All right, as we continue our sermon series on the Book of 1st John, please turn with me in your Bibles to 1st John, Chapter 2. 1st John, Chapter 2, when you found your place there, let's stand together for the reading of God's word this Lord's Day. Let us pray. O God, our Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, the Son, the Holy Spirit, one God, we pray thou speak to your church by this, your word. to strengthen us, Lord, in ways in which only you can foresee we shall need to be strengthened. May this, your holy word, be a powerful means of grace in our lives, the better, Lord God, to worship you, the better, Lord, to do the work that you've given us to do, the better, Lord, to bear witness unto the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our days. All this we ask in his name, amen. So our sermon text this morning is 1 John 2, verses 20 and 21. Hear now the word of God. Beginning at 1 John 2, verse 20, the Apostle John says, But you have an anointing from the Holy One. You know all things. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. Jesus of Nazareth once sat upon the Mount of Olives. overlooking the city of Jerusalem. In just a matter of days, he would be dead, being nailed to the cross, having laid down his life for the salvation of his church. As he sat upon the Mount of Olives, his disciples came to him, John among them, to ask him questions about the last days. They wanted to know when the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed and what would be the sign of the Lord's glorious return and the end of the age. And Jesus' answer to their questions is known now as the Olivet Discourse, which you can find in Matthew chapter 24. As for when these things would come to pass, Jesus had little to share with his disciples. He said not even the angels in heaven were privileged to know that. But he did describe to them in some detail the world of the last days, describing it as a world full of trouble. He spoke of famines and plagues and of earthquakes. wars and rumors of wars in the earth. And he said, these are but the beginning of sorrows. He went on to speak of persecution of his disciples, Christians in the world. And he warned his disciples on the mountain of deceivers. As a matter of fact, this is the first thing that Jesus speaks of in the Olivet Discourse. The first words that come out of his mouth in verse four are these. He says, take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ and will deceive many. And then later in the Olivet Discourse, verse 24, Jesus takes up this theme again and says there these words. He says, For false Christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. So there's two things that you hear in that line. One, the deception of the last days will be a great deception, a great deception like the deception of the serpent in the garden. It will be subtle and yet powerfully seductive. It will prey upon people's fears and mistrusts. It will appeal to their worldly lusts and pride, and many people will be deceived, even the whole world is capable of being deceived by such a deception, even, Jesus says, the elect, if such a thing were possible. And that's the other thing that you hear in this life, but that is not possible. The whole world may be deceived by the deceivers of the last days, but it is not possible that God's elect will be deceived. Why not? Because God will not permit it. God will make it impossible that His elect should be deceived in those days. That is one of the things that the Apostle John heard Jesus say on the Mount of Olives. So now here we are, John's first epistle. It is many years later, decades later, sometime late in the first century. And John is writing here, as we said, to Christian churches, presumably in the region of Ephesus. In verse 18 here of chapter two, John has broken some bad news to these churches. And the bad news is the deceivers were already appearing in the last days. had begun, his words to them there, our little children, it is the last hour. And the deceivers of which Jesus is speaking here in chapter two are, as we've said repeatedly, the Gnostic heretics that had arisen in these churches and continued to plague the Christian churches during their first centuries. Among the Gnostic claims, which were so impressive to people, is that they claim to have the Holy Spirit. and to be receiving new revelations from the Holy Spirit. And so by means of these new revelations to possess secret knowledge that the other members of these churches did not possess. And so the message was clear, the message of the Gnostics to the members of these Christian churches. You need us, but we will teach you. we will teach you these new things, which the Spirit of God has revealed to us. and is revealing through us. Well, John listened to all this, and John heard in the Gnostic teaching something that alarmed him greatly, and that is the denial of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He pinpoints particularly the Gnostics denied that Jesus was the Christ. Verse 22, it's of the Gnostics that he speaks when he says, who is a liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. He is Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. And later we learn the Gnostics also denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh. Chapter 4, verse 3. John