Basic Training -- How You KNOW, Know (Part 2)

Church Announcements

To our church: we're going to have a congregational meeting on July 25. This is a family meeting. I'm tired of doing these between services—it's chaotic. So we're going to move to an evening Sunday night. We'll go over a couple things. This is not just for members, but for members and anybody who's interested. We're going to go over our budget for this next year. We're excited to have another elder to put forward for a vote before our congregation: Fritz Thornton. And we'll also have a big announcement that I'm not going to tell you about. So you have to come to that to find out the big announcement. We're doing that on a Sunday evening to try to make it a little different and a little bit more relaxed. We hope you'll plan on joining us.

That's it for the family business for today. Let me pray for us before we turn to God's word.

Opening Prayer

Lord, we thank you that every person that's here this morning is here at your invitation. We may think that we got up and chose to come to church, but we thank you, Father, that it's your Spirit who helped us to get out of bed this morning and helped us to get out the door and brought us here. We know that you have something for every person here. We pray that you would give us ears to hear and hearts to receive what you have for us.

Father, we pray for our church, where this has been a time of great shaking and we've had people who have disappeared or have left and it's hard to know who's still here. Lord, we pray that you would—as we sang in the first song—you're our foundation. And Father, we pray that you would help us to continue to trust you. You've been so faithful to this congregation over years. I pray that for us. Lord, help us to just continue to put our roots deep into you. Lord, we want to be people who are continually and deeply transformed by the gospel. We pray that for us this summer, that you would meet us in that. Lord, we pray you renew our joy, renew our hope, renew our confidence in your power and in the strength of your word and your Spirit at work among your people. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.

Scripture Reading

It's our custom as a church to read God's word out loud and we're going through the book of First John. Today, we're going to be First John 2:15 through 27. You can find that up on the screen or in your bulletin. I'm going to ask you to join me in reading this aloud.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride and possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world, and the world is passing away along with its desires. Whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that it might become plain that they are not of us. But you have been anointed by the holy one, and you all have knowledge.

I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

Let what you have heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us: eternal life.

I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you, but the anointing that you have received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him. — 1 John 2:15–27

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Opening Illustration

When I was in seventh grade, I won a blue ribbon in my school's science fair. Yeah, I know—nerd portfolio right here. And if anybody needs to do a nerd walk off, I also played the French horn and was a mathlete in middle school.

But anyway, my science fair project was to drive all around the little county I grew up in in East Tennessee and pick up bags of soil and dig up more bags of soil and bring them back to my house. I ordered a chemistry experiment test kit and got this thing and tested the soil. The whole experiment was about what's in the soil—what makes for good crop growth here and not there. I would have been a great NC State student in the seventh grade, and for that I won the blue ribbon.

Now don't you wish in some ways that there was some kind of test like a chemistry test that you could take that assured you that your salvation was real? You ever been through periods of real doubt, real lack of assurance, like is this for real? Am I for real? Is this for real? Are we just deluding ourselves? This is normal for Christians and I just want full disclosure for pastors too. We struggle and some seem to struggle all the time, some don't struggle much, and some it comes in waves. Where you wake up in the morning like, I still know.

I want to encourage you this morning, we're opening up this book again, First John. Here's this wise old pastor John, one of Jesus's original 12 disciples, and he's writing to a church like us—a lot of Christians who are struggling for assurance. And he's saying, look, there are some tests. I'm gonna give you a couple chemistry kits. I'm gonna help you to know. As we're going through this book this summer, every time I preach and rotate a number of people through because James is out of town or on sabbatical for the summer, I'm running solo with the ship. But every time I'm preaching, I'm talking this summer about how do you know that you know? Because John is really concerned that we would know that we know. There are things that we can do to tell: is this real? Am I for real? How do we know?

Two Tests

Two tests this morning I want to give to you—a little chemistry test I'm handing you. One is the exclusive truth test. The other is the exclusive love test. And we're gonna look at these together.

