Reacting to False Teachers

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Well, this morning as we look at the book of 2 John, we’re getting close to the end of our series on these letters from the last apostle. John being the last of the twelve who walked with Jesus every day of his ministry, him being the last surviving one, and really the only one that seems to have survived into old age. And as he’s getting to the end of the first century, and he’s at a ripe old age, and he’s looking at these new generations of Christians that have come after him, He’s really the last link, the last direct link to the time that Jesus walked on earth.

The last one who saw everything Jesus did. The last one who heard everything he taught. And John, toward the end of his ministry, writes a few of these letters to the believers that were coming after and saying, By the way, I’m about to be gone, and here are the things that you need to know while I’m still here.

And we’ve spent several weeks looking at 1 John. And in 2 John, he restates some of the themes that he covered in 1 John. And so there are some verses here that we’re going to read and we’re going to go through very quickly because we’ve already pretty well covered them over the last few weeks as John spent five chapters explaining what he now explains in about five verses.

But he starts in verse 1, and we are going to do the whole book today. Very rarely will you ever hear me say, we’re going to look at the whole book today, but there’s only 13 verses. so I think you can handle it.

He starts off in verse 1 and says, The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth, and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth, for the truth’s sake which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us forever. Grace be with you, mercy and peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. So he starts off with this very nice greeting.

the people that he’s writing to, he talks about how much he loves them. He says, not only do I love you, but everybody who knows and loves the truth loves you as well. And he wishes them grace and mercy and peace from God the Father.

Couldn’t we all use a little bit more grace and mercy and peace in our lives? And so he wishes for them these things. These are not just flowery church words.

He’s really wishing that God would bless them with good things. He says that all of this is in the name of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. John spent, we talked about it last week, talking about some things that God wants us to be certain about. And John really hits hard the idea.

He wants us to be certain. God wants us to be certain that Jesus Christ is God’s Son and came to be the Savior of the world. This is really central to what John was explaining to them because there were false teachers already in that time.

Already in that time. Before they had televangelists, there were already false teachers that were plaguing the churches. And that were teaching that Jesus Christ wasn’t, as I said last week, Jesus Christ wasn’t God’s son until his baptism.

And stopped being his son right before the crucifixion. And that Christ really was just a spirit, didn’t have a body of flesh, which is bonkers if you ask me. and also has some problems when we come to the idea that God’s Son shed his blood to die for us.

If you take that away, there’s no salvation, except through their weird secret knowledge that they taught. So John was warning the churches, hey, stay away from this stuff. This is poison.

And every opportunity he gets, he hits home the idea that Jesus is, was, and always will be the Son of God. That’s one of the big driving principles behind what John writes here and in the other letters. and it says that he’s writing to the elect lady and her children and there’s been lots of conversation lots of discussion about who he’s actually writing to some people take this just at face value and say that he’s writing to a lady who was uh prominent in one of the churches and her children and giving these instructions saying hey you’re an example in the church so follow this example follow live this way believe these things and be an example to others around you others look at uh At verse 8, which we’ll come to in a few minutes, where it says yourselves, and the fact that he uses a masculine pronoun in the Greek to say he’s probably not writing to a woman.

And there’s something to be said for the idea that in this time of persecution, they would have used coded language. I know a lady who was a missionary to China, and she would write emails back to people at our church. It was her home church.

She would write emails back to people, and she would talk about going to our father’s house, because they were meeting in an underground house church. So instead of emailing, you know, this happened at church, oh, I got together with my brothers and sisters at dad’s house. And that was a coded way to try to fly under the radar of the surveillance of the Chinese government.

It’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination that the elect lady would be a church, and her children would be the people who were part of that church. Now, either one of those makes sense. I tend to think it’s a coded message that he’s writing to a church.

But whichever view you take, whether you think he’s writing to a church or whether he’s writing to a specific woman in a church, the message is still the same, and the intent is still the same, saying this is how the church ought to operate. Whether he’s writing to the church as a whole or simply writing to a woman who’s influential in the church and saying be an example in these things to the church. The message for the church is still the same.

And he says in verse 4, I rejoice greatly that I found of thy children walking in the truth as we have received a commandment from the Father. He said, when I heard that your children are still walking in the truth, I rejoice. He said, this made me happy.

It’s one thing for our children to do the right thing when we’re watching them. But it’s another thing for us to turn our backs and then come back an hour later and they’re still doing the right thing. That’s when you feel like, well, maybe I’m not a total failure as a parent.

Until the next time they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Right? But John says here, I haven’t been with you and when I found out your children are still walking in the truth, that just made my day.

