that down. They don’t remember anything I preached in three years, but they remember the longhandles. See, I learned not only that day that they speak a different language, but I realized we can be saying the same name and talking about two completely different things.

We were saying the same name. We were both saying longhandles. I was talking about a campfire fork.

they were talking about thermal underwear. And it led to confusion, because we were using the same name and talking about two completely different things. See, this happens in religion as well.

We can use the same name and be talking about completely different things. Even when it comes to the name of Jesus, we can say the same name and be talking about two completely different people. You may be sitting there saying, but I thought there was just one Jesus.

Well, there is. There’s one true Jesus, but the Bible even talks about false Christs arising and deceiving people. And John, along with the other apostles, went to great lengths to combat this proliferation, this multiplication of these false Christs and false ideas of Christ. We’re going to be in 2 John today.

2 John is actually the third book named John, so it’s John, 1 John, 2 John. So if you’re looking for it, go to Revelation and turn back two books. Turn back through Jude and 3 John, and then you’ll be at 2 John.

In one of his letters, John wrote about this. It’s not the only time he wrote about this, but the one we’re going to look at today. Wrote about the fact that people were getting it wrong when it came to Jesus.

And this is still going on today. This is still going on today that we’re talking about, we’re saying the same name, we’re saying Jesus. They’re talking about completely different things.

And when people say, well, does it really matter what we believe? Does it really matter what we teach? Doesn’t it just matter that we love Jesus?

Well, sure, if we can agree on what Jesus we’re talking about. There are churches today, not just churches, there are religions and philosophies that teach all sorts of different things about Jesus to the point that he’s no longer even the same person. Jesus is mentioned many, many times in the Quran.

Actually, it calls him Isa, but it’s thought of as the same Jesus. He was born of a virgin. He did miracles.

He was a teacher sent from God. All this according to the Quran. He was a prophet of God.

He was a great man, did more miracles than anybody. I was listening to a radio program earlier in the week where somebody said, I think he did more miracles and lived a more miraculous life than any other prophet in Islam. including Muhammad, and yet the Jesus of Islam is not the Son of God.

As a matter of fact, in Islam it’s considered the great unforgivable sin, the sin of shirk, to say that God has a son, or that God can form any kind of relationship like that. The Jesus that the Quran talks about was not crucified. He didn’t die on a cross, because they say that would have been a source of shame to one of Allah’s prophets.

And so he didn’t rise again from the dead. In the last days, he’s going to come back, and he’s going to assert the dominance of Islam over the world. That doesn’t sound to me like the Jesus of the Bible.

We can be saying the same name, talking about two completely different people. In Judaism, he’s either looked at charitably as a good teacher, and nothing more than that, or a complete lunatic on the other end of the spectrum. Not the same Jesus we look at, who’s the only begotten Son of God, the Messiah, the fulfillment of all those prophecies.

The Mormon church looks at him as being one of the sons begotten by the Father, which, by the way, includes you and me, making Jesus and Lucifer our elder brothers. The Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that he’s a created being, not much different than any other angel, and that he didn’t die on the cross, he died tied to a stake, and he didn’t rise again from the dead the way we believe that he just sort of reappeared in spiritual form. In a lot of the Eastern religions, he’s considered a great moral teacher, an avatar, if you’ve heard that term.

That word avatar means a, it’s kind of like a guru, a spiritual teacher, who taught us one way that we can end our cycle of death and rebirth and be absorbed into the God consciousness of the universe. We could go on and on and on with the list. There’s the socialist Jesus, the new age Jesus, there’s the Jesus of mythology, the Jesus who never existed, you find in society there’s no end of people who believe in Jesus in some form or fashion, but what they mean by Jesus is very different a lot of times from what we mean about Jesus. What churches and denominations and religions teach about Jesus is incredibly important.

It is the most, this doctrine of Christ is the single most important truth we hold. And if you’re following along with the notes you were given today, that’s the first set of blanks. The doctrine of Christ is the single most important truth we hold.

Who is Jesus? When we say all that matters is that we love Jesus, what Jesus are we talking about? Who is he?

I mean, the doctrine of Christ, as it talks about in 2 John, which we’ll get to in just a minute, affects everything. It affects our view of who is Jesus? What was the whole meaning and purpose of his life?

Why did he die? Did he die at all? Did he die for us?

