Gooding, David: 5 – The Heresy that Destroys Fellowship

Let's begin our study this morning by reading the passage, which is the first epistle by John and chapter two. The first epistle by John and chapter two. Beginning to read there at verse eighteen. Little children, it is the last hour, and as you heard that Antichrist comes, even now have there arisen many antichrists, whereby 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, how that they all are not of us. And you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. I have not written unto you because you know not the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, even he that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. He that confesses the Son has the Father also. As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If that which you heard from the beginning abide in you, you also shall abide in the Son and in the Father. This is the promise which he has promised us, even life eternal. These things have I written unto you concerning them that would lead you astray. And as for you, the anointing which you received of him abideth in you, and you need not that any one teach you. But as his anointing teaches you concerning all things and is true, and is no lie, and even as it taught you, you abide in him. Now, my little children, abide in him, that if, uh, when he shall be manifested, we may have boldness and not be ashamed before him at his coming. Now, last week we discovered that John wrote his epistle in the first place that we might have fellowship with him and with his fellow apostles in that glorious manifestation that they had witnessed, the incarnation of our blessed Lord. And he wrote explaining that when we have fellowship with him and with his fellow apostles, we have fellowship also with the Father and with his Son. We noticed last week that when John talks about having fellowship, he's talking primarily about the enjoyment of the common possession of eternal life. The content of our fellowship is that eternal life that was with the Father, was ever his delight from the remote beginnings of an uncharted eternity. That eternal life was personal. The second person of the Trinity, as we have come to call him. What John is writing about, therefore, is that eternal life that was ever with the Father and his personal delight and interest. That eternal life was manifested, was incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. And God, as you may imagine, still continues his eternal interest in that great person, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. And when we come into faith, we come into fellowship with the apostles, we come also into fellowship with the Father. We share with God the common possession of eternal life. We notice that subsequently John in his chapter five informs us that he writes that we might not only have eternal life, but know we have eternal life, and we registered it in passing that if our seminars are going to have John's intended effect, it will mean that at the end of our studies we shall go away not only in the possession of eternal life, but in the certain knowledge, God-given knowledge, that we do possess here and now the great gift of eternal life. We noticed in the third place that John writes that we may not sin. The assurance of our salvation that we have through God's gracious word is not intended to promote in us laxity of living. It is intended to have the opposite effect, and normally does in the life of the believer. Assurance of salvation leads him not to wish to go out and sin all the more, but rather that he may cease from sinning. Then last week we noticed the famous suggestions of the older commentator, uh, Robert Law, who pointed out that in the course of this epistle, John gives us tests that we can apply to every profession to have eternal life. If a man say he knows God, if a man say he has eternal life, then all the apostles agree together that there ought to be evidence in his life to substantiate that claim. And of course, if the evidence isn't there, it raises doubt about the validity of his claim. And according to the suggestions of this commentator, there are three great cycles of thought in this epistle. And in the first, we are offered tests by which we can test our profession that we have life, that we have fellowship with God. And the tests are the tests of righteousness, love, and doctrinal belief. We saw that we have to have, we have to be able to pass all three tests. Just passing one of them isn't good enough. All three have to be in us, demonstrated in us simultaneously. And then he suggested that that same pattern is repeated in chapters two twenty nine to four six. The claim that we are children of God is to be tested by that same battery of tests, righteousness, love, and doctrinal belief. And Law's suggestion was that, um, uh, in the last and third section of the epistle, John goes into greater detail and further emphasizes that cycle of three tests. So let us now notice, as we come to our particular passage today, that after the initial prologue, the three passages, the three tests, if you like, show up three vital contrasts, three irreconcilable opposites. Under the test of righteousness, we read of walking in the light on the one hand, versus walking in the darkness on the other. And as we saw in our studies last week, they are irreconcilable opposites. You cannot be doing two of the two of them, both of them at the same time. Then the second test that