says, every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. In other words, this is a great deception. This is a great deception. And yet, many in these Christian churches have been deceived by the Gnostics, and become followers of the Gnostics, and left these Christian churches in recent days to join the Gnostic cult, as we read in verse 19. And so John is writing here this letter, not to the Gnostics and their followers, but to whom? He's writing to the believing remnant in these churches that had just been through this attempt at a Gnostic takeover. And so it's the people to whom John is writing who were not deceived, right? When others were deceived. These are the ones who had rightly discerned that the voice of the Gnostic teachers was not the voice of God's Holy Spirit, but it was the spirit of Antichrist. And so here in 1 John chapter 2, verses 20 through 21, John is encouraging those who had stood firm while others were wavering and had fallen away. And John's message to them in these two verses is, you are not deceived, nor shall you be deceived. by the deceivers in the last day. You were not deceived by these antichrists, nor shall you be deceived by other antichrists that will come. The Gnostic should come around again, or a whole other group by a different name should come, though there be many of them. Though their lies be still more subtle and more seductive than those of the Gnostics. Though they should have the power to do wonderful signs in the midst of a world that seems to be unraveling. And though everyone on the earth in those days should be deceived by the spirit of Antichrist through these deceivers and bow down and worship the beast, John says to the believing remnant of these churches, you will not. And why not? And the answer is because God has armed you, His elect people in the last days, against this very deception with two great gifts. As Jesus foretold on the Mount of Olives, in the possession of these gifts, it is impossible that you should be deceived. So what are these two gifts with which God has armed the believing remnant of His churches? The first gift here, John says, is an anointing. See that in verse 20. He says, but you have an anointing. Commentators are mostly agreed that this is a reference to the Holy Spirit. That's the first gift. The anointing of the Holy Spirit. So you think back to John's gospel. In the Gospel of John, the question is asked, why had Jesus come as he revealed himself, as he made himself known publicly at his baptism? And the answer was, so that he might give the Holy Spirit to men. As the Spirit descended upon him at his baptism, John said, I baptize with water, but he has come to baptize with the Holy Spirit. This is why He has come. And later in John's Gospel, chapter 7, at the Feast of Tabernacles, the question is asked, why come to Jesus? And this is the answer that Jesus gives as He lifts up His voice in the midst of the Feast in John 7, 37, and says this, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. For he who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. And then John comments and says, but this he spoke concerning the spirit. whom those believing in him would receive. So this is why Jesus has come, to give the Holy Spirit. And this is why we would come to Jesus, to receive the Holy Spirit. And John, in this letter, confirms that Jesus has given this gift of the Holy Spirit to the members of these churches, the believing remnant. Chapter 2, verse 27, he speaks again of the anointing which you received from him that abides in you. Later in chapter 3 verse 24, John speaks of the spirit whom he, Jesus, has given us. And then finally in chapter 4 verse 13, John declares he has given us of his spirit. This is why Jesus has come. We have come to Jesus and this is what Jesus has given to us. So we look now at the first line there in verse 20 and just sort of parse this thing to make sure that you understand what John is saying here. you see there he speaks of of you this is second person in the greek it's plural right so he's not speaking to an individual but he's speaking to the believing remnant of the churches he's speaking to the members of the churches when he says you he says but you but is translation of the greek Kai could also be translated and, but all the English translators prefer but here and rightly so, because what John is saying is he's looking back at the Gnostics and their claims and he's saying, not them, but you. As he speaks to the believing remnant of these Christian churches, he says, but you have, that's in the present tense, the present reality. Not you may, not you will, but you do. You have something and continue to have it. It is something which comes from the Holy One, which is God, God the Father. And through God the Son, what you have, what you possess is God's gift to you. What he has given to you and you have received from him. And this gift, John says, is an anointing. So start there. So what is an anointing? Well, an anointing was, in the ancient world, a ceremony, a ritual involving oil, where oil was ceremoniously, ritually poured upon someone's head. And what did that anointing with oil signify? It signified God's blessing. It signified God's favor. And sometimes it signified God's choice. This is my choice, the one who I have favored, that I am anointing, that