It affects what’s our responsibility to him? What’s our responsibility to God? See, if he’s just a great moral teacher, we don’t have the same responsibility to him as we do if he’s Lord, if he’s the Son of God.

What is our relationship to God? Because I can tell you, if we look at Jesus the way the Bible describes him, as the only begotten Son of God, the sacrifice for our sins, our relationship to God is significantly different from if we look at Jesus as just a great prophet or moral teacher, as some religions do. If Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, and the once and for all sacrifice for our sins, then our relationship to God is that we are reconciled to God through his death, through no goodness of our own.

But simply because of the grace and mercy of God, we are able to be reconciled to God and find peace with him. But if Jesus is just a good moral teacher, just a man, then our relationship to God is based on, Did I do enough good? Did my good outweigh my bad?

Maybe God will choose to love me. Maybe God will choose to tip the scales in my favor. How do we find eternal life?

Same thing as our relationship to God. Do we find eternal life through trusting in the sacrifice that Jesus made, or do we find eternal life through our own effort? Folks, these are important questions, and these are questions that we can’t answer unless we know who Jesus is and unless we know what he came to do.

And see, John realized how important this question was. And so he wrote to the early Christians. We’re going to start in verse 7 of 2 John.

No, we’re going to start in verse 6. He says, and this is love, that we walk after his commandments. He’s saying, if you want to say you love Jesus, demonstrate it by the way you obey him.

This is the commandment that as ye have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it. And he’s talking as he goes on to describe here, he’s talking about the doctrine of Christ. The things that you have been told, the things that Jesus taught, the things that Jesus did, and the things that were passed on through the eyewitnesses to those things. See, the apostles weren’t just religious guys who came up with their ideas and their doctrines and built a following.

The apostles were the apostles because they were eyewitnesses to the things that Jesus said and did. When Jesus did miracles, they were there to see it. When Jesus died on the cross, they were there to see it.

Before he died on the cross, said that he had come to seek and to save that which was lost. They were there to see and hear him say that. When Jesus had risen again from the dead and he was walking around in physical form, they were there to see it. They were there to stick their hands in the nail wounds.

They were there to eat with him. They were there to hear him teach throughout all these three years. And so if anybody knew what Jesus wanted us to do and who Jesus was, these eyewitnesses are our best source of information about that.

And they had passed down the faith to those who were willing to listen to them and believe in Jesus. And so he’s saying the things that you’ve heard, the commandment is that you should walk in what you’ve heard about Jesus. You should walk in the truth of who Jesus is and what he expects from us.

Again, not because the apostles were these brilliant theologians, but because they saw the man with their own eyes. They watched him and they listened to him for three years. And he says in verse 7, For many deceivers are entered into the world.

He said, this is why you’ve got to remain strong. This is why you’ve got to walk in what you know to be true, because there are deceivers. Many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.

These were not people like we’ll hear today who say, well, Jesus never existed. Which, by the way, yes, he did. He’s one of the best attested facts of ancient history.

If we start questioning whether Jesus existed or not, we have to throw out almost everything we know about ancient history. These were not people who said, oh, Jesus never existed. They knew better.

What he’s talking about here were false teachers like the Gnostics who were one of these groups of deceivers in particular who said, oh, yes, Jesus did come. Certainly, Jesus walked among his disciples, and he did all these things. He taught these things.

But there’s a deeper secret knowledge that’s only for the really spiritually initiated, only for the insiders, the inner circle. And one of these secrets, one of these things of knowledge, the word gnostic comes from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. One of these secret teachings that they had to come to grips with was the fact that there’s a battle between the spiritual and the material, the spiritual and the physical. And the spirit world is good and pure.

And the physical world is degraded and depraved and wicked. And so with that knowledge, they said, if Jesus was truly good, then Jesus had to have just been spirit. Jesus couldn’t have come in a physical body.

And so I don’t know if what these men thought they saw for three years was a hologram in their experience or what. But these Gnostics were saying Jesus couldn’t have come in physical form. So when it says, who confess not that Jesus has come in the flesh, Again, they’re not saying that Jesus didn’t exist. They were trying to tell people, well, the real Jesus we need to worship is just this spirit being who didn’t have a physical body.

There’s a huge problem. So you might say, well, what’s wrong with believing Jesus is just a spirit? There’s a huge problem in the implications of that for us.

Because if Jesus came as a spirit and didn’t have a physical body, he couldn’t be physically nailed to that cross. And spirits don’t bleed. And spirits don’t die.

