Please open your Bibles to 2 John, where our study today will be verses 7 to 13. Using the Pew Bible, you'll find it on page 1306. Listen now to God's holy, inerrant, and life-giving word, beginning at verse 7 of 2 John. The apostle writes, for many deceivers have gone out into the world. those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is a deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete. The children of your elect sister greet you. May God be praised through the reading and the hearing of his holy word. Amen. Father, we now pray your blessing. We thank you for the Holy Spirit moving the Apostle John to write to that congregation in ancient Asia. But Lord, you were speaking to us when he wrote that. And so speak to us, Lord. Give us ears to hear, particularly on such a vital matter as that which we find today. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Modern Reformation Magazine once published an issue, the title of which was Our Debt to Heresy. Now there's a seemingly implausible topic, and yet the magazine showed that it was the impetus of false teaching that moved the church to do its best work in interpreting scripture. Most of the most wonderful things that we really understand more clearly from the Bible regarding Christ and the Trinity, the saving work of God, was performed because of the need to do it, because there was heresy. Let me give some examples. It was in response to that dreaded Arius. Every time we sing the Gloria Patri, we are opposing the Arian heretics and their denial of the deity of Christ. And we have from that, the Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed. Not only do we often say the Nicene Creed, I hope you notice the second verse of our opening hymn was largely a recitation of that great careful language, God of God, light of God, very God of very God, begotten not made. Why do we have that? Because of the heretics. It was the heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches in the fifth century about the two natures of Christ that prompted the Council of Chalcedon in 451 to give us the hypostatic union. Christ is one person with two natures. That was in our reading from the Confession without confusion and without inseparably joined together, careful language about the hypostatic union. Augustine wrote his devastating material on salvation by grace alone. I remember the first time I read Augustine, I said, well, he's under the influence of Calvin. Of course, he wrote a thousand years beforehand. Well, where did he get those thoughts? Because he needed them because that heretic Pelagius was going around denying total depravity, was denying that sin had any effect. And yet it was all moral effort on your behalf and you could be saved. And that is what prompted Augustine to lay down the foundations of the doctrines of grace. Let's fast forward to Anselm of Canterbury in the 12th century in his beautiful articulation in Cur Deus Homo of substitutionary atonement. Why did he do that? Because the heretics were putting a completely different theory on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we get to the Reformation where Martin Luther nails down the doctrine of justification through faith alone. Why? Because of false teaching that was spiritually killing the people. A little of that rich doctrinal heritage would be ours without heresy. Well, whatever gratitude we may have towards past heresy that have been safely answered, present heresies are another matter. For them we have no gratitude. And John sees him as a real and deadly danger. Church history tradition tells us that John came back from the Isle of Patmos and he discovered that there were these men who'd separated themselves from the church and they were teaching against the full deity of Jesus. They were tempting sheep to depart from the fold of salvation and that he responded with this short letter, which today we know as 2 John and then Right after that came 1 John. Now his purpose was the same as Jude, who in his short letter put it this way, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once delivered, once for all delivered to the saints. Jude verse three. Well, in John's short letter to the elect lady, which we take to mean a congregation under his care, the apostle began by expressing his joy to find some of your children walking in the truth. That's the first reason why he was filled with delight over that, because a lifestyle of godliness and truth is a lifestyle of salvation. But in verse seven, he gives a second reason why he was glad to see that. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Evidently, John is concerned that some others, while some are walking in the truth, some others are being lured outside of the truth. Now when John writes that deceivers have gone out into the world, he makes clear, this is our first point today, that Christians must have discernment. with respect to truth and error of essential biblical doctrines. We must have discernment about what is true and sound and necessary and what is a heresy. And of course, the first step in discernment is to realize that there is a threat. That's what John wants them to wake up. There's a threat of this false teaching. Now, you and I are living in a time like John's when the awareness of this threat is both essential and sorely lacking. I think I often compare the evangelical movement of which we are a part to the Corinthian church. Paul wrote to the Corinthians to rebuke the celebrity culture. What they were interested in was personalities. It was in giftedness. That was the Corinthians. And the evangelical church today is often more interested in who can attract a large following rather than who