read the entire book of 2nd John and as you know it's only 13 verses long I'm only going to speak to a few verses of it even though it is a pretty important up these are pretty important passage of truth to learn today but the Word of God says The Elder, to the elect lady and her children whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also those who have known the truth, because the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. I rejoiced greatly that I have found some of your children walking in truth as we received commandment from the Father. And now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have heard from the beginning, that we love one another. This is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Look to yourselves that we do not lose those things we work for, but that we may receive a full reward. Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house, nor greet him. for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds. Having many things to write to you, I did not wish to do so with paper and ink, but I hope to come to you and speak face to face that our joy may be full. The children of your elect sister greet you. Amen. May God add his blessing to the reading and the hearing of his perfect word. In this postcard, the Presbyter John has set stage for us to have a ready answer as to how we as Christians are to live our Christian lives, which is the only way that we can be pleasing to God, that our lives can be pleasing to God. And as you heard last week, our Bible text tells us that there are two connected components to living the Christian life. And God has, John, gathered these two things together, and he's to take into consideration, and these are part of what our lives, our activities are to be, no matter what we're doing, no matter who we are, if we want to please God. The two key truths, the two key words, you may remember what they are. They are truth is one and love is the other. Because truth and love are inseparable. But what informs us as to exactly what truth and love are from God's perspective? How do we really know what living in truth and love are to look like? And just what help do we have to actively and correctly walk in them? Well, obviously, John, the apostle, the presbyter, he knows because he's inspired. God is giving him this information. And in our text, he graciously draws us to this positive, by this positive comment about the life of some lives that he sees lived by some people. And in this case, John is commenting on those who are believers, and they're obviously younger believers. John's positive comment is about children. I believe this is children of the church. I believe the lady is the church, her, she the church, and the sister is a sister church, but we'll talk, that's another sermon. But in these people of the church, these children of the church are walking in truth. But what was John's basis for this apostolic affirmation? Did John just say what was his fancy, what suited his fancy? Is he just being nice and saying nice things as compliments to make these people feel good about themselves? Is he just playing nice? We look at what John says in verse four, and he says this, if you're looking at the text. I have found some of your children walking in truth. That's a wonderful statement. as we received commandment from the Father." And that's how we know. That's the standard. As we received commandment from the Father. John isn't taking it upon himself to set his own standards. to meet his own personal liking by his own made-up preferences. And I'm prone to that. You're prone to that. Everyone is prone to that. We like what we like when we like it. We like what we like the way we like it. But God says we need to learn to like things, love things, appreciate things, admire things the way he wants them, the way he says they are supposed to be. John's standards are God's standards, and here he's recognizing that these young people are walking, they're living, they're conducting themselves in a way that visibly displays, that visibly affirms the standards that God has set. the commands for Christian living in love and truth as God wisely and perfectly has decreed. So notice where John now shows us the perfect standard. Look in verse four again. I rejoiced greatly that I have found some of your children walking in truth as we received commandment from the Father. Verse five, and now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning that we love one another. This is love that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it. So there in just those four, verses four, five, and six, you have commandment, the word commandment four times. You have this phrase about walking and walk according to the commandments three times. So when the Bible, How do we understand this? When the Bible speaks of walking, it usually has a lifestyle and view that is motivated by either faith, and that's what I look to all of you for. You live your life by the faith. Who was it? Jim Warcraft says you live the way you live because you think what you think, and you think what you think because of what you believe. It's a fact. You live the way you live because of what you think, and you think what you think because of what you believe. You're supposed to be walking in faith, faith that conforms to the scripture. But there's people who walk in faithlessness. And when you walk in faithlessness, it also shows itself in character that is unacceptable to God. That's non-Christians. So what happens when we walk with someone? You know, I remember walking with, this was in the late 1960s, probably 69, 70, I don't know, 68, I don't remember. Jimmy took me down to Shelman's Bluff and we'd walk down that river and we'd talk. And, you know, we were shoulder to shoulder, and we'd listen to each other, and we'd pay attention to each other, and sometimes things would be serious, and sometimes they'd be lighthearted, and you've all had that. You've walked with people, and you've been serious, and listened, and you're serious sometimes, and lighthearted others, and you share your thoughts, and you share your dislikes, and you share your likes, and you share your desires, and your wants, and you share fears, and goals, and you're paying attention to this person, and almost to the exclusion of everything else. And you probably want to please the person and be a good friend to them. Walking as a Christian, and the Christian walk, has all those components and more. We are called in the scripture to walk in faith by faith, Romans 10, 17. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. We're supposed to walk in the spirit, Romans 8, 1 and 8, 4 and Galatians 5. And we're to walk in love, Ephesians 5, 2, as Christ has also loved us and so forth. We're to walk in truth, Psalm 86, 11, if you're Read that verse this afternoon, 8611, says that we walk in truth and we walk according to God's commandments. Leviticus 26.3, walk in my statutes and keep my commandments. Deuteronomy 5.33, you shall walk in the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you. Deuteronomy 8.6, therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God to walk in his ways. Deuteronomy 13.4, you shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice. Joshua 22.5, Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to keep his commandments, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. Psalm 119, Make me walk in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and your law is truth. You see, the case is airtight. If I had read all of the passages that bring together, that link together love and law, and love and commandments, and commandments and truth, and I would have, just the ones that I quickly put together this past week, I mean, literally in minutes, I would have had to have read about 30 more verses to you. The case is airtight, absolutely airtight. Truth comports with the word of God, and John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth, thy word is truth. So I could have given you 30 more, but let me just give you two more, just two more before we, as we make this next point. Second John, verse six. This is love that we walk according to his commandments. Just that part of it. In Romans 13, 10, love is the fulfillment of the law. When we talk about love and we talk about law, we talk about truth, we need to realize that love is much more than a feeling. Living the Christian life is much more than a feeling. Walking with God is much more than a feeling. In fact, when the scripture says that love is the fulfillment of the law, you've heard me say this before, it's actually when we love somebody rightly, we're actually ratifying the law. We're following the instructions of God's law through living them out. True love follows the instructions of God, and love is fulfilling the requirements of the law. Now, there's no merit in that, only duty in that. And one of the most astounding verses, I think, in all of the Bible is found in Luke 17. And in Luke 17, verse 10, if you have your Bible, you might want to mark this, because it's one of those that kind of sets you back on your heels. Luke 17, 10. And Jesus is talking about faith and duty to his apostles. And they go through and he talks about thanking people and all this kind of stuff. And then he gets to verse 10. So likewise, here's the bottom line for Jesus and his disciples. When you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, quote, we are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do. You don't merit favor by doing the minimum. And doing all that he's commanded is the minimum. It's your duty. There's no merit whatsoever in it. So what do we need? Well, we need, remember back in verse three, we mentioned this last week, in verse three, the grace, the mercy, and the peace. Grace and mercy and peace, not from people, not from the world, not certainly from the, you don't need to forgive yourself. You need grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father, from the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father, and you need those in truth and in love. Well, with that in mind, take up your bulletin for just one second and turn back to the Ten Commandments. And I want to point out what this looks like in a few things. If you love someone in truth, if in truth you love someone, then here's a little bit of what it looks like. You want to love them according to the commandments. Love is the fulfillment of the law. This is the law, part of the law. You shall have no other gods before me. If you love me and I love you, you're going to do all you can to keep me away from the cults, away from the idols of this world, away from the false gods that are around us. We're going to do that for each other. Second, thou shalt not make any graven image. You're going to help people as you talk to them, as you're brothers with them, sisters with them. You're going to listen as you're walking down that road together. You're going to listen for images in the heart or in the mind. you know, images that are not in keeping with the Scriptures. You don't want an image of the Father or the Son or Holy Spirit. You want to have these words that inform you. No images, no bowing down, no committing to anything or anyone above God. And if I performed your wedding or if I performed your pre-marriage counseling, one thing I told you is that you're not supposed to love your spouse first. You're supposed to love your spouse second, because second to God is still a very high place. Second, second to God is a good place to be. Third, take, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. You know, what do we do? We hear our friends and they say, geez, gosh, Jesus, short for God the Son, Jesus. Gosh, how are they using that? Are they misusing the name of the Lord? There's many ways to misuse the name of the Lord. And if we were to start properly using the name of the Lord and resisting the misuse of the name of the Lord, it would probably change a lot of the conversation around us. and fourth, remember the Sabbath day. To remember something means you've got to have it on your mind. Do you help your, do you love your brothers and sisters enough to help them have the Lord's Day on their mind and to keep it uniquely apart, to keep it holy? Honor your father and your mother. That doesn't, as adults, you don't have to obey your father and your mother. Cal has to obey his father and mother. The Shor's children have to obey their father and mother, but the day is gonna come when they will listen to our counsel and receive our counsel as just that counsel and not as instruction, and they will be honoring us. Because we don't raise children to grow up and still obey us as though we're their boss. We raise them to be mature enough to make their own decisions. So we can honor our parents by listening, by