The Exclusive Truth Test

First, let's look at the exclusive truth test. This is verses 18 through 27, and this is the part that raised your eyebrows when you read. If you were paying attention, did anybody's eyebrows raise at the word antichrist? You're like, oh, this is to be an interesting one, or I didn't know I was coming to that kind of church this morning.

So what is all this about the antichrist thing? Well, interestingly, the word antichrist doesn't appear like we would think in the book of Revelation. It only appears in two books in the Bible: First John and Second John. Even though when I say antichrist, some of you are thinking about books like The Stand or Left Behind or the TV show South Park—yeah, there's a whole South Park episode about the Antichrist—or movies like Little Nikki. Yes, I said Little Nikki in church. Omen. They're all these kind of apocalyptic. What's funny is that the antichrist that John talks about here is not one person. Did you notice this?

As you've heard the Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come. — 1 John 2:18

Look at verse 18. I wanna demystify this for you. He's not talking about the end times or an individual. Although he does say, "hey, children, this is the last hour. We're waiting for the return of Jesus," he's not talking about one person. What does he say in verse 18? Many antichrists have come.

He goes on to say, here's who I'm talking about: somebody who used to be part of the fellowship of the church but isn't anymore. Remember the passage where he's like, they were part of us but they went out from us, and then them going out from us shows they weren't of us? And then he goes to this—he says, this is his definition: a person who abandons the faith in Jesus Christ. This is the antichrist.

He who denies the Father and the Son. — 1 John 2:22

An antichrist is a person who rejects Jesus. In other words, John is saying something that was as countercultural then as it is today. He's saying there is a core set of doctrine, a set of essential beliefs that you actually have to believe to be with God, to have a relationship with God. He's saying there are some things that you have to assent to in order to be saved. There's a doctrinal core. There's some things you have to agree with.

And if that sounds really arrogant to you, you're paying attention. He's saying there is some exclusive truth out here that's capital T truth. That's objective truth. And if you're offended right now, let me just raise you one because John goes on to say: you know what, it's not just that this is truth, but anybody who believes otherwise believes a lie. I can't think of anything more offensive to people right now than to be able to say, not only do I have the truth, but you believe lies. And yet this is what he's saying: if you don't believe this, you're believing in a lie.

Now this is where I want to go with this this morning.

Here's my proposition to you: this exclusive truth claim that Christians have is actually a claim of the most inclusive variety you can imagine. And people who are looking for this inclusive approach—where everybody believes what they want—are actually holding on to what is the most moralistic and exclusive expression of faith you can have.

Here's what I mean by this. There are two versions, two ways of looking at truth in the marketplace of ideas, and this is not new to us. This was happening in John's day as well. One is that there is an objective reality. There's an objective capital T truth, and I have to make my life fit around that. The other is what's reigning today—which is that truth is whatever I make it to be. It's based on my experience.

This is where the phrase "my truth, your truth" comes from. You know how people use that expression all the time. They mean: this is my truth that I believe in. Your truth is good for you. My truth is good for me. And you'd be surprised how hip the apostle John is to our culture today.

He's writing to a group of people at the end of the first century who are dealing with Gnosticism. And there's an idea that's like your "my truth" version of truth. Like, I have this secret divine knowledge of me and God, and that's my truth that I hold on to. It's been revealed directly to me by God, and you can have yours. And John is saying, no. There is actually an objective reality. There's an exclusive truth. You have to believe this if you actually want to claim a relationship with the living God.

You remember Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Buffy was on between 1997 and 2003. So I'm dating myself, but you all can go back and watch this old historical TV show. Well, here's the funny thing about Buffy. Her job was, big surprise, to be a vampire slayer. One of the tools that she used in her trade in the first seasons was a cross. She'd pull out the cross and the vampires would react to it. It worked.

