Robert J. Morgan's Blog, page 9

When Darkness Is Your Only Friend

What We Can Learn About Depression from the Saddest Psalm in the Bible

A STUDY OF PSALM 88

 Introduction: More than 300 million people worldwide battle medically-recognized depression, and according to the WHO it’s the leading cause of disability in the world. It affects women twice the rate of men; but depressed men are 4 times more likely to commit suicide. Depression-related diagnoses in America have soared the recent years, especially among young people. The American Journal of Psychiatry reports that children as young as 3 are battling clinical depression. In a broader sense, all of us have moments when we feel depressed.

Some depression is biological in nature, having to do with hormones and chemical imbalances.Some is medical. More than 200 common prescription drugs have side effects that may contribute to depression.Much of our depression is philosophical, which experts won’t admit. The teaching of atheistic evolution, which pervades our culture despite its glaring inaccuracies, can only bring despair to those who ponder its implications.Some depression is the result of our sinful nature and choices.Some is demonic; we’re engaged in warfare with a terrible enemy.And some of our depression is circumstantial as we are overwhelmed by the pressures of life.

The writer of Psalm 88 was depressed, and Psalm 88 has the distinction of being the saddest chapter in the Psalms. It is the only Psalm in which there is virtually no expression of hope. The writer felt worse at the end than at the beginning. Yet Psalm 88 is a part of inspired Scripture and contains an incredible lesson.

Exposition: Let’s begin by working our way quickly through the verses of Psalm 88. According to its heading, Psalm 88 was written by a man named Heman the Ezrahite. We don’t know exactly who this was, but he had terrible problems.

Verse 1: Lord, You are the God who saves me…That is the emotional high point of this Psalm. This man begins by addressing the Lord as the God who saves him. From this point on, his emotions go downhill.Verses 1-2: Day and night I cry out to You. May my prayer come before You; turn Your ear to my cry. This written prayer represents what the Psalmist was saying aloud day and night.Verse 3: I am overwhelmed with troubles. That word “overwhelmed” has to do with overflowing waters, of being swept away by a flood of pressures. It occurs twice in this chapter.Verses 3-4: …my life draws near to death. I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like one without strength. This man was overwhelmed with trouble and apparently battling an illness that seemed terminal,. He had suffered a massive loss of physical and emotional strength. He was collapsing.Verse 5: I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from Your care. This man was upset with God. Many of the biblical heroes were very honest in their prayers. This man blamed God for allowing these problems to overtake him.Verses 6-9: You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily upon me; You have overwhelmed me with all Your waves. You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief. Some people suggest this man had been diagnosed with leprosy, which meant isolation from human contact and being left to literally rot to death.Verses 9-12: I call to You, Lord, every day; I spread out my hands to You. Do You show Your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise You? Is Your love declared in the grave, Your faithfulness in Destruction? Are Your wonders known in the place of darkness, or Your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? In a series of rhetorical questions, the man asked God, “What good can I accomplish in this condition? What purpose would it serve if I died?”Verses 13-14: But I cry to You for help, Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before You. Why, Lord, do You reject me and hide Your face from me? Notice that answerless question: “Why?”Verse 15: From my youth I have suffered and been close to death; I have borne Your terrors and am in despair. This man’s entire life had been hard. Perhaps his diagnosis of leprosy was the final verdict in a lifetime of failing health. The word “despair” is the translation of a Hebrew term found only here in the Bible. Various translations say, “I can’t take it anymore… I am finished… I am helpless… I am desperate… I am worn out….”Verse 16: Your wrath has swept over me; Your terrors have destroyed me. Here was a worship leader who said, “God, You have destroyed me.”Verses 17-18: All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. There was not a single moment in the day when this man felt better. All day long he suffered. And in verse 18 he ends his psalm and his prayer by saying to the Lord: You have taken from me friend and neighbor—darkness is my closest friend.

 That all sounds very depressing, doesn’t it? This man could not change his circumstances, no matter how much he wanted to. He seemed unable to lift his own spirits. There are times when we cannot change our circumstances or even lift our spirits. But all is not lost. As depressing as Psalm 88 seems, there is something hopeful about it. There is a powerful lesson here. There was one thing this man could do, and he did it with every verse, with every sentence, with every word. He prayed. Every verse is a prayer to God. When you can’t change your circumstances or lift your spirits, there is one thing you can do. You can keep praying. The most hopeful verse in the entire Psalm is verse 1, when he started his prayer by addressing the Lord as “the God who saves me.” Now, a careful study of Psalm 88 shows us Heman the Ezrahite prayed to his God in seven different ways.

First, he prayed audibly. He said, Day and night I cry out to You. The word “cry” indicates vocality. I think most people in the Bible prayed audibly. While God can read our minds, our thoughts are better articulated when they pass through our lips. If you’re in a depressed frame of mind, it helps to pray audibly. It makes our prayers more specific and reminds us we really are talking to someone there in the room with us.

Second, this man prayed with pen and ink. He wrote his prayer. He took the time to gather his thoughts and compose them into a poem of prayer. Writing out our prayers or composing them into a poem is a powerful spiritual exercise. Many of our great Christian hymns have come about in this way. I keep a little prayer notebook and find great therapy in writing out a prayer to God when I feel overwhelmed.

Third, this man prayed musically. He offered his prayer in song. When he wrote out his prayer, he didn’t write an essay, narrative, or letter. He wrote a poem set to music, and he sang out his prayer. The superscription says it was a song for the music director to teach the choirs of Israel. The Psalms were hymns to be sung. There is a powerful effect to singing our prayers; that’s the value of Christian hymnody. That’s why I keep a hymnbook by my desk. Remember, it was when King Jehoshaphat put choirs in front of his armies that the enemy forces were routed. Satan hardly knows what to do with Christians who sing.

Fourth, this man prayed physically. He didn’t curl into a fetal position and whimper. Verse 9 says, I spread out my hands to You. This man may have been kneeling or sitting or standing, but he exerted the energy to lift his hands upward, toward heaven and toward God and toward the source of his help, and his uplifted hands were a symbol of faith and need and expectancy. The people in the Bible prayed very physically.

Fifth, this man prayed honestly. He was not irreverent or blasphemous, but he was brutally open as he told God how he felt.

Sixth, he prayed scripturally. You find many of his sentences and phrases recorded in a similar fashion elsewhere in the Psalms. He must have been very familiar with the Psalms, because he uses language and terms that are reflected in other Scriptures. For example, Psalm 68:20 says, “Our God is a God who saves.” And Heman began his prayer, “Lord, you are the God who saves me.” Psalm 5 says, “In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice.” Heman said, “In the morning my prayer comes before you.” In other words, sometimes our best prayers came when we’re familiar with certain Scriptures and turn them into prayers, which we pray over and over, using the very words of God.

Seventh, this man prayed persistently. Verse 1 says he prayed day and night. Verse 9 says he prayed every day. Verse 13 says he prayed each morning. Despite his depression, this man persevered in prayer. He prayed frequently. Even when it seemed God wasn’t answering, he kept at it. He knew the truth of Luke 18:1 – We ought always to pray and not give up.

Eighth, this man prayed, and in the providence of God his prayer led directly to Psalm 89. The Psalms are arranged in their order by the Holy Spirit who inspired them. Commentators have long understood that if you want to really understand a Psalm, you need to also notice the one that precedes it and the one that follows it. I believe the Lord wants us to know that we aren’t stuck in Psalm 88 forever. We are there for 18 verses and we read its last line, “Darkness is my closest friend.” But then our eye falls to the very next verse –Psalm 89:1, which says: “I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.”

Conclusion: In 1942, a group of about 50 volunteers from the Army Air Corps signed on to a top secret and dangerous mission. Sixteen crews trained day and night for secret bombing raids that were almost suicidal in nature. They were under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle. One of the men was Sergeant Joe Manske, a mechanic and gunner on aircraft #5. The bombers flew their mission and were returning home when they faced tremendous headwinds that slowed their progress and used up their fuel. On aircraft #5, the crew realized that without a miracle they’d crash at sea and be lost. Sergeant Manske unbuckled his harness and in the back of the B-25 bomber, he got down on his knees and earnestly prayed. As he prayed, something almost miraculous happened. The winds began to shift direction, and the headwinds slowly turned into tailwinds of about twenty-five miles per hour that pushed the planes toward their landing site. They made it to China where the crew bailed out and survived until they were rescued (See Barry Loudermilk, And Then They Prayed (Barry Loudermilk, 2011), 33-47). This man couldn’t change his circumstances and he couldn’t lift his spirits, but he could pray; and somehow, as we pray, God gradually changes the headwinds to tailwinds.

We encounter a lot of headlines in life, but even in the most difficult times we can unbuckle our harnesses, kneel down in the darkness, and pray. And when we pray in Jesus’ Name, somehow, in God’s timing, the headwinds turn into tailwinds and they push us from the bleak despair of Psalm 88 all the way into Psalm 89. We can bail out there, and find that beneath us are the everlasting arms. Instead of saying, “Darkness is my only friend,” we can say: I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. With my mouth will I make known your faithfulness to all generations.

And somehow, the tailwinds keep pushing us on, through the pages of Scripture until come to the Gospel and Jesus, the light of the world, and then they keep pushing us all the way to heaven.

When darkness is your only friend, prayer is your best option, and the Light of the Word is your greatest hope. When you feel darkness closing around you, remember Christ, and keep on praying the name of Him who said:

I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall never walk in darkness,  but will have the light of life (John 8:12).

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Don’t Be Rattled; Just Be Vigilant

A Study of 1 John 4:1-6

Introduction

Now today I want to encourage you to never be rattled by the opinions flying around you, but to be vigilant. We’re coming to 1 John, chapter 4, verses 1 – 6. Let me read it, and then I’ll explain it briefly verse by verse; and then I want to show you how the concepts of this chapter worked out in Christian history and how it is manifesting itself today.

Scripture

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

1. The Importance of Sound Doctrine 

The apostle John is vitally concerned here about the set of beliefs entrusted to the church. He understands the importance of having sound doctrines, because what we believe determines the trajectory of every aspect of our lives.

It’s true on an everyday basis. Let’s say you’re hiking on a mountain trail and come to a footbridge. You stop and study it and inspect it. If you believe it’s safe and will bear your weight, you’ll likely cross it and continue your hike. But if you don’t believe the bridge is sturdy and you suspect it could collapse under you, then you’ll turn back. The trajectory of your hike is determined by what you believe.

If you believe the tap water coming out of your faucet is clean, you’ll drink it. If you believe it’s full of lead leaching from the pipes, you’ll not drink it.

Let’s say you take a final exam in school. If you believe you passed it with flying colors, you’ll be happy for the day. If you believe that you messed up and failed it, your spirits will be down and you’ll be discouraged.

We live by faith in every aspect of our lives.

The same is true for our ultimate beliefs. If we believe there is a God who loves us and who has given us a Book to guide our lives and choices, we’ll live in one way. If we believe there is no God and we’re nothing but random molecules with no true meaning in life, we’ll live a totally different kind of existence.

Our beliefs determine our behavior, and that’s why it’s so important to have clear views about biblical doctrine and theology. This is something that concerns me very much as a pastor. Many of the sermons from our pulpits are mostly application. Most of the Bible studies in our churches are mostly relational. Where, o where, are people being trained and instructed in truth and teaching and doctrine? This is what John was concerned about.

2. The Importance of Sound Doctrine in John’s Day

With that in mind, let’s look at his passage in 1 John 4, starting again in verse 1:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, 

That is, do not be gullible and do not believe everyone who says they are speaking spiritual truth, because not everyone who sounds authoritative is speaking God’s truth.

…but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, 

In other words, evaluate what preachers and teachers and professors and pundits are saying and test their opinions by the standard of Holy Scripture.

…because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 

In the immediate application, John is again referring primarily to those who did not accept the high Christology he wrote about in his Gospel, his high view of Jesus Christ as being both fully God and fully human. These people with a weakened theological message were bedeviling and intimidating the ones who stayed true to Christ.

Overall, the danger of eroding theology and false voices is a major subject in the New Testament. I think many pastors today are hesitant to warn against and condemn certain ideas because they don’t want to be seen as negative or to offend anyone who might be sitting in their congregations. But…

Jesus warned, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15 NKJV).Paul warned, “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit” (Colossians 2:8 NKJV).Peter warned, “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you” (2 Peter 3:1).Jude warned, “Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you” (Jude 1:3-4).John warned, “May deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist” (2 John 1:7).

What makes us think that we no longer have to warn people about weak theology and dangerous ideas that are blowing in today’s hot and gusty winds? There have never been more ways to propagate a lie as there are today.

