picking up in verse 18 and reading through 27. Little children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and 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. Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is Antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the son does not have the father either. He who acknowledges the son has the father also. Therefore, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the son and in the father. And this is the promise that he has promised us eternal life. These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. The anointing which you have received from him abides in you and you do not need that anyone teach you that is the same anointing teaches you concerning all things. It is true and is not a lie. And just as it has taught you, you will abide in him. So far, the reading of God's word, and I want to read as well this evening from our Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 12. which is in the back of our blue Psalter hymnals, page 19, question 31 and 32. And in the Catechism's instruction about the Apostles' Creed, it asks about our confession of Jesus Christ. Why do we call Him Christ? Why is He called Christ, meaning anointed? Because He has been ordained. Do you all read it corporately? Good. Let's do it. Sorry. I wasn't prepared. Why is He called Christ, meaning anointed? because he has been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher who perfectly reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God for our deliverance. Our only high priest who has set us free by the one sacrifice of his body and who continually pleads our cause with the Father and our eternal King who governs us by his word and spirit, and who guards us and keeps us in the freedom he has won for us. But why are you called a Christian? Because by faith I am a member of Christ, and so I share in his anointing. I am anointed to confess his name, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks, to strive with a good conscience against sin and the devil in this life and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for all eternity. Let's ask God to bless our time, dear Lord, and we thank you for this word and this instruction. Open our ears and make us wise to knowing your grace for us and what you would have us learn. Amen. Well, any good sermon about the Antichrist, it only makes sense, should start by talking about the Christ whom he opposes in this world. And as we just read in our Heidelberg Catechism, the catechism asks this pointed question. Why is he called Christ? You know, some of us perhaps in Sunday school, You know, maybe when you were a child, I don't know, you thought Jesus Christ was His name, like His first name and His last name. If He had a driver's license, it would be Jesus and then Christ. But of course, Christ is the title that He bears, that He was given by the church. Jesus is called Christ because He is anointed, Christos. It's the Greek parallel of the Hebrew term Messiah, the anointed one. Jesus is called Christ because it's a confession of faith. It's the church's confession. This one, this man, Jesus, is the Messiah. He is the promised one. But the catechism, of course, tells us more than that. It tells us what it means that the promised one of Israel was known as the anointed one. That the Catechism's answer reflects the Reformation's unique insight into what are called the threefold offices of Christ. Jesus Christ is the Messiah, is the fulfillment of the three Old Testament offices that were marked by the anointing. He is the true prophet, the prophet that was promised to be greater than Moses, perfectly reveals God's will for our redemption. The high priest, of course, of the order of Melchizedek, who by his perfect sacrifice has redeemed us. And he is our eternal king, whereby he protects us and keeps us in our redemption. And oftentimes the church and Christians have gone off the rails one direction or another by focusing on Christ only as prophet. Maybe he just teaches us what we should do. That would be the WWJD version of Jesus. What would Jesus do? That's just the Jesus who shows us the way, points. Or we could go off the rails by making Him only a priest and inventing a religion or creating a Christian faith that's a sacerdotal faith that's all about sacraments and no instruction, no knowledge. Or we could make Jesus just a king. It's all about ruling, all about action, all about changing the world for Jesus. Well, if you forget your sins and the truth of the gospel, that's not enough. This understanding of Christ as the anointed one is crucial for how we understand the Antichrist, as he's introduced to us here in First John. John's comfort here, as I set the stage a little bit this morning, is to comfort the saints of the Lord. They're being disturbed by antichrists who have risen up in their midst and have gone out from them. In another one of John's epistles, we read that these would not confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. They were denying the Incarnation. And against those who deny Christ as the Messiah, as the Anointed One, John holds forth for our comfort our own anointing. He repeats that term three times in this passage. I don't know if you noticed it. You have been anointed. Echoing, or I should say, anticipating the teaching of the catechism. As Christians, we are anointed. We are taught by the true prophet. We've been made to know the truth. In this battle between Christ and Antichrist, between truth and deception, we have nothing to fear. Remember, we have overcome. We share his anointing. Three times in this text, John mentions