I will bless. That's what's signified by an anointing with oil. So we think of King David here. When God had chosen the youngest of Jesse's sons to be king, he sent Samuel to anoint him with oil. The message was clear. God has chosen you, David. to be king over Israel. Among the promises made to David later in the Davidic covenant was that David would be the father of a line of kings and that somewhere down the line a son, a Davidic son, would come forth who would deliver the Israelites from their enemies. And that coming one was known to the Jews as the Anointed One, the Messiah, or in Greek, the Christ. And so when Jesus Christ in the first century comes forth to declare himself, to make himself known publicly as his ministry begins at his baptism, we expect an anointing. To signify that this is indeed God's Son and God's choice. And we get it. But it's not an anointing with oil from the hand of John the Baptist. It's an anointing with the Holy Spirit from the hand of Jesus' Father in heaven. Matthew 3.16. It says, Behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, my choice, the anointed one. Jesus understood his anointing in this way, that he was anointed not with oil, but with the Holy Spirit. The synagogue of Nazareth, in Luke chapter four, It says that Jesus was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah, and he opened the book to what we now know as Isaiah 61, found the place where it was written thus, quote, The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted. to proclaim the liberty to the captives in the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And then Jesus closed the book, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. And Jesus began to say to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. I am that anointed one. anointed by my Father with the Holy Spirit. That's how Jesus understood his anointing, and that's how Jesus' church understood his anointing, that he had been anointed with the Holy Spirit. The church prays and acts chapter four to God, to God the Father. They speak of Jesus this way, as your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. your anointed one. And then later in Peter's speech to the household of Cornelius, Peter declares this concerning Jesus, that God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. So Jesus is preeminent, the anointed one, God's choice. God's favored one, his son, and he has anointed him with the Holy Spirit. Now, we trace then a line where John traces a line in verse 20 from Jesus' anointing to the anointing of the Christians in these churches, the believing remnant. Jesus is, in verse 22, the Christ, the Christos, is that in Greek. The Gnostics, however, are the Antichristoi. But then there's another reference to this Christ word group, and that is this word anointing. Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one. The Gnostics are the Antichristoi, but you Christians, you have a Christoi. anointing. How so? In that, Jesus Christ has anointed you with the same Holy Spirit by which he was anointed of your father. So that is the anointing in verse 20. The first gift that God has given to the Christians and the believing remnant of these churches. The gift of the Holy Spirit. The second gift, then, that John speaks of in verse 20, is the gift of complete knowledge. Complete knowledge, verse 20. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, literally in the Greek, and you know all. The English translators supply things. It's literally, you know all. Now obviously, the Apostle John is not attributing to the Christians of these churches omniscience. He's not saying that they know all things as God knows all things. Far from it. So you have to take this in a qualified sense. What John is saying is, in the vast realm of knowledge, There is something that you need to know. Something that God has revealed unto his church in the last days, and you have already received that revelation from God, and therefore know all there is to know about this thing. What John speaks of here, he later in verse 21 calls simply the truth. The all of verse 21 is the truth of verse 21. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it. And so you tell me, what truth did these Christians know? The answer is the truth of the gospel. The gospel truth about Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ as the truth of the gospel. So notice here, we're in the late first century. The age of the apostles is coming to a close. Gnostics have arisen, claiming new revelations from the spirit of God, claiming to have received knowledge beyond what God had revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ as preached by his apostles. And the apostle John steps in here, not only denying that the Gnostics had received new revelation from God, but actually denying that there was any new revelation from God or would be any new revelation for God, that Christians had any need of any new revelation from God. He says, you don't need these Gnostics or anything that they could teach you. You know the truth. You know the whole truth. You already know all that there is to know. So John here sounds a lot like a cessationist, doesn't he? That's a position of the Reformed Church historically. What's mentioned in Confession of Faith, chapter 1, section 