2  This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,  3  but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

John is saying that the most basic truth about Jesus of Nazareth is that He was Almighty God who came in the flesh and took upon Himself full humanity in a human body so that through His death and resurrection He might provide forgiveness of sin and eternal life for the human family and restore us in God’s presence as His beloved people. To deny that is to be anti-Christ-like, anti-Christian.

4  You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 

John once again, as he has done repeatedly in this epistle, reassures those who had remained true and solid in his congregations and under his leadership and who had accepted his Gospel. These people are the ones who are really of God and from God and they have overcome the evil one because Jesus Christ is within them and He is greater than anyone, including, of course, the devil who is in the world.

John ends the paragraph saying:

5  They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them.  6  We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

John gave them a very simple way of determining who was telling the truth and who was lying. Whoever listens and agrees with the inspired teaching of John and of the apostles is trustworthy. Those who reject the apostolic teachings are not from God; they are the very spirit of falsehood.

There are two basic viewpoints, and we have to determine which one we’re going to embrace—the viewpoint of the Bible or the viewpoint of the world. When we listen to God’s Word, the Holy Spirit gives us discernment and wisdom to distinguish the true from the false.

3. The Importance of Sound Doctrine In Christian History

Now, I want to show you how John’s insistence on a high Christology and a high view of the biblical and apostolic view of Jesus Christ worked itself out in the unfolding history of the early church. The New Testament writers universally acknowledged Jesus Christ as both God and man. The purpose of this message isn’t to lay out all the evidence of that, but the 27 books of the New Testament are clear about this, and it was the understood doctrine for the next two centuries as the church grew despite terrible periods of persecution.

The Council of Nicaea 

But in the early 300s there was a man named Arius. We know very little about his background or where he came from. We do know that in the year 313, he became a church leader in the city of Alexandra, Egypt. He was described as “tall, thin, learned, austere, fascinating, but proud, restless, and disputatious.”

He had apparently studied theology under a man named Lucian of Antioch, who had been a follower of the teacher named Origen of Alexandria.

Arius began teaching that Jesus of Nazareth cannot be God Incarnate. Arius said that Christ was created by God and, after His own creation, he became the creator of the universe. In other words, God created Christ, and Christ created the cosmos. 

Here is a direct quote from a letter Arius wrote: “The Son [that is Jesus], timelessly begotten by the Father, created and established before all ages, did not exist prior to his begetting, but was timelessly begotten before all things; he alone was given existence [directly] by the Father. For he is not eternal or co-eternal or equally self-sufficient with the Father.”

All the other bishops and church leaders in the city of Alexandria condemned his views, but Arius continued to advocate for his position that Jesus was not eternal and was not God, and he gained more and more adherents. It became a furious controversy in the church of that time. It so threatened to split the church that Emperor Constantine convened a conference to deal with the matter. The Council met in the City of Nicaea about 100 miles from Constantinople. This was the first great Council of the church since the one in Acts 15. Indeed, until Constantine suspended the persecution of the church, Christians were unable to come together freely and safely. 

Now things were different. Constantine paid all the travel and lodging expenses, and so church leaders from all corners of the Roman Empire—the then-known world—packed their bags and made their way to this city. We aren’t sure how many people attended. Some accounts say 250 and others say 318. Some later accounts put the numbers as far more. It’s possible that the total attendance of the delegates was 300 or so, but the total number of people who came with them and gathered around the conference rose to perhaps 2000. 

One history book describes it like this: “The final end of the Great Persecution in the Roman Empire (was) less than a year in the past. Bishops who had spent their lives coping with an antagonistic Roman state could scarcely believe their eyes as a Christian emperor (who had even paid their travel expenses) opened a theological council to proclaim the Christian faith to the world.”

Some of these church leaders still bore the marks of persecution. One man had a patch over his eye, which had been gouged out by persecutors. Another was unable to use his hands that had been crushed and he had marks on his body of having been tortured with a hot iron.

After Constantine made opening remarks and some of the primary leaders had spoken and prayed, the Council got down to business. It became immediately apparent there were three groups—one group that held the apostolic view that Christ is and will always be God; the Arians who thought Jesus was a created being; and the majority who didn’t know what to believe. We have to remember that any kind of Christian Bible school or training association had been very difficult during persecuted days and some of these pastors had very little training. 

One group after another put forth documents to clarify the issue, but each led to heated debates. But with each debate, the issue became clearer. More and more of the delegates realized the Gospels and the New Testament did, in fact, clearly state what the church had generally always believed—that Jesus Christ was, is, and always will be God, of the same eternal essence as the Father. He had also taken upon Himself full humanity to live among us and die for our sins. He was both God and man. 

By the end of the conference, the vast majority of delegates came to this conclusion and created a document that stated this. In fact, only Arius and two of his friends refused to sign it.

The original Nicene Creed said:

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,

and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten,

begotten of the Father before all ages.

Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made,

of one essence with the Father by whom all things were made;

who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven,

and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man.

And He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried.

And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures;

and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father;

and He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead;

whose Kingdom shall have no end. 

And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit.

There was also the postscript: “But as for those who say, There as a time when He was not, and before being born He was not, and that He came into existence out of nothing, or who assert that the Son of God is from a different substance [essence], or is created, or is subject to alteration or change—these the Church [condemns].” 

This statement was further refined and amplified in later Councils and Creeds, but it is terribly important to recognize one thing. The Council of Nicaea did not announce that Christ was God. They simply affirmed what three centuries of Christians had already known and believed. Some revisionist and cynical historians say that Emperor Constantine realized that he needed for political purposes to turn Jesus Christ into  God in order to strengthen his throne and solidify his empire. They say that until then, no one had thought of Jesus as being God. But Emperor Constantine decided to elevate Jesus to the status of God in order to elevate his own status as emperor. 

But these cynical historians evidently have not read the New Testament. The entire epistle of 1 John is John’s response to the early church in the light of the desertion of those who did not hold his high view of Christology. And that brings us back to our text. In the first century, John wrote his Gospel saying that the Word (the Logos, Jesus) was God (John 1:1). He is both Lord and God (John 20:28). Even His Jewish critics recognized that He claimed to be God (John 5:18).

When some church members rejected that and left the churches, John wrote 1 John to reassure the church, and in our text today he said:

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

In other words, we must listen to what people say and evaluate their assertions according to the plumbline of Scripture. The character of every single person on this earth is determined by how they view Jesus Christ, and every false religion and cult is based on a distortion of the person of Christ.

The biblical view is very well summed up for us today by the Westminster Confession of Faith, drawn up in 1646, which says:

The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance, and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof; yet without sin: being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man.

This has been the prevailing opinion of Christianity from the very beginning. Yes, there have always been heretics and false teachers. But from the very beginning, the great mass of Christian thinkers in all three major branches of the church—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—have never wavered from what John wrote, what Nicaea clarified, and what Westminster continued to teach. 

4. The Importance of Sound Doctrine Today

This has been the position of the church in New Testament times, in early church history, throughout the Middle Ages, during the Reformation, in our own day, on until the end of time.

Let’s look at some other groups, because every false religion and every cult is characterized by a distorted view of the person of Jesus Christ:

The Jewish faith admits that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish Rabbi, but not that He was the Messiah nor was He God.Muslims recognize Jesus as being born of a virgin and as doing many miracles. They think of Him as a good man and a prophet, and they even call Him the Messiah. They believe He ascended into heaven. But they do not believe He was or is God nor that He is He the Savior of the world. They do not believe He died on the cross and rose again. They believe Muhammad, who came after Christ, supersedes Him.What do Mormons believe? If you’re not careful you can be very confused about this. Mormons do believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, but they do not believe Jesus was or is God Himself. They view Him as a separate god-like creature created by God.Jehovah’s Witnesses is, in many ways, a modern form of Arianism. They believe God created Jesus Christ as the first creation. They deny the deity of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit.   Secularism is all over the place. Some try to deny that Jesus of Nazareth ever existed, although that’s a difficult claim to make. Most acknowledge Him as a great teacher and they think we should follow some, but not all, of His teachings. 

John told us to test the spirits and evaluate the views that are polluting the minds of so many people. We are always on firm ground when we hold to the apostolic truth and to the wonderful biblical identity of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

The hymn writer said:

Fairest Lord Jesus! Ruler of all nature,

O Thou of God and man the Son!

Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor,

Thou my soul’s Glory, Joy, and Crown!

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Don’t Be Rattled, Just Be Loving

A Study of 1 John 3:11-24

Introduction: 

Somewhere along the way in your school experience when you studied Victorian Literature you probably read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems. In recent years, she’s been rediscovered by feminists and by political philosophers who have praised her. But we ought to remember she was first and foremost a follower of Jesus and an eager student of the Bible. She read the Bible both in Hebrew and Greek, and she made extensive notes in her personal Bibles. For example, in one of her notes in the margin of the book of Psalms, she noted how this particular Psalm was describing the yet-to-come Jesus Christ. She was saturated with Scripture.

I wonder if that is why she wrote so beautifully of the concept of love. Her most famous poem described her love for her husband, Robert Browning, with these familiar words:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach….

She was writing that to her husband, but she was drawing from Ephesians 3, which talks about the depth and breadth and height of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

In the Bible, the apostle John is called the Apostle of Love. When you read the four Gospels, you’ll find that Matthew uses the word love 15 times, Mark 7 times, Luke 13 times, but John uses it 39 times—more than the other three put together. And He uses the word another 27 times in this one epistle we’re studying—1 John. Today we’re coming to the apex of this subject as we read 1 John 3:11-24: 

Scripture: 

11 For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

Background: 

This is one of those passages in which, to study it, it’s best to go verse by verse inductively, and then at the end we can develop the main point. John begins with verse 11, saying:

11  For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 

Here again John seems to have been harkening back to the Upper Room Discourse, recorded in his Gospel in chapters 13 through 17. On the eve of His crucifixion, Jesus told His disciples to love one another. He said everyone would know we are His disciples if we love one another. Now here in the epistle of 1 John, this is the first of six times when John tells his disciples to love one another.

What does it mean to love one another? John is going to provide several maxims about this.

1. Don’t Be Like Cain; Be Like Christ

12  Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 

John went all the way back to the beginning of the book of Genesis and to the beginning of human history to remind us of the first two sons of Adam and Eve. Abel was righteous, but Cain was evil. Out of his evil heart came envy; and out of envy came anger; and out of anger came hatred; and out of hatred came murder. 

Jesus said, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.”

In other words, whether we love others depends on the overall condition of our heart. A person who is righteous in God’s sight is able to love others; someone who is not righteous in God’s sight cannot love. They may be able to express affection; they have emotions that feel to them like love; but the person without the righteousness of Christ cannot truly love as Christ does and as Christ demands. So we must not be like Cain; we must be like Christ.

2. Don’t Be Surprised by Evil; Be Secure in Christ

13  Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.

Just as Cain hated his brother Abel, so the world is conditioned to hate the followers of Christ. Jesus pointed this out again and again, warning His disciples to expect hatred and ridicule and castigation and persecution. John told us not to be surprised by this, and Peter said the same thing in 1 Peter 4:12: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come to test you.”

John here tells us not to be surprised, but to be secure. In verse 14, he said:

  14  We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. 

The fact that we find the existence of divine love inside of us is evidence that we belong to Christ and have passed from death to life. John goes on to say:

Anyone who does not love remains in death.  15  Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

3. Don’t Give a Lecture on Love; Lay Down Your Life 

16  This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

Isn’t it interesting that this is 1 John 3:16, and it’s the perfect echo of John 3:16. God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son; and just as Christ laid down His life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

We all know stories of people who died for someone else. In reading about World War II and Vietnam and other stories from military history, we come across true heroes who fell on grenades or in some other way sacrificed their lives to save their compatriots. When the tornadoes hit Middle Tennessee last year I read about a father in a mobile home who put his son into the bathtub and lay on top of him while their home was destroyed. The father died, but the son lived. Jesus said in John 15;13, “Greater love has no one than this; to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

But John adds an interesting twist. He says that laying down our lives for someone else doesn’t  necessarily mean dying for them. It means living in order to serve them.

  17  If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?  18  Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

This New Testament emphasis, which was taught in the Gospel of John and explained in the epistle of 1 John has changed the whole world.

In the Greco-Roman world of John’s day, almost no one gave anything in the form of charity. There were occasional exceptions to this, but the times were hard. Plato taught that a poor man who was no longer able to work because of sickness should be left to die. Another philosopher taught that when you gave supplies to the poor, you simply lost what was yours and prolonged the beggar’s misery. 

