All right, let's turn together now in God's word to 1 John chapter three. Picking up where we left off last week, we'll be looking at 1 John chapter three, verses four through 10 this morning. When you found your place, let's stand together for the reading of God's word. And now let's pray. O God, our good shepherd, we're thankful, Lord, that you are with us, your sheep, for surely we are prone to go astray and would go astray if you did not keep us and bring us again and again back into yourself. We pray this morning, Lord, that through this, your word, that you would do the work of a shepherd to protect us, Lord God, from things that would harm us and particularly harm us by drawing us away from you. All this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So again, our sermon text today is 1 John 3, beginning at verse four, all the way through the first line of chapter 10, verse 10. So 1 John 3, four through 10, you're now the word of God. The apostle John writes, saying, whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him there is no sin. Whoever abides in him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen him nor known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. In the 19th century, a new theology arose in the Protestant churches in Germany. It was known as theological liberalism. The liberal theologians were convinced of modernism, and so they engaged in a project to reinterpret the Bible to realign Christian faith with modern thought. And in doing so, they claimed to be the saviors of Christianity. Theological liberalism spread to the European continent and across the Atlantic to America, and in time infiltrated and gained control of the most influential churches and seminaries in our land. And so by the beginning of the 20th century, theological liberalism was poised for a complete takeover of Christianity in America. J. Gresham Machen was a Presbyterian churchman and professor of theology at Princeton Seminary, and Machen tried to sound the alarm. While other conservative-leaning Christian leaders were prepared to make room for the new liberal theology in the American church, Machen forcefully argued that no compromise was possible. Theological liberalism, he said, was fundamentally at odds with Christian faith and life. In the introduction to a book entitled Christianity and Liberalism, Machen made this public statement, quote, Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. In other words, theological liberalism is a quasi-Christian movement, meaning it seems to be Christianity, but it is not Christianity at all. Ever since, the enemies of J. Gresham Machen have smeared him as a small-minded and divisive man. But Machen was not divisive. He was discerning. And it's a shame that more Protestant Christians at the beginning of the 20th century did not heed this man's warnings. As part of our sermon series here on 1 John, I've decided to preach just one sermon on 1 John 3, 4 through 10. I could have divided it up into multiple sermons, but that didn't seem right. The challenge here is that what John says is simple, But the way that he says it is complicated. So, you're going to have to be quick to keep up with me this morning. But at the same time, you'd have to be pretty dull to miss the point. This passage and thus this sermon is about spiritual discernment. And the point being made about spiritual discernment is basically this, that in the realm of spiritual things, there is a way to tell the difference between things that are truly different. And there are times in the life of Christ's church when it is of great importance that we do so. So there's three things I'm gonna take you through all this morning. First, I'm going to state four principles of spiritual discernment. These principles are the basis of John's argument in this passage. Secondly, I'm going to explain to you something about the quasi-Christian deception of first century Gnosticism. And then thirdly, we're going to follow John as he teaches the first century church how to apply these principles of spiritual discernment to this quasi-Christian movement of Gnosticism. And then we'll conclude. So first, four principles of spiritual discernment. And note here that spiritual discernment is not a feeling. It's not that you will know what a spiritual thing is because of the feeling that it gives you. Spiritual discernment is a matter of understanding. And that's why we can speak of principles of spiritual discernment. The idea is to understand the principles and you can exercise spiritual discernment no matter how a thing makes you feel. So number one. Every spiritual thing arises from a spiritual source. Principle number one, every spiritual thing arises from a spiritual source. So whether it's a spiritual teacher, or spiritual doctrine, a spiritual experience, a spiritual movement, a spiritual institution, every spiritual thing must have arisen from something else that is spiritual, and that something else is its source. Principle number two, there are only two spiritual sources. from which a spiritual thing can arise. Only two. Not three, not five, and this is, according to John, just a matter of fact. And appreciating that fact greatly simplifies the exercise of spiritual discernment. The question of a thing's spiritual source is a simple question of either or. Its source is either this, or if not this, then it must be that. With only two possibilities, when you exclude the possibility of one, you're left with the possibility of the other, and that's all. Principle number three. The two spiritual sources from which all spiritual things arise are opposite, antithetical. Like light and darkness, to use John's metaphor. And here they are. One source of spiritual things is God and Christ. That's the light. And the other source of spiritual things is Satan and Antichrist. And that is the darkness. So let me test you to see if you understand. If it is a spiritual thing, and it's not from God and Christ, then where is it from? Satan and Antichrist. You've got it. And according to John, it really is that simple and therefore misleading to make it seem more complicated than