But here's what's interesting. Over the course of the filming, the writers changed the symbols. They'd pull out any old relic from the past, and as long as you believed in it, it worked against vampires. Now, what happened during that time period? Were vampires going through some kind of post-Christian training? Were they like, "Hey, let's think about this in a postmodern way"? No. Nothing's happening to vampires. What's happening is the show's writers are saying, we want to reject something that symbolizes objective truth. Truth with a capital T. We want to say truth is whatever you make it.

Now the apostle John, he knows exactly where we're living right now. He would have been watching Buffy and would be talking about this. What is the exclusive truth claim of Christianity? John tells us in verse 22: Jesus come in the flesh. Jesus, God incarnate as a person. Jesus comes and he sweats and he sleeps and he walks around and he teaches and he dies on a cross and he's raised from the dead. But it's a real person who came at a real point in history, who spoke a dialect of Hebrew, who lived in a particular place and time.

Jesus come in the flesh — 1 John 2:22

It's this historical figure, but also that Jesus continues. God in flesh is with us today, resurrected from the dead. Now a lot of people say, I wish we didn't have Jesus like that. I wish Jesus came back every generation so I could have followed him around and been one of his disciples.

But do you realize what a gift it is to us that Jesus came at a particular moment in history? This is an incredible gift because it's something outside whether you experience it or whatever you feel about it. You can go look it up in history books. You can take some of the original documentation. You can study and say, did this really happen? Can I verify this? It's in a moment in history, and it doesn't matter how you feel about it—it happened. And that is a tremendous gift to us to be able to do that. It could be verified.

And some of you are like, "Wait, wait, time out, preacher boy. Because I don't know if I can trust this book. I mean, what you're talking about is great, but it's all mediated through this book and I have lots of questions about it." Well, good for you. I'm not going to do this today, but I did a whole sermon series back in 2015 called "Can I Trust the Bible?" We asked all the questions. If you're struggling with that, I'm not going to re-preach that sermon this morning. Go to our resource page, look at old sermons from 2015, "Can I Trust the Bible?" Listen all you want to.

But this is my point.

You know, I took my boys fishing when we were at the beach two weeks ago. We went out in a boat and went fishing in the Intercoastal Waterway. When you dock your boat, you want to dock it to something that has pilings that go into mud with concrete at the bottom. You don't dock it to another boat. Why not? It's gonna float away. Or you want one of those big heavy things that anchor with spikes on it, throw overboard and it goes down and it grips on the bottom—something solid. You want something solid to be docked to.

Same with our faith. There is something solid God has given us in the person of Jesus come into history. I want you to think about it this way: some of you all love nature. So this summer on vacation, you're going to go either to the mountains or to the beach. You love the mountains because you're like, stand up really high and I feel really small. I see the stars at night and I'm like, man, wow, this is what God has made. I feel my place in the universe. You go to the beach and you love watching the waves because you're like, I feel really small, put in the right orbit. I'm small and that's a good thing.

But you know how you can go and look at nature and nature tells you certain things about God. It can tell you God's into beauty, God is powerful, God is creative. But it can't tell you much more than that. It'd be like a person who's like, I'm gonna try to learn about William Shakespeare by reading all the plays of Shakespeare. You could deduce some things about the author from reading his works. You could say, well, he likes poetry, he can rhyme things pretty good sometimes, he likes a lot of blood and gore. You can deduce things, but unless Shakespeare wrote himself into the place as a character, you couldn't deduce that much about him.

But we have a God who wrote himself into our history, who came at a place and time in a body with a dialect and you can study it and that is an incredible gift to us.

On Exclusive Truth

I know some of you are here and you're like, this whole exclusive truth thing is very arrogant, feels very narrow, it feels like you have a corner of the market on the truth and you have to believe this and there's no other way. That sounds really mean.

Here's what other people want in our culture. People want a faith that's my truth that says, you know, you be a good person and you don't try to convert people and you don't offend people because that's the worst sin right now. Like if you do that, you're good.