is walking in the truth. In the American church culture today, and I could give you specific examples for these, a preacher may deny the unique personhood of Christ. He may discard the authority of God's word when the culture challenges what it says. He may substitute worldly success, I refer to the prosperity gospel, for heavenly salvation. He may teach all of those heresies and yet remain an evangelical leader in good standing. That is very, it's not only possible today, it's widespread. People tend to pick churches today based on the personality of the minister. The church is fit with a chosen style rather than for a commitment to the teaching of sound doctrine. Michael Horton urges we all have to take a step back and ask ourselves whether evangelicalism is increasingly a cultural and political movement with a sentimental attachment to an image of Jesus more than a witness of Jesus Christ and him crucified. 1 Corinthians 2 too, I think Horton is right. Well, the New Testament makes it clear that there are satanic enemies of Christ and that they pose a deadly threat through false teaching. John wants us to know the threat. Now, the prime examples, of course, were in the Gospels, the religious leaders who, they didn't merely oppose the doctrine of Christ, they opposed the Christ himself. And they said he was Satan. They said he cast out demons by Beelzebul, and they opposed him. They conspired with falsehood to hand him over to be crucified. And Jesus said of them, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. John 8, 44. Jesus warned his followers, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. Matthew 7, 15. It's amazing, given the clarity of what Jesus said, how little seriously this is taken today. Or think of the Apostle Paul. Years later the apostles are planting the churches and there the heretics are coming from within the church. It's heartbreaking to read Acts 20 when Paul meets with the Ephesian elders. These were men that he grew in the faith. He probably evangelized many of them and they've been with for three years. He taught them and they built up that great church in Ephesus. John's now the pastor of that church. And yet when he meets for the last time with the elders, he has to tell them this, this is Acts 20, 29 to 30. I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock and from among your own selves. will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. Well, since John later pastored that very city's congregation, we may assume that some of these antichrists he dealing with were men about whom Paul was speaking. Well, Jesus said this, he said, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. Matthew 13, 24 and 25. Now notice that that weed project to spoil the field was only made possible because the watchmen were asleep. Jesus' word surely mandates that churches would carefully consider, carefully examine candidates for ministry to ensure against heresy. The grave threat is from the pulpit. Oh, the pew has its own problems, but the threat of heresy is primarily from the pulpit. Jesus says, let's have the watchman on guard. Let's safeguard the office of ministry and the pulpit. Well, John leaves us no doubt, not only about the threat of false teaching, but he's pretty clear, very clear about what that false teaching is. We see the threat, but also the teaching itself. Verse seven, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Now notice that John does not beat around the bush. He pointedly identifies the false teaching that must be shunned. That's necessary. People don't know what to watch out for unless they're told what it is. And so when heresy circles near our churches, we must be willing to speak pointedly and specifically about them. And there are times when names must be named. In 3 John, he's going to name names. In 2 Timothy and Titus, Paul names names. That has to be done as well, but particularly, the false teaching must be explained. Now, as we saw when we were studying 1 John, the particular heresy John faced was an early form of what's called Gnosticism. And that was a blend of Greek mystery religion and mysticism and Christianity. Now, one of the key tenets of Gnosticism is that there's a radical divide between spirit and matter, and spirit's good, matter's bad. Matter is contemptible, and salvation is the release of spirit from the body, from mere matter. Now, if you hold that doctrine, you are not going to accept the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they denied the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Corinthian Gnosticism. Corinthius, we're told, by Eusebius, was the heretic leader that John faced. His version of it was that what happened was the Holy Spirit came upon that man, Jesus of Nazareth, and made use of him for a while. That's why Jesus did those extraordinary things. But the Spirit left him before he went to the cross and died. Now, that being the case, the key doctrine of the atonement held no place among the proto-gnostic. For them, the Son of God did not become man and he certainly did not die in the flesh for our sins. Now, we have to say, of course, that not all error, not all disagreement is heresy. Christians can be, and we certainly are, divided about secondary, nonetheless important matters, the mode of baptism. There are some of our fellow Christians who'd be appalled by what we did earlier today, and they teach against covenant baptism, and one of us is right, one of us is wrong. I'm pretty persuaded we're right, but that doesn't make them heretics. You think of end times views. We should be thinking about those things, and Christians do not agree. That does not make someone a heretic. We don't break fellowship