that. And fourth and finally, last principle is, and every spiritual thing bears the marks of the source from which it arises. Every spiritual thing bears the marks of the source from which it arises. What is of God and Christ affirms the Gospel and promotes righteousness on the lives of those who believe it. What is of Satan and Antichrist denies the Gospel and promotes lawlessness on those of the distinguishing marks. So when you examine a spiritual thing, it may well be that you can't see the source itself But that doesn't prevent you from seeing what the source is. No spiritual thing, however it seeks to disguise itself and to pretend to be something it's not, can successfully hide these marks from the discerner. So in the realm of spiritual things, it's always possible to know if a thing is of God and Christ or of Satan and Antichrist. Always. You just have to know what to look for, and be careful to look. So those are the four principles of spiritual discernment. Move on then, secondly, to our understanding of the quasi-Christian deception of Gnosticism in the first and second centuries. Again, quasi-Christian means seemingly, but not really, Christian. And that's why it can be deceptive. So Gnosticism has roots in Greek philosophy and Eastern mysticisms, kind of a mixture of the two. But it found in Christianity enough that it sort of sounded Gnostic, that Gnostic teachers were able to infiltrate Christian churches without Christians at first realizing that what these men were teaching was not Christianity, but Gnosticism. So that's very similar then to what Machen said about theological liberalism. I'll read that quote to you again. Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief. Not Christianity, is what he said. which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. It sounds in some ways like Christianity, but it's not. Among the Christian-like claims of the Gnostics were these. They claimed, of course, to be of God. And making this claim in the churches, they would hold up the Bible. this God, your God, we are of Him." They claimed, furthermore, to be filled with God's Holy Spirit, to have received revelation through the Spirit, and to speak by the Spirit in these Christian churches. They furthermore professed to know and to believe in the Christ. They would say that. The Anointed One, and spoke of Him as a Savior. And finally, they claimed that through the knowledge of God and Christ, that they had attained to personal righteousness before God. So all such Christian-sounding claims suited Gnosticism well enough, and the Gnostic leaders made much of those claims in Christian churches. But all the while, Gnosticism still bore the marks of Satan and Antichrist. It wasn't a perfect representation of the light. John notes those marks throughout his epistle, and they are these. The Gnostics professed faith in the Christ, but denied that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ. In fact, they denied that the Christ was a man at all. The Gnostics also claimed to have attained personal righteousness through the knowledge of God and the Christ, and yet that had nothing to do with the atoning blood that Jesus shed on the cross for sinners, and they denied any need of that. And finally, the righteous status that was claimed by the Gnostics before God did not translate into actual righteousness in their lives. And that's an important point. The righteousness that they claimed to possess in God and Christ did not translate into actual righteousness in their lives. And apparently that was obvious, so that John could point to it and say, what about that? So you can see both why Christians in the first century were confused by Gnostic teachers in their midst, and also why John thought that they should not have been confused. Yes, the Gnostics had learned to talk like Christians in some ways in order to deceive Christians, but they could not hide the marks of Antichrist that betrayed their true spiritual source. So that brings us to the third section in the sermon. Now we're going to follow the Apostle John here, in 1 John 3, 4-10, as he applies these principles of spiritual discernment to this quasi-Christian movement of Gnosticism in the 1st century. So there's going to be a verse-by-verse exposition of this passage. I have to move pretty quickly for the sake of time, but hopefully I've laid the groundwork so that you can follow easily enough. Begin with verse 4. John says there, Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. Now, I'm persuaded that John is not just defining sin by its synonym, lawlessness. That is, he's not just saying that sin is the transgression of the law, though it is. Rather, I think in verse 4 that John is identifying something, which he calls lawlessness, as the source out of which sin arises. The Greek word translated lawlessness is anomia. Namas, Greek for law. A is the Greek prefix of negation, so anomia means without law. And so it's really similar to the English word anarchy. Without law describes this disordered state of unrestrained wickedness. And that's why Jesus and the apostles most often used this word anomia to describe the spiritual anarchy of the last days. So, for instance, in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus says that it is because of increasing lawlessness that the love of many will grow cold in the last days. So, anemia is like the rising tide of spiritual wickedness. It's making men's hearts cold. In the same gospel, those who have practiced and are filled with lawlessness, the spiritual darkness, are those whom Jesus casts into the furnace of fire at the Last Judgment. Likewise, the Apostle Paul, warning of the appearance of the Antichrist in the last days, calls him the man of lawlessness. Anamia in 2 Thessalonians 2.3 declares there in verse 7 that already in the first century the mystery of lawlessness was at work. Paul asks of the Corinthian church in 2 Corinthians 6.14 this question, what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial, that is the devil? So anomia, as used by Jesus and the apostles, is more, I think, than just a synonym for sins. It's an even