also we studied last week throws up a further set of contrasts and irreconcilable opposites. We read of loving the Father and our fellow members in the family of God, and opposite to that, loving the world. And it is John himself who points out that they are irreconcilable contrasts. Says he, if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Now this morning we're to come to the third test. Let us notice that it throws up likewise irreconcilable opposites. This is the test of our doctrinal beliefs. And it's a question, on the one hand, of believing Christ and his apostles, versus, on the other hand, believing antichrists of one kind and another. So this morning we are to consider an ancient and terrible heresy, and that I have to admit to you forthwith might sound a very dull and daunting thing to do on a Saturday morning, even though it'd be Valentine's Day, soon after breakfast. And we might be tempted to think that considering ancient heresies is a very remote historical matter, simply. At best, only theological for the theologians and irrelevant to the ordinary believer. But let us notice that that isn't true. So John tells us in the passage that we've read, this heresy had, to start with, had one very practical result. It had resulted in a lot of people leaving the church. They went out from us, says John. Now, he probably means it in two senses. They went out from us doctrinally. And we notice, uh, that he is talking as an authoritative apostle of himself and the other apostles. They went out from us, he says. That is, they came to a point where they rejected the testimony and the authority of the Christian apostles. They probably went out in a second, uh, physical sense, that having been outwardly members of a Christian church, they now seceded from that church and left the fellowship of the believers. What we shall now see as to the seriousness of this thing is that the false doctrine they held was not merely a theoretical theological matter. If their doctrines were true, they destroyed the whole basis of fellowship with God. They destroyed the very possibility of our sharing the eternal life with the Father and with his Son. Hence the practical interest. If the topic is that we might have fellowship with the Father and with his Son in this great and glorious gift of eternal life, then we shall feel exceedingly deeply about any doctrine that denies the very possibility of such a fellowship, by destroying the factual and doctrinal basis of that fellowship. In other words, this morning we are not nitpicking, we are not looking for minor differences among different companies of God's people, uh, ready to pounce upon the slightest deviation. We are contending for the very heart of the gospel. And of course, it is always an important criterion to use of any doctrine. What implication does it hold for the basic doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ, the very basic gospel by which we are saved? And so, because it is that ancient heresy was so important in its own time, we must ask ourselves now, presently, is there any counterpart to this nowadays? With that, therefore, let us look now at a brief survey of the passage that we have to study. The contents of chapter two, verses eighteen to twenty eight, could be summed up like this, very roughly. Verses eighteen to nineteen, the heretics are exposed by the apostle. From that, in verses twenty to twenty one, he turns immediately to pointing out to the believers what resources they have against this false doctrine and those who teach it. Then again, he turns in verses twenty two to twenty three to defining the heresy. Then in verses twenty four to twenty seven once more, with his gracious fatherly fashion, the apostle now in his advanced age comforts the believers by pointing out to them again what resource they have against this false doctrine and the heretics who propound it. And then in verse twenty eight, he reminds us all of the final exposure of all that is false and disloyal to the Lord Jesus, that shall come when the Lord Jesus himself is manifested. So let us briefly run through these, uh, uh, uh, contents of our paragraph. The heretics exposed. Says John in verse eighteen, little children, it is the last hour, and as you heard that Antichrist comes, even now there have arisen many Antichrists, whereby we know it is the last hour. These words have troubled some people. They have asked themselves, how could it possibly be true that two thousand years ago almost it was already the last hour, or the last season, or the last period? And the answer would appear to be that with the incarnation of our Lord, history did reach its last epoch, its last age. There had been many ages before, ever since God created the world, but all those successive ages, before the flood, after the flood, then with the call of Israel, and so forth, all those ages were looking forward to the great climax that should be the coming of the Messiah. And with the incarnation, that last period dawned. The Messiah actually came. That is what constitutes it, the last hour. When the Messiah came, he pointed out to us how that his coming would be in two parts, and pointed, moreover, to those prophecies in the Old Testament that indicated that very thing, that the coming of Messiah must be in two parts, what we now call his first coming and his second coming. But ever since he came, the world has been now in the last epoch. Hebrews chapter one puts it doctrinally. God, who has spoken in