with someone because they're pre-mill when we're all mill, that kind of thing, within some bounds on that. But you see, true heresy, the really deadly teaching, it's one of the things we see in John's teaching here. It always concerns the person and work of Jesus Christ. The true heresy that's damnable, that will lead people to death, concerns Christ. Danny Akin writes, John knew that Christology is at the heart of Christianity. If you are wrong on who Jesus is, you will be wrong everywhere. You may have noticed when I chronicled at the beginning the great historical heresies to whom we are in debt, they were all Christological in one important way or another. Arianism denied the deity of Jesus. Nestorianism messed up the whole two natures and one person of Jesus. Pelagianism denied the grace of the Lord Jesus. Substitutionary atonement was in response to those who denied the meaning of the cross. Justification of faith is about the effects of Christ's finished work. All those great doctrines, not by chance, they center on something essential about the person and work of the Lord Jesus. I think Akin is right when he says, the heart of all false teaching is a defective view of Christ. Consider the 20th century. Someone says, what happened in the 20th century? Our answer would be liberalism. whole denominations were eviscerated in the 20th century. I read a thing in 1920 at the Ivy League colleges, in 1900 you were expected to go to Bible study and prayer meeting every day at Princeton University. By 1920 they didn't even have the meetings. What happened? Liberalism. And someone says, well, what's liberalism? Well, in general, it is the denial of the unique authority of the Bible. They deny inerrancy. They deny the authority of God. And so when the culture disagrees, they cave in and they just start living the world. That is what liberalism is. And yet, if you go back to the 20th century, And you say, what were the key doctrinal issues in which they denied the authority of scripture? They all pertain to the person and work of Christ, the virgin birth of Jesus, the miracles of Jesus, the atoning death of Jesus, the bodily resurrection of Jesus. It's not incidental. The Antichrist are Antichrist. And the heart of all heresy, even when the methodological issue has, and it's the case, has to do with the authority of the word of God. It's a huge issue. but then the actual content will pertain to the person and work of Jesus. You may have heard of the Jesus Seminar, a much celebrated scholarly movement among liberals, and they got the best scholars, so-called, to study, to use secular historiographic means to discover who the real Jesus of history was. I don't think anybody was surprised when the answer was, well, he certainly was not born of a virgin, He certainly performed no miracles and he absolutely did not rise again from the dead. It is Antichrist. Well, the spirit of our age says, you know, you need to be tolerant of scholarship. Well, look at verse seven, John speaks differently. Such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist. He meant that, wittingly or not, the Antichrist heretics were agents of Satan in his spiritual assault against the church. That's what he says is going on. And you say, what is John's attitude to these variant doctrines of Christ? The answer was absolute intolerance. He was utterly intolerant. Ian Hamilton says it was John's commitment to the glory of Christ and his concern for the eternal good of sinners that caused him to write in the way that he did. Well, surely correspondingly, if we lack that zeal for the truth, the true teaching of Jesus in his person and work, can that not only mean that we lack a zeal for his glory and for the salvation of those who must have the true gospel if they're going to be saved? Every one of us was saved because others held firm the true doctrine. Well, John wants us to see that there is a threat of heresy. He wants us to know what the teaching is. But if he goes on in verse nine and he notes, this is very important, what is the tendency of all false teaching? How does it work? Is there a pattern that you see? John says, yes, there is. There is a tendency. Here's what he says. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Now, his main point is you cannot be in fellowship with the Father while denying the Son. And Fanny Crosby was right. Come to the Father through Jesus the Son. If you've not done that, you cannot have salvation unless you are joined to Christ in a faith where you receive and you surrender yourself to him. That's John's main point, but notice how he puts it. Notice how he describes a heretic. It's one who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching. See, what's the deal with a heretic? They don't stick to scripture. They go beyond scripture. They bring in insights from outside the scripture. There's mandates, intellectual mandates. There's theories. There's perspectives. There's whole grids that they import, and they're not going to stick to the scripture. They're going to go beyond the scripture. John Stott says they claim to have go-ahead views. a superior gnosis, that's where Gnostic comes from, knowledge, a superior gnosis, and that enabled them to advance beyond the rudiments of the faith in which the common herd were to abide. Donald Burdick writes, the Gnostics claimed to be advancing beyond the inferior concept of the incarnation. They consider themselves progressive in their thinking. Going ahead of God, the false teachers had in reality left God behind. Now that's going to be true not just in gospel issues, it's true in so many issues. I remember not that long ago reading a reformed, an evangelical conservative