1, those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people, that is, dreams and things to the prophets being now under the new covenant what ceased so the reformed church confessionally is a cessationist body of believers right our position is not that new revelation is impossible of course it's not impossible we're just saying there's no need of that We're just saying that Jesus Christ is the full and final revelation of God and of his will unto his church. It is the completed revelation of the last days. And to us, as to John, I would say the suggestion of a revelation beyond Jesus is derogatory to him. It diminishes his significance. And furthermore, is known to be, in the history of the Church, a mischievous attempt to draw Church members away from Christ and after themselves. All right, so let's summarize at this point. John here, in his first epistle, identifies the Gnostics as the sort of deceivers or antichrists which the Church had been warned by Jesus would arise in the last days. And John is now writing to the believing remnants of these churches in Ephesus, those who had not been deceived by the Gnostics when others were. And John's explanation to them goes like this. You have not been deceived because of God's two gifts to you. Two gifts which together have made it impossible for the deceivers to deceive you as they deceived others. I particularly emphasize the two gifts working in tandem. First, you have the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ that is as preached by Christ's apostles. And the truth is, as you know, that the Christ has come in the flesh. True humanity of the Christ You know that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the son of the living God incarnate. And you know, as you have been told in the beginning, that Jesus the Christ died and shed his blood on the cross for us to cleanse us of our sin. You also know, according to the gospel as preached by the apostles, that Jesus has risen again and lives on as our advocate before his father in heaven. and that even now and forevermore Jesus intercedes for us as our high priest having obtained God's forgiveness and therein our eternal peace. You have that gift from God, the truth of the gospel. But you also have the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the second gift. So notice here that with those in the churches, these churches, who were deceived. And those who were deceived by the Gnostics also, at one point, had the truth. The true gospel had been preached to them as well as to these others. And yet, in time, they fell away. So what did they lack? The answer is conviction. They lacked conviction, and particularly the conviction of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given to God's elect along with the gospel to convict them or to convince them of the truth of the gospel in a way that only the Holy Spirit can. And so they had come to know that these things were true. That Jesus truly is the Christ. We know that. And that we are truly His people for whom He died. We know that we are because the Spirit bears witness with us still that we are God's children. We know truly that we are cleansed by the blood that Jesus shed for us outside the walls of Jerusalem so long ago. And we know as truly that we have peace with God through Him. So here's the question. Christians, what is the ministry of the Holy Spirit? Jesus tells us, he told his disciples in the farewell discourse in John 15, 26. He said this, when the helper comes, that's the spirit, whom I shall send to you from the Father. You have received the anointing from the Holy One, right? When the helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the spirit of truth, okay, you see where we are, who proceeds from the Father, he will what? Testify of me. That's the ministry of the Holy Spirit. To testify of Jesus. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is not to guide you Christians to the best deals at the best garage sales in town. You hear people talk like that? The Christian people, and I suppose they think they're giving glory to God when they say things like that. But there's a problem with talking like that, and there's a problem with thinking like that. What people seem to think, Christian people, a lot of them, is that whenever they have a decision to make in life, no matter how pedestrian, That when they come to a decision and they feel good about the decision that they're making, and especially when things seems to go well, that that was the Holy Spirit. That was the Holy Spirit. It was guiding me, it was speaking to me, it was showing me what was the right thing to do in that moment, that instead of going down the road here, I would have missed that garage sale, I went to this garage sale and I saw that house and I don't know, my heart was warmed and I went in and sure enough, there was this great deal and that was the Holy Spirit. I'm asking you, is that a biblical content? Do we ever see the Holy Spirit doing anything like that in Scripture? That doesn't come from the Bible. It doesn't come from the Reformed Church. Do you know where it comes from? It comes from the Charismatic Movement. At least in these days. Charismatic Movement had a lot of influence upon a lot of denominations, including, I'm afraid, Reformed Presbyterian denominations sometimes. What is the ministry of the Holy