divers manners and different proportions to the fathers by the prophets in this previous ages, hath in this last age spoken unto us in his son. Jesus Christ is God's last word. There is nothing more to be said until our blessed Lord comes again. It is the last hour. There we are not to expect further revelation. Our blessed Lord is the Word of God. Now we are told explicitly in the epistles and by our Lord himself that at the end of this age there shall come a dark figure known in under one of his names as the Antichrist, the great opposer of Christ. People have thought as to whether, in calling him Antichrist, the original writers meant to imply that he opposed the Christ by straight out frontal attack and opposition, or whether he is called Antichrist in the other possible meaning of the preposition anti to imply that he opposes Christ by imitating Christ, by being a false Christ, and thus trying to take the place of the true Christ. He shall be the Antichrist that is to come. But already, says John, there have gone out many antichrists, and he uses the plural. That is, the coming of the Antichrist won't be one sudden, uh, unexpected, unprepared for event. The great mastermind of his satanic majesty that lies behind the coming of the Antichrist is already at work, has been at work ever since the Lord Jesus came. Even now, says John, there are many antichrists by which we know it is the last hour. The devil himself, who when our Lord came, attacked him and tempted him in the wilderness, has been at his fell task all down the ages to oppose the Lord Jesus, and that particularly by corrupting the truth, the gospel of our Lord Jesus. We therefore need ourselves to be wise, don't we? Because whether we die soon or late, we may be sure that those movements of thought that shall lead up to the coming of the Antichrist are already with us. And the point of being told about prophecy to come and what shall happen at the end of the age is not merely to satisfy our curiosity about the divine timetable of things to come. It is that we might be wise even now and recognize going on around us those movements of thought that shall contribute to the coming of the great Antichrist. Men's minds are being softened up, ready to accept that terrible deception. So now, says John, this particular instance, they went out from us, that is, they went out from us apostles. I suggest that we ought to notice this very, very carefully when John throughout this epistle uses the first person plural pronoun, he talks about we and us. He is talking primarily about the apostles. Their authority is something that we cannot possibly exaggerate. They were appointed by the Lord Jesus. Said the Lord Jesus of them, he that receives you receives me. And conversely, to reject an apostle, to refuse to believe what he says, is to reject our blessed Lord himself. They went out, says John, from us, meaning presumably not just physically, but doctrinally. You'll say this is all very remote. Well, let me record to you my, uh, little experience yesterday and the day before. I have an elder brother much wiser than I, but he lives in that remote part of England known as East Anglia, you'll see. He rang me up the other day, uh, to discuss with me certain correspondence he was being having in The Times, not that, uh, that other paper that some people take, the London Times, but the famous paper, the East Anglian Daily Times, you'll see. And, uh, somebody had been in the correspondence columns saying that the whole prophecy of the virgin birth was, uh, untrue. In the first place, said the writer, uh, it rested on a mistranslation of the Old Testament passage in Isaiah. Secondly, uh, the virgin birth didn't happen anyway, not literally. Matthew made up the story in his desire to try and prove that Jesus Christ fulfilled all the prophecies of the Old Testament. So he's caught out twice, is Matthew. First of all, he's misinterpreted Isaiah, which never did prophesy a virgin birth, and secondly, he's gone and made up a story of the virgin birth, you'll see, i- in order to try and prove that Jesus Christ fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies. And my noble brother wrote to the paper to protest against this denial of the truth of the New Testament. The original writer replied, as they are wont to do. Oh, but what a pity were was the effect of his words. What a pity you have these kind of fundamentalist people around, you see. They put people off from the faith in demanding that they believe these things literally, do you see? If only they could be shown that this was a a sort of a myth, do you see, in which the Christians were putting across their belief that Jesus was special and that we're not expected to take the myth literally, then we can discard the story, but we can still believe the truth of it, you see. We can believe that Jesus is someone special. And, uh, if people see that, then of course they'll come and believe the gospel, because now they are not required bele- to believe something that is intellectually impossible for an intelligent man or woman in the modern century. It is these fundamentalists who insist on believing the Bible literally, that put people off and keep them from the faith. And as we talked over the telephone, my noble brother and I, you see, we were led to think about these verses, surely, where the issue at stake is, but Matthew was an apostle, wasn't he? Is it so, shall we now say that the story that Matthew has recorded of the virgin