Our Dangerous Journey

White-anting...

For many people fortunate enough to own a home, it is well known that protecting it is time consuming, expensive and not without risks.

Our homes can be the biggest investment we make in our life.

The greatest danger to that investment is not fire, storm or flood, but a silent little insect, smaller than a match head, related to the cockroach, that can eat your home from the inside out before the owner is aware they’re even present.

Termites, or white ants, can enter a house through a hole as small as 2mm, and eat the timber in a house, leaving just the paint and destroying from within our biggest investment.

Christian Faith…

The most valuable thing possessed by a Christian, home owner or not, is their Christian faith.

Faith is the issue on which the matter of salvation depends.

Our faith in the finished work of Jesus, his sacrificial death and resurrection on our behalf is the key that turns the lock on the door of eternal life.

As Christians, it is faith in Jesus that is the channel by which we receive the benefits of Christ’s saving work.

If a person is going to survive death… it is by their faith in Christ and his gospel.

It was not brains or beauty or wealth and possessions that Jesus commended people… but for their faith.

To the two blind men Jesus said, “Do you believe I am able to heal you?” “Yes Lord” they replied… Mt 9:29 “29 Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith will it be done to you”

To the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years who touched the hem of his garment and was healed at that instant… Jesus said Lk 8:48 “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.””

If you and I are going to enter eternal life it will be through the possession and exercise of saving faith…

Today John is going to bless us incredibly by warning us of how our faith can be white-anted.

Without us even being aware it is happening our faith can be eaten from the inside out leaving us with a shell of what it once was… until one day it is discovered that there is nothing of any value left...

The first danger John warns us about is love for the world, 1 Jn 2:15 “15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

“The world” has many meanings.

Jn writes in Jn 3 “For God so loved the world” meaning planet earth, including and especially the people on it.

But here in v15 John refers instead to the world that has abandoned God and has no thought for how God wants people to live.

The world here means worldliness… and worldliness is simply the life of the average person.

Unfortunately many people in church take worldliness very superficially.

Some people think it means don’t buy magazines, expensive clothes and new vehicles… others think “Nah, you can do all them… to love the world just means swearing, gambling, addictions… none of which I love… so I’m fine. Move along; nothing to see here.”

Love for the world is white anting from within ourselves, v15-17 Cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and and the boasting of what he has and does.

John doesn’t let us off so easily…

One of the ways white ants can be found is by someone just poking around the trim of the house. Around the windows and doors and floor trim.

John pokes some sensitive areas of human life 1 Jn 2:16 “16 For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.”

Three areas he pokes… the cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes and the boasting of what he has and does.

The cravings of sinful man are things that go on within us all because we are fallen creatures.

Food, sleep, sex, leisure, pleasure are all part of life in the world.

But when we start craving them, believing if we could have more of them we would be happy, content human beings… that’s loving the world

Food moves to gluttony, searching for fulfilment through the pleasure that comes from eating.

Sleep becomes laziness, craving not having to discipline myself to work.

Craving leisure and pleasure and sex, taking them when we like rather than enjoying them as gifts from God in their time and place.

They’re cravings coming from within.

They are part of our fallen nature, which of course is within us all.

The lust of the eyes… John turns to the things that our eyes see outside of us and usually through our eyes we take inside us that lead us love the world and undermine our faith.

This will be things like see the status, success, pursuits and possessions of other people and so we start to covet what they have.

This in part is the world of advertising continually assuring us that we must have this possession or that experience if we’re to be a full, and fulfilled human being.

For some of us that is very enticing.

That’s where I get white anted.

But for others who are happy to love people and use stuff, many succumb at John’s next poke!

And lastly it is the boasting of what we have and do.

This is the thought of the self-made man (or woman).

Listen to me! Let me tell you about my experience; the things I’ve achieved; the people I’ve met, the clubs I belong to and how much money it costs to belong to them!

Or it may be as simple as coveting the success of one another’s children or grandchildren… wishing that my children had this or were that and then I would be happy.

The ESV translate 1 John 2:16 (ESV) “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.”

It has often been said that when the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity early in the 4th C AD, he began a movement that made Christianity in the western world largely respectable and safe.

I do know that that certainly was the case in the last half of last century in Australia.

The church became a sort of chaplain to the world.

The world brought their babies to the church to be “christened” and we married their young couples and buried those who died…

and in turn we received a seat at their table to speak into the affairs of all that was happening in the world.

Vic Wright was a man I did some Christian training courses with in the 90’s. Vic made a lot of money making Wrightbuilt furniture in Sydney, who sold his business and bought a block of land at Uralla.

He decided he would like to run for election on the local shire council but he thought he better join the church so people would know that he was a respectable person to vote for.

Len Trump was the minister of the Anglican church in Uralla Vic chose to go to.