As we’ve received a commandment from the Father, they’re being obedient to God still. And some of the themes that he covered in 1 John, he hits here, like I said, the idea of loving God and loving one another. He says in verse 5, and now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.

And that echoes what he said in 1 John, where he says, I can’t remember which chapter now it was, but I talked to you about that. He says, I don’t give you a new commandment, and then turns right around and says, here’s the new commandment. When really what he’s talking about is this is the same old thing that God’s been telling us all along, and yet it’s all new because Jesus has enabled us to do it.

So it’s not a new commandment, but it’s like it’s a new commandment. And he says to her in verse 5, I’m not writing to you anything new. This is nothing new to you, but that we love one another.

And he talks about loving God in verse 6. This is love that we walk after his commandments. You want to say that you love God, show it, prove it by doing what he tells you to do.

And that same example I always give, those days that the kids just could not care less about what I’m telling them to do if they tried, and then come up to me and say, Daddy, I love you. That’s great, but I don’t feel very loved right now because you’ve just totally disregarded anything I said. Nothing I say matters.

Of course, I know they love me, and I love them even when I want to pull their little heads off. But it means so much more when it’s demonstrated, right? And he talks about demonstrating our love for God through obedience.

This is the love that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it. He says there’s nothing new here.

Just do what God has already told you to do. There’s not some new way to make God happy. Just do what he’s already told you.

And then in verse 7, he goes on. We’ve talked about this a little bit in 1 John. First, talking about the idea of identifying and rejecting the antichrist spirit that is in the world.

and this antichrist spirit denies the doctrine of Jesus Christ. He said, For many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. He’s talking about these beginnings of the Gnostics who believe all that weird nonsense I told you at the beginning of the message about Jesus becoming the Son of God and then stopping in their secret knowledge and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He says these people deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

They deny that God, the Son, put on human flesh and came to earth and shed his blood for our sins. He said, that is a deceiver. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Now this gets a little confusing because when we hear the term antichrist, we think of the guy that it talks about in the book of Revelation.

And we think about these huge world leaders that people have speculated about. People thought Hitler was the antichrist. People thought Napoleon was the antichrist. I mean, people thought Nero was the antichrist. Some Christians today still think it was Nero who was the antichrist that he talked about. Regardless of who the Antichrist, the Antichrist is, the Bible said already in their day there was an Antichrist spirit.

That not only was there someone who was going to be the Antichrist, but there were lots of people who were an Antichrist. Just because they were against Christ, that’s what anti means. They were against the doctrine of Christ. And he says, look to yourselves that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. And he’s talking about the fact that, hey, we’ve led you to Christ, we’ve discipled you, we’ve built you up in the faith, and we don’t want to do all of that just to see you go astray after these weird ideas, you know, here toward the end.

Keep an eye on yourselves, make sure that you’re still in the truth, so that we receive a full reward. And he’s not saying, because I want God to give me a bigger mansion when I get to heaven, so you better walk the straight and narrow and don’t blow this for me, buddy. No, he’s talking about the reward of seeing the things that they would do for the kingdom.

When you get involved in ministry, and I don’t mean as a pastor, I mean you as a Christian. I’m not in ministry because I’m a pastor. I’m in ministry because I’m a Christian.

And you’re supposed to be in ministry because you’re a Christian. Your ministry may look different from mine. Part of my ministry is to pastor this church.

Your ministry may be teaching school, working at a bank. When you get involved in ministry and you start leading people to Christ and you start building people up in the faith, it is a rewarding experience to look at people and see them grow in the faith and realize that God used you as a tool to be part of that. And to see them grow and to see them lead others, it’s a very rewarding thing.

And he says, hey, don’t go off in left field here because we want the full reward. We want to see what God will do in and through you for the kingdom. In verse 9, he says, Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God.

He’s very clear here. Whoever denies the doctrine of Christ does not have a relationship with God. It’s just that simple.

And the message is the same today to all those who say, I have a relationship with God. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? No, there are many roads to God.

No, God says, the Holy Spirit of God says here through John, that those who transgress and abide not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God. If you don’t have the doctrine of Jesus Christ, you do not have a relationship with God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son.

And this is where he starts to give us some new information. Everything up to now has really been him restating in this separate letter some of the things he’s already written in 1 John, but starting in verse 10, he gives us some new information. That’s where I want us to focus this morning, rather than just tell you the same things that I’ve told you for the last several weeks.