antichrists, and three times he mentions chrism, the anointing of Christians. So you see, the opposition, our protection, our comfort in the face of deception in the church today is the Holy Spirit and His anointing. It's somewhat ironic that in our popular eschatology, You never know when you talk to different churches how much they might have been exposed to these kinds of things. I'm thinking of Left Behind books or Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. It's ironic that the Antichrist is such a source of speculation and doubt for us. Fear is what I was raised with in large part. I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. until leaving that church around high school years into a broader evangelical church and finally into the Reformed faith. But my Catholic mother grew up watching the 700 Club with Pat Robertson every morning. And I remember hearing signs that the rapture was near. You know, the Antichrist was coming. Maybe he was already here. It was mostly sort of reading between the lines, the headlines of the Soviet Union and the Middle East and what was going on in the world. And I remember that one of the first things I recall about President Reagan was the uncanny fact that his three names were comprised of the six letters, Ronald, Wilson, Reagan. Six, six, six. Did you ever hear that one? Maybe Reagan was the Antichrist. Yet the Apostle John who blessed us with this word Antichrist has the explicit stated goal of ending end times speculation and doubt. His aim is to comfort us. And this is one of the great tragedies of the vivid popularity of speculation in the world about the end of the world. John writes about the return of Christ for the comfort of a church in the midst of tribulation. Now, as he writes, as he tells us, it is the last hour. The year 90. That's almost 2,000 years ago. And he repeats it for effect with no hint of speculation or guesswork. Even now, many antichrists have come. Therefore, we know it is the last hour. The last hour isn't 2011 or 2012. May 21st, by the way, is the new date. And if you see the family radio. But John says it was a long, long time ago. What's going on here? Was he wrong? Were the apostles wrong about the return of Jesus? No, he wasn't confused, he wasn't mistaken. Though John's the only New Testament author to use the term Antichrist, he clearly assumes that the church he is talking to, the church he is writing to, is familiar with the term. He says that they had heard that the Antichrist was coming. Paul, in his letters, calls this figure the man of lawlessness. And of course, Jesus himself has spoken of the one who abominates and desolates, standing where he ought not to, that is, defiling the holy places, referencing to an image that was used already by the prophet Daniel. So for hundreds of years, there had been a realization that at the last hour, an anti-Christ type person would come. The return of Christ and the consummation of all history was clearly taught to coincide with a period of crisis. and heightened opposition. An opposition that would be led by a notorious figure, an Antichrist. Despite the fact that no one knew the day or hour of his return, the hour of his return would be marked by the final defeat and revelation of the one whose activity was behind this lawless one. In other words, it's the sort of final scene in the drama of redemption when Satan is ultimately, completely, entirely unmasked before the eyes of the whole world as the one who has been causing so much mischief and trouble. It's far less important to identify, as John makes clear here, it's far less important to identify individual Antichrist than the spirit of the Antichrist. Both Paul and John recognize this. In 2 Thessalonians, Paul says that there is a man of lawlessness, but then he also says the mystery of lawlessness is already at work in the world. Now until the lawless one is finally revealed. It's the same thing that John is saying when he says, even now there are already many antichrists. Here is in the book of Revelation, John is comforting the church with the knowledge that through the spirit of antichrist, that is already at work in the world, that he is lying about Jesus, that he's working to undo the Christ's work, his priestly, his prophetic, and his kingly work. The fact that the Antichrist is at work now is proof that the Christ has overcome. He's trying to undo the defeat which has already occurred. So it's a positive sign. A fever spiking before it breaks. There are many antichrists in the world. It's the last hour. That's how we know. John and the apostles were not wrong. They weren't mistaken about the return of Christ. They had a bigger perspective of history than we do. They knew that it could happen at any moment. that all of God's promised works of redemption had been accomplished in Jesus' life, death and resurrection, in His ascension. That the Prince of this world had been cast down and His death throes were in their final stages. So they weren't trying to predict the date of the return of Christ, but they were saying, it's the last hour. It can happen at any time. It's the same thing that Jesus said over and over again. So who are the Antichrist that John's talking about here? Well, the church had been disturbed by the departure of the Antichrist, and John describes in this colorful way, and this is an interesting sentence here we read in our text, and I'm reading here from the ESV translation, which is in my sermon notes. Unfortunately, it's not the exact text I read, so it might vary a little bit. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain or manifest that they all are not of us." You see that interesting expression, of us, from us, with us? He repeats that form five different times in this one sentence. And he uses a slightly different meaning each time, but he's underlining and emphasizing the fact that they went out from us but were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued. Their departure wasn't a new event so much as it was a revelation of a truth that was already known to God. What is emphasized in this is that the departure and separation of the Antichrists was not an accident. It was a revelation of what had always been true. Even when they were in our midst, they were not of us. They were not a part of our fellowship. And in the first section of this letter, John spoke of those who claimed to know God, who claimed to be sinless, but didn't show love. And he said that they were, in fact, blinded by darkness. John is describing this opposition party in terms of their ethical failure. They lied about their sinlessness and, in fact, they were sinners. Here, John is describing the same people, but he's focusing on a different aspect of their error. He's focusing on their false doctrine, their denial of the Son. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. You see, in their departure, the Antichrist showed that they had never rightly confessed the Son. And indeed, their error was finally, ultimately made plain in their outright denial. Clearly, at some point, they had confessed something, right? They'd joined the Church. Presumably, they'd been baptized. They'd confessed the Trinity. But they didn't believe it. What is taught here is the same truth that's taught in our Reformed Confessions. It's the Reformed doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. It's the pea in the tulip in the five points of Calvinism. Now, this is often misunderstood, but perseverance of the saints doesn't teach that once an outright decision for Christ has been made, there's some sort of eternal guarantee of salvation. As though if you walk the aisle or fill out the card at a revival, that you're saved and there's nothing else you have to do. This is the mistaken view of once saved, always saved. No. The perseverance of the saints recognizes that people will fall away. The reality that the church is a mixture of sheep and goats, of wheat and tares. We recognize that there are false sons in the pale of the church. Tragically, because church officers, church members don't know the mind of God. We don't know the hearts of men as our Lord does. Hypocrites abound. Many, many show temporary faith. This is the clear teaching of the parable of the sower, is it not? Some seed falls on the rocky soil, springs up quickly only to wither in the heat of the day, or some among thorns and is choked by trials of life. Perseverance of the saints teaches that those who make a good confession persevere in it. And you hear John's comfort here. It's a powerful word of comfort. The Word that you heard in the beginning abides in you. And they abide in the Father and the Son. True faith doesn't have to be muscular. It doesn't have to be strong. It's not the strength of this faith that saves you, but true faith once given by God as a gift is maintained and preserved. The Word abides. The preaching of the Word, even this Word of threatening, Don't go out from us. Don't leave this fellowship. It helps keep us to what we once confessed. And it's so simple, is it not? Those who cannot confess that Jesus is the Christ. He came in the flesh to save us from our sins. There's no great mystery here. And since John describes only the error of the Antichrist, we don't know what they taught positively. He just says that they denied that Jesus was the Christ. They seem to have claimed to know a different route to the Father. What some have called a sort of a Christless Christianity that didn't require the man Jesus dying for their sins. A way to have a spiritual side without the blood of the cross. To which error, John, is absolutely clear. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Only the confession of the Son gives one fellowship with the Father. You can't meet God on the golf course Sunday morning, or in the redwoods of California. You know, that's my temple. I worship God in nature. No, you don't. Those who thought they could find alternate routes to God, who denied the necessity of the cross, were not only denying the Son, but also the Father. They were offering a false hope They were deceiving and deceived. But it's interesting that when John here addresses and turns to the Antichrist in the midst of the church, and this is why I use this text to illustrate this catechism lesson, his focus is equally on those who have the charisma, the anointing of the Holy One. He writes to us to remind the christened ones, the baptized, that they know the truth. And why do you know the truth? Note that John doesn't abandon the concept of knowledge. The people that John opposed in the church, they came to be known in church history as Gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, because they had this spiritual way of seeking God, a knowledge, but were deniers of the Christ. But John doesn't abandon their false knowledge. They had claimed to know God falsely. They had a spiritual insight. But John says what? You have been anointed by the Holy One. You have knowledge. You know the truth. Knowledge isn't some speculative practice that we get from communing with the spirits. Something that we hear from God through the preaching of the Word and His Holy Spirit in our hearts. There is no way to the Father but by the Son. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. When you come to faith in Christ, there's no higher life, no second blessing, no special recipe to seek out to make your life perfectly happy. The Christian life is not a faith journey where you discover new truths, pick up spiritual expertise along the way, and finally graduate to the next level. Listen, what John says, that which we heard in the beginning, the promise of eternal life in the sun is what abides in us to the very end. What is that all? That's it. Just faith in Christ. He forgave me for my sins. He returns in judgment, the resurrection of the dead. Yeah. What the creed teaches, that's about it. It's pretty remarkable. We were bound for wrath and he redeemed us. The Word of Faith, Paul writes in Romans 10, is near you. It's in your ear right now as I talk. You don't have to climb up into the heavens to pull Christ down. You don't have to go down into the abyss to rescue Him. The Father comes near you in the Son where you are at in your sin and misery and in the preaching of life in His name. As Moses said to the Israelites on the shore of the Red Sea in Exodus 14, The Lord will fight for you. You have only to be silent. Listen. Keep your peace. The Jews came to Jesus in John 6. What work can we do to do the work of heaven? What work can we do? We want to do something to enter the kingdom. This is the work. Believe, Jesus says. This is My work. The knowledge that we have in Christ through our anointing. We didn't discover it. We didn't unearth it. It was not learned by us in the active sense. It was bestowed on us. It was received. Three times, John reminds us that we have knowledge because we were anointed. We were christened because we confessed the Christ. But more importantly, what he is saying is that we confessed the Christ because we were christened. The anointing that you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in Him." What John is saying here is a really close echo, parallel, of the blessing of the New Covenant as it was foretold by Jeremiah. I will put My law within them. I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor." You see what John says? Don't go around following the prophets, following the latest spiritual fad. No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother. Say, know the Lord. The Gnostics, the false prophets, claim to know the Lord, remember? For they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord." Why? Why do they know Me? How do they know Me? "'For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.'" You see, the obstacle to us knowing God, having fellowship with God, abiding with God, is our sin. The obstacle is our guilt. And He's removed that. That's why the word of faith is close to us. We don't have to work our way out of this pit. He has come to us. And this, our catechism reminds us, is why we are called Christians, because we, like Christ, have been anointed. We, like Christ, serve as prophets, priests and kings in his kingdom. Because by faith, I am a member of Christ, and so I share in his anointing, and I am anointed to confess his name, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks, to strive with a good conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for all eternity. The arrival and the departure of antichrists should not disturb us. It's a sign of the times. It is the last hour. The great deceiver has been defeated. He roars about as a lion because he knows his final fate. He cannot strike down the Prince of Peace and the truth is no longer in his quarter. He has to lie. The deck is stacked against him. All he can do is try to deceive you, to pull you away from that simple truth you have first heard, your first love. You may think The weight of your guilty conscience is a strike against you. That your lack of zeal betrays you. Maybe I'm a false Christ. Maybe I'm a false Christian. Maybe I'm about to fall away. I haven't done so good this week. But John says, you've been anointed by the Holy One. Jesus Christ, the righteous one, is advocating for you before the heavenly throne. He's in your corner. No one who hears this promise of eternal life can say they cannot confess His name, for the Word of life brings with it the power to believe and to persevere. The promise that He has promised, John writes, no one who has received the promise can say it's too difficult to endure, for His yoke is easy. He has endured for you. No christened one can say that they have failed to master their sins, for the Christ has mastered them. He has overcome the world, now guards you and protects you until the day of His return. As easy as it was to believe, to receive that promise at the first, so it is easy to abide in Him. His anointing was true in Him, and it is true in you, and it is no lie. Abide in Him. Let's pray. Dear God in Heaven, We rejoice that You have come near to us. Your grace has reached out to us particularly. You've set Your love upon us. And we don't know why. It's a great mystery. We pray even now for our loved ones who do not know You by faith. But we have a renewed boldness and vigor to share our faith because of Your great kindness to us. We pray that You would indeed abide with us, dear Lord, that our faith may abide. And that we may be comforted. By the comforter. The Holy Spirit. Who is our own cherished possession because Jesus has gone away. But he will come back and we pray that he comes quickly in his name. Amen. And our benediction, I ask you to please rise as we turn to number 92. We pray, of course, that the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit go with you all this evening. And we sing together. A mighty fortress is our God. Number 92. We'll sing the stanzas.