And so the very idea of what the book of Hebrews talks about, of Him being the blood sacrifice for our sins, the once and for all sacrifice, the sacrifice that accomplished what all the priests and ministers throughout time offering their good religious deeds and their sacrifices and their rituals, what all of those together could not accomplish, Jesus Christ accomplished once and for all when He was nailed to the cross and shed His blood. But if he didn’t come in physical form, he couldn’t have done any of that. And so there was this ongoing battle in the early days between the Christians and the Gnostics.

And the Gnostics would come along saying, oh, you love Jesus? Great, so do we. Oh, you want to follow Jesus’ teachings?

So do we. Let’s tell you about the secret teachings. And they were leading people not just to believe in different teachings, not just different opinions.

I’ve said before, we have different opinions about a lot of things, I’m sure, in this room. If you get 12 Baptists in a room, you’re going to come up with 13 different opinions. That’s just life.

That’s just how we are. We are a loving but contentious people. I’ll say it that way.

You know what? That’s just human nature. I could say the same thing.

You get 12 humans in a way and you’re going to come up with 13 opinions. It’s not that they had different opinions and that made them evil. It’s that they were leading people to believe in a Jesus that was not the Jesus reflected in Scripture.

Who was not the Jesus that the apostles saw with their eyes. was not the Jesus that God had been foretelling for all these years. He said, those who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, this is a deceiver and an antichrist. Now, notice here, he doesn’t say this is the antichrist. But the people who were teaching these false Jesuses, he said they are promoting what he calls in other places the antichrist spirit.

They were, they’re not the guy in Revelation that we know of as the antichrist, but they were actively opposing the Son of God. Not just teaching different ideas about Him, but they’re actively opposing the Son of God and leading people away from Him. And so He says, verse 8, Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.

He says, take care of yourselves. Look after yourselves. Make sure you are rooted and grounded in the truth of Jesus Christ. He said, and He’s not talking to them about losing salvation, He’s talking about him losing a reward.

What he’s saying here is you take care of yourselves and you make sure you stand strong. He said so that what I have done so that my ministry to you, that my work with you would not have been in vain. And if you’ve spent time as a Christian in ministry, and by ministry I don’t mean being a pastor, being a deacon, I mean ministering to other people the way that we are all supposed to do.

If you’ve spent much time doing this at all, you’ve probably experienced that. where you’ve spent days or weeks or months pouring your life, investing in somebody who came from some time of trouble, and they’re seeking the truth. They’re seeking to follow the Lord, to get things right.

And you’ve spent time investing in them, working with them, listening to them, teaching them, trying to help them get on the right track, only to see them go back to what they were doing before, only to see them throw their lives away again. And you just want to throw your hands up and say, all that time. I don’t want to say it’s a waste, because God has a tremendous capability of working in people, even when we don’t see it happening.

And God, you know what, God’s word, if you’ve spoken it into somebody’s life, God’s word is there, and it’s going to be rattling around there when it’s needed most. So there’s nothing that says that that person can’t come back and find the straight and narrow again. But we look at that and we think, all this time, and what was it for? It’s not a waste to minister to people, but we may feel that way sometimes.

And he’s saying, take care that you stay in the truth about Jesus, about who he was and what he did, so that there’s some benefit, so that there’s some fruit to all this work that we’ve put into you. He says, whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. This is a pretty frightful statement to me.

You know, the Bible doesn’t tell us that if we’re wrong about the end times, we have not God. There’s probably some disagreement in this room about how all that shakes out. I’ve told people before, and I have my thoughts on what I think will happen, but I’m open to being corrected by God’s word.

But I’ve said before, I’m pro-millennial, meaning whatever God’s going to do, I’m in favor of, whether it meets with my expectations or not. But we probably have some disagreement about that. He doesn’t say if you’re wrong on the end times, you don’t have God.

He doesn’t say if you’re wrong on the way you’re supposed to take the Lord’s Supper, you don’t have God. If you’re confused about baptism, you don’t have God. He doesn’t say any of those things.

But he said if you’re wrong on the doctrine of Christ, those who transgress and abide not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God. What he’s saying about these false teachers. Let me clarify something here throughout this.