deeper, darker term. When John says here in verse four that sin is lawlessness, what he's doing is he's tracing the sin that he sees in Gnosticism to the unseen spirit of anarchy and satanic rebellion, out of which only such dark things can arise. Verse five. John continues and says, and you know that he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him there is no sin. And he, in this verse, is of course Jesus Christ. So John is pointing out two things that we Christians know about him. First, Jesus was manifest or appeared in our world to take away our sins, not to leave us in them. And then secondly, in Jesus himself, John says, we know there was no sin. As John said in verse three, he is pure. So clearly, what John is showing us is that the spirit of Jesus is the opposite of anomia, the spirit of lawlessness. Jesus himself stands opposed to lawlessness. So how then, John is asking, can Jesus Christ be the spiritual source of the Gnostic movement in which we see that sin continues and abounds? Verse six, John says, whoever abides in him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen him nor known him. So this verse is the verse that's a sticking point for a lot of us. It sounds as if John is saying that as Jesus Christ is sinless, so Christians are sinless. But there's two problems with that. Back in 1 John 1, 8 through 10, same epistle, John taught that if we as Christians say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. We make God a liar, and do not have his word in us. That's the first problem. And then secondly, as for Jesus and all the other apostles, they all taught in various places that Christians do sin, and so we'll have a continual need to ask Christians to confess and repent of their sins in their life before God. So as I mentioned earlier in the sermon series, John does not mean what John cannot mean. And John cannot mean here in 1 John 3, 6 that only sinless people are Christians unless we're ready to accuse John of contradicting himself and everybody else in the Bible. So what does he mean then? Both translators and commentators tend to make much of John's use of the present verb tense in this verse, which in Greek emphasizes that an action is ongoing in a person's life. So the ESV, the English Standard Version, particularly stresses this in its translation of verse 6. It renders it like this. It says, no one who abides in him that is in Jesus keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. So, that's helpful. But, you may be thinking, yes, but that's just the problem. Though I am a Christian, I do keep on sinning. And I'm increasingly aware of that. Aware of it every day of my Christian life. I see Paul saying something similar of himself in Romans 7, 19, where he says, the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Present tense. And again, of the Christian in Galatians 5.17, Paul says this, the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another so that you do not do the things that you wish, for saying to these Christians, you know what I'm talking about, right? So Jesus may be pure, and indeed he is, and I may be made pure like him when I see him on the last day, verse three. But alas, I am not yet pure. I, the Christian, am spirit and flesh, and these are opposed, even within me. So it is a continual struggle for me not to sin, and if I'm to be honest, in that struggle, it is not always the better Christ-like part of me that prevails. And that's everyone's experience, including John's. So the ESV emphasis is helpful, but something more is needed, I think, to explain verse six, and I think we find that something more in verse seven, so look there. Verse seven, John says, little children, let no one deceive you, for he who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he, that is Jesus, is righteous. So what do you pick up on there? It was something deceptive in Gnostic teaching, and particularly Gnostic teaching on righteousness. That righteousness was being defined in a way that neither demanded nor produced practical righteousness, such as helping the helpless, which John will speak of later in chapter three, verse 17. What did righteousness mean in Gnostic theology? Maybe knowing secret knowledge was what the Gnostics called righteousness. Or perhaps righteousness in the Gnostic scheme of salvation was having had some sort of esoteric mystical experience of God. I don't know. But whatever righteousness was to the Gnostics, it apparently didn't have anything to do with actually doing what is right. But that's wrong, John objects. How do we know? And his answer is beautiful, because that's not what we've seen in Jesus Christ. Jesus, the son was truly righteous, how so? Not in that he knew secret things or had special experiences of God that other people didn't have, but that he obeyed the commandment of God his Father. That's what righteousness is, and John is saying, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Verse eight. He who sins, John says, is of the devil. For the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. So now, two different kinds of people are starting to emerge. On the one hand, there are people who understand righteousness as it was truly manifest in the Son of God, who in that light confess their sins and seek to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ, according to the gospel. And furthermore, who as Christ's followers endeavor now, however imperfectly, to resist the temptations of sin in the spirit and do the good works of Jesus in their lives, such as helping the helpless. And these people are called truly Christians. But on the other hand, there are people who deny that Jesus is the Christ. who talk about righteousness like people who don't know what righteousness is and who go on sinning unashamedly because their cult has told them it's okay, which is one of the reasons they like that cult. And these people are, to use John's terms, not non-Christians, but what? Of the devil. So notice that twice he repeats that phrase, of the devil, in verse eight. John's identifying the source, isn't he? John cannot see the devil, but when he looks at