926 1 Jn.2.18-27 God Became Flesh
Notes
Transcript
- A few weeks ago, I was trying to sell an old stereo system over Facebook Marketplace
- I had many enquiries and my experience with the marketplace taught me that the sale is not a sale until the deal is done so I never tell a person the item has been sold until it is sold
----------------
- I had a person lined up to come & buy the old stereo system
- I had another person waiting to see whether this guy would actually show
- I explained the situation to him & he was ready to come should the first guy not want to buy it
--------------
- There was a 3rd person who was keen as well & I tried to explain the situation to him like I had done with the 2nd guy – I wanted to tell him that there were 2 in front of him wanting to buy & I would get back to him on how things went
-----------------
- Here is our conversation
Aiwa Sale
- From left to right – “No, it’s not available” – was a button that I hit accidentally
- Look at his response when I said, “Sorry Butter Fingers”
------------------
- Here is an example of the importance of the written word & in understanding grammar & context
- I raise this because when it comes to reading the Scriptures, often we don’t give attention to grammar & context
-----------------
- Perhaps, it would have helped if I had put a common between Sorry & Butter fingers, but in his mood, I doubt that would have made any difference
- I was able to clarify the problem with him through Ros’ Facebook & sent a message explaining the situation
- He was apologetic & said that he had had it with so many rude people that he reacted to hastily
---------------
- I just found it so interesting that this example gives us insight into how important context & grammar are to understanding the Scripture rightly
- I mention this in the hope that you will be patient as context will make a big difference to understanding John’s Epistles
- So, let’s begin
---------------------
Q. What if Jesus didn’t come to earth?
Q. Wouldn’t it mean that the unseen God would remain unseen?
- The apostle John has instructed the churches to not love the world nor the things of the world
- For good reason, since the world & its ways are contrary to the Lord & His ways
- We also talked, last week, about the importance of foundations
- The apostle reiterates that again in today’s passage where he says
24 As for you, 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.
--------------------
- I was just thinking one morning this week of how the human mind can get so distorted
- How we can be influenced by the world & its ways & yet still think that we are sound & on the right track – of course, every dictator has even thought that too
- The reality is that the knowledge of good & evil has overcome or corrupted the human mind – to put it in computing terms – it has corrupted our database of understanding
- The issue is that the knowledge of good & evil is too much for us mortals to comprehend
- Since we are not God, nor equal with God, we are operating out of a, let’s say, corrupted database
- Solution: is to trust the Lord who has revealed reality to us
- That means to trust in what He says is reality and what He has done is reality & what He says is good & evil
------------------
- This same distorted database is that which caused the philosopher, Plato, to advance his theory of Dualism
- We have been living with this theory for a very long time & most people are not even aware of how they have been touched by it
- We see it manifested here in this Epistle & I will, hopefully, help you see how it is still being manifested in the church
- It’s what the apostle John is fighting against & what we must fight against
-----------------
Q. Is life under God organised horizontally or vertically – let’s look at these diagrams
- Plato organised the world horizontally & divided life into 2 realms – the spiritual, higher life & the physical, lower life
** Dualism – Plato
- Plato said that the upper story was a higher realm with the lower storey being a lower realm
----------------
- In the upper or higher storey, you have the Invisible & the Eternal
- In the lower storey you have the Visible & the Finite
- You end up having two different levels of value introduced into society
- As applied to the Christian world, this is what you get under Plato’s dualism
** Dualism 1 chart
- Here you see how the spiritual things topped the mere fleshly things
- The spiritual became way more important, but the things of the world were unimportant & even bad
- Christians, under this influence, inclined to retreat into the sacred & give little concern to the secular
-----------------
- This is how many have been able to be Sunday only Christians because only Sunday is sacred – the rest of the week is unimportant because it is in the lower storey
- We can also see the influence of this thinking in the Corinthian church where husbands & wives were abstaining from marital sex in favour of prayer
- In other words, martial sex was not of the upper storey but the lower storey & therefore had little consequence, perhaps, even detrimental consequence, to prayer - the spiritual endeavour (in the upper storey)
- Paul has a different view which I’ll explain shortly
-----------------
- The church opened monasteries – where monks would separate from the secular to focus only on the spiritual
- They engaged often in contemplation & prayer – in contemplating God & in prayer – purely spiritual endeavours
- There was the harsh discipline of the body (we call asceticism) – why – because it was in the lower realm & needed to be subdued to the higher plane of the spiritual
Brother Baku entered the ‘Monastery of Silence’ and the Head Friar said, “Welcome Brother, this is a silent monastery. You are welcome here as long as you like, but you may not speak until I direct you to do so.”