Len faithfully preached the gospel and by God’s grace Vic understood and was converted.

It has been a long time since people outside the church have considered joining the church so they would be seen to be good people!

Unfortunately it was this close relationship between the church and the world that at least contributed and may have even been largely responsible for the Christian church in Australia being a mile wide and an inch deep.

Sean O’Donnell says in his commentary on 1 John;

“We cannot let a hint of the “pride of life” creep into the church. God is not impressed by what family we are from, how we look, what we own, whom we know, what we know, where we went to school, what club memberships we hold, or how we have supposedly changed the world. What God loves is when his children look like his beloved Son.”

God loves it when his children renounce their retail therapy and come to him for significance and security.

God loves it when his children who know more, perhaps much more than other people in church, humbly listen to others and rejoice in their knowledge.

God loves it when like Christ, we serve other people rather than expect service from others and believe the room is a much better place because we’ve graced it.

God loves it when we trust God enough to step down from positions of power...

and pray for others to step up and take our place and lead the church into times of flourishing that didn’t happen on our watch.

And rejoice and be glad if and when they do flourish!

God loves it when we boast… not about all we’ve done but about the wonder of Jesus and the sacrifice of the cross and the triumph of bodily resurrection.

Many countries have pyramids; tombs built for royalty to take their possessions with them into the afterlife.

The largest is the Great Pyramid of Giza;

one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Architecturally it is a true wonder of the ancient world; magnificent boulders exquisitely arranged and filled with beautiful treasures from pets to gold chariots and wonderful riches of all kinds.

Architectural wonder…

but theological blunder.

Just a few centuries and bandits plunder their riches and put the deceased bodies in museums.

Look at v17. The world and its desires are passing away.... but the person who lives out the will of his God in humility and holiness and joy in service… that will never pass away.

White anting from without

So these are things that we allow into our minds and hearts and allow the white anting of our soul.

But John warns us also of a danger from without.

The storms and tempests; earthquakes and bushfires.

1 Jn 2:18 “18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.”

The last hour… was John himself deceived?

Did he think Jesus was about to return 40, 50, 60 years after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension?

No, the NT is quite clear, the last hour, (or the last days) is the last period of time in God’s calendar before everything gets put right.

It wasn’t the last days in the OT… the climax of God’s redemptive plan still had to happen. They were waiting for Messiah.

It wasn’t the last days during Jesus ministry. Then the last days were at hand.

The last days arrived with Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection and return to glory… and the last days will conclude when Christ returns in glory; judges evil and banishes it forever and joins heaven and earth together as the place when God and his people enjoy eternal bliss and joy and fulfilment.

In between those two events the church must deal with the antichrist.

How many people have heard of the antichrist? Funnily enough, in reading v18 we have read 40% of the times the antichrist is mentioned in the whole Bible. Another occurrence in v22 and one more in 1 Jn 4:3 and 2 Jn 7.

Many people associate the antichrist with the beast in Rev 13 and the mark on the right hand or forehead and the number 666.

Some Christians associate the antichrist/beast with Emperor Nero, the pope, Hitler and many others.

But John says the antichrist is coming… and even now many antichrists have come.

So while there may be a particular antichrist/beast just before Christ returns… John, who wrote not just the gospel and this book but the book of Revelation as well, makes it clear that in the last hour there are many who oppose Christ and his church.

They are the ones who are anti-christ.

Some are out there in the world… and unfortunately, many are in here… in the church.

Of course many governments all around the world in every age are antichrist… perhaps the greatest threat are those within the church who are antichrist.

Protecting the foundation of faith, v24-27

So what are God’s people to do to protect ourselves from the many dangers that undermine our faith… dangers from within and dangers that are from without?

V24. See that what you heard in the beginning remains in you.

What is that… that was from the beginning?

It’s the gospel.

Some homeowners take for granted that because things look OK around the house all is well.

They assume that the sound timber that was there at the beginning will always be there.

They are fools… and very foolish.

The sound timber for Christians is the Gospel.

Do you know the gospel?

Don’t ASSUME! Share, speak, test one another; probe the edges.

Tell be the gospel… in 2 seconds… tell me the gospel in two minutes… 20 minutes.

In the book of Acts the apostles keep saying: You killed him, God raised him, we saw him.

Jesus died and rose again… for us and our salvation… that’s the gospel.

In Romans it is chapters 1-8; In Ephesians chapters 1-3.

Paul says the gospel more succinctly to begin that great passage in 1 Cor 15 about bodily resurrection.

1 Corinthians 15:1–2 NIV84

1 Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

1 Corinthians 15:3–5 NIV84

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve.

We must ask ourselves and each other every day: Is that in line with the gospel?

That’s how we protect this most valuable possession; and ensure that we take part in the joy of eternal life with Christ.