I don’t think he’s just talking about your run-of-the-mill person that you run into on the street who’s confused about God, and confused about who Jesus Christ is, he’s not saying they’re evil. I don’t want you to look at your friends and neighbors and family members who are a little confused about who Jesus Christ is and write them off as the Antichrist. He is talking here about people who are teaching these things. He’s talking about people who are leading others astray.

And he says, if they abide not in the doctrine of Christ, they have not God. This world is overrun with religious people and religious teachers who think that they have a close relationship with God. But they are looking at a relationship with God through the wrong Jesus.

Folks, the reason this is so important is because I can only have a relationship with God the Father through Jesus, through Jesus his Son. Because the Bible teaches that I am sinful. The Bible teaches that I am a sinner from birth.

I’m a sinner by nature. And God, in contrast, is so holy that we cannot even understand the perfection of his nature. And I gave you the example, a lot of times we like to say, well, that sounds harsh.

I gave you the example a few weeks ago of walking into the gas station to get a hot dog and somebody’s petting a dog over by the hot dog display. And it doesn’t seem a bit harsh at all for me to say, I know it’s your pet, but that filthy animal does not need to be over by the clean hot dogs. Some things have to be kept apart because we want purity over here, and so it has to be kept apart.

God, in his purity, in his holiness, is offended by our sin, and we are separated from him. And it’s not harsh. It’s the purity of God, the holiness of God over here.

And there’s no way for me and my sin to bridge that gap. That sin is what built the wall in between us. It’s only through Jesus Christ that I can have a relationship with God.

It’s only through the fact that he sacrificed himself to pay for my sins, that that sin can be forgiven, that that slate can be wiped clean, and I can come to God still a sinner but clothed in the righteousness of Christ to be able to boldly approach the throne of grace. And if you don’t have that, if you don’t have that understanding of who Jesus Christ is and what he did, then you can’t come to God for that relationship. And so it’s not God saying, ha, you have the wrong opinion, so you’re stuck in hell.

He’s saying, if you have not nailed that down, if you don’t know who Jesus is, the Jesus of the Bible, and if you don’t know what he did for you, and if you don’t put your faith in him, and instead put your faith in this false Christ over here, you still have no basis for coming to me. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If you’ve got the Son, you’ve got the Father.

If you have a relationship with God the Son, you have a relationship with God the Father. I can now come before God as his child. Not only taken in as a servant in his household, but adopted as his child because of what Jesus Christ did.

That now we can have that intimate relationship where he says we can call him Abba, meaning Daddy. And as I’ve said many times before, there are only two, soon to be three people in the world, not counting the dogs, that I let call me Daddy. And it weirds me out and it bothers me when we go somewhere and, you know, somebody’s dealing with the kids and you’re getting on to the kids and they say, well, dad, now it’s okay.

I am not your dad. Don’t call me that. That is an intimate term.

They get to call me daddy. You don’t, not that you’d want to. It’s an intimate thing that we get to call God the Father, Abba, meaning daddy.

It’s an intimate term. And that’s available to us because his only begotten son paid the price for our sins so that we could be clothed in his righteousness. He says in verse 10, if there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God’s speed.

For he that biddeth him God’s speed is a partaker of his evil deeds. And I’ve seen people take this verse a little bit out of context and take it to excess. You know, the Mormon missionaries come to your door.

That you’re supposed to, you know, you can’t even tell them have a good day. That is not what he’s talking about here. I’ve in the past invited them in, given them a bottle of water, been kind to them, talked to them about the gospel.

He’s not telling us not to do that. Early on, as Christians, they didn’t have buildings like this to meet in, set aside for worship. They met in people’s homes.

What he’s talking about here is not, don’t let them into your house, don’t be kind to them, don’t show them hospitality, don’t even say, have a good day to them. What he’s saying here is don’t bring them into your assembly and give them a hearing. Don’t hold them out to other people as though they’re teachers of the truth.

It would be very confusing to you. Would you be a little confused? Would you be a little confused if I brought the head of the local kingdom hall up to share the platform with me and let him share some things about what they’re doing in ministry and then was all shaking his hands, God bless you, brother.

Would that be a little confusing to you? I would be confused. What is he doing?

And if you’ve not studied their doctrines, you might think, The preacher’s okay with it. The Jehovah’s Witnesses must believe the same things we do. It leads to all sorts of confusion.

What he’s saying here is don’t bring them into your assemblies. Don’t give them a hearing. Don’t trot them out before your people and say, hey, let’s listen to what this guy had to say.