Brother Baku lived in the monastery for 5 years before the Head Friar spoke to him: “Brother Baku, you have been faithfully serving here for 5 years now. . . you may speak two words.”
Brother Baku said, “Hard Bed.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” the Head Friar said. “We will get you a better bed.”
After another 5 years of faithful service, Brother Baku was called again by the Head Friar. “You may say another two words Brother Baku.” “Cold food,” said Brother Baku, and the Head Friar assured him that the food would be warmer in the future.
On his 15th anniversary at the monastery, the Head Friar summoned Brother Baku to hear his allowed two words. “I quit,” said Brother Baku.
“It is probably best,” said the Head Friar. “You’ve done nothing but complain ever since you got here!”
--------------------
- Then you have the church start baptising babies who are unable to give consent to following Jesus
- With no evidence in the Scriptures of any babies being baptised what, on earth, brought Christening about?
- Well, Plato’s dualism explains it perfectly
- If, according to Plato, matter is evil, a newborn baby has been born into the lower realm of matter - impure & tainted
-----------------
- The church, having been influenced by Plato started to think that babies would go to hell because they are corrupted flesh – they are material, earthly – made of matter & therefore, need redeeming immediately
- Yet, they also recognised that baptism was necessary for salvation & so they would baptise or christen them asap
------------------
- Of course, Plato got life so wrong & this is not the worldview that the Scriptures give us
** Dualism 2 – this is the correct view – the vertical line, not the horizontal
- Under God, all of life is sacred
- Furthermore, God created the heavens & the earth = God created Matter – created the material universe
- Genesis 1:31 “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good…
- Plato got it very wrong – all life is under God & all of life is sacred & matter, the material, the physical body, is good
- What you do in the body may be sinful, but the body is not, in itself, evil
----------------
- With the Biblical worldview, the apostle Paul says to husbands & wives to continue to pray, but continue to engage in marital intimacy lest Satan take advantage of you
- Both are important
-----------------
- Babies who are incapable of either good or evil are not condemned to hell because they are made of physical properties
- What a person does in the sight of God will determine their future
- God is not stupid nor is He unjust
- Baptism is the means that God has given, to express one’s faith in His sight
- It is done volitionally – meaning, it is a person’s voluntary response to God of their own will
1. God Did Suffer
1. God Did Suffer
- The problem the early church had with dualism was that it questioned the issue of God being capable of suffering & of associating with matter
Q. Could God become flesh – erk, evil, tainted flesh?
Q. Suffering is associated with weakness & finiteness, but God is infinite! How could He be associated with suffering & finiteness?
- If the spiritual is the higher plain & suffering was associated with the lower plane, how could God be involved in suffering?
- He lives in the purity of the untainted, spotless upper realm where suffering does not happen according to Plato’s dualistic view
-------------
- This caused immense distress for the church
- The ramifications were so serious as it would change the world’s views completely, about God
Q. Would it matter to you if God was not in Jesus?
Q. Would it matter if the unseen God remained unseen?
Q. Would it matter if God never experienced what it is like to live life the way we do?
Q. Would it matter if we never knew how God felt about us?
Q. Would it matter that on the cross, God was not suffering for you?
-----------------
- I think we would all say that it does, indeed, matter - & more than anyone could realise
- But there are these splinter groups in the early church that have been influenced by the world to believe that God could not suffer
- It is so egregious, so untrue, that John here calls these people, antichrists
- They think that they have a better understanding of God
- That they have special esoteric knowledge of God that only they possess
- That they are the anointed of God
- So, if anyone wants eternal life, they must join their group, so they say
-------------------
- It reminds me of a charismatic cult church that was operating at the time when I was a Deacon with the Southport Church of Christ
- I went to see a guy who managed a motel in Labrador & he was in tears
- He & his family were going to the SCC but his wife was also going to this charismatic cult church at night
- Of course, many of these type churches make claims to have something other churches don’t have – rings so like the message here in 1st John
---------------
- But he would not go because he believed that this so-called church was teaching heresy
- As it turned out, he was right, for the Elders of this church threatened him that if he didn’t come over with his wife to them & their beliefs, that his wife should take the children & leave him
- That was a dead giveaway that they should have nothing to do with that cult
- The foundations of the church are so important that they should be held onto tightly by every generation
2. Jesus Is the Christ
2. Jesus Is the Christ
Q. What does it mean to say that Jesus is the Christ?
22 Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.