But here's what people want when they say that. Do you know who Gumby is? You may remember Gumby? A couple years ago, somebody gave me a Gumby Jesus. Before some of y'all get mad at me and like that's a violation of the second commandment, I'm not tempted to worship this thing. I keep it in my office though as a reminder of the culture I preach to. Because we live in a culture who wants a Jesus we can pose however we want to. Jesus, you need to conform to my ideas. I want you to do what I think.

What's funny about that is we want in our culture a Jesus who's so inclusive and so accepting and so loving and he's never going to contradict you or tell you something you don't want to hear and you can shape Jesus to do what you want him to do. This is where we live.

And ironically, here's what you do if you have Gumby Jesus: Gumby Jesus is the most moralistic exclusive Jesus you can come up with. Because Gumby Jesus says, if you're a good person and you do good things and treat people the right way and you recycle, okay, maybe not recycle. But if you do all the things, you know what? You're in.

What's funny about that is we have a real Jesus who said, I came for the sick, not the well. I came for people who are not nice and don't do good things all the time and are selfish and tend to look out for number one. Gumby Jesus is helper Jesus. Real Jesus is savior Jesus.

What we really need—what's the most inclusive religion around? The real Jesus who comes to us in history and is living, resurrected today and says, I'm not here for the good, I'm here for the sinners.

This is why in Jesus's ministry, did you notice it was the Pharisees who wanted Gumby Jesus. They wanted Jesus to do what they wanted him to do. Who flocked to Jesus? Broken sinners, people who knew, I don't have a chance. That's who kept coming to Jesus. That's who ran to him.

This is the most inclusive gospel you'll ever find: believing in an objective truth that says Jesus is the only way and he's this good. And I can't make this stuff up. This is the real thing.

Understanding Exclusive Love

This is really popular right now. I know that the exclusive truth claims of Jesus are really hard for some people. But I want you to know this—and some of you all have been walking with Jesus for a long time and you know this—that Christianity is not assenting to a set of doctrine, is it? It's not just a set of beliefs. I mean, yes, it's identifying like this is true. These central set of beliefs are true, but what's so important is not what I think about God, but what God thinks about me and more than that what He does for me. Because Christianity is not just a set of doctrines I check off, it's a living relationship with the real God who by my believing in Him changes my very status of relationship to Him.

John, who wrote this gospel—sorry, in this letter—he also wrote the gospel and he begins the gospel this way. He says two things. He said, there's a real Jesus who came in flesh and blood, and we have seen Him and behold His glory. Glory is of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. He's real. And then he says this: he says this is what is given to us to all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God.

This is why John, when he writes this letter to us and it's filled with all these little chemistry tests—how do you know that you know?—he doesn't say, in chapter two verse three, "here's how you know you've been saved." This is what he says: "here's how you know you know Him," because Christianity is about knowing him. So here's your little chemistry test to take home today.

Do you believe? Do you believe in the very essentials? Jesus is a real person who came in a real point in history and died on a cross and died on the cross for sinners like me. Man, that is one of the greatest tests you could take and give such confidence. You know, how do you know that you know? You believe in the exclusive truth. But second, you also believe in exclusive love—and this is what I mean by this.

Exclusive love—this is verses 15 through 17. John says something really hard right here that's hard for us to hear and is potentially confusing. He says, "here's the test: don't love the world or anything or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him."

And a lot of us are like, what? If you pay attention to this book, that's a really confusing statement because the same writer in John three sixteen says:

God so loved the world... — John 3:16

So wait, there's a kind of love of the world that God loves and there's a kind of love of the world that God hates. So how do we know the difference? Well, let me show you this. Let's talk about first about what it means, what it doesn't mean, and then talk about what it does mean.

So there's a love of the world that God loves. What is that? Well, I just told you—John three sixteen. What does God love when he speaks of the world there? He's not talking about rocks. He's talking about people. God loves lost people. He loves sinners. This is why in that passage for John three sixteen, it's wedged between a story about a super religious guy who Jesus invites to faith and a super pagan woman that Jesus invites to faith. Jesus loves lost people.