The world was unbelievably callus. Their idea of fun was watching people be killed and devoured by wild animals in the colosseums. If a child was born but unwanted, it was taken out and left to die of exposure. This was especially true of baby girls who were regarded as less desirable than baby boys. 

Torture and crucifixion were commonplace. 

Historian Alvin Schmidt wrote, “the Greco-Roman culture did not see the hungry, the sick, and the dying as worthy of humane assistance. The worth of a human being was determined by external and accidental circumstances in proportion to the position he held in the community or state. A human being only had value as a citizen, but very few people qualified as citizens…. Non Citizens were defined as having no purpose and hence not worthy to be helped.”

What Jesus and John taught was radically new in their times. But this message took hold and changed the western world. Justin Brierley in his book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, wrote: “Christianity was the pivot point that turned civilization in a radically new direction, from a culture in which many lives were regarded as cheap and expendable towards the valuing of every human life.”

Justin Brierley wrote about Tom Holland, who is an English historian who was fascinated by ancient civilizations even in childhood. His father was an atheist, and Holland himself disavowed belief in God. His earliest books were about Greece and Rome, but he became disillusioned with what he learned. “The more you live in the minds of the Romans, and I think even more the Greeks, the more alien they come to seem. And what becomes most frightening is the quality of callousness that I think is terrifying because it is completely taken for granted…. This is a really terrifying alien world, and the more you look at it, the more you realize that it is built on systematic exploitation…. In almost every way, this is a world that is unspeakably cruel….”

Next Holland studied the history of Islam, and again he was disillusioned with what he found.

He kept asking himself one question—where did our modern ideas of compassion and human rights and charity come from? The only answer, he discovered, is that the changing element was Jesus Christ and the early Christian teaching about love.

Holland ended up writing an article entitled, “Why I was Wrong about Christianity.” He wrote about how it was the Christian story of Jesus Christ that brought compassion, human values, charity, goodness, and selflessness to western civilization. He ended his article saying:

Today, even as belief in God fades across the West, the countries that were once collectively known as Christendom continue to bear the stamp of the two-millennia-old revolution that Christianity represents. It is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.

Tom Holland subsequently wrote a massive book entitled Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World.

This is the power of the agape love that Jesus Christ introduced to the world and infused by His Spirit into His followers. This kind of love says, “How can I help someone? How can I meet their needs?”

This is the kind of love that transforms a marriage. How many romantic movies have we seen in which a man tells a woman, “You really make me happy”? We’ve heard this so many times we don’t even think about the implications of such a statement. What the man is really saying is: “Your job is to make me happy and to meet my needs.” Agape love would say, “My job is to make you happy and to meet your needs.” 

Verses 19 and 20 are very difficult to interpret. There are many ways of translating and looking at these verses, and it can become very complicated. But if we take it at face value in the NIV it says:

19  This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence:  20  If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

That seems to be saying, “When we love others with the agape love of God, we know we belong to Him and to His truth, and that fills our hearts with rest and peace. And even if we feel the distress of our failure to love as we should, God is greater than our hearts and He knows how to help us do better.” Verses 21-24 goes on to say:

  21  Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God  22  and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.  23  And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

4. Don’t Depend on Yourself; Depend on the Holy Spirit

So the unfolding line of thought in this passage seems to be: Don’t be like Cain; be like Christ. Don’t be surprised by evil; but be secure in Christ. Don’t give a lecture on love; lay down your life. And finally, don’t depend on yourself; depend on the Holy Spirit for this love. Verse 24 says:

  24  The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

The apostle Paul told us in the book of Philippians to work out our salvation as God is working in us. He works in us, and we work it out. This is a prime example. The kind of love John is describing is impossible for normal human beings. It’s only possible for the followers of Christ because it is imparted by the Holy Spirit. 

Galatians 5:22 says, “The fruit of the Spirit is love….”Romans 5:5 says, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Jesus Christ loves the world with perfect agape. We have none of it in ourselves—not one drop. But the indwelling Holy Spirit, as He has full access to our hearts, takes the agape-love of Jesus and begins to cultivate it inside of us, and we begin to learn how to put the interests and needs of others before our own interests and needs. In a marriage, for example, the husband learns that his main job is to meet the needs of his wife; and vice versa. At the office, we learn to look at situations more carefully—not just reacting in anger when something doesn’t go our way. We look at the other person and try to understand what’s happening in their own heart and mind.

Let me give you an example of what I think this looks like. Let’s say two sixteen-year-old fellows were competing for the same spot on the basketball team and only one could be chosen. If both these boys had the mature agape love of Christ in them, the one who lost out would understandably be disappointed, but his disappointment would be mitigated by his joy that his companion got the spot, and he himself would learn the vital lesson of trusting God with the disappointment. The one who gained the coveted spot would be disappointed that his schoolmate didn’t get it, and his joy would be mitigated by his concern for his friend, though he himself would trust God with his victory.

In other words:

Agape-love rejoices when others succeed. Agape-love works hard for the welfare and happiness of the other person.Agape-love forgives easily, encourages heartily, and sacrifices often.

The apostle Paul put it like this in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (Message):  

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

We can’t produce that kind of love in our fallen humanity. We can only ask the Holy Spirit to cultivate it inside of us.

Here’s a good prayer, composed by hymnist Kate Wilkerson:

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,

Live in me from day to day,

By His love and power controlling

All I do and say.

May the Love of Jesus fill me

As the waters fill the sea;

Him exalting, self abasing,

This is victory.

The post Don’t Be Rattled, Just Be Loving appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

Don’t Be Rattled; Just Be Abiding

Now, let’s plunge into one of the most difficult passages in the writings of the apostle John. Read with me 1 John 3, from verse 3 to verse 10:

Scripture:

3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.

Introduction: This passage presents a real interpretive challenge. What in the world is John telling us here? Let’s review for just a moment.

In chapter 1, John told us in verses 8 – 10 that even though we are born-again followers of Jesus Christ, we still have to grapple with the frustration of sin in our lives. We’ve been saved from the penalty of sin but not from its presence. He wrote: If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar and His word is not in us.

John was writing this to Christians, and to mature Christians at that.

He brought up this theme again in chapter 2, verse 1: My dear children, I write this so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

But now in chapter 3, it almost seems as though John is telling us that, in fact, if we belong to Christ we cannot and will not sin. He said: No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

And in verse 9, he wrote: No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 

So this sounds like a contradiction. In chapters 1 and 2, John said that we may sin but we can confess it, and when we do sin we have an Advocate with the Father. But in chapter 3 he says that if we belong to Christ, we cannot go on sinning.

How do we solve this riddle? The first thing is to realize that this is Scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that the apostle John was an intelligent, logical man. So we can operate on the assumption that this is merely an apparent contradiction, not a real one. When we realize what John is really telling us, the difficulty will be resolved and we’ll be left with a deeper understanding of the ways of God and the depth of the Christian experience. 

With that in mind, let’s just go through this passage—1 John 3:3-10—and ask the Lord to help us to grasp its meaning and its application to our lives.

All Who Have This Hope in Him Purify Themselves

Verse 3 says, All who have this hope in Him purify themselves, just as He is pure. He’s talking about the certain and sure expectation of the return of Christ, the resurrection and glorification of the body, and the life we’ll enjoy forever in Heaven. John is saying, “If you’re really focused on the excitement of our Lord’s return, you will continue fighting sin in your life and become more and more like He is—blameless and holy. That obviously means we have areas we need to purify. We have some thoughts and habits that we need to correct. Even though we are Christians, we are not perfect. But we are working on growing better and stronger every day.

Sometimes when I travel, I let various grandchildren stay at my house. A time or two I’ve come home and the house was a wreck. I do not want to walk into my house after an exhausting trip and find it a wreck. I want everything to be in its place so I can walk into a clean house. I’ve helped them learn that when they are anticipating my return, they need to straighten things up and wash the dishes and vacuum the floors. If we’re truly anticipating our Lord’s return at any time, we’ll be conscious of holiness and mindful of purifying ourselves for His return.

Everyone Who Sins Breaks the Law; Sin is Lawlessness.

In verse 4, John defines sin. He says, “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.” This is an incredible definition of sin. Let me explain it this way. Left to ourselves, we are unable to define right from wrong. For example, some people say that it’s wrong to engage in sexual activity apart from a covenant marriage between one man and one woman. Others vehemently disagree with that. They think it’s wrong to maintain that position, that all kinds of marital equations are right so long as the people involved love each other, as they say.

How do we know what is right and what is wrong?

Our only infallible standard is the Word of God. Since God is the holy and righteous creator, anything that violates His holy nature is evil; and He has given us a book with laws and rules and commands and standards that reflect in our human experience what is right and wrong. When we violate what God has said in His Word, that is wrong and that is evil. So sin is whatever violates the character of God as codified in His Word.

Of course, we have all fallen short of God’s perfections and His character and His glory, which means we’re separated from Him. This is literally the greatest dilemma in the universe. What do we do about it? Well, we can’t do anything about it, but God can. Look at verse 5:

But You Know He Appeared To Take Away Our Sins

The verse says: But you know that He appeared so that He might take away our sins. This is the entire message of the Gospel in one sentence. There are two parts to it.

First, He appeared. God Himself appeared on earth in the person of Jesus Christ. John began His epistle on this note: The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. This is what we call the incarnation—God coming into humanity through the conception and birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Second, why did He appear? To take away our sins.

Every week the garbage truck comes to my house. I roll the garbage out to the curb and the truck comes, dumps it into the back of the vehicle, and takes it away. It’s gone and it’s not coming back. It is out of my house and out of my life. That is what Jesus Christ does with our sin and shame and guilt. That’s why we should never look back and flog ourselves for the stupid or hurtful things we’ve done—not if we’ve been cleansed and forgiven by the shed blood of Jesus Christ. He appeared to take away our sins.

No One Who Lives in Him Keeps on Sinning

Now with verse 6 we come to the perplexing verse: No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him.

We know, based on what I quoted earlier from chapters 1 and 2 (as well as what we read in the rest of the Bible) that John was not telling us that Christians cannot and must not sin. He cannot be teaching Christian perfectionism—that we come to a point in this life in which we are perfect and sinless. Nothing in the New Testament teaches that. We’ll be perfect and sinless in Heaven, but now in this life we do not have the option of sinless perfectionism. So what, then, does John really mean?

The word live here is the traditional word abide. No one who abides in Christ keeps on sinning. The word sin is the word that means to miss the mark, to engage in wrongdoing. So the verse can say: No one who abides in Christ keeps on missing the mark and engaging in wrongdoing.

In other words, sin can never come out of the experience of abiding in Christ. When we abide in Christ, He is our everything. We are connected to Him in unbroken fellowship. If we are fully abiding in Him, we are not grieving the Holy Spirit. We are not quenching the Holy Spirit. We are one with Him. When we sin, it is an erosion of that relationship. It doesn’t mean we have lost our salvation, but we have lost a bit of our fellowship with Him. In that sinful area of life we are not at that moment fully abiding in Him.

In other words when we commit a sin, it is a splinter in our experience of abiding in Christ. If you have a sinful habit in your life, it does not come from your experience of abiding in Christ. It must have another source. It comes from somewhere else. 

Where then do the sinful lapses come from?

The One Who Does What Is Sinful is of the Devil

Look at verses 7 and 8: Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

The devil is not only trying to keep sinful people from coming to Christ; he is also trying to create little hairline fractures in your abiding relationship with Christ.

It’s very interesting to study what John has to say about the devil. Let’s make a little list from this passage and then we’ll add some more items from elsewhere in 1 John and from John’s Gospel.

The devil has been sinning from the beginning. That is, he has been breaking the law and operating diametrically opposite to the righteous character of God. That is here in verse 8.The devil is also known as the evil one. Look at verse 12: Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother.The devil is also called “the one who is in the world,” but he is no match for Jesus Christ, who lives within us. Look at 1 John 4:4: You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is the one who is in you than the one who is in the world.The devil cannot do any ultimate harm to God’s children, according to 1 John 5:18: We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them.The devil, however, is in control of this entire world system. The very next verse says: We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one (verse 19).Backing up to chapter 2, we’re told in both verses 13 and 14 that through Jesus Christ, we have overcome the evil one.

Now let’s glance at one cross reference in John’s Gospel.

In John 8:44, Jesus told His enemies: You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

There is a very interesting phrase there that helps us, I think, understand our passage in 1 John 3. Look at it again: “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.”

