The worst kind of liar

With the advent of modern technology, especially in the realm of computers, we have experienced great benefits but also the great perils that have come with such advances. One of the biggest challenges has been the issue of truth, as it pertains to the flood of information that passes through the corridors of the internet at blinding speeds. Now, anybody can post something on the internet or social media and pass it off as truth. As you know, “Everything you read on the internet is true, right?” Of course not, and it has become increasingly difficult to navigate the mounds of information to determine truthfulness. Not even pictures can be trusted, can they? One favorite pastime of a lot of people has been Photoshop. This is a particular software that allows you to edit pictures and manipulate them as well. There have been a few pictures that have fooled the world, such as a shark jumping out of the water with its jaws open toward a Navy rescue swimmer dangling helplessly on a helicopter ladder. It’s a fascinating picture but completely fake. However, a new advent of digital manipulation has to do with artificial intelligence. There is now AI technology that can create images of fake people. Seriously. There are perfect images of people that do not exist. This is quite frightening because it shows how strange the future technological age will be and the increasing difficulty of knowing what is real and what is not real. Yet, this isn’t new, is it? Through the ages, there have been people who have tried to pass off what is false for what is true. Forgery, if you will. This was especially prevalent in the New Testament world. Early in this series will looked at the idea of false teachers as part of the background of John writing this letter. It seems that there was false teaching going around which John felt necessary to combat. He wasn’t content to simply let it go because he recognized the great danger of those who digested this false teaching. This morning, we will look and see the make-up of a false teacher and discover the worst kind of liar.

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1 John 2:18-27

So far in this letter, John has pointed out that there are people who claim to know Christ but their lives do not match their words. Therefore, he has given several tests to determine the sincerity of the profession that some people have. However, now John gets into a description of who these false teachers are and what they are like. John is helping his readers make a proper identification so that they can steer clear from these false teachers. John is going to show us a few important things about false teachers: False teachers are inevitable, False teachers are pretenders, False teachers have wrong beliefs about Christ, and False teachers are deceptive.

False Teachers are inevitable

Some things in life are inevitable, aren’t they? Some things that we love and enjoy come with irritations that are necessary. I love the beach. I’ve always loved the beach. There is nothing quite like sitting on the sand, watching the waves or diving in and letting the salty water glide over your body. The beach is a magical place. However, it’s not without it’s with some irritations. As much as I love sitting in the sand… sand can become quite annoying. It’s get in your clothes, bathing suit, sometimes in your bed. For some people this is too much and they hate the beach because of it. Here’s the thing though, you can’t have the beach without the sand, it’s just a part of life. It is the sand itself that alerts us to the fact that we are near the beach. Sometimes when we think about false teachers, we think about them as an anomaly; that they don’t have to exist. However, John will show us otherwise.

John is telling us that it is the last hour. The last hour is imagery that is probably very familiar to many people. What does he mean? In this context, the last hour is best understood as the time between the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ. We are in the last hours or last days right now. Someone might say, “Wait a second, John wrote this close to 2,000 years ago! He must have been wrong because Christ hasn’t come back yet!” I like what one commentator notes, when he says that for John it is not the question of sequential time, but an epoch of time; an age that is leading to a grand event. Peter is a particularly instructive here when he reminds us that, “With the Lord one day is a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). The big evidence of the last hours is the presence of antichrists. Now John reminds his reader that the antichrist is coming and this antichrist will be that satanic figure that will arise after the day of Christ. Now it is important to note that the word AntiChrist only appears here John’s letters. It’s not in the book of revelation. However, the principal is there. Nonetheless, that is not what John is referring to here when he mentions antichrists. He’s not talking about that one grand, evil figure but many different antichrists. He doesn’t mean false Christs here, rather he means people who are against Christ. One of the hallmarks of living in the last days is that there will be people who teach things that are antithetical to Christ. In fact, in every generation, there have been false teachers rise. In the early church, in the medieval church, in the church that was around the age of enlightenment and even in the modern church. There has been and always will be false teachers. What does that mean for us? We must always be on guard. There is no age that is safe from false teachers.

False Teachers are pretenders

Throughout the ages, some of the most insidious of all enemies are always those who come from without but those who come from within. The enemies that we think of our friends but actually work against us one day. For John, these false teachers or antichrists were not people from the outside but people from the inside. They were with the early Christians from the beginning, they fit right it. Perhaps that they said and did the right things. They looked the part. Yet, John says that they were deficient and we know that they were deficient because they did not continue. The reformation thinkers considered this idea as the perseverance of the saints: those we who are truly believers in Christ will continue to the end. Those who fall away from Christ were never with him to begin with. Have you heard the old saying, “Faith that fizzles before the finish was faulty from the first”? Nonetheless, the false teachers are among us, they learn the language, they know how things are, and then somewhere along the line they take a left turn. If you were to study cults or other fringe groups, they usually came out of orthodox Christian background and were warped. The danger of this is that those who are peddling false teaching know the lingo of orthodoxy. They can say the right words.

John says there is a distinction though. He said that the church is made up of those are have been anointed by the Holy One. The anointing is the anointing of the Holy Spirit, who is given to us by the Holy One, who is Jesus. This is the difference between pretenders and the true church: the Holy Spirit. You see, there has been a whole host of people through the ages who have adopted the externals of Christianity but have never had the transformation that only comes through the Holy Spirit. John is including this as an encouragement to the believers: you know the truth and no lie is of the truth. The encouragement is that Christians need not be concerned because they have the Holy Spirit, thus having truth. We know the truth! When people come claiming to have some sort of special or unique teaching, John says, “You have what you need!” We do not have to worry about the pretenders.