Spirit? The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to bear witness to Christ in our hearts so that we should not doubt him here in our hearts, no matter what is going on out there in the world. That's the ministry of the Spirit. And if that doesn't seem like an important enough ministry for the Holy Spirit, then you underestimate the greatness of the deception in the last days and what will become of those who are deceived. And there will be many. The Apostle John shows us in 1 John 2, 20 through 21, that armed with these two gifts, the truth of the gospel and the Holy Spirit, the deceivers of the last day will find God's elect impossible to deceive. As God's elect, no matter what signs the false Christs and false prophets can perform and do perform and what else they say that may be agreeable and appealing to the flesh, all that God's elect will be able to hear when they listen to these men is men denying what they, God's elect, very well know to be true. which is the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, their Savior and their Lord. And they will know, while others don't know, they will know that not only is what they are hearing a lie, but importantly, that such a great lie cannot come from a place of truth. And notice that that is the force of John's words at the end of verse 21. He doesn't say simply, no lie is the truth, but he says no lie is of the truth. In other words, the spirit of truth, which is what Jesus called the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth does not speak this way. That is the spirit of Antichrist. So in conclusion this morning, I'll say again, I think I've mentioned this before, it is ironic that Christians today often read 1 John and come away shaken in their assurance, doubting if they are really Christians, doubting if they are really saints. You get that a lot. I'm not saying this is not a place for self-examination. in John's first epistle, there is. I'm just saying it's obvious that that was not John's purpose. John's purpose is quite the opposite. His purpose is to assure Christians, these Christians and other Christians, particularly under the pressures of the last days, that they truly are Christians and that they have the Holy Spirit and that they cannot be shaken. What John says in this epistle, he says to churches. He's speaking here to churches, and particularly churches that believe that Jesus is the Christ who has come in the flesh. Churches that confess their sins before God, and at the same time know themselves to be cleansed by the blood of God's Son. Churches whose members love each other. according to Christ's new commandment, as their Lord loved them. And furthermore, Christians that are standing firm in their faith in the midst of a troubled world full of lies, even as others waver and fall away. That's who John is speaking to. And am I wrong to think in that that John is addressing himself to churches like ours? Haynes Creek Church. Don't be shaken, be strengthened by this epistle, because I think it's addressed to you. We think back to Jesus on the Mount of Olives. The question his disciples asked him concerning the last days, how long, how long till these things come to pass? fall of the temple, return of the Lord in glory, the end of the age. I can't tell you. Jesus didn't tell his disciples on the Mount of Olives. There has been no new revelation on this point since then. We don't know when these things will be. But what will the world be like as we wait for the end, Christ's return at the end. We did say something about that. He said the world would be troubled. Among the troubles that he mentioned were plagues. So let's reflect on our COVID experience. What's the old world word for a pandemic? It's a plague. And in the history of plagues, and there have been many, COVID was not a particularly bad one. And yet, it brought our society to a halt, didn't it? And people became unglued. Now, imagine all sorts of troubles at once. Plagues, famines, earthquakes, and wars, and rumors of wars, like all the alarms going off in society and all the alarms going off in people's nervous systems. And in the midst of a moment like that, the deceivers arise. Including deceivers arising in our churches who are not at first recognized as such. with powerful speakers, with powerful rhetoric, and are capable of doing marvelous signs that we should wonder at their power, and whose message is unbelievably seductive. And as this is taking place, the hearts of men everywhere are growing cold, and lawlessness abounds, and it is becoming increasingly costly to be a Christian, and there's a great falling away. And people are leaving the church in droves right at the moment when another Christ-like Savior appears. If we stand fast in our faith, then John knows, and we know, why we do and what it means. Namely, that we are God's elect. That Jesus Christ died for us, and that we have an anointing from him. So take comfort in that. That even if the Antichrist himself should come in our time and deceive the whole world, we will not be deceived. We shall prove to be impossible to deceive. Not only because we know the truth and that it is the whole truth, but we also know that we know him who is the truth. And that is God's gift. to us and the explanation for both the patience and the perseverance of the saints. Shall we pray?