In other words, those who belong to the devil have a nature within them that wants to carry out his desires. That doesn’t mean they might not occasionally do a good deed. But overall, their nature is one of wanting to carry out all the desires of the devil.

In the same way, those who are abiding in Christ have a nature within that wants to carry out the desires of Christ. That doesn’t mean we might not occasionally do something wrong. But overall, our nature is one of wanting to carry out the desires of Christ.

I want to suggest that is the essence of what John is saying in 1 John 3. John cannot be talking about sinless perfection in this life because he has already told us what to do as Christian when we sin. But he is saying:

The one who abides in Christ has a nature that wants to please Jesus all the time. If you don’t have that nature within you, you cannot be a Christian. When we abide in Christ, we simply want to please Him with all we do, with all we say, with all we are. The one who abides in the devil has a nature that wants to please the devil all the time. 

I believe that is what John is telling us here. He is not telling us that in Christ we cannot sin. He is telling us that when we abide in Christ, it is no longer in our nature to sin. We are becoming more and more like Jesus. When we do sin, as he said in chapter 1 and 2, we confess it and we have an Advocate with the Father. But the more we learn to abide in Christ, the more we will live in a way that pleases Him.

Now, let’s go on to the last part of the passage.

Jesus Appeared to Destroy the Devil’s Work

Verse 8 continues: The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. This really goes back to the first announcement of the Gospel in Genesis 3:15, when the Lord said to Satan that one day the seed of woman—a Messiah—would appear who would crush his head.

Hebrews 2:14 says the same thing, telling us that by His death, Jesus Christ broke the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil. 

Revelation 20:10 is one of the most wonderful verses in the Bible. It says: “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur…forever and ever.”

No One Who is Born of God Will Continue to Sin

Now we can wrap up our study with verses 9 and 10. Verse 9 says: No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.

We interpret this in the light of what we have already said. John is not telling us that when we receive Christ as Savior we’ll never fall into another sin. He is telling us that when we are born again and abiding in Christ, we have a new nature and that new nature wants to please the Lord. If we don’t have that nature, we’ve not been born again. 

But I can’t pass over one particular word here that is shocking to theologians and to careful Bible students. There is nothing else in the Bible like it. One commentator called it a very daring metaphor. Look at verse 9 again: No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them.

The word seed is the Greek word for semen. Most commentators believe John is using this remarkable metaphor to describe the Holy Spirit, who applies the blood of Jesus Christ to our hearts, causes us to be born again, and then remains within us, living within us, which is how we abide in Christ. Anyone who has undergone this remarkable experience will have a desire to please the Lord. We will be grieved at the sinful tendencies in our lives and seek to overcome them for His glory.

So, to summarize, John was not a man to contradict himself. Having admitted that Christians sin and have to confess their sins, he is not about to teach that we are sinlessly perfect. He is telling us that when we are born of God’s seed, when the Holy Spirit has wrought this incredible transformation, when we are abiding in Christ we have a new nature that wants to please the Lord and that grows in holiness. If we don’t have that, we should question our salvation. On the other hand, the people of this world have a nature that wants to sin. They are living out the desires of their father, the devil.

One of the ways we know we are saved is that within us there’s a desire to live as we should, to live biblically, to live with growing personal holiness, until we see Christ face to face, and then we will be as He is. We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

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The Donelson Fellowship’s First Pastor

Before it’s lost, I want to honor the story of The Donelson Fellowship’s first pastor, because I owe him a lot! He paved the way for those of us who followed him. His name was Robert Owen, and his son Dennis helped me remember and record his story. Rev. Owen was born early in the 20th century to a farmer and his wife in Florida. Robert was the oldest of four boys. Their mother died when Robert was nine, and Robert’s father had to sell the farm to pay her medical bills. Mr. Owen was so distraught about loss of his wife and farm that he went out to the barn, fell on his face, and asked the Lord to take his life. God didn’t do that, but afterward his young son Robert mostly grew up in the homes of grandparents, uncles, and aunts.

Robert entered the Navy during World War II and served as the desalination sailor aboard ship, using a process to turn salt water into drinking water for the others on the vessel.

After the war he married Mary Louise, whose young soldier-husband had been killed in Europe shortly after the beginning of the D-Day invasion of Europe. The man’s body was seen on a riverbank outside the city of Cherbourg, France. Until Dennis told me, I didn’t realize TDF’s original pastor’s wife was a war widow who had married a sailor who survived the conflict.

Mary Louise went to Piney Grove Free Will Baptist Church in Chipley, Florida, and one day Robert went with her. Within two weeks, he had committed his life to Jesus Christ. In time he became a deacon, and shortly afterward he felt God’s calling him into ministry.

By then, Robert and Mary Louise had three children, Helen, Kinnie, and Dennis. The family moved to Nashville where Robert enrolled in Free Will Baptist Bible College. He soon became acquainted with the small group in Donelson who wanted to start a church, especially the Miller and Rudy families. They had begun meeting in a little house on old Elm Hill Pike, a small white structure I remember seeing when I first moved to Nashville in 1980. It served as a clubhouse for various community groups.

Robert became the church’s first pastor and served part time. He supplemented his meager income by working at the Rudy Sausage Company where he cut hams with a huge knife. He afterwards kept the knife, which had been well worn down, as a souvenir of those days. Robert and Mary Louise were well liked, visited people, and saw the church begin to grow.

While he was pastor, the little congregation bought its current property on McGavock Pike, selling church bonds to finance the purchase. They dug a basement (which now serves as the meeting space for teenagers), and Dennis remembers as a child walking around the top blocks praying he wouldn’t fall into the basement and die.

When money ran out, the members put a temporary roof over the basement, and that became the church’s first sanctuary. With great excitement, they planned their first worship service on their new property for a particular Wednesday night. But that week it rained so hard the basement flooded, and instead of meeting for their opening service they all showed up to bail water, mop floors, and repair the damage. Jeff Nichols and I were told of that night many times. In a strange way, it bonded the new members and attenders. (I myself experienced such a night during the Nashville flood of 2010, when another new basement on our property flooded despite our frantic efforts bailing and mopping and sandbagging.)

Soon the church was meeting regularly in their basement chapel with Robert presiding and preaching. “Dad enjoyed his time there,” Dennis told me. “The people were very good.” Eventually Robert heard of churches back in his home state needing pastors, and he felt he should return to Florida. Over the years Robert Owen faithfully pastored a number of churches before he passed away on September 7, 2020.

When I served as pastor, we wanted to honor all the former pastors and we would invite them to special anniversaries and homecoming events. Robert and Mary Louise always showed up, quiet, thankful, and ready to say a word about those opening days. I want to always honor him as my predecessor and keep alive the story of his leadership, his working in the sausage factory, and the muddy night the church tried to have its first service. As I said about the Christian stories of American history in 100 Bible Verses That Made America, stories like these shouldn’t be lost, for they are our legacy. They must be passed down, often remembered, and cherished by those of us who are pressing onward.

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The Zechariah Zone

Luke 1:5-7

Who begins reading a book with Chapter Two? 

When you pick up a book—fiction or not—do you typically skip the first chapter and begin with the second? On a few occasions, I’ve read the first chapter and thrown the book away. But I don’t recall ever having started reading a book in chapter two. The first chapter typically gives us the setting and framework allowing us to follow the plot and the progress of the whole work.

Why, then, do we begin the Christmas story in Luke chapter 2, that famous passage that says: Now it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And all went to be taxed, everyone into his own city. And Joseph also went up out of Galilee, out of the city of David, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem….

When we begin in Luke 2, we miss the actual beginning of the story and we forget the original heroes—an obscure couple, gray and aged, caring for one another and quietly serving the Lord in a small house in a hill town outside Jerusalem. They lived off the beaten track—but that’s just where God burst into history after 400 years of silence.

Before Joseph and Mary, there was Zechariah and Elizabeth; and before Jesus Christ there was John the Baptist.

Luke is a masterful historian, and he gave us parallel accounts in chapter 1 and in chapter 2. Luke 1 is primarily devoted to an older couple, Zechariah and Elizabeth who lived off the beaten track, and of the miraculous birth of John the Baptist. Chapter 2 is primarily devoted to a young couple, Joseph and Mary. and to the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ.

The two stories mirror each other, as one commentator observed:

The same angel, Gabriel, appeared to Zechariah and Mary; both were troubled by the angelic visit; both were told not to be afraid; both were told of the future birth of a son; both births were associated with the work of the Holy Spirit; in both passages the angel gave the name for the son; in both the angel stated that the son would be great; in both the sons’ future roles in God’s plan were announced; and in both we are told of the birth, circumcision, and naming of the sons.

Let’s start at the beginning, with Luke 1,with this forgotten elderly couple in a nameless town—two people who had experienced heartache in life, yet had remained faithful to the Lord and to one another in the winter of life. God burst into their lives, giving them the unimaginable opportunity to set into motion the events of the first coming of Christ. 

He wants to burst into your life too! 

When He bursts in, there’s no telling what will happen!

Zechariah and Elizabeth teach the secrets of overcoming griefs, fulfilling the unique role God has for us, and hastening the coming of Christ. They can show you how to make the rest of our life the best of your life.

After 400 years of silently waiting, the Lord burst again into human history, and the story starts with an old couple in a humble home somewhere in the mountains outside Jerusalem…

…off the beaten track.

1

God Appointed You for This Very Time

(Luke 1:5)

I recall attending college chapel one day when Stuart Briscoe was preaching. In his inimitable British accent, he uttered a statement I didn’t write down but have never forgotten: “You were born at just the right time; you’ll die at just the right time; you’re living at just the right speed. You are exactly where God now wants you to be for His glory.”

About the same time, I found a verse in the Bible that I’ve sense adopted as my life verse: “You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in Your book” (Psalm 139:16 TLB).

Ephesians 1:4 says, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world….”

For the child of God, there are no accidents in our calendars. 

After his matchless prologue in Luke 1:1-4, Luke began his story, saying, “In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah….”

Both these men seemed to be near the end of life. Zechariah was “very old” (verse 7), and as for Herod, well, that tyrant died in 4 B.C., as he was reaching the age of seventy. Years before, the Romans had appointed him “King of the Jews,” though he served at the pleasure of Rome. His royal title, it seems, was almost like a joke from God, for the real King of the Jews was to be born right under his nose, sending him into murderous convulsions during his final days.

Herod was cruel and paranoid. He killed his own family members like a farmer slaughters hogs, and he had no qualms about slaughtering the boys of Bethlehem in a vain attempt to kill Jesus. In the days of Zechariah and as the birth of Jesus approached, Herod’s cruelty was amplified by a terrible disease.

One of the most unpleasant sentences I’ve ever read in a biography is this diagnosis of Herod’s disease from an early historian: “The chief violence of his pain lay in his colon; an aqueous and transparent liquor also had settled itself about his feet, and a like matter afflicted him at the bottom of his belly…. His privy-member was putrefied, and produced worms; and when he sat upright, he had a difficulty breathing, which was very loathsome on account of the stench of his breath…. He had also convulsions in all parts of his body.” 

Some historians believe he had been poisoned.

What if this man were your neighbor and the king of your little patch of the world? 

Many of us are frustrated at the state of the globe, and we complain loudly (and often rightly) about our government and its policies. But in the Western World, none of us lives under a monster like Herod the Great.

Yet Zechariah and Elizabeth were born at just the right moment in history; they would die at the right time; they were living at the right speed; and they were just where the Lord wanted them to be at that moment in history so He could burst into the human story and bring the real King of Jews into the world. It was the fullness of times when world conditions were providentially opportune for the entrance of the Gospel.

John the Baptist—the son given to Zechariah and Elizabeth—was, in essence, the last of the Old Testament prophets. His ministry linked the Old and New Covenants, preparing the way for Christ, his cousin who was exactly six months younger than him. We can think of Zechariah, Elizabeth, and John as the trio who ended the Old Testament story, began the New Testament history, and connected the two like the spine of a book.

Just to make sure we don’t miss the point, the very last words of the Old Testament say, “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents….” (Malachi 4:5-6). The Gospel story begins at their very point with the coming of birth of John the Baptist who “will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children…” (Luke 1:17)

Do you see how remarkable this is! The Old Testament ends precisely where the Gospel story begins—one seamless tale spanning 400 silent years. And an old Judean couple provided the coupling.

If God had wanted you to have been born in the days of Herod the Great, He could have done that. He could have dropped you into the fifth century amid the collapsing ruins of the Roman Empire. If He had wanted you to help Martin Luther with the Reformation in the 1500s, He could easily have brought that about. Perhaps you would have loved attending the D. L. Moody evangelist campaigns of the 1800s or wondered what it was like to serve to live in the Roaring ‘20s. 