So when it says "do not love the world," He's not talking about not loving lost people and He's also not talking about the material world. This is probably less obvious to you, but I really need to make this point, otherwise you'll get really confused. John doesn't mean and can't mean we're not supposed to love the material world. See, there's a category mistake that Christians sometimes have—to think, "oh, what John means is like spiritual is good, material physical is bad." And that can't be true. John is the gospel writer who most emphasized the very physicality of Jesus. So John has Jesus who's eating fish and serving fish to them. After the resurrection, they hug him. And he's emphasizing Jesus is no ghost. Physicality is good.

So maybe you grew up in the church, especially in the Bible Belt. You know, Bible Belt churches had a tendency to misread this and to make the wrong things the enemy. So did you ever hear, "don't drink, don't chew, don't date girls who do?" Okay, maybe I've just heard that. It's East Tennessee for you right there. But right, we made the wrong things in the church the enemy. So like cards, dancing, alcohol—physical things that of themselves are not bad. I mean, Jesus in Matthew 15 says:

It's not what goes into a person that corrupts them, it's what comes out. — Matthew 15

Right? Like all of our evil actions, all of our selfish intents, all of our jealousy and selfishness—that's what comes up out of us. That's what makes us unclean.

So look, as a Christian, you're on solid ground to see if you're like, "you know, I love eating a good meal. I love a glass of wine."

I enjoy art. I enjoy physical things of this world. That can't be what John's talking about. He's talking about something much deeper. When he's like, there's a love of the world that is so dangerous to you, you can't even imagine it.

Look at verse 16, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, the pride of life. I know in ESV that sounds really tame, so I'm gonna go King James on y'all because I think this is much more heavy metal. King James says, lust of the body, lust of the eyes and the pride of life. That's more like it.

Because here's what he's talking about. In this passage, he says, these are not normal desires. I'm not a big Greek scholar, so I don't like to flex on you all with Greek because I barely passed it in seminary, but the word for desire is thumia and what he's talking about is not just the normal thumia, but the epithumia, the epi desires, the mega, the incredible hulk desires is what he's talking about—gotten big and destructive.

Let me give you an example of this. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter goes into Hogwarts Castle and he finds this room with a giant mirror. Anybody know what I'm talking about? He finds this room in the room of requirement and there's this giant mirror and he loves to go stand in front of it. When he looks in the mirror he's not by himself. What does he see in the mirror? He sees his parents who are deceased and he loves to go back there and look at them with his mom and dad behind him.

One day he comes into the room and he finds Professor Dumbledore sitting there. He's like, "Harry, I know you've been coming here. Do you know what that kind of mirror is?" He says, "No, I don't know." Dumbledore says, "Well, it's called the Mirror of Erised, e-r-i-s-e-d. It doesn't take an English major to know that means that's just desire spelled backwards—the Mirror of Desire."

So he's looking in the mirror and he sees what he desires. Dumbledore says, "Do you have any idea what that is?" Harry shakes his head no. He says, "Let me put it this way and see if you can figure it out. The happiest person in the world will look in the mirror and just see themselves just as they are." Harry's like, "So this mirror shows us what we want, whatever we want." Dumbledore says, "Well, sort of. Yes and no. It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts."

It goes on to say: "You, Harry, who've never known your parents, when you look in the mirror, you see them standing around you. Ron Weasley, who has always been in the shadow of his older brothers, sees himself standing alone above them, the best of them. This mirror gives neither knowledge nor truth and people have wasted away before it entranced by what they've seen or have been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."

So way to go, JK Rowling—great sermon illustration for Bradford this morning—because what she is showing us is love of the world. There is a type of love, an epi desire that can become so entrancing that it actually can choke out and kill anything else in its way. And there are these epi desires that compete for you for exclusive love of Jesus.

See, here's the test: Do you love him and is he first?