He’s talking about these people who deny the doctrine of Christ, which I spelled out for you a few weeks ago. The doctrine of Christ is just the truth about who Jesus Christ is and what he came to do. In a very general, maybe overly simplistic way, here it is that Jesus Christ is God the Son, that He is co-eternal and co-equal with God the Father, that He existed from eternity past. He was there in the creation of the world.

He participated in the creation of the world. And then about 2,000 years ago, He stepped into time and space and He put on human flesh and became fully God and fully man. He was already fully God.

He became fully God and fully man. He was born of a virgin. He lived among us for 30 some odd years, lived a perfect sinless life, did miracles, raised people from the dead, and never violated the law of God once.

And then in obedience to his father, he went to the cross as the only acceptable sacrifice for our sins. He was nailed to that cross, taking responsibility for every wrong that you and I had ever done, said, or thought. And he shed his blood, and he died there.

And he commended his spirit into the father’s hands. He was buried in a borrowed tomb. Three days later, he arose again from the dead, proving that he had the power to forgive sins just like he claimed to.

He showed himself to those who were around and those who knew him to prove that he really had risen from the dead. And then he ascended to the right hand of God the Father, where he remains even today until he returns to judge the world and bring his saints home. That’s the doctrine of Christ. I know some of you might have been thinking, well, there’s got to be more to it than that.

When you hear the word doctrine, you think seminary, theologians and all that. The doctrine of Christ is just very simple. What the Bible teaches about Jesus Christ. Who he was, what he did, how we can have salvation through him and him alone.

And even in their day, they had people who denied those things. We have people who deny those things as well today. We have people who call themselves Christians who deny these things today.

And this is not, you know, attack other churches and denomination Sunday. Okay? I’m not trying to tell you that the Methodists are evil or the Presbyterians are evil.

You know, this is not about other denominations. There are some people who use the word Baptist in their churches, in their church names, who deny some of these truths. I think, why even have a church?

Why even go to church? And by the same token, there are people in other denominations, there are groups of Methodists today who have the doctrine of Christ, there are groups of Methodists today who deny parts of the doctrine of Christ. This is not about denominations. This is about whether or not you believe the truth about Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture.

And by the way, there are people of no denomination who deny the doctrine of Christ and some who affirm it. But just like in our day, they had people in their day who said, yeah, we want to pick and choose and we’re going to change this. He wasn’t really the Son of God or he just became the Son of God at certain times.

There were other heresies who said, well, no, he was just a man. He certainly was a very godly man, and maybe the Spirit of God dwelled within him, but he was still just a man. There are people who believe this today.

There were people in the days of the early churches who thought he was just a created being. He might be a God, but he was created by the God. I’m pretty sure God said there’s only one God.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. I’m pretty sure that’s been a foundational teaching from the beginning. Today, you have the idea that Jesus was begotten by God the Father, but just one of many.

And by the way, God the Father used to have a mortal body and became God, and we can follow in his footsteps and become gods through obedience to the teachings of the Mormon church. My understanding, unless they’ve changed the teaching recently to be something else, is that at one point, and possibly still today, the Jehovah’s Witnesses taught that Jesus was actually the Archangel Michael at one point in his existence. Folks, we’re still surrounded by, there are churches in Oklahoma City today that teach that Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin and did not rise again from the dead.

Churches who teach this. And again, like I said, I don’t understand what’s the point of even going to church. If I didn’t believe this, you know what, it’d be a whole lot easier to sleep in on Sunday morning and not feel the guilt of, oh, I sinned, I didn’t do the right thing, I didn’t tell enough people about Jesus.

It’d be a whole lot easier to walk away from this if I didn’t believe that Jesus was who he said he was. I don’t understand the point of going through those motions. So they dealt with it.

We deal with it still today. And here’s what John says, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, 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. He says, don’t take him into your house. Don’t show him hospitality.

Don’t wish them well. And there are some people who take it to that extreme and say, or I should say take it to an extreme, and say, yeah, if you have a friend who doesn’t believe what you do about Jesus, don’t be friends with him. Don’t show him any hospitality.

I wondered about this because years ago, I got a call on a Saturday morning from my cousin in Norman, and she said, there are two missionaries at my door. I don’t know why she was whispering. And she said they were at her door.

They were not anymore. So I don’t know why she was whispering. She’s in the house.

Called me and said, I was in high school or college. She said, come down here. I said, why do I need to come down there if they’re not there anymore?

She said, well, I told them I was naked to come back in an hour. And I said, well, you’re not naked, are you? Because I’m not going down there.

She said, no. So I came down there and we waited. These two nice young men from Utah came back. We invited them in, gave them refreshments, and listened to their spiel, and then pounced.