But the Lord, in His sovereign decree and omniscient wisdom, brought about a chain reaction of generational descent through cascading rivers of genetics over thousands of years through ancestors whose names are lost to history—all to make sure you came into the world at the very moment He needed you.

God has appointed you for this time, and He has a plan to use every day of your life to fulfill His goals and achieve His glory. 

It’s no accident you’re alive today!

2

God Ordained Your Background

(Luke 1:5)

When I need an occasional pick-me-up, I pick up one of Florence Littauer’s books. She died at age 92 in 2020, but her 40 books are tonics. Florence was born during the Great Depression and lived with her family in two rooms behind her father’s general story. Her dad encouraged her to memorize Bible verses and poems, which she did. She took elocution classes in elementary school and wrote poems in high school. She was in the senior class play, and in college she became involved in the drama department. She majored in English, speech, and education, and she became a schoolteacher.

Along the way, she faced some deep heartaches. Two of her sons were born with degenerative brain disease and died young. That sent Florence into a deep depression, but also brought her to faith in Christ.

One day she read Paul’s words to Timothy about passing along the things she had learned to others who, in turn, pass them to others (2 Timothy 2:2). Paul was talking about the Gospel, and Florence felt he was writing just to her. She felt God was calling her to a special ministry—one that everything in her background had prepared her to do. She became one of the most popular Christian speakers and writers of her era.

Later when a student asked her about her career, she said, “I told him that my whole life had been a preparation to get me to write: my childhood memorization, my high school plays, my college speech and drama training, my English and speech teaching, the loss of my sons, my Christian commitment, my Bible teaching, my speaking ministry.”

She added, “It took time to realize that my hurts and victories could be used to give others hope. My whole life had been a training ground for. Christian service.”

Every single person on earth has a different background. Things have happened to you that haven’t happened to anyone else in the same way you’ve experienced them. We all travel an original road, and we all encounter our own unique blessings and burdens.

What we discover is that every single strand of our lives is God’s cross-stitching, and He prepares us for the glorious purposes He has for us. Looking back, that’s certainly been true for me, as it is for you. No detail is wasted.

That was true for Zechariah and Elizabeth. Notice, for example, just one important part of their background. Luke 1:5 says: “Now in the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.”

Both Zechariah and his wife were from the tribe of Levi, and both were direct descendants of Aaron. Zechariah was a priest who married a priest’s daughter. They were part of the priestly line of Aaron.

That means their son, John the Baptist, was a Levite, a priest. I had never realized that until I dove deeply into this chapter, but it was a vital part of John’s background. He, like his father Zechariah, became a member of the Division of Abijah, which ministered in the Temple. John must have been trained by his father from infancy, and he was undoubted given the formal education he needed to fulfill his office.

According to Numbers 4:3 and 1 Chronicles 23:2-3, priests could not begin serving in the temple until they were thirty years old.

John the Baptist began preaching when he was thirty years old (see Luke 3:23), but it wasn’t in Jerusalem and it had nothing to do with the temple on Temple Mount. He was there as a special priest to introduce the world to the Man who said about Himself, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days,” speaking of His body (John 2:19).

And look at this! The Gospel of John says: “And the Word (Christ Jesus) became flesh, and did tabernacle among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of an only begotten of a father, full of grace and truth. John (the Baptist) doth testify concerning him….” (Young’s Literal Translation).

Jesus Christ was the walking, living, true, holy embodiment of the tabernacle or temple of the Lord, and John was assigned to serve that temple. He exercised his qualification as priest when he baptized the sinners and when He also baptized the Savior. All the strands came together as a beautiful cross-stitching, preparing Him to introduce the One who was destined for the cross.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Whatever your background, look back at it with sanctified gratitude, because God is weaving all the threads so as to make your life His handwork, prepared to do the God works God has planned for you.

No detail is wasted.

3

God is Serious About Personal Holiness

(Luke 1:6)

When First Lady Rosalynn Carter passed away in 2023, her family held a small funeral for her with about 200 people. Pastor Tony Lowden said in his eulogy, “There’s no place on this Earth that you can find anyone that has anything bad to say about Rosalynn Carter. Not one person on the left or anybody on the right.” That was because, he said, “she did not worship the donkey or the elephant. She worshiped the Lamb.”

What would you like said at your memorial service? It’d be nice if someone could say of us: It’s hard to find anything bad to say, for they worshiped the Lamb. They were God-fearing, upright, honest, followers of the Lamb.”

Here’s the way Luke described Zechariah and Elizabeth in Luke 1:6: “Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly.”

That doesn’t mean they were sinless. It means they were endeavoring every day to be increasingly sinless with all the righteous energy of God’s amazing grace. They were serious about personal holiness.

That’s the kind of person the Lord is looking for. The Bible says, “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him” (2 Chronicles 16:9).

At the dawning of the Messianic Age, the eyes of the Lord ran up and down the streets of Jerusalem and the hills of Judea, looking for an aged couple whose hearts were fully committed to Him. And He found one couple who were righteous in His sight, taking His commands and statutes seriously.

J. I. Packer wrote a book called Rediscovering Holiness in which he said, “…the sidelining of personal holiness…has been a general trend among Bible-centered Western Christians during my years of ministry. It is not a trend that one would have expected, since Scripture insists so strongly that Christians are called to holiness, that God is pleased with holiness but outraged by unholiness, and that without holiness none will see the Lord.”

I’ve noticed, for example, that the language we use has gotten very profane and obscene. If you go into a bookstore and look at the titles of books, a lot of them have words on the cover that would keep me from reading the title out loud. If you listen to a politician speak, profanity is sprinkled through the words like red pepper. Television shows and movies are riddled with words I don’t want to hear. And for some reason people get a real kick out of seeing videos on social media of children going on cursing binges.

What’s wrong with that? 

Colossians 3:8 says, “But now you must rid yourselves of…filthy language.” And Ephesians 5:4 says, “Nor should there by obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place.”

This is only one of a thousand areas the Lord wants to perfect in our lives. Many times, we’re not even aware of areas within us needing attention. So we have to be courageous enough to ask the Lord to show us and help us. The Psalmist said, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

There’s no question Zechariah and Elizabeth had offered that prayer many times, for pious Jews were devoted to singing the Psalms regularly.

Unrecognized, unconfessed sin can make us spiritually ill.

One of the most frightening times in the life of our family involved my granddaughter, Audrey, who was two years old at the time. She became very sick. It was the weekend of the 2010 flood in Nashville, and it was hard to get to the hospital. But Joshua and Grace kept taking her to the pediatrician. Audrey simply grew weaker and weaker until she developed a high temperature and was listless. She looked like a dying child. The children’s hospital at Vanderbilt took over, and the doctors gathered around to discuss what was wrong with her. They suspected leukemia and every other illness you can imagine.

Finally one of them said, “Let’s do a chest X-ray.” The others said, “We’ve all listened to her chest and her breathing is fine. That’s not the problem.” But the man insisted. In a few minutes, the doctor came running back saying, “I’ve found it. I’ve found it.” 

There was an undetected spot of very virulent pneumonia in one of her lungs. Instantly they knew how to treat it, and she came back to life, as it were, almost miraculously. 

Is there an undetected, unnoticed spot of sin in your heart, in your mind, in your habits, in your life that is weakening you spiritually and making you sick in your souls. Ask the great X-Ray Technician of the heart to search you and see if there is anything amiss, and to lead you in the way everlasting.

And the Bible says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him and to strengthen those who worship the Lamb.

4

God Works Grace into Your Grief

(Luke 1:7)

A wonderful daily devotional book is just celebrating its 100th anniversary: Streams in the Desert, compiled by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman. I bought my first copy at a flea market in Detroit in 1981 for fifty cents. The contents are priceless.

Here’s just one sentence for Mrs. Cowman’s devotional material, this one included in the material for July 6: “It is such a comfort to drop the tangles of life into God’s hands and leave them there.”

We don’t get very far into the Gospel of Luke or chapter 1 until we come face to face with some painful emotional entanglements for Zechariah and Elizabeth. Let’s continue our story: “In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive….”

I’ve been a pastor long enough to realize how infertility can be to a young couple, and how much heartache occurs with pregnancy problems and with miscarriages and all kinds of issues related to childbearing. The feelings of sadness, anger, depression, hope, disappointment, and fear are overwhelming.

In Elizabeth’s case it was ever more difficult, for two reasons. First, she was now very old, and now time had passed her by. Second, she was Jewish. For a Jewish couple to be childless was a sign of double sorrow because it meant they could never be in the lineage of the coming Messiah. They could never be the parents or grandparents or great-grandparents—they could never be in the chain of forebearers who would make up the Messianic line. Some people would view them as unworthy.

This sorrow had descended on them decades before, but it still hung over their lives like a small dark cloud that never seemed to blow away. They had undoubtedly accepted it and learn to live with it; they still had joy and purpose in their lives. But still, it was little cloud that always floated over their home.

Yet that is exactly the point at which God was going to do His greatest work in their lives.

I don’t know how to explain it and I don’t fully understand how it works out this way, but God works His greatest grace into our greatest griefs, and He causes all things to coalesce together for the good to those who love Him and who follow His purpose for their lives (Romans 8:28).

He turns misery into ministry, adversity into advantage, burdens into benefits, and human pain into divine gain. He knows how to download grace into our discouragements, and uplift our circumstances until they synthesize with His purposes. Our entanglements become His enablements.

There’s much more to learn in this chapter, but I’ll leave that for you. In the meantime, I want to thank you for following my weekly podcast and sharing it with others. From all of us here in our studios, we wish you a very Merry Christmas.

The post The Zechariah Zone appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

The Best Things Ever Said about Jesus of Nazareth

There was an item in the newspaper recently about a woman who had never been out of communist China, but on her first trip to the West she attended a performance of Handel’s “Messiah.” As the last stirring notes faded away, she turned to her hosts with. “I must know,” she pleaded, “Who were they singing about?” 

As the hymn writers put it, “Who is He in yonder stall, at whose feet the shepherds fall?”

“What child is this, who, laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?”

The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, reading the prophet Isaiah, asked, “Who is the prophet writing about?”

The people of our Lord’s own day asked, “What manner of man is this? Even the winds and waves obey Him.”

Jesus Himself asked His disciples, “Who do you think I am?”

In the two thousand years since, there have been enough answers to that question to fill all the libraries in the world, and yet every description seems inadequate. How do you describe the most beautiful life ever lived? What do you say about the most remarkable man that ever existed? 

In this podcast, I want to share my collection of some of the most superb and superlative things ever written about Jesus. Some of them are very short–only a sentence or two. Some are longer. But all are succinct and eloquent descriptions of His life. I’ve compiled these and am constantly adding to them, for there aren’t enough words in the vocabularies of all the languages on earth to describe Him.

Martin Luther, the 16th century reformer, said it very simply: No other God have I but Thee; born in a manger, died on a tree.

The American devotional writer, Samuel D. Gordon, said, Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that man can understand.

In the fourth century lived one of history’s greatest preachers, John of Antioch. He became known as John Chrysostom, for the word “Chrysostom” means, “Golden-mouth,” and that word described his oratory and his sermons. He once said: I do not think of Christ as God alone, or man alone, but both together. For I know He was hungry, and I know that with five loaves He fed 5000. I know He was thirsty, and I know that He turned the water into wine. I know he was carried in a ship, and I know that He walked on the sea. I know that He died, and I know that He raised the dead. I know that He was set before Pilate, and I know that He sits with the Father on His throne. I know that He was worshiped by angels, and I know that He was stoned by the Jews. And truly some of these I ascribe to the human, and others to the divine nature. For by reason of this He is said to have been both God and man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: The name of Jesus is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world.

The theologian Augustine was intrigued and perplexed by the imponderable paradoxes of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Writing about it, he said: He it is by whom all things were made, and who was made one of all things; who is the revealer of the Father, the creator of the Mother; the Son of God by the Father without a mother, the Son of man by the Mother without a father; the Word who is God before all time, the Word made flesh at a fitting time, the maker of the sun, made under the sun; ordering all the ages from the bosom of the Father, hallowing a day of to-day from the womb of the Mother; remaining in the former, coming forth from the latter; author of the heaven and the earth, sprung under the heaven out of the earth; unutterably wise, in His wisdom a babe without utterance; filling the world, lying in a manger.