Now, what we did last Sunday night in our 5 o’clock class was fine, Brother Terry. Listening to some of the TV preachers. We came in and said, we’re going to listen to these because you’ve got to hear some of these crazy things that are being taught.

Not from a standpoint of, oh, they’ve got some good insight, but can you believe that this is being preached in the name of Jesus? That’s a little different. But he’s saying, don’t bring these false teachers in here.

Don’t encourage them. Don’t help them in their mission of confusing people about Jesus Christ. So we’re warned not only to be careful with ourselves, but to be careful about promoting these things to other people, because the doctrine of Christ is the single most important truth we hold. Now, I’ve talked about this quite a bit, the doctrine of Christ, and he mentions it in here.

You may be wondering, okay, the doctrine of Christ, important, I got it. What is it? I’m glad you asked.

The doctrine of Christ is very simple. It’s the truth about him, about Jesus, that was revealed by Jesus and relayed by his apostles. That’s the doctrine of Christ. It’s not some fancy theological formula that I’ve got to get out the whiteboard and show you all the Greek and draw lines and graphs and things.

It’s very simple what Jesus revealed about himself and the apostles passed on. Who he is and what he did and what he wants from us. That’s the doctrine of Christ. And it covers some things that I’ve laid out there for you, that some of the essentials of who Jesus is and what he did, this doctrine of Christ. He’s the only begotten Son of the Father.

He’s not one of many. He is not a separate God. He’s not a man who became God.

And I’d encourage you to go look these verses up for yourself later on. But he is the only begotten Son of the Father. The only one.

He was born of a virgin, and he was God in human flesh. Now, this is important. because only begotten Son of the Father.

Some people still think, well, he’s a lesser God then. No, no, he was God in human flesh. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God. John chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. And then verse 14 says, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

See, Jesus Christ was not just a God. He wasn’t just the Son of God. He was God, the Son in human flesh, born of a virgin.

He lived a perfect, sinless life. Throughout all of his years, he never did anything wrong, never did anything sinful. I don’t know how he did it.

I can’t go five minutes without some kind of sinful attitude. My goodness, especially when I’ve got a drive. Y’all know that by now.

I don’t know how he did it, but he did. He never thought or did or said anything that was sinful or sinfully motivated. He lived a perfect, sinless life.

God made him who knew no sin. He had no sin of his own to be sin for us. He took responsibility for our sins.

He died on the cross as the only perfect, once for all, physical blood sacrifice for our sins. Now you may be thinking, there’s a lot of words in there. Yes, and I picked every one of them very carefully.

He did die on the cross. It wasn’t just an illusion. He was the only sacrifice for our sins.

He was the only perfect sacrifice for our sins. The only one that could pay for all of our sins. See, if I died on the cross, I’d just be paying for a sin that I committed.

I couldn’t pay for all my sins and I couldn’t pay for yours because I’m a sinner. But He was a perfect sacrifice. He was the once for all sacrifice.

He doesn’t have to be sacrificed over and over every time we sin. He doesn’t have to be offered on the altar of the Mass every week for our sins. He was offered once, and it covered everything.

Please, please, please, I beg of you, even if you don’t go read all these other, I encourage you to read all these verses that I’ve written down for you, but if you read none of the others, I beg you, go read Hebrews chapter 10, and talks about how he accomplished in one action what all the religious rituals throughout all time could not, that he died once for all. He was buried, and he rose again three days later in that same crucified body. It wasn’t a different body God gave him.

He didn’t rise in some kind of spiritual form. He wasn’t a hologram. Don’t laugh.

There are people who believe that. He rose in that same body that he died in because the wounds were still there. They could feel him.

He wasn’t a ghost or a spirit because he sat down and ate with them. He wasn’t somebody else. It wasn’t a case of mistaken identity.

These men walked with him for three years and they knew him. His family knew him and they all said that he was risen again. And then he ascended physically to the right hand of the Father and will one day return the same way in power and glory.

He’s not coming back spiritually. He didn’t return invisibly in 1914. Again, some people believe that.

But he will return physically one day in power and glory. These are some of the things that the Bible teaches about Jesus. These are some of the things that he made clear about himself and that his apostles were laid as the eyewitnesses to these things and said, these are the basics.

These are the things you’ve got to know. These tell us everything we need to know about who he is and what he did for us and how we can have a relationship with God through him. So J

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