reformed article, scholar, and he writes that we should be open-minded to evolution and he argued that from Genesis 2-7. I thought that was very curious. Because Genesis 2.7, you remember, says that God formed the man out of the dust of the earth. We have a physical, we have a description of the unique creation of Adam at a particular time. But the writer said, and this was a member of our denomination, of course, said, oh no, that can be taken to describe millions of years of biological evolutionary processes. I remember saying, well, you might read that into the text, but you will never read it out of the text. And the reason they're reading it into the text is they have accepted a superior authority, which is now, the very thing John says, going on ahead of the scripture. We're going where the scripture doesn't go. We're not abiding in the teaching itself. What a dangerous thing it is to do that. We are to abide in the teaching, John says. Now let me caveat that by saying this doesn't mean there shouldn't be real scholarship. Not all scholarships are heretics, however poorly I usually speak of them. There is actual, there are new insights that are gained from time to time. My old mentor, Dr. Boyce, said if you have a new breakthrough in theology or Bible interpretation, there's about a 95% chance that you're a heretic, but that leaves 5%. And I would argue the 20th century has seen some really good understandings of some issues in the book of Revelation. The understanding of that, I think, has at least been restored. There have been some real insights in the 20th century that were not there before, but they are relatively few. But you see, notice the key. What's the difference then? Someone has a new idea, a new approach. How do we tell false from actually something good and true? The question, John says, is does it go beyond the scripture or does it abide in the teaching? By the way, the teaching there means a fixed doctrinal standard that is the apostolic faith. The test of all teaching and scholarship in conformity is in conformity to what Paul called the pattern of sound words. There people says, well, there's not actually a body of doctrine in the New Testament. The New Testament says there is. Paul says the pattern of sound words. John says, abide in the teaching of Christ. Now you have your view, I have mine. We're perspectival. No, it's the teaching of Christ. That means that wise churches must make clear what is their doctrine. This is the benefit of our great confessional standards coming out of the Protestant Reformation. People say, oh, you have a confession, you're not biblical. No, no, it's the confession that makes clear what is the pattern of sound words. And then we govern the minister. I praise God I'm in a denomination where I don't have the right to say anything I want. And if I were to deviate from the teaching, I would hope that a big hook would come from somewhere and grab me by the neck and start dragging me out. Maybe not literally, but metaphorically. Particularly if it's a Christological error, if it's heresy, we are to safeguard it, we are to do so by clear confessional standards. Well, John wants Christians to discern the threat. There's a threat of false teaching. He wants us to know what the false teaching is. He's intolerant of them. He shows the tendency. What's the tendency? It's going ahead, going beyond, being progressive in that way. Let me point out one last thing he points out. Another feature of heretics that he notes is their diabolical tenacity. They are tenacious in opposing the person and work of Christ. Now, where do I see that? Back in verse seven. For many deceivers have gone out into the world. What does gone out into the world mean? Well, it could mean they've left the church. They went into the world. That's possible. I think it's likely that John means more. He means that they've gone out with a missionary fervor, that they are counterfeiting the zeal of a Christian evangelist. David Jackman writes, they have gone out as missionaries do. They're penetrating new areas with their false gospel. They're spreading their heresies with missionary zeal. They're eager to influence new areas and dominate other churches. Isn't that, boy, the history of America shows that with Mormonism. Christian scientism, Jehovah's Witnesses. These things built empires. I was in Africa at the African Bible College with Palmer Robertson. They're struggling, they got a nice campus, they're short on money. It's a massive complex right down the road being built by the Jehovah's Witnesses. All the money in the world and they're building seminaries to the cause of denying the deity of Jesus all over the world. They have gone up, they are tenacious. in their Satan-inspired zeal to oppose the work of Christ. And John says, you see, when you realize that there really is a deadly threat from antichrist teachers and there's a spiritual evil animating them with zeal, we'll understand how important it is. This is all putting together our first point. We must be discerning about truth and error on the key doctrines of Christianity. Well, John's call for discernment leads to two applications, and the first is seen in verse eight. Watch yourselves. The point is, we need to be discerning about these things. Watch yourselves. Now that means, negatively, it means that we should not listen to, we should not be students of those who oppose the teaching of Christ. And I'm always reminded of Psalm 1. There's a no and a yes. The no, blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. Do not walk in the counsel of the Antichrist false teachers who deny the deity of Christ that the Son of God came in the flesh to die for our