The Council of Chalcedon, held in the year 451, was convened, in part, to systematize the doctrine of Christ. They put it beautifully when they issued their decree for the churches: We… confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; the same perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man, in all things like unto us without sin; … and in these latter days for us and for our salvation, born of Mary the Virgin Mother of God according to the Manhood… existing in two natures without mixture, without change, without division, without separation; the diversity of the two natures not being at all destroyed by their union, but the peculiar properties of each nature being preserved…not parted or divided into two persons, but one Lord Jesus Christ.

One of my favorite Bible teachers is the missionary statesman J. Oswald Sanders. He simply said about Christ: Most men are notable for one conspicuous virtue or grace. Moses for meekness, Job for patience. John for love. But in Jesus you find everything.

John Donne (pronounced “don”) was an English poet and clergyman who lived 1573-1631. He is one of the most powerful and eloquent preachers coming down to us from the 17th century. In one of his sermons, he drew a parallel between the birth of Christ, and His death, and he put it uniquely, comparing the cradle to the cross: The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where He was born; for to His tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as His cross at last. His birth and death were but one continual act, and His Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day

The 19th century Bible teacher, A. T. Pearson, said: He stands absolutely alone in history; in teaching, in example, in character, an exception, a marvel, and He is Himself the evidence of Christianity…. (He) resigned the throne and crown of heaven, exchanged the radiant robe of the universal King for the garment of a servant, descended to death, condescended to human want and woe and wickedness, lay in a lowly cradle in a cattle stall at Bethlehem, and hung upon a cross of shame of Calvary, that even those who crucified Him might be forgiven. Can you span the chasm between the throne of a universe and that cross? A crown of stars and a crown of thorns? The worship of the host of heaven and the mockery of an insulting mob?… There is nothing like it in history, not even in fable. How can we understand…? A man with human infirmities, without human sin or sinfulness; poor, yet having at His disposal universal riches; weak and weary, yet having the exhaustless energy of God; unable to resist the violence and insults of His foes, yet able to summon legions of angels at a word or wish; suffering, yet incapable of anything but perfect bliss; dying, yet Himself having neither beginning of days or end of years?

The British Bible teacher J. Sidlow Baxter said: Fundamentally, our Lord’s message was Himself. He did not come merely to preach a Gospel; He himself is that Gospel. He did not come merely to give bread; He said, “I am the bread.” He did not come merely to shed light; He said, “I am the light.” He did not come merely to show the door; He said, “I am the door.” He did not come merely to name a shepherd; He said: “I am the shepherd.” He did not come merely to point the way; He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.

The distinguished historian Philip Schaff wrote, A catalog of virtues and graces, however complete, would merely give us a mechanical view. It’s the spotless purity and the sinlessness of Jesus as acknowledged by friend and foe that raises His character high above the rich of all others. In Him we see the even harmony and symmetry of all graces: His love for God and man, His dignity and humility, His strength and tenderness, His greatness and simplicity, and His self-control and submission. It’s the absolute perfection of Christ’s character that makes Him a moral miracle in History. It’s futile to compare Him with saints and sages, ancient or modern. Even the skeptic Jean Jacques Rousseau was compelled to remark, “If Socrates lived and died like a sage, Jesus lived and died like a God.”

Will Durant, historian and author of the massive The Story of Civilization, devoted an entire volume of 751 pages to the years surrounding the life of Christ, and he entitled it “Caesar and Christ.” In it he noticed the stylistic differences between the Gospels, but he concluded, The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. No one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teachings of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature in the history of Western man.

In his book, Many Infallible Proofs, volume 2, A. T. Pierson, having alluded to the raw, brutal nature of the Roman Empire, quotes this paragraph from a Dr. Porter: How, then, can it be explained that forth from that generation came the loftiest and loveliest, the simplest, yet the most complete ideal of a master, friend, example, Savior of human kind, that the world has ever conceived? In ideal that, since it was furnished to man in the record, has never been altered except for the worse; a picture that no genius can retouch except to mar; a gem that no polisher can try to cut, except to break it; able to guide the oldest and to soothe the youngest of mankind; to add luster to our brightest joys, and to dispel our darkest fears? Whether realized in fact or regarded only as an ideal, the conception of Jesus is the greatest miracle of the ages!

These words are attributed to Napoleon: You speak of Caesar, Alexander, of their conquests; of the enthusiasm they enkindled in the hearts of their soldiers; but can you conceive of a dead man making conquests with an army faithful and entirely devoted to His memory? My army has forgotten me while living. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force! Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love: and at this hour millions of men would die for Him. I have so inspired multitudes that they would die for me–but, after all, my presence was necessary–the lighting of my eye, my voice, a word from me–then the sacred fire was kindled in their hearts. Now that I am at St. Helena, alone, chained upon this rock, who fights and wins empires for me? What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal reign of Christ who is proclaimed, loved, adored, and whose reign is extending over all the earth.

And how can I fail to include this classic summation found on so many Christmas cards and in so many Christmas sermons, Its author is unknown, although it is sometimes attributed to the Boston pastor, Phillips Brooks (1835-1893): He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He never went to college. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself. He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His friends ran away. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure of the human race, and the leader of the column of progress.  I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on earth as has that One Solitary Life.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 1: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.

The words and the witness of all the generations extols that One Solitary Life as the most extraordinary ever lived. But none of them can equal the words of the inspired Scriptures, and no tribute about Christ has ever been more beautiful than the one I would like to end with today, the announcement of His birth and the description of His ministry, as given by the Christmas angel to the shepherds on the outskirts of Bethlehem. Luke 2:11 says: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

This Christmas, there’s only one question to ask: Is He the center of your life? Is He your Christ? Your Savior? Your Lord?

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord!

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“And That Is What We Are!”

A Study of 1 John 2:28 – 3:3

Introduction

Whenever you handle a set of papers, you’re probably going to come across one of the world’s greatest and most lowly inventions—a paper clip. It was invented by a Norwegian man who just twisted some wire together so it would secure papers. He never imagined that other people would come up with hundreds and hundreds of ways to use his paper clip. How many criminals have we seen on television or the movies who escaped because they picked their handcuffs with a paper clip? How many of us have hung Christmas ornaments on the tree with a paper clip? Or used one as a key ring? Or stuck one in our glasses when the screw came out. I was doing that one day when I met a man who looked at me and said, “I see you have a screw loose.”

But there’s one thing it is very hard to do with a paper clip—and that is to unfold it and untwist it to make a perfectly straight piece of wire—perfectly straight, horizontal, linear piece of wire. But when the Lord helps you, you can keep working at it for as long as it takes.

We’ll talk about that today as we continue our studies into the small letter of 1 John, near the end of the Bible. Today we’re coming to the ending of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3.

Scripture

28 And now, dear children, continue [abide] in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.

29 If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

Abide In Him

Here again the apostle John brings up the concept of abiding in Christ. He is very attached to this idea, which Jesus introduced in John 15 in His parable of the vine and the branches. He said, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Abide in me and you will bear fruit.” That analogy has three parts.

First, it tells us we must be attached to Christ, devoted to Him in unbroken fellowship. The vine is the trunk of the plant that is connected to the roots and emerges strong and upright from the ground. The branch is ancillary, a limb or offshoot. Jesus could have used the idea of the human body and an arm. Here I am, and the core of my physical self runs from my head to my feet, and between my head and my feet God has placed my heart and lungs and the organs that keep me alive. I have two arms, one on my left and one on my right. My core body can live without my right arm, but my right arm cannot live without my core body.

My arm needs to remain in unbroken connection to my body, just as a branch needs to remain in unbroken fellowship with the vine. When we are abiding in Jesus Christ it means that we are enjoying unbroken fellowship with Him. He is our everything.

Second, if that’s true, then we are supplied with everything we need, especially on a spiritual and emotional level. Just as sap flows continually between the branch and the vine, so the Holy Spirit flows continually from Jesus Christ to us, and we are always receiving the spiritual resources we need—such as God’s truth in the Scripture and His power and His grace—by means of the circulating Holy Spirit.

Third, if we are abiding in Christ and are being supplied with all the spiritual resources we need, we bear fruit. We are fruitful. We develop an agape-type dimension of divine love that brings with it joy and peace and good works. Jesus said, “If you abide in Me and I abide in you, you will bring forth much fruit.”

So the idea of abiding implies being attached to Christ, supplied by Christ, and fruitful for Christ. That isn’t true in its fullest sense for every Christian, for some Christians are living sub-Christian lives. They are attached to Christ, but they aren’t spiritually healthy. There are habits or attitudes that grieve the Holy Spirit and reduce the flow of His circulation, just as you may have circulation problems with your arm.

That’s why John told these Christians in Western Turkey to Abide in Christ, as Jesus had taught us in John 15.

Anticipate His Return

How do you know if you’re abiding in Christ? One way is by how often you think about His return, His Second Coming. Let’s go back to our paragraph in chapter 2:

28  And now, dear children, continue [abide] in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.

We want to live in such a way that we’ll have no regrets when He comes, when we see Him and stand before Him and give an account of our lives. And now John is going to expound on this and go further into it.

28  And now, dear children, continue [abide] in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.

29  If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

3  See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  2  Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 

God doesn’t just love us. He lavishes His love on us, and He doesn’t just lavish His love on us—He lavishes His great love on us. See what great love the Father has lavished on us…!

Think of a marriage. It’s wonderful if a husband and wife love each other, but what would it be like if they lavished great love on each other? What would it be like if parents lavished their children with love, and children their parents?

Lavish means occurring in profusion, with great amounts, amounts without limit, given with expression. That’s how much God loves you. He loves you. He lavishes you with love. He lavishes you with His great love. And He lavishes you with His great love to such an extent that He calls you His son or His daughter.

John couldn’t get over that. Look at his emphatic language. He repeats this three times: See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God….

John is an old man who had served Jesus since he was a teenager, had known Jesus personally, and had been one of the original apostles. But he couldn’t get over this incredible truth—that we are children of God. He has lavished His great love on us and called us children of God, and that is what we are—we are children of God. 

Now, he says the world doesn’t understand that. In the context of our studies, he is saying that the deserters who are leaving the churches and proclaiming a false narrative about Christ do not know what they are missing. They do not know what they are leaving. They think they are superior and smarter and shrewder; but they are simply worldlings, while we are truly the eternal children of a loving Heavenly Father.

And that’s why we can anticipate the future. Jesus is coming back for us! 

And what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 

In other words, when Jesus comes again He will rapture or resurrect us, He will transform us, and He will make us like Himself. We can’t imagine all that means, but we do have some ideas about it.

The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, 

42  So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;  43  it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;  44  it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

He continued:

51  Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—  52  in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  53  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.  54  …the perishable (will be) clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality,

The British Broadcasting Company did a program on what the human body will be like after a million more years of evolution. They suggest we’ll have brain implants just like we now have implants like pacemakers or new hips. For example, we might have a brain implant that will help us remember everyone’s name. Or we might have implants in our eyes that allow us to take pictures or see things far away. We will have designer babies, just like we now have designer pets. 

Interesting, none of that has anything to do with evolution. It’s all advances in technology, which, to me, have very ominous undertones. I don’t doubt that if the human race survives another hundred years and if Christ doesn’t return, the advances in medicine will be amazing. But in the end, every human being will still die—because it is appointed unto man once to die. The wages of sin is death.

But when Christ comes again—well, that will be the true revolution in human development. We will be resurrected with bodies patterned after His own glorified, resurrected body which will never again age, feel pain, suffer diseases, and which will be capable of things we can’t even imagine. That’s what John is saying:

And what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 

Adopt His Purity as Your Own

So we’re to abide in Christ and anticipate His coming. And there’s one more thing. If we do that, we will also adopt His standard of purity as our own. Look at the passage again:

28  And now, dear children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.

29  If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

3  See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.  2  Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  3  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

John has already told us in chapter 1 that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. But now he says we have a part to play in it too. We must work on purifying ourselves.

Basically that means we must keep working all our lives on correcting our bad habits. Think of a piece of wire that is all twisted and bent and crushed and contorted. You take that wire and go through it inch by inch, trying to straighten it out. That’s what we’re to do. We’ve got to keep working on personal holiness and maturity. We’ve got to keep working on our twisted habits and attitudes, straightening them out.

And when Christ comes, we’ll give him the wire and He will in an instant turn it into a cable that is straight and true and capable of transmitting a trillion watts of power every second. 

What do you need to straighten out in your life? If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive your sins and purify you from all unrighteous. And He will give you the motivation and ability to keep purifying yourself from all sin. Because we are children of God. That is what we are! We are the recipients of God’s saving love. The world doesn’t know us, but He does. And we have three great imperatives in life.

To Abide in Him.

To Anticipate His coming.

And to adopt His purity as our own.