birth is a story that Matthew fabricated? For if he fabricated the story and it isn't true, then of course we shall have to part company with the apostles, can't we? And now we're coming round to what the verse is talking about. They went out from us, says John. Oh, but says, uh, will say the, the, these kind of teachers, but look, you're getting warmed up over nothing, because while it isn't historically true, it's a myth, and myths are theologically true. They seem to have forgotten that the Apostle Peter, in his second letter in chapter one denies it outright. We have not followed myths, he says. And Peter knew exactly what a myth was. We have not followed myths when we tell you the story, for instance, of the Transfiguration. It's not a myth, it is an historical happening. In recent years, we have been treated by very hi- to to very high ecclesiastics, haven't we? Telling the nation at large that the virgin birth is not in that sense historical, and the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ isn't to be understood literally either. They claim still to believe in the truth of these things, they say, but in themselves they are myths. But then, says the Apostle Paul, it isn't a myth. And we put our whole apostolic authority on the line. This happened, says Paul, and if it didn't happen, then we apostles are found to be liars. And what is more, if it didn't happen, says Paul, then the whole Christian gospel goes up in smoke. There is nothing in it. It is a curious phenomenon, is it not, in modern times, that certain clever scholars seem to think they can take what they have now told us is not true, and somehow reinterpret Christianity to make it true. If the apostles say you believe this, for this is the gospel, and it happened, and if it didn't happen, it's a lie, how will you come along now and say, oh, but it didn't happen, in that sense it's not true, but we can rescue the Christian gospel from it and somehow make truth of it. The thing is intellectually nonsense. They went out from us, says the apostle, and here is the great exposure of their heresy. They went out from us. John then points out, and this is very serious, isn't he, that they never were true believers at all. I would not have dared to have said it, but John tells it, says it. They went out from us, for they were not all of us. They weren't of us. They never were. It is possible to advance great lengths in theology and yet never to have been born again. They were not of us, and they went out. If they had been of us, they would have continued. An interesting note, isn't it, about apostates. Apostates are not believers that have lost their faith. They never were of us, says John, and they have gone out, and their going out makes it evident and manifest. Having said that, let's move on quickly to the believer's resource. The first resource that John mentions, he's going to mention another one later on. The first resource he mentions against this false doctrine and against these false teachers is the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Every believer, he says, has this anointing of the Holy Spirit. I've not written to you because you don't know the truth, says John. You do know, and subsequently he is going to say that you have not need that anybody teach you. Now, obviously, John doesn't mean that in the absolute sense that no believer needs anybody to teach him, for our risen Lord has put teachers in the church. He means it, however, in slightly different fashion. When it comes to these fundamental matters of our Christian faith and our gospel and our very salvation, a true believer has already within him the witness of God's Holy Spirit, and instinctively the believer will recognize false doctrine about the person of Christ to be what it is. And that for a very simple reason, of course. Are you a believer? And you know your sins are forgiven, and you're rejoicing in the forgiveness of your sins, and I come to you this morning and say, you know, the death of Christ, it wasn't an historical fact. Well, you're not going to listen, are you? Why not? Because if it isn't a historical fact, your sins aren't forgiven. And you know it at your very heart that this is what has made your peace with God and your living fellowship with God, and the Holy Spirit's witness to that in your heart witnesses at once that this false doctrine that I have mentioned isn't true. When it comes to the person of our blessed Lord, the Holy Spirit, it is his prime responsibility to witness to the Lord Jesus, and he witnesses in the heart of the believer so that instinctively they know. And they know that no lie is of the truth, says John, adding a twist to his denunciation. There can be no compromise in it. It's no use getting up and in a very learned voice saying, ah, well, dog's body who's just come out with this heresy that the virgin birth isn't true and that the resurrect- bodily resurrection of Christ isn't true, but he is a very enterprising thinker, and this is a valid way of approaching Christianity. And we must be broad enough to include it. No, says John, the Holy Spirit will witness in you that no lie is of the truth. It's not an alternative way of coming to the truth. Then let's move on again to the heresy defined. Verse twenty two: who is the liar, but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, even he that denieth the Father and the Son. You say that's surely very remote from Belfast. Not really. Let me tell you a story. In the middle