Gnosticism, he sees all the marks of the devil. He says, they do as he has always done. And as for Jesus, Jesus has come to destroy such works assure people that those works are okay. Verse 9, John says, whoever has been born of God does not sin, for his seed remains in him. He cannot sin because he has been born of God. Again, another tricky verse. Gnostics are of the devil. They claim to be righteous, but they go on sinning. That's lawlessness. Christians are of God. They confess their sins and endeavor to follow Christ the Son in the ways of righteousness, in His Spirit. That's obedience, and that's the difference. And it's the difference between darkness and light. And how do Christians come to be the obedient children of God in the midst of the children of the devil? How do they come to be of the light as God is light? John says they are born of God. What's he talking about? He's talking about regeneration. When a man believes in Jesus Christ for his salvation, God adopts and plants new life in him. And that's the seed of God that John speaks of in this verse. And that seed of God's Holy Spirit, which only the Christian has, is the spiritual source of new spiritual things in his life. Things which are the very opposite in character of the works of the devil, or as Paul calls them in Galatians, the works of the flesh. What is the fruit of God's Spirit? Christian, you know the verse. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, Paul says in Galatians, there is no law. He's not describing anomia. He's not describing lawlessness. He's saying everything here is in perfect harmony with the law, with the revealed will of God. And that's the sort of spiritual thing to which the Holy Spirit gives rise and the life of the new man of Christ. So as we said, it's not that a Christian never sins. There's no way to arrive at that conclusion. We are not pure nor shall be until that great day when we see Christ as He is. John taught us that. But rather, it is that there is now that within the Christian never sins, never approves of sin, never encourages to sin or excuses sin. And I'm talking about the Holy Spirit of God, the Spirit of our adoption. And so when the Christian man walks, as Paul urges him to walk, not in the flesh, but in the Holy Spirit, why, then he walks differently from every other man, including the Gnostic one. Because the Christian, by his faith in Jesus Christ, is there in drawing spiritual things from a spiritual source, which is the very opposite of anemia. And that source is, as John calls him in 1 John 2,1, our advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous. We who are his abide in him, and only we do. And so the conclusion, verse 10, John says, in this, The children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. They are different, as different as they can be, a child of God and a child of the devil, spiritually speaking, and you can tell the difference. You just have to know what to look for and be careful to look. Again, one talks of righteousness, but just goes on sinning. The other confesses Jesus Christ as the righteous one and bears the fruit of his spirit in his life as Christ's disciple. Conclusion then. There's your case study. You see here how the Apostle John applied the principles of spiritual discernment to a quasi-Christian movement in the first century known as Gnosticism. See how it works. I hope so, because there is another quasi-Christian movement now coming in the 21st century church. The late Harry Reader called it progressive Christianity, because it is aligning itself with progressive thought. Progressive Christianity preaches, among other things, the moral good of socialism. Progressive Christianity embraces the LGBTQ agenda. Progressive Christianity champions critical race theory, and it does all this in our churches and in the name of God and Christ. I heard of a church in Conyers in which the pastor declared from the pulpit recently that the most important part of the gospel was ready, diversity, Equity and inclusion. And where did he get that, I wonder? My friend who attends that church almost fell out of his chair. But he's still in that church because his wife wants to go there. For liberal churches, the ones that capitulated to theological liberalism, In the early part of the 20th century, the main line of Protestant churches, progressive Christianity is just a natural development. There's not a lot of surprise there. But it's the rise of progressive Christianity in evangelical churches that's the real story of our time. The pressure's great to yield, to conform, to be, as they say, an ally. And we are warned that we'll lose the next generation if we do not. And so some evangelical church leaders are leading us in that direction and doing so are claiming to be the saviors of Christianity. I'm not a prophet, but I am a student of church history, and we've seen this before in Machen's day. And you would think, here's the bitter part of it, you would think that Christians would be able to see the marks of Satan and Antichrist. in a movement that normalizes the perversity of homosexuality, that kills babies unflinchingly and encourages people to do so, and further seeks to draw, to confuse and draw confused school children into a chemical and surgical gender transition without the knowledge or consent of their parent. You'd think that it would be obvious to Christians what this is, spiritually speaking, but just you wait. You're gonna be amazed how many professing Christians and their leaders hearing this agenda promoted in familiar Christian terms will be deceived by this, including many whom you had thought would be more discerning. This sermon series on 1 John is, among other things, equipping you to stand where others will fall. So heed the warning this morning, and it's this, as I close. Whatever its name, what speaks of righteousness, or for that matter, justice or love, what promotes anomia, or lawlessness, the disorder of unrestrained wickedness, is certainly not of God and of Christ. You see that? You have enough to know. It's not a thing with which we as Christians want anything to do. Shall we pray?