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Spotting Deception Before It Traps You

A Study of 1 John 2.24-29

Introduction 

Jennifer De-Stefano is a woman in Arizona who got a terrifying phone call not long ago. She recognized the voice at once. It was her daughter’s voice. The 15-year-old girl was named Briana, and she was sobbing. Through her tears, she said, “Mom, I messed up.”

That would be a nightmare call for any parent, but it got worse when Jennifer heard men in the background telling Briana to shut up. “Mom, help me!” was the last thing Jennifer heard. And then a man came on the phone and threatened to pump her stomach full of drugs and drop her on the other side of the Mexican border if Jennifer didn’t give them money. 

Fortunately, Jennifer put the phone on mute and screamed for help. A neighbor heard, called 911, and people gathered at Jennifer’s house as she tried to negotiate with the kidnapper. One of the neighbors was smart enough to pull Jennifer aside and tell that Artificial Intelligence can now duplicate anyone’s voice, and this was almost certainly a scam—which it was.

Imagine going through that! No, we don’t even want to imagine it.

We’re living in a world of deception, and the deception is becoming more and more difficult to discern. Your loved one has a video on social media, and AI can replicate so closely you can’t tell the difference. Someone imitating your loved one’s voice exactly!

When the apostle John was alive, he didn’t have to worry about Artificial Intelligence, but he was facing the same exact issue. People were claiming to speak for God. They were pretending to speak in His voice, but it was a message of deception. People would say, “This is the real Gospel,” and they would sound apostolic in their tone. But they were deceivers. John was concerned that many of his church members would be deceived by these false teachers, so he told them how to spot deception in the paragraph we’re coming to in our study of 1 John. Today’s passage is 1 John 2:24-26: 

Scripture

As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what He promised us—eternal life.

I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has been taught you, remain in Him. 

Background

In this series from John, I’ve repeatedly mentioned the background scenario. Apparently John sent out his Gospel—the Fourth Gospel, which we call the Gospel of John—sometime late in the first century to his churches in Western Turkey. Some of those attending these churches did not agree with John’s high Christology—that Jesus Christ was fully God and truly human. They began leaving the churches and telling the other members that John was old and foggy in his thinking. They rejected the apostolic view of Christ and were spreading a low view of Jesus Christ among the churches. 

The apostle Paul had dealt with something similar in his letter to the Colossians. There were deceivers who sounded authentic, but their message was wrong.

We’re facing an even bigger problem today because the voices of deception are coming in so many different ways and from so many different directions. Everywhere we turn, we are hearing lies that sound like truth. And some of these lies are seeping into our churches. 

How, then, can we spot deception before it traps us. In this paragraph, the apostle John gives us a pair of glasses with two lenses. I’ve worn glasses since I was in college. Over the years I’ve had many pairs of glasses, but every one of them has had two lenses—one for each eye—and they have enabled me to see with accuracy. In this passage, John gives us a pair of glasses that enables us to spot deception before it entraps us.

1. The Apostolic Message

The first lens is the apostolic message, the Gospel that was proclaimed by Jesus Christ and by His apostles. Look at verse 24: “As for you….”

That’s an important biblical phrase. Whenever you see the phrase, “But as for me” or “But as for you” in the Bible underline it, because it is showing us the contrast we’re to present to our culture. It’s like when Joshua said, “If you want to serve false gods, go ahead and do it, but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15, my paraphrase). We cannot control what our society or our culture or our nation does. But we can say to them: “Go ahead! Live as you choose. But as for me, here is how I am going to live. Here is how I am going to think.” We can be graciously defiant. We can be counter-cultural. 

As for you, we know that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you.

He is referring to the Gospel message, which they had heard at the beginning of their spiritual journey with Christ. 

Jesus Christ of Nazareth was supernaturally born of a virgin. He fulfilled hundreds of predictions and types about Him in the Old Testament. The angels sang at His birth. He had grown up without sin. He was anointed as Messiah at the Jordan River when He was thirty years old. The Spirit of the Lord came upon Him. He taught with authority. He healed the sick and raised the dead. He was rejected, arrested, falsely accused, and crucified. He physically rose from the dead on the third day. He now had a glorified and imperishable body. He spent the next 40 days teaching His disciples further truths about the Kingdom of God, then He ascended back into Heaven, whence He had come. He did so with a promise to return when the times reach their fulfillment. His death and resurrection was a work of redemption, and all who take Him as their Lord and Savior are forgiven of their sins and have eternal life. This is the Gospel. This is the apostolic witness. All four Gospel writers testified to this.

Matthew said about Him that He came to the disciples in a storm, walking on the water, and He rebuked the waves and wind, and those in the boat worshiped Him (Matthew 14:33).Mark said about Him that the people of His day were amazed and said, “What manner of man is this?” (Mark 4:41, KJV).Luke said, “A Savior has been born to you; He is Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11).

But no one spoke of Him the way John did. John said:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men…. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-4, 14 NKJV).“The One who comes from above is above all” (John 3:31).“This man really is the Savior of the world” (John 4:42).“No one ever spoke the way this man does” (John 7:46).Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not recorded in this Book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 21:30-31).

Peter said: “There is no other name under Heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12, NKJV).

Paul said: “(He) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in Him all things were created: things in Heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or powers, or rulers, or authorities; all things have been created through Him and for Him, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:15-16).

This the apostolic message. Jesus is true God and true man—God who became flesh so that as God He might have the power and purity needed to save us; and as man He might shed His blood to make that salvation possible.

Now John said here in our text in 1 John 2:24: As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning—[the Gospel message from the apostles] remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what He promised us—eternal life.

The word “remain” is the word that is translated in the older translations as “abide.” It’s the same word Jesus used in John 15, when He said, “I am the vine and you are the branches…. Abide in Me and you will have a very fruitful life” (my paraphrase.” If a limb is cut off from a tree, it’s going to die. As long as it stays in tight union and connection in the tree, it will be fruitful.

If we’re going to spot deception we have to have a worldview that is based on the uncompromised and uncompromising message proclaimed by the apostles—the Gospel message of Jesus Christ, which abides in our hearts and minds.

2. The Anointing

The second lens that enables us to spot deception is the anointing Jesus gives us. Look at the entire paragraph again.

As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what He promised us—eternal life.

I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has been taught you, remain in Him. 

Verse 26 says, “I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray.” He’s talking about the deserters, the people with a low view of Christ who were leaving the churches. Earlier in the chapter he had called them anitchrists, and he said, “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us.” These people weren’t just leaving the church; they were trying to take others with them. They were trying to intimidate and persuade those who were remaining true to John’s Gospel and his high view of Christ.

In verse 27, John repeats the phrase, “as for you,” and he again tells them they have an anointing.

I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you.

He had talked about this anointing earlier in the chapter. Almost every commentator sees this as a reference to the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus poured out on the church on the Day of Pentecost.

Now, at this point I want to bring in two cross references, two other passages, in the Bible.

First, let’s go back to John’s Gospel and to the Upper Room Discourse, which Jesus spoke to His disciples the night before His crucifixion. 

John 14:25-26 says, “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said.” 

And John 16:12-15 says, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify Me because it is from Me that He will receive what He will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is Mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from Me what He will make known to you.”

Jesus promised that His people would be anointed with and would receive the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit would teach them and help them to remember, understand, and apply His teachings to their lives.

Now let’s look at 1 Corinthians 2:10-16:

These are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

Jesus promised to send His people the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit would guide us into all truth. Paul said the Holy Spirit enables us to understand what God has told us in His Word, so that we can make judgments about all things, developing the mind of Christ.

This is exactly what John is saying as well. Do you see how consistently this teaching unfolds in the Bible? John knew what he had written in his Gospel, and he knew what Paul had written and the truth behind it. So he told his readers:

I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has been taught you, remain in Him. 

Now, when he said, “You do not need anyone to teach you” he didn’t really mean they didn’t need teachers. After all, he was teaching them. And in his little letter of 3 John, he told them to make sure they received the teachers he was sending to them. This is a reference back to the deceivers and the deserters. He was saying, “You don’t need to be intimidated by these so-called teachers. You don’t need what they are trying to tell you. “But as His anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has been taught you, remain in Him.” 

Conclusion

Now let’s bring all this together. What John is saying here is that there are many deceivers, many antichrists, and we have to protect ourselves against them. We have to spot them before they trap us. We have two lenses in our glasses. We have the Gospel and we have the Spirit—the Holy Bible and the Holy Spirit. That means…

First, we must be filled with the Scriptures. We must study our Bibles, know our Gospels, and become students of theology. There’s a sense in which we must all be theologians. You may be thinking, “Oh, I can read my Bible, but I’ve never thought of myself as a theologian.” Theology is simply the study of God and His Book. It comes from the Greek word theos, which is God. It is God-ology. 

I’ve come to believe that most Christians in America have a very shallow knowledge of the Bible. And most churches aren’t really helping. In our pulpits, we emphasize exhortation and motivation; and in our small groups we emphasize relationships. But where are we really laying forth hard-core, solid Bible information and teaching? 

Here’s what I would suggest to you. Get yourself a very good study Bible—one with notes that introduce each book and that have marginal notes and footnotes. Pick one of the 66 book installments that make up the Bible—right now I’m doing this with the Old Testament prophet Zechariah—and spend a half-hour each day pouring yourself into that book, seeking to understand why it was written, what it says, and what it all means to you. If you can’t find half an hour, start with ten or fifteen minutes.

The ESV Study Bible is very good. The MacArthur Study Bible is also a winner. The NIV study Bible is very good. A good study Bible is like a Bible College education within two covers. Use a pen or pencil, or a set of colored pencils, and make notes. Try to master each book of the Bible, one at a time.

The Bible says, “Let the Word of Christ dwell richly within you.”

Nick Proell is a student who was witnessing about his faith in Christ at the University of Wisconsin. It was at an event discussing human sexuality, and Nick was sharing the Gospel and engaging students about the evils of radical gender ideology and child mutilation. Suddenly he realized his Bible was missing, and he saw an individual literally ripping out the pages of the Bible with his teeth. Nick said, “It was my personal study Bible that I used every single day.” This opposing student was ripping out pages, chewing them, and spitting them out.

Nick kept his perspective. He said he was glad to see the fellow digesting God’s Word.” And later he saw individual students picking up and reading the pages that were blowing across the campus.

Nick got himself another Bible and he continued to devour it in the way that we should!

Second, be filled with the Spirit. You can study the Bible for years—some people do—but without the Holy Spirit it’s nothing except an ancient textbook. But everything changes when you have the author of the book meeting with you, opening your mind to its message. 

When you sit down for your daily Bible study, offer a prayer. Say: “Dear Lord, as I approach this wonderful Book, fill me with the Holy Spirit and give me illumination and spiritual understanding as to how to apply this message to my own life.” The Psalmist prayed, “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in Your Word” (Psalm 119:18, my paraphrase).

It’s truly amazing how God will show you truths in the Bible that hit you just as personally as if He were sitting there beside you, speaking to you audibly.

Yes, there are agents of deception all around us—but we have the message we have heard from the beginning and we have an anointing. 

The devil has a hard time deceiving the followers of Christ who, on a habitual basis, are filled with the Scripture and filled with the Spirit. And that’s the best way I know of spotting deception before it leads you into a trap.

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The Antichrists Among Us

Introduction

Who is the antichrist and when will he show up? He is already alive right now, rising to power in some palace or executive residence or capital in this world? Is he right now a brilliant university student who has no idea the diabolical role he will play in the terminal days of history? Or is he a character who will appear in the future, in a hundred years or a thousand years from now?

I don’t have the answer to those questions. But I do know one thing. There are many antichrists among us right now—and we should be aware of them. Think of the word anti-Christ. What does that mean? It means anti-Jesus. It means anti-Christian. One day the final, ultimate world ruler of wickedness will show up. He will be the decisive devil-filled antichrist that we read about in several passages of the Bible. But even now there are many preliminary, precursory antichrists in the world, and it’s important to recognize them and to be on our guard against them.

To put it differently, there is a coming ultimate Man of Lawlessness that we often call the antichrist. But before he comes, there will be many others who are anti-Christ, anti-Jesus, anti-God, and anti-Christian.

Scripture

How do we know this? We read about it in 1 John 2:18-23. This is the most critical passage in 1 John as to understanding why John wrote the letters that we call 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. Let’s read and study this paragraph:

18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

Background

This is a remarkable passage. Here the apostle John says that many antichrists were alive and active in his own day, and, in fact, these people were once members of his own churches—the churches over which he was bishop in Asia Minor. Some of his members had marched out of his churches; they had deserted the congregations, and John was calling them antichrists. 