heeding, And then by discussing, we may disagree with him, and that's a good thing. Thou shalt not kill. If we love each other, we're going to protect each other. We're going to offer safety to each other if we can. You could never feel loved by anybody if you thought your life was in danger from them. Thou shalt not commit adultery. How can we commit adultery? You ever been invited to watch a porn flick or to watch a movie that was filled with things that caused emotions and desires that are adulterous? We need to protect one another from those things. Thou shalt not steal. If we love one another, we're going to recognize and respect private property. Your stuff is your stuff. My stuff is my stuff. It's not for us to take. We need to be careful that we don't bear false witness. If we bear false witness, we're not loving, but if we bear the truth, for our neighbor, that is loving. We shall not covet thy neighbor's anything. I'll just wrap that up there. If you love somebody, you know, there are wealthy people in this world, there are poor people in this world. The poor seem to have a bent toward envy. Envy is covetousness, and that's not right. We need to be laboring for what we have. We need to be saving for what we want to keep, and so forth. If we love one another, we're gonna teach those things, and we're gonna protect people from those things, including how we vote when it comes time for those who would confiscate our monies through taxes. Yesterday, our church received from friends of mine and Joanne's $27,500 in gifts. There's people in this world that have lots of money and can do that. And you know what I think about those people that gave that money yesterday? I think, praise God for giving you that kind of wherewithal to do those kinds of things with a free heart. And I don't want to displace them. I wouldn't trade places with any of them. They're the kind of people that because God has put it in their heart, they can provide those kinds of gifts, those kinds of resources. That's a lot of money in one day. A lot. And God has been good to send it the way of this church. So no covetousness is allowed. We love those people and we appreciate people for those kinds of resources to be a blessing. We understand that much, but we need to go on to verse seven. And as we look at verse seven, it says this, for many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Well, just as love and truth can't be separated, the opposite of love and truth, those can be identified with one word, and that word is deceiver. A deceiver walks in lies and hatred. A deceiver is opposed to truth and has no biblical love for you. A deceiver is a twisted twister concerning love and truth, concerning God's commandments. And we need to recognize that we have lots and lots and lots of enemies in this world, all around us. who want to deceive us and kill our souls. One day, Joanne and I, we'd had church. I'd preached that morning. It was Sunday afternoon. We'd just had supper. Kirk was a little guy. Corey was not even here yet, I don't think. And some knock on the door, and it was two Mormons. And they said that they wanted to tell us about their view of Jesus. And so I talked to them a few minutes, and after we talked a few minutes, and I realized we weren't going to get anywhere, I told them to leave my neighborhood. And they said, we're not going to leave your neighborhood. We can go where we want to. In fact, we just went to your neighbor's house, and he received us right well. And we're going to go down the street. So I said, OK, well, let's go. I'm going with you. So they left. I walked out behind them. They went to a girl across the street named Karen. They knocked on the door. Karen opened the door. I said, hey, Karen, these are Mormons. They're here to tell you lies and kill your soul. She shut the door. We went to the next house. Hey, Joseph, these are Mormons. They're here to tell you lies and kill your soul. He shut the door. They left the neighborhood. I went to Dave Dean, my guy on the next side. I said, hey, what'd they tell you? He told me, we straight out, he came to Christ. So God used it. The point being that we have to recognize that there are people out there, lots and lots and lots of people out there, who are trained to deceive us. They are false teachers, and they will tell us lies and kill our souls. And you don't run across them just every now and then. These people are as close as turning on the radio. You can turn on radio preachers who are deceivers. You can get on your computer and you can send an order to Amazon or to Borders, and they will deliver deception right to your door. Yesterday, which is Saturday, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, the Seventh-day Adventists, they had church, and they had their doors wide open, and they would be glad to receive you, so that you could come in and receive their deception. Today, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons and the Seventh-day Adventists, they're in your neighborhoods, trolling for souls. to deceive, because they know that the people who are home today or on the golf course today, they're probably not very spiritually mature, not very wise to the truth of the scriptures. And the Roman Catholic Church, it has its services of deception seven days a week, but at least they stay at home. So deceivers are not rare. There's an abundance of them, and many of them are not just misinformed people who happen to have an audience. Many of these people are intentional deceivers. When I had class with R.C. Sproul in seminary, he used to tell us stories about his seminary. And of course, his seminary was much harder than our seminary. His training was much more rigorous than our training. He was very full of a lot of those kind of things. But he used to tell us about the guys that he went through seminary with. who didn't believe anything that they were being taught. They just went through seminary to check the boxes so that they could one day be pastors in churches and have the genteel life, have a salary, have a pretty secure job. and just kind of have a comfortable, easy life. They didn't believe what they were—in fact, he said that when he was sitting in the ante room for his ordination examination, which you saw Ray do, they could answer all the questions. He said he would talk to them, and they would talk about questions and answers, and they could answer the