- In the Gospels, to say that Jesus is the Christ means that Jesus is the Messiah, the King, who had come into the world
- But here, John has a different meaning – a meaning that the heretics were using
---------------------
- The heretics taught that Jesus & the Christ are separate from one another
- We have some historical information about a guy by the name of Cerinthus who taught that Jesus was only human whereas the Christ was Spirit & divine
- He taught that at Jesus baptism, the Christ Spirit alighted on Jesus BUT then before He suffered & was crucified, the Christ Spirit left Him - so that the divine did not suffer
- In holding to this view, Cerinthus & those who followed him, denied the union of the divine & human in one Person - in Jesus
- The Liar, John says, is the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ
- In other words, that they are one and the same
------------------
- In short, Cerinthus held that Jesus is from the lower storey & the Christ Spirit is from the upper storey
3. Must Affirm Jesus-Christ to Have the Father
3. Must Affirm Jesus-Christ to Have the Father
- You would most likely hear the same statements about religion that I hear – that if you believe in any god, it doesn’t matter which, then you’ll go to heaven when you die
- Well, that is straight out of the spirit of this age’s playbook
- But John says in this passage today that if you don’t accept that Jesus has come from God, then you do not have the Father
--------------------
- This is the very opposite of what these heretical groups were saying
- Because they have some sort of secretive knowledge, a special illumination of the Spirit, they claim they have been given the keys to the Father in heaven and to His eternal life
- You are also, at the same time, both perfect & sinless
- Furthermore, those who refuse to join with you should be despised & rejected
----------------------
- All this must have been very confusing to the average church person
- You want to go to be with God the Father but if you don’t agree with these preachers, you will miss out, according to them
- They have much in common with the modern charismatic movement that claim individual authority for proclamations as if coming from God
-------------------
- The reason you have a compiled & completed NT is because the church realised that no new revelation was being given & that the threat of heresy was so real & pervasive that the church might not survive & they closed the canon
- It is why the apostle John keeps calling the churches, back to the original apostle’s Gospel
- To those who spent time with Jesus – heard what He had to say, saw what He did
- The truth must be fought for against the antichrists who are destroying the truth
-------------------
- Here is what Paul warned when saying farewell to the Ephesian Elders
29 “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
- Paul has long since departed Asia Minor when John wrote
- In fact, Paul was beheaded under Emperor Nero somewhere between 65-67 AD
- John wrote his Epistles about 90 AD – so he was a very old man at the time
- But he knew the truth & he keeps emphasising the need to go back to the apostle’s teaching – holding fast to it & not to allow yourselves to be influenced by those who themselves see everything through the eyes of the world
4 You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
- You don’t hold to the original apostolic Gospel, then you will live in error
- John is affirming that one must acknowledge the full deity of Jesus as well as His full humanity to actually worship God the Father
4. The Anointing Is “what was from the beginning”
4. The Anointing Is “what was from the beginning”
20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. 21 I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.
26 These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you. 27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.
Q. What is this anointing?
- Automatically, people think it’s the Holy Spirit
- Yet, if it’s the Holy Spirit that is teaching you, then how can anyone tell you apart from the heretics that claimed to be anointed too?
- In other words, if you claim inspiration for what you believed & these others claimed inspiration for what they believed, then who’s to say who is true & who is the liar?
---------------------
- But John has something else in mind here
- The anointing is that faithful word of truth that has come from the beginning – that which was sanctioned by the Holy Spirit through the words & works of Jesus
- This is a message that says BE CAREFUL about what anyone says, especially, be it a person claiming inspiration from God
- There can be no advances on the word that has been heard from the beginning
- The Gospel of Christ is sacred & not to be messed with
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
- Jesus has come to live as a human being from God
- This is affirmed by the virgin birth – He has no human father, but His real Father is God
- It is confirmed by Jesus Himself
23 And He was saying to them, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. 24 “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”
- We know God loves us because He sent His Son to suffer & die for us
-----------------
- It is affirmed by our Father in heaven
16 After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, 17 and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”
- We must affirm that Jesus has come in the flesh from God
- He is both fully human and fully divine
20 And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