Scholars believe there was widespread desertion from John’s church as a result of the publication of his Gospel—the Gospel of John. Let me explain. The New Testament begins with four biographies of Christ, which we call the Four Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke were almost certainly written before the year 70. John had undoubtedly read them. I’m sure he agreed with them and appreciated every word. But John also had some things he wanted to say and some stories he wanted to tell. So he wrote the final Gospel when he was elderly, and he emphasized one particular truth that Matthew, Mark, and Luke had alluded to throughout their works but had not highlighted as much as he wanted to do it himself. John took this truth and he did highlight it. He spotlighted it with all the wattage he could load into his pen.

His great message is that Jesus Christ—the carpenter of Nazareth, the teacher of Galilee, the figure on the cross—was and is and always will be everything that it means to be God Himself. He was Almighty God dwelling among us as a human. 

We see this in many ways in John’s Gospel.

First, when you pick up the Gospel of John, notice how he opens and closes his Gospel. His first words were: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The term was known to first-century Jews because it was used in the Targums as a reference to God. When John used the term “Word,” he was referring to Jesus—and he said plainly in the very first verse of his Gospel that the Word—Jesus of Nazareth—was God. The very first sentence of John’s Gospel proclaims the deity of Jesus Christ—In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Then John ended the body of his Gospel in John 20:28 with Thomas, the most skeptical of the disciples, declaring of Jesus Christ: “My Lord and my God!” This is the beginning and ending note of the Gospel of John—Jesus is the Word who was and is God; He is our Lord and our God.

Second, as we read the Gospel of John, we see that even our Lord’s enemies recognized He was claiming to be God Himself. Look at John 5:18: For this reason they tried all the more to kill him [Jesus]; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.

And in John 10:33, the Lord’s enemies said: We are…stoning you for…blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.

Third, Jesus used the divine title I AM seven times, an explicit claim to divinity. In the Old Testament, Moses asked God, “What is Your name?” The Lord said, “I AM WHO I AM.” In other words, I am the one who always exists, who is self-existence. Jesus coopted this as a name for Himself seven different times in John’s Gospel. For example, He said in John 8:58: Before Abraham was born, I Am! He was saying, “I—Jesus of Nazareth—was alive 2000 years ago when Abraham was born. I Am self-existent. I Am eternal.”

Fourth, the Gospel of John attributes divine qualities to Jesus. 

John calls Him the creator of everything (1:3).He attributed to him omniscience, the ability of knowing everything there is to know (21:17).He affirmed that Jesus was perfect, righteous, and sinless (16:10).He spoke of the glory that belongs to Jesus (12:41).He spoke of the right and power of Jesus to raise the dead (5:21).He referred to Jesus as being worthy of worship, which is only possible of God (9:38).

Fifth, John talked about the existence of two words—the world above and the world below. We belong to the world below, but Jesus belonged to the world above and He came down from heaven to bridge the gap. For example…

In John 3:31, Jesus said about Himself, “The one who comes from above is above all.”In John 6:38, He said, “For I have come down from heaven not to do My will but to do the will of Him who sent Me.”In John 8:23, Jesus said, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.”

There’s much more, but that’s a sampling of the high Christology—the high view of Christ—that John crafted in his Gospel. He left no doubt that Jesus was and is and always will be the eternal God.

The Reaction of Deserters: No He Isn’t!

So John wrote all of this in his Gospel and sent it out to all the churches of Asia Minor, over which he was the bishop. Some of the members of these churches could not fit John’s high Christology into their philosophical grid. Many commentators believe these people were holding early forms of what later became known as Gnosticism. There’s no need to go into the details of that. Suffice to say these people would not accept the high view of Jesus Christ that John incorporated into his Gospel. There was a faction in the early church that held a lesser opinion of Jesus, and they weren’t content just to leave the churches and form their own groups. They wanted to propagate their ideas. They wanted to take over the church. They had traveling teachers to spread their heresy, which became the basis of John’s writing his other two letters, 2 and 3 John. 

As Dr. Colin Kruse put it: 

The secessionists or false teachers were not content to keep their new beliefs to themselves. Instead they organized a group of itinerant preachers who circulated among the churches and propagated their beliefs with the view to winning people over to their understanding of things. This created confusion among the believers who remained loyal to the gospel as it had been proclaimed from the beginning, the gospel that had come down from the eyewitnesses. As a result of the confusion, these believers began to question whether they really knew God, whether they were really experiencing eternal life, and whether they were really in the truth. The primary concern of the author in writing 1 John was to bolster the assurance of such people….

That’s why the book of 1 John is so full of assurance. We love this epistle because of this. If you need assurance and reassurance about your relationship with Jesus Christ, this is a great book to study. John keeps telling the believers who remained true, “You are right and they are wrong. They are anti-christs, but you have an anointing. You know the truth. You have overcome the evil one. You have been forgiven your sins. You have eternal life. God will answer your prayers.”

Now, you may be saying, “What does any of that have to do with us?”

First, there’s confusion in many in the pews of evangelical churches. People cannot clearly explain who Jesus Christ is. A study conducted in 2020 by LifeWay Research found that thirty percent of people who identify as evangelical do not believe that Jesus Christ is God.  

Second, there’s erosion in many of the pulpits of Protestant churches. The President of Union Seminary in New York City was interviewed in the New York Times as part of their coverage of the Easter holiday. This woman was asked if Easter was a literal flesh-and-blood resurrection. She replied, “Those who claim to know whether or not it [the resurrection of Jesus] happened are kidding themselves. But that empty tomb symbolizes that the ultimate love in our lives cannot be crucified and killed…. For Christians for whom the physical resurrection becomes a sort of obsession, that seems to me to be a pretty wobbly faith….”

She was asked about the Virgin Birth, and she said, “I find the virgin birth a bizarre claim. It has nothing to do with Jesus’ message. The virgin birth only becomes important if you have a theology in which sexuality is considered sinful.”

She was asked, “What happens when we die?” Her response: “I don’t know! There may be something, there may be nothing. My faith is not tied to some divine promise about the afterlife.”

Yet near the end of the interview, she asserted in clear terms, “I’m a Christian minister.”

John would have called her an antichrist.

This kind of erosion of Christian doctrine is something I’m keeping a close eye on; we all should. For us today, the flashpoint has to do with the sanctity of gender, sex, and marriage. Jesus taught very clearly about this in Mark 10, among other places. Yet many pulpits are too intimidated by the culture to teach the Scripture with clarity.

“But You”

So John told his readers: Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. But you…

Notice that sudden turn in the argument. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.

The word anointing in the Greek is the word chrisma. It means that you have been anointed with something. Someone has taken a substance and poured it on you or rubbed it into you. 

Who did that? The Holy One. We have an anointing from the Holy One. This is John’s phrase for Jesus Christ, which he used in His Gospel, in John 6:69: “We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

So we have an anointing from Jesus Christ? What is it? It’s the Holy Spirit.

1 John 3:24: The one who keeps God’s commands lives in Him, and He in them. And this is how we know that He lives in us: We know it be the Spirit He gave us.1 John 4:13: This is how we know that we live in Him and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit.

The apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:21-22: Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, and set His seal of ownership on us, and put His Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

All that makes the rest of the paragraph in 1 John clear:

20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

So here was the situation. The apostle John had published His long-awaited Gospel, and in many different ways he declared that Jesus Christ is God Himself who became flesh and dwelt among us—truly God and truly man—two natures in one personality. And He died and physically rose from the dead. And all who come to Him and receive Him as their Savior have eternal life. Not only that, but Jesus pours on them the anointing of the Holy Spirit. At the moment of a person’s conversion, the Holy Spirit comes upon and into the lives of the follower of Christ. And it’s the Holy Spirit that gives us our deep conviction of truth and confidence and assurance as we study God’s Word.

Those who reject the Jesus of Scripture don’t really know Him. They do not have a relationship with God. They are liars. They are deniers. And they are antichrists. And we should never be rattled by them or intimidated by their teachings. We are right and they are wrong. We have an anointing from Jesus that reinforces the biblical truth in our hearts.

Conclusion

There are four practical applications we can take away from this.

First, we must commit our lives to Jesus Christ, who was God of very God who became man of very man to die for us and rise again to give us eternal life. We can know and be certain of our relationship with Him. He has given us an anointing.

Second, we must be students of the Scripture, growing in our understanding so that others will not deceive us or lure us away. There’s nothing so wonderful as becoming a student of God Himself as He reveals Himself in the Bible.

Third, we must be defenders of the faith. There’s something very interesting about how the New Testament is arranged. I believe the Holy Spirit guided, not just the contents of the Bible, but the way the books were arranged. 

The New Testament begins with four Gospels that tell the story of Jesus; followed by the book of Acts, which tells about expansion of the church throughout the Roman world. Next are the thirteen letters of the apostle Paul, in which he deposits into our hearts and minds the great truths that explain Christianity. These thirteen letters are full of theology, information, explanation, and instruction. After Paul’s epistles we have the books of Hebrews and James and 1 Peter, which add some rich details. 

But then, near the end of it all, we have five short books before the consummating book of Revelation. And these five books all tell us in one way or another that we are to be defenders of that story of Jesus we read in the Gospels along with the theological truths we read about in Romans through 1 Peter. Let me show you:

2 Peter 2 warns us of false prophets that will arise in the church, warning us they will promise us freedom while bringing us into slavery.The next three books are the three epistles of John, which tell us how to respond to false teachers who arise in the church.Next is the book of Jude, which tells us to contend earnestly for the purity of the faith that has been handed down to us.

And then we have the final consummating book of the Bible—Revelation. So, in summary, the New Testament gives us the history of Jesus and His church, followed by letters of doctrine and truth, and then a series of warnings about those will distort this truth. And then it ends with the wonderful book giving us the story of how it will all end. So there are five books—2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude—that call us to be defenders of the faith.

Fourth, all of this helps us be confident that we are right, we are anointed, we have the truth, we have overcome the wicked one, our sins are forgiven, and we have eternal life. No other message, no other philosophy, no other worldview can match the supreme logic and joy given to us who hold the Bible in our hands.

Perhaps you bumped into Albert Camus in philosophy class in high school. He was a French philosophical writer who was born in French North Africa and arrived in Paris just as the Nazis took over the city. He joined the French Resistance and after the war became a popular writer and philosopher. He helped create an atheistic philosophical system known as absurdism, which says the universe is irrational and meaningless. Furthermore, human life, he said, was meaningless because in the end we all die. When I was in college, his books were required reading on secular campuses and had a huge impact on an entire generation. At my Christian college, we all read Francis Schaeffer, while on non-Christian colleges everyone read Albert Camus.

Camus died in 1960 in a car wreck as he and a friend were returning from Provence to Paris. He was only forty-six.

But here’s what most people don’t know. A year before the wreck, Camus began to doubt everything he had written and lectured. He had met a Methodist minister named Howard Mumma, an American who preached in Paris every summer in an English-speaking church. One morning, Pastor Mumma noticed Albert Camus in the congregation. The two met and became friends. Camus told him he was fed up with the philosophy of existentialism and was seeking something more. As a result, he had started going to church. He said he was seeking something “to fill the void” in his life. He also told Pastor Mumma that he had been reading the Bible and to his surprise he was finding answers there he didn’t know even existed.

Through many discussions, Pastor Mumma explained the Gospel to the great philosopher how to be saved. And Camus responded with these words: “Howard, I am ready. I want this. This is what I want to commit my life to.”

Four months later, he died in the car wreck. But because of Pastor Howard Mumma, we know how one of the most celebrated atheistic philosophers of the twentieth century discovered he could not live with the implications of his atheistic existentialism and absurdism, and he found meaning instead in the pages of 1 John and the other books of the Bible—and in the Christ whose message fills the pages of Scripture.

Some of Camus’ followers reject this story. Did Albert Camus really become a born-again Christian. I don’t know. I can’t be dogmatic about that. But Pastor Mumma was a good man with a respected career, and he waited many years, until he was 90, to publish this account. He didn’t want to exploit a celebrated conversion, but he did finally decide to tell the story before he took it with him to the grave.

At the very least, I think it tells us that those of us who hold to the logic of the Christian faith never find it absurd. It is sensible, logical, wonderful, and worthy of our commitment. And with grace and confidence we can say, “I’m not going to be rattled by the antichristian forces and philosophies of this life. They are wrong, but we have the right man on our side—the man of God’s own choosing. Do you ask who that may be—Christ Jesus, it is He!

So let’s be committed; let’s be students’ let’s be defenders; and let’s be confident!

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