questions, and then they'd say, but do you believe it? And they would say, no, we don't believe it. But we have to answer that we believe it. We have to take a vow that we believe it in order to get a job. And Sproul said he would just be so angry with these people, and he would tattle on them. And that's where R.C. Sproul taught us the phrase spiritual prostitute, because these people were willing to go so far and sell out the truth for a job, for money. Verse seven, many deceivers have gone out into the world. They're everywhere, in every media, they're in books, they're in electronic media, they're in social media, and they have all kinds of credentials, PhDs and so forth. So what does God say, how does God say you're to hedge against this? Act 1711, and this is throwing the ball in your court. Act 1711, these were more fair-minded than the Thessalonians. in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. So here's the Apostle Paul or Peter or John, any of them, teaching And what do the people do? They don't go, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, preach your brother. No, they opened the 39 books of the Older Testament and they measured, they measured what even the apostles were saying by what the prophets had said. The prophets who were recognized as spokesmen for God, they measured every person who claimed to be a spokesman for God, everything they taught by the scriptures. Now here in this passage, in verse 7, there are those who will deceive you about the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he's getting at. You see, there's one sign of the true Redeemer and Savior. He is the one. He is the one who came from God into the world and took on flesh to be fully God and fully man. That's what we call the incarnation. It's what we celebrate during the Advent and the Christmas season. And the Bible teaches that the incarnation of Jesus is central to the Christian faith. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. 1 John 4, 2 and 3. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist. Remember that word we just mentioned, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Now, when did, when was that written? 68, 69 AD, 2000 years ago. Here, the, the, the, the Presbyter John, the Apostle John says the Antichrist and the deceiver are already in the world. They were around them all then, and they're around us now. So Jesus, as man, he represents God to us, and as man, he represents us to God, and as God, he represents us to God. Did I say that right? As man, he represents us to God, and as God, the God-man, he represents God to us. Now, we got it right. So no matter what you may say about the Lord Jesus, if you don't say that he's sent from God and he's the God-man, then you've got it wrong. Shorter Catechism question 22. How did Christ being the Son of God become man? Christ the Son of God became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul. being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her yet without sin. So he's the God-man. But the second part here, the Antichrist question. He is a deceiver and an Antichrist. He's not one or the other, he is both. And really, when you think about it, a deceiver is an Antichrist, an Antichrist is a deceiver. The word anti-Christ has two meanings. The word anti, you probably immediately think of opposed to, somebody in opposition to, a competitor. And there are plenty of people who want to compete with the Lord Jesus. They want to compete with Christianity. All of the cults do that. But then there's also the word, it has a second meaning and it means supplanter or substitute. So somebody who is anti-Christ is somebody who is opposed to Christ and somebody who wants to be in the place of Christ. And who are some of those people? The devil is one. You may remember also the Moonies, Sun Yung Moon. He claimed to be the Christ incarnate. Jim Jones claimed to be their Messiah. The office of the Pope. What is the office of Pope? He calls himself the vicar of Christ. What does the word vicar mean in Latin and Greek? It means the substitute or in the place of. So the vicar of Christ is the substitute for Christ. That's exactly, literally what the word vicar means, vicarious. Jesus is, he vicariously atoned for us. He, in our place, he took our place in death and in sin so that he could take away our sins and take away our guilt. So he is the vicar. Christ was the vicar for us on the cross. Many faith healers do this. I see them on the tube all the time, and they claim to have the power of Christ. Of course, many cults. Hans Kuhn, Ernst Caseman, and all United Pentecostals. I want you to know these names because these people write books, and they're dangerous, and they're around. But back to Acts 1711. They were, the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians because they searched the scriptures daily to see if those things which Paul had said were true. You know, I think you know that I'm serious about the Bible. But you might think that, but how do you know? Have you tested me by the scriptures? You've heard Ray preach here. What makes you think Ray's not a heretic? I mean a flaming heretic. Have you checked the scriptures? Have you measured what he said by the scriptures? What about Jimmy when he teaches Sunday school? Jimmy could be an apostate. He could be a deceiver and an antichrist too. The only way you know for sure that he's not is not because I say he's not, but because you You have to take responsibility, and that's the point of this message. You have to take responsibility to know what you're hearing. and what category you need to put them in. All teachers. When Doreen teaches the kids, when Joanne teaches the ladies, are they telling the truth? Are they deceivers? Are they anti-Christ? You must be careful. And you've got to get it right. Because on Judgment Day, you're going to stand there before God And you're not going to be able to say, well, Mike told us this, or Ray told us this, or Jimmy told us this, or Doreen told us this when I was four years old. I remember my Sunday school teacher telling us this. Or Joanne told us this in a ladies' meeting. No, that will not get you anywhere. There is no absolution from anything anybody tells you, you You have to pick up the Bible, you have to study the Bible, you have to make the Bible the truth yours, and you have to protect, you have to protect your own mind and your own soul. Amen? Amen.