And here's John's warning to us: the problem with epi desires is that they're both competitive and destructive. They're competitive in the sense that it's like, if I could just have that, that would give my life meaning and value. And this is what John says:

If someone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them.

Like these are competing with one another. You know the word priority? It's actually bad English. People don't know this. It's actually bad English to use the word priorities. That's not even a real word because the word prior means one. So this test is saying there's got to be one thing that's at the top. Everything else is secondary. There's a priority. Not priorities.

And to be a believer is to say, "Jesus, he is who I am. He's my identity. He's what he's who I want. He's first."

See, because we don't realize it's not just that they're competitive—they're destructive. Epithymia are destructive to us. See verse 17? It grows up, it takes over, it destroys.

If you grew up in the South, you're probably familiar with a plant, even if you're not a plant person. It's called kudzu. Kudzu was introduced to the United States in 1876 at the Philadelphia Continental Exposition, and it was introduced for its beauty. Look at this beautiful bush. It made a reappearance in the nineteen thirties when the US government began to pay farmers to plant this at eight dollars an acre to prevent erosion of the soil.

Now some of you don't know anything about kudzu—whether it's beautiful or why people were paid for it. What do you know about kudzu? It grows unbelievably. There have been measurements of vines that grow as much as eight feet per day. That's incredible. In 2015 alone, kudzu in the South grew by 150,000 acres. That's insane. So something that's beautiful, something that's useful, takes over. And there are things in seed form in every one of us that, given the chance and without being checked, will take over in every person—not just those special bad sinners out there, all of us.

And Jesus warns us of this. Here's the test: What's first for you? Is Jesus first? It's a regular question we ask ourselves. Has he got primary place? What are things that you're allowing to grow up in your life right now that are destructive? What are areas in your life where you've made peace with the world? Not a big deal, but you're not really aware that these desires are becoming kind of epic—things that have taken over your thought life, your time, your energy, your finances that are just too big.

Here's John's second chemistry test to take home. He's handing it to you: Jesus first. He's the only thing that, if you give your life to it, will actually give your life meaning and order and put everything in the right orbit around it. Anything else is destructive. Anything else is kudzu. Take the test. Exclusive truth, exclusive love.

During the height of the Cold War—and I'm a Cold War kid, Gen Xer—there was a story about a Russian air force pilot who took his fighter from Russia and flew it to an American air force base in Japan. This was a big scare because people didn't know what he was doing. They thought he was going to blow it up or kamikaze bomb the air force base, but he lands safely and asks for asylum from the United States.

This guy was interrogated, debriefed, and all that kind of stuff, and they found out he was legit. He really wanted to leave the Soviet oppressive regime and become a bona fide US American citizen. Over time, he was allowed to do that. And what's funny about this Russian who decides to become an American—this huge change in his life—he goes from being a citizen of the Soviet Union, an oppressive regime, to becoming an American citizen with all the freedoms and rights afforded that. But I bet there are lots of days when this dude woke up and thought, "I still feel very Russian today." I guarantee he spoke English with a Russian accent. I guarantee he still liked pierogies. There are lots of things about him that are still of his old citizenship, and his experience over his life is learning to live into the new citizenship that he's been given.

This is what it means to be a follower, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe. We anchor our lives on the objective reality of the Son of God, Jesus, who transfers your very citizenship out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light and life. Your life therefore is more and more growing and living into that new reality, embracing what it means to be free, embracing what it means to be part of the new citizens of the kingdom of God.

There are days when you feel very Russian. You're like, "I feel like nothing has changed." And yet over and over, this reality begins to dawn in your life. Brothers and sisters, may it continue to do so. We continue to put him first. We continue to push ourselves: Is he real? Yes. We come together every week in this church. We gather in his name. We remind ourselves of what's truer than true—truer than your feelings, truer than how you performed this week, truer than whether you feel Russian or American today. It's an objective reality, and it's been given to you.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let's pray together. Father, I know that there are those here who struggle this morning.