sins. And yet, Isn't it true that there's an appeal to the new, to the novel? It becomes trendy. I mean, in America, you sell anything by putting the word new on it. Half the time, they've just kind of rearranged the box. It's new. Oh, it must be better than the old. Evangelicalism has bought this in so many ways. The old is bad. It's the new. It's the trendy and the hip. And that's true with ideas as well. Let me say this, when the fashionable scholarly elite has taken a position at odds with the clear teaching of God's Word, the appeal is not so much intellectual as social. When I was at seminary, we had a joke and it went like this, I'll call you an evangelical if you'll call me a scholar. What it meant was, oh, well, we'll change the definitions of what the gospel is if you let us have tea at Harvard Divinity School. Wouldn't that be great? Oh, we're scholars. You're evangelicals. Well, proper scholarship is to be desired. But we are not to be sucked into the social desire to be among the elite, to be thought of that way, to be in the young crowd. By the way, this is the way Christians are corrupted at college. It's not with careful atheistic arguments. Atheistic arguments are terrible. It's through social pressure. It's through intimidation. It's by alluring. Now, I've loved how the writer of Hebrews put this. He spoke of the same thing. And in Hebrews 2, 4, he put it this way. He warned, lest we drift away from what we have heard. What I like there is that drift away is a nautical term. The writer of Hebrews was clearly a man of boats. He uses a lot of nautical terms. And this particular one, drift away that he uses, it describes a boat that has slipped its mooring and is drifting out to sea. The rope has come undone and you went to bed, the boat was there, woke up in the morning, it wasn't there. What happened? It was unmoored, it just drifted away. And he says that's what happens spiritually. That same word can be used, of a ship again, that starts deviating off its course. You can't perceive it, but it just starts getting off course and it never reaches the destination. And John's saying the same thing. Beware lest you drift away in that kind of way. Now, part of the remedy is the negative. We must not give ourselves to these things, but primarily watch yourselves is positive. It's a positive, just like Psalm 1, blessed is he who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. Well, we must avoid fashionable error, but we will only do that with a prayerful commitment to God's word. Someone says, you keep reading the Bible, you read that every day, haven't you learned it yet? A, no. B, that's not just the issue, I'm staying on course. I'm, it's the means of grace. I need grace. It's, it's, it's God's conduit for life. And so I need that. And, and I'm keeping, let me, the way to keep your boat tied safely in the Harbor of salvation is through a daily prayerful commitment to the word of God, but not only in a mechanical way. to the authority of the Word of God, the power of the Word of God, the truth of the Word of God. Augustine once said, I find that when I and the Bible are in disagreement, and that happens from time to time, I have learned that I am wrong and it is right. because it's the Word of God. It's the revelation of the true and living God. It is, therefore, what Psalm 19 says. It is true. It is radiant. It enlightens the eyes. You can't say it about anything else. And so when the culture says, oh, we think that Bible's outmoded and it's kind of ignorant. I mean, it's not their fault. They were ancients. They were primitives. And so science has a new view. Well, look, I'm all for proper science. But I like to argue if you have men and women of great education, brilliant minds, working hard, very impressive, and then you have the sovereign, eternal, immortal, invincible, all-knowing God, I just don't think it's controversial to go, it's very impressive, but you know, this is a little more weighty. And so the Word of God is true. We must have that conviction, and that will tie us down. That's what John's saying. Watch yourself. Have a lifestyle of tying yourself to the Lord. How do you keep the ship on course by having the map open as you're moving the wheel? That's what he means when he says, watch yourself. C.S. Lewis, I thought, spoke so wisely on this. He says, we have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in your mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examine a hundred people who had left Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument. Do not most rather simply drift away. That is how it happens, the drifting away. Well, John's call to watchfulness means that Christian teachers must always study with an aim to biblical accuracy. I must preach, not in order to make myself popular, not in order to stay out of trouble, but what the Bible says must be the end of the matter. for Christian hearers. Watching out means exercising discernment in where you go to church, that you would attend the church primarily based on its commitment to biblical truth and careful exposition. Simply put, Christians who choose to attend a church based on its trendiness, its style, its cultural place, place themselves, and especially their children, in deadly peril. You might think when John calls them deceivers and antichrists that the false teachers are ugly men with scars on their faces and, you know, hangnails and teeth sticking out. Actually, they're always good-looking. I argue that the Orthodox, we have better-looking wives. That's God's grace to us. But we ourselves are a bunch of fat, gappy-toothed guys, and they look great. Nothing wrong with looking great. But the heretics, they seem