Because at the time, we were toying with the idea of working together and writing a book on Mormon teaching and how to witness to them and all that. So, you know, there was a purpose in mind here. But I read passages like this, and I think, did we sin by giving them a bottle of water?

Should we not have invited them into the living room? I mean, did we commit some transgression here of God’s law? Let me tell you what he’s talking about.

In their day, for ministry to be carried out, people traveled. Today, I’m pretty well settled here in Seminole, and I minister to this congregation and the community at large as I have an opportunity. But there were a shortage of trained Christian leaders and teachers at that time, So they would travel, sort of like the old circuit-riding preachers of our pioneer days.

They would travel from place to place, and they would minister to the churches. And there was no McDonald’s. There was no Holiday Inn.

I’d probably be better off and a lot skinnier if there was no McDonald’s today, but those sausage biscuits or something else, I’ll tell you why. Anyway, when they traveled, they had the only option was to stay with people. And you as a believer, if somebody who was a teacher came to your home, you would put them up for the night or for the week, however long they were going to stay there.

You would feed them. And out of the goodness of your heart, you would provide them with supplies for the next portion of the journey. That’s just the way it worked.

You think, well, how rude. They come in and take all your stuff. It was a joyful thing to be able to support these people as they went on their journey, kind of like we do with missionaries.

We’ve had missionaries here, and the church has taken up an offering, And then some of y’all have given them cash way above and beyond. And we’ve sent them back home with food and snacks for the two-hour journey home to wherever they were going. We do this today.

It’s not a strange thing. But back then it was the only way. If you didn’t have people to put you up and take you into their home and give you hospitality and feed you, you could not travel from area to area to preach your message.

You’re pretty much stuck where you live. The ministry of these missionaries, these traveling teachers in that day, was entirely dependent on the hospitality of Christians. And there were some Christians who, because of their love and their generosity, were just willing to give to anybody who came along and said, I believe in Jesus Christ. But what was happening, and I don’t fault those believers for that at all.

I wish we were all. I wish I was more like that. But they were willing to give to just anybody, and the false teachers were taking advantage of it.

oh yeah, I believe in Jesus Christ, never stopping to define which Jesus Christ they believed in. I don’t know if any of you remember last year when I taught a series on the different views that people have of Jesus. You may not, because you’ve slept since then, but I know some of you were kind of surprised when I called it liar, lunatic, legend, or Lord, because those are really the only options.

Jesus is one of those four things. And we talked about some of the different views that people have of Jesus. Jesus the good man.

Jesus the religious riddle. Well, he just believed, you know, whatever I want to believe, Jesus is a blank slate. Jesus, the revolutionary.

Jesus, you know, and then the Jesus of the Bible. Oh, yeah, I believe in Jesus. You know what?

You ask the Mormon, do you believe in Jesus Christ? Absolutely they do. His name is on their church.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, do they believe in Jesus? Absolutely they do. I’ll go you a step further.

The Muslims believe in Jesus. The Hindus believe in Jesus. I tell you what, the Jesus that they believe in is not the same Jesus that is taught in our scriptures.

And so they were saying, oh, you believe in Jesus, come in, let us help you. And these Christians were providing them with the supplies that they needed to go on and continue leading other people astray. I don’t fault them for that.

I fault the false teachers for that. But John says, by the way, if they come to you, just because they say they believe in Jesus, if they come to you and they don’t have the doctrine of Christ, do not take them into your home. You see the reason now why he says don’t take them into your home.

It’s not a sin if you invite the Mormon missionary for a glass of iced tea and a quick little chat about who Jesus really is. It’s quite another thing to enable their ministry. So he says don’t do that.

There are a couple things that he tells us here that I’m just going to go through very quickly. You’ve got them in your notes. We must not enable false teachers.

That’s exactly what they were doing. They would not, these false teachers, these Gnostics, these Aryans, these all these different groups of heretics, we call them now, would not have had the opportunity to travel throughout the Eastern Roman Empire and spread their false messages if they hadn’t had hospitality of people putting them up for the night and feeding them and giving them supplies and sending them on their way. And so he says, don’t enable false teaching.

I would say enabling false teaching would not be inviting the Jehovah’s Witness in for a glass of tea in a conversation. Enabling them would be, well, here, let me give you, here’s some money that’s going to go right back into the printing of more of their literature. And my understanding is they don’t sell it, but people do occasionally give them donations for the literature.

Well, I like some of what that guy says on TBN. I’m going to send him a donation. Yeah, he’s wrong on something.