False Teachers have wrong beliefs about Christ

There are all sorts of different doctrines within Christianity. The truth is, people have differing views about a lot of these different doctrines. Baptists, for instance, have believed historically in believer’s baptism, baptism after conversion as opposed to infant or child baptism. This is what I believe. However, there are wonderful Christian people that have a different take on that than I do and I can still have fellowship with them. You see, false teaching is most dangerous when it affects the doctrine of Jesus Christ. John says here that the antichrist is anyone who denies Jesus as the Christ. John goes a step further and says that to deny the Son is to deny the father. Wow! This is quite a statement because very few will actually deny God the Father and still consider themselves spiritual, but John has a wake-up call: if you don’t know Jesus for who He really is, then you don’t know God at all! To deny the Son is to deny God. It is this precise reason that we do not consider groups such as Mormons or Jehova’s Witnesses as Christian: because they deny Jesus to be fully-God and fully man. This is non-negotiable. We can’t turn a blind eye to this. For example, I would never have someone stand behind this pulpit and preach if they do not fully embrace Christ. Nor would I have anyone lead Bible studies or Sunday School classes that cannot affirm this. We must stand very firm on this and never waver on this at all. We cannot have real Christian fellowship with anyone who denies Christ. This is what we should be aware of.

John’s encouragement is that we stand firm in what we have heard from the beginning, which would be the Gospel message in all of its orthodoxy about Christ. If you stand firm in this, you can be content knowing that you will abide in the Son and the Father and also have eternal life. We must abide in Christ. This is the challenge for all Christians, we withstand the temptation to abandon false teachings and we don’t try to move on to something else. There will be people who come around and sell some sort of new, belief system which may be ok in the beginning, but oftentimes descends into error. Here is a word of caution. Sometimes people hear a good sermon and they might say, “I’ve never heard anything like that before; that is new to me.” Now sometimes this is not bad, right? A preacher might have a knack for presenting orthodox view in a way that is fresh to people. This is good! Here is the caution though, if whoever you sit under is always presenting something new and everything is different than anything you’ve ever heard… be cautious. Novelty isn’t always a good thing. It is important that we are anchored to orthodoxy. There was a famous evangelical preacher a few years ago who was quite famous for his cool and clever videos and the way he would present his message. He gained quite a following. However, he later fell into error by rejecting the biblical concept of hell. You can be too cool.

False Teachers will try to deceive you

Listen, false teachers are not content having their little bizarre beliefs and staying in some dreaded corner. No, because they have the spirit of the antichrist, they have a hell driven agenda to deceive the body of Christ. Don’t be naïve, church. There are people, sometimes that begin in good churches like this, that go astray and will try to suck you up. Sometimes it’s as simple as, “Hey have you ever heard of this preacher? His teachings are so unique and true,” or “This book changed my life because I’ve never heard anything like it!” John makes a very interesting point when he says that they have the truth and don’t need any teachers. Wait a second! We have all sorts of teachers at Richland Hills Baptist. Is John saying that Christians education isn’t needed? Don’t tell the seminary, they have a whole degree program for this! No, no. John is saying here that they don’t need anyone to come with cool, clever and new teachings. In Christ and through the Holy Spirit, we have what we need! Now, Christian education is important because it is through this that we grow in our understanding and it is often the medium that the Holy Spirit uses to teach us. However, this is only true if the teaching aligns with the Bible. If it doesn’t, we don’t need those type of teachers! So, therefore, we continue to abide in Christ and we do not stray. What John is really saying here is that we have all that we need to withstand false teachers. At times they seem intimidating and mesmerizing with their knowledge, but for those who hold fast to Christ and the Holy Spirit, we have what we need. Remember, false teachers will come and go, but it is our confession of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit that will sustain us against their attacks.

We live in a time in which false teachers abound, perhaps not necessarily more in number but greater in their reach. Think about the way that TV and internet are broadcast around the world. One false teaching, in the hands of a connected person, can reach all around the world in just a few seconds. Just because something is piped through the TV does not mean it is true. We are now inundated with all sorts of teaching that doesn’t align with Scripture. It is necessary that understand the anatomy of these false teachers so that we can withstand them with the truth of the Gospel. Practically speaking we must check all teachings according to the Scripture. We must not take anyone’s word for it. This means, of course, that we must be actively engaged in Scripture, so that we can know a forgery. We should not be too enamored with the cool or trendy, or the slick orators.

It is also appropriate for me to say that at Richland Hills Baptist Church, we affirm that this is God’s Word, inspired without error, and we teach it. I work diligently to be sure that everything that is taught behind this pulpit and in other settings is thoroughly Biblical. My desire is that Richland Hills Baptist will forever and always been known as a place of solid biblical teaching that does not fall prey to the whim of this world and whatever false teaching that may crop up. However, it will take all of us though. Yes, I am the shepherd but we all have a responsibility to guard the treasure of the Gospel. Remember, John wasn’t just writing to the pastor but to the whole church. Let us make a commitment today to stand firm against false teaching.