sincere. Satan's no dummy. They seem pious. They seem so well-meaning. That is not the issue. If we are to abide in the teaching of Christ, it will not happen by accident. It will be because we made it our priority. Indulge me in one more illustration of this. This one's from the Bible, the book of Judges. I was talking to someone last night. He said he's doing his devotions in the book of Judges and how gnarly it is. It's horrible. It just gets worse all the time. And what's really shocking about Judges is it comes in the Bible after the book of Joshua. Joshua was the high-water mark spiritually in the Old Testament. What a bunch of champions the Israelites were in Joshua's time. They trusted the Lord, the power of God, you know, hails raining on their enemies and they're doing these mighty deeds. And that book of the Bible is followed by the next generation. One of the worst scenes, a spiritual decline of sordid unbelief. You go, how do you get in one book from Joshua to Judges and the answer is given in Judges 2 10. There arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. You see, this shows that after we've accepted Christ, we must continuously be taught and teach sound doctrine. Joel Beakey puts it this way. If we fail to do that, our children and their children will be given at best a dim version of the truth. We will be passing onto them a light that has been so diminished that its clear shining of the truth is no longer visible. and the gospel has become no gospel at all. Well, John adds a warning, watch yourselves, and then he gives this, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Is he saying that they're all gonna lose their salvation? Well, certainly if you're professing faith in Jesus Christ by following the Antichrist heretics, your profession is engraved out, but he does not mean that you will lose your salvation. Notice he says that you may not lose what we have worked for. What have we worked for? The building of the church. The gospel work in our generation. That's what we'll lose if we don't watch out. David Jackman says, rightly I think, John was expressing his concern that all the hard work of evangelism, teaching, pastoral care to which the church leaders of that generation had given themselves so sacrificially would in the end come to nothing if the church in the next generation turns away from the truth. That's John's first application. His point is be discerning about truth and error and heresy. Watch yourselves. And then secondly, knowing how serious this is, we must never give aid to the enemy in this war. He says, if anyone comes to you and does not bring his teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting. Now, you probably know there weren't motels in the ancient world. In fact, there were inns, and they were almost all houses of ill repute, so you didn't stay in an inn because they weren't there, and when they were, you didn't stay there. Where did you stay? In the homes of people. And the early church relied upon that, yet they relied on the apostles who were going around, and the apostolic delegates at the end of Titus. Paul says, look, I've got Apollos and some other guys coming, take care of them, put them up, provide for their needs. That's what the early church did, and hospitality was at a very high premium. But hospitality must have its limits, John insists. In fact, it ends all together when it comes to Antichrist's false teachers. Do not receive them into your house or give them any greeting. Now commentators point out that churches in John's time almost always met in homes. And partly because of the plural nature of this, he's using the plural you. I think it's rightly taken that his primary concern has to do with the house where the church is being met. You're not to bring these false teachers to the place where the worship community is. When he says you're not to greet them, you're not to give them a positive introduction. I'd like to welcome today. So-and-so, so-and-so, would you like to speak?" John says, don't be doing that when the Antichrist heretic comes to your town. And he will. Now the principle, of course, means the teacher showed up. If you're going to follow John's teaching, if somebody shows up, I've been sent, I'm here to give you teaching, they have to examine him. And John says, look, use my, he says, he must, if he does not bring this teaching, do not let him in. John says, take second, John, use these things I've said and test them on those things. I want to point out to you that a true teacher, a faithful teacher, never minds being examined. I love it if they say, mind if we ask you some questions to discern your orthodoxy? I don't get my back up. I go, amen. It's like Paul with the Bereans. Thank you for asking me for the biblical basis. Always beware of men who resent examination. Examine them harder. A true teacher loves to be examined. By the way, that's true of Christian books. When I was an early Christian, I was blessed by Christian bookstores, but it's a very dangerous place to go, and I don't mean to dishonor faithful men and women trying to serve their community, but when you're not exercising a doctrinal standard, and the Christian book industry is not exercising a doctrinal standard, I actually once went to the Christian Booksellers Association for an interview for a book I was selling, of course, I'd written, and I asked the guy in charge, what's the doctrinal standard? And he said to me, if they say they're Christian, we accept them as Christian. The Apostle John would faint. So I'm not against Christian books, but listen, if you're a new believer, really any believer, ask your pastor or elders, mature Christians, who's a good author? Be