Yeah, he’s probably wrong on some pretty important things. I’ll tell you what, occasionally I’ll hear something that Joyce Meyer says that makes some sense. Then I go back to the statements that even a blind hog finds a truffle every once in a while.

And a broken clock is right twice a day. I’m not right all the time, but I’d like to think I’m right about doctrine more than twice a day. Oh, that fellow on TBN, I like some of what he says.

I’m going to send him a donation. Don’t do that. You’re enabling false teachers.

And by the way, this is not about, oh, don’t support other ministries. Just support this church. Support this church.

This is your church. But also support other ministries as God leads you. My wife and I give to ministries and missionaries who are not part of this church all the time.

So that’s not what this is about. This is about enabling those who are preaching the gospel and not enabling. They’ve got enough resources to do it on their own.

They don’t need us to help. He says, if any come to you and bring not this doctrine, receive them not into your house. What they were doing was they were enabling these people to go and lead others astray.

Second of all, we must not encourage false teachers. Neither bid him Godspeed. Now, we say the word Godspeed, God bless you, and to us it’s just something you say.

It doesn’t really mean anything. In that day, what you’re really saying is that I wish, I’m invoking God to prosper what you’re doing. May God speed you on your journey.

Encouraging them. Encouraging them in what they’re doing. He says, don’t encourage the false teachers.

I have some dear friends who believe some really wrong things about Jesus Christ. And I love them and I pray for them. But you know what? I might even pray with them when they’re having a difficulty in life.

But I’m not going to pray that God prospers their church. I’m not going to pray that God helps them to spread their message. I’m not going to encourage them in that and say, well, I hope things go better for you.

How’s your group doing? Well, we’re down to 20 people. Well, I hope it goes better for you.

I’m not going to say that. He says, don’t encourage false teachers. And don’t endorse false teachers, last of all.

For he that biddeth him Godspeed, here we go, is a partaker of his evil deeds. If you support him, if you’re helping him out, if you’re pushing him on his way, if you’re saying, hey, I stand with you, then you’re part of this. And I’m afraid this is maybe the easiest one to fall into.

Because sometimes we’ll say things or not say things that make other people think, oh, this guy’s okay, or this teaching is okay. I’ll hear people say, well, I really like this Bible teacher. And inside I’m thinking, danger, danger.

and I’ll just kind of smile and nod. And I wonder if that gives the impression that I think they’re okay. And I’m not a confrontational person.

I don’t like to start fights. I don’t like debates. Honestly, preaching a message like this is a little uncomfortable for me, but it’s where we were in the passage.

I don’t want to say, hey, the guy that you love and listen to is a heretic and you’re right there along with him. I don’t want to say that to people, especially if it’s a loved one, if it’s a family member. But there’s a gentle way to do it, to not endorse.

Sometimes our silence is an endorsement. There’s a way to do it and to address it without endorsing. I know family members have given Charla a book, and I can’t remember which one now, but inside I’m going, I don’t want that book in my house.

And there’s a choice here of saying, your family member is a heretic. Why are they reading that? Why are you bringing that garbage in my house?

And there’s also the option of doing nothing, saying nothing, and oh, it must be okay. And instead, what I’ve usually done is, you know, you’re a grown woman, I’m not going to tell you what to read, but just be very careful. Be very careful about that author.

Be very careful about that book. Some of you may tell me, oh, guess what I heard? I’d love to share with you what I heard, you know, the other day in this Bible program I was listening to, and I don’t want to offend you, but I’m going to tell you, be very cautious about that person you listen to.

I mean, you don’t have to slap somebody down to not endorse the false teaching. And we need to make sure that whatever we do shows that we stand with the gospel and doesn’t say oh but you know it doesn’t matter what you believe about Jesus as long as you love Jesus no that we make very clear where we stand and what we stand for now you may be thinking well just want us to be the heresy police you may be thinking he’s trying to tell me to be the heresy police I’m not or he wants me to run around checking on what all my family members are reading or telling everybody they’re right that’s not what I’m saying either you’ll notice he doesn’t tell them you know punch the heretics out and follow them to the next town and tell nobody to have anything to do with them either. He says, don’t enable them.

Don’t you be the cause of this continuing on. Why is that so important? Not because we want to be right about everything.

Not because it’s my way or the highway, and if you don’t agree with me, you’re wrong. We probably don’t all agree about everything in this room. As I said Wednesday night, when you get a dozen Baptists in a room, you’ll come up with 13 opinions.

We are a contentious people at times. Not sure what that was. We don’t always, is that the signal it’s time, it’s over?

We’re not always going to agree on everything. Has something to do with that. We’re not going to always agree on everything.

But it’s not