careful who you're reading. And there are some good authors, great authors who are bestsellers. I'm not saying the popular are bad, but there are very popular people who are not teaching what is in accord with sound doctrine. You get John's point. We need to keep the heretics out. We need to guard against the doctrine, but we must never give aid. to the spreading of evil. Look what he says. Verse 11. Now, one question that inevitably comes up is going to lead straight to the Jehovah's Witnesses. It was almost amusing. Almost every commentary I read this week, and I read a lot of them, mentioned the Jehovah's Witnesses. It's a real testimony to their tenacious will. And the question is, is John saying, when the Jehovah's Witness comes to my neighborhood, is he saying I should not let them into my house or some other group like that? Well, reading John in contests suggests that he had church meetings in homes primarily in mind. I think that's true. And it's also true that well-trained Christians may use that opportunity to correct their teaching and perhaps win a convert to Christ. And yet, I would urge that the right way to take John is literally. What does the Bible mean? The Bible means what it says. Well, it's gotta be contextualized. I acknowledge that it's largely the house church, but I do think the right way to take him is literally. And you say, well, Jesus showed kindness to poor sinners like tax collectors and prostitutes. Yes, he did, but not to false teachers. Just go read John 8, the second half of it. He is ruthless in denouncing them. And there is no fellowship between Jesus and the false teachers. John is not referring to fellow Christians who have disagreements in secondary matters. Come on in, let's discuss it. Let's try to be nice to each other. Let's have a positive conversation. But there's something, a person's not a heretic because he or she differs with us on the sacraments or something else. Not within reason. John Stott says, John is referring to those who are engaged in systematic dissemination of lies. They are dedicated missionaries of error. To them we must give no encouragement. I would say to you pastorally that unless you possess training that equips you to encounter the specific heresy that's standing at your door, The best way for you to guard yourself from clever arguments to intentionally deceptive arguments is to keep the door shut. Well, let me conclude by pointing out back in verse 8, John said we must be watchful so that we may win a full reward. Well, what are these rewards of vigilance joined with prayerful faithfulness to the doctrine of Christ? Well, our first reward is always the glory of God. God is glorified as the light of his Son is kept pure, is passed down from one generation to the next. Another reward is seeing a sinner saved. And how does that happen? Only one way, verse 9, by abiding in the teaching of both the Father and the Son. He has the Father and the Son if he abides in the teaching. Oh, how precious that is. You can't be saved by another Jesus. I want to suggest another reward of guarding sound doctrine concerning Christ and His person and work is seen in the words by which John concludes this letter. He acknowledges there's more to talk about, but he wants to do most of it in person. Verse 12, though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face. Now what he shows is is that when we have guarded against false teaching, when we've fenced it out, that opens the lines of communication. And we can dive into deeper things. That's what he's showing. We can grow in breadth and depth when we're clear on the essentials and they're carefully guarded. When heresy is kept at bay and countered by faithful teaching from the scriptures, when there's confessional standards guarding the truth, Well, then we can dig deep into the good soil and we can grow in our knowledge of the truth of God and the person of God and His salvation. The wonderful teaching of Scripture will yield a harvest of strength and faith in gospel works. We will, as Peter put it, we will grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You know, if you want something to grow, you put a fence around it, right? And if we put fences around the gospel truth, there will be growth, there'll be open communication. Look, John concludes by noting that through a growing faith, our joy may be complete. And he then ends with greetings from a sister church. The church of your elect sister, the children of your elect sister greet you. What he shows is if we will watch out against the false teaching that would tear us from Christ, if we'll watch out and keep it safe, We'll have the reward of being drawn near to one another. Our doors will be opened to fellow believers. Our hearts will be extended in sympathy and in support for exciting works of the Lord. There is great stuff happening in the world. We need to make sure it's sound, it's actually Christ's work, but then we can embrace it wholeheartedly. What a reward that is. Our fellowship will be enriched by a widening circle of interesting men and women boldly doing the work of Jesus Christ. But with the prospect of this reward comes a sober command. Watch yourselves. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for all the circumstances that caused John to write this letter. Father, cause us to pay heed to what has been taught. Many of us are in different places. This message would have spoken to some of us one way or another. Father, let us hold to the teaching. Let us sit under your word. Speak to us. Keep us safe and sound in the harbor of salvation. Protect our church. Cause us to protect our children. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.