seventies, there was in Belfast a movement that called itself, I think, the Divine Light Mission. They used to run processions through the streets. They got young people and took them to London and put them through various, uh, experiences, and these people, uh, claimed to have seen the light. One afternoon, there came a knock at my door, and here was a young lady, charming young lady, as usual, and she came to bring me this gospel she had. She told me she'd been to London to see the light. I said that was very interesting, and I had no doubt that she saw the light, but that the Bible tells us, you'll see, that we have to be careful in these matters, for even Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light, and therefore, how would we know which light was which, so to speak? She thought there was no difference for all, all true religions taught the same. I said, what do you really believe about the Messiah, the Christ? Well, their leader, who happened to be an Indian, he was the Messiah, she told me, for this age. I said, where was he? Oh, he was in Boston. I said, well, that shows he isn't the Christ, because our Lord said that when they say, behold here and behold there, and the Messiah has come, um, the very fact that they have to tell you where he is is an indication that he isn't the real thing. For when the Messiah comes, everybody shall see him. You won't need to be talk- ask, where is he? Ah, but she persisted as best she could, and then her leader came up, and he wanted her to to remove immediately. He wasn't interested in talking. He looked a little bit sour. But, uh, we persisted. I said, I'd like to know, sir, what do you believe? Is Jesus the Christ? Oh yes, we all agree. All religions agree on that fundamental point, said he, and it's you who try to make difficulty for us, but this is an equally valid, uh, knowledge of God. Jesus is the Messiah, our leader is the Messiah. It so happened that on my doorstep there were a couple of milk bottles. I said, please tell me, sir, allow me to use a little illustration for help me in my thinking. I said, there are two milk bottles, yes, and if I said there are two bottles there, uh, you would say yes. Ah, yes, yes, yes. I said, but suppose the bottles were both full of milk. You wouldn't say there are two milks there, would you? It's simply that milk is one and the same substance, and one bottle is full of the milk, and the other bottle is full of the milk. Two bottles, but not two milks. Yes, he said, well, I see, yes. Now he said, tell me about the, the, the, the Christ. You say Jesus is the Christ and your leader is the Christ. But wait a minute. Are you not really saying that Jesus is the bottle and the Christ has come and filled the bottle? And that your leader is another bottle, and that same Christ has come and filled the other bottle. Yes, he said, that's exactly so. I said, you're saying, aren't you, that Jesus is not the Christ himself, simply that Jesus was filled with the Christ. Yes, he said, that's right. All true religious leaders have been filled with the Christ. I didn't help matters, perhaps, when I read him this verse. Who is the liar, save he that denies that Jesus is the Christ, not was filled with the Christ. The Christ isn't the Holy Spirit. The Christ is the second person of the Trinity, Jesus our Lord. More of that on another, in another session. Notice how John goes on to say in verse twenty three, whoso denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. This gives us another slant upon this heresy. We are talking about our Lord as the Son of God, as the second person of the Trinity. If you deny his being the second person of the Trinity, the Son, ipso facto and by definition, you deny the Father, don't you? You can't have a Father if there's no Son. What would be a Father of? If there is no Son, then the whole basis of our fellowship with God is gone. What is eternal life? The prologue has told us eternal life is sharing with the Father, that eternal life that was with the Father, that person, that second person of the Trinity, our blessed Lord, the Son of God. Say that he wasn't the Son of God, he was just a mere man filled with the Holy Spirit. Well, then all basis of fellowship with the Father is gone. God isn't going to sit down at any table with us to share in the enjoyment of a mere man. Be he never so holy. The thing, therefore, at stake is the very fundamental of the gospel. And I will confess to you, it worries me when nowadays we hear some folks, surprisingly, begin to talk of what in theological terms they call a spirit Christology. That is, they say, and they claim to be evangelicals, they say that Jesus our Lord had no pre-existence. What happened was that he, being born as a man, God's Holy Spirit so filled him that he was taken up into God, so to speak. But to talk like that is to come perilously near to what John is now describing. It is to deny his status as a second person of the Trinity. With that, John goes on to talk about, uh, our resource. And I mention it now very briefly because the clock is running away with us, and we started a little bit late. Never mind. You'll be able to make up the ground in your discussion times. Our resource, according to John now, i- is the Word of God. In the first place, it is the Holy Spirit of God. Now here it is the Word of God, and we need both, not one without the other or the other without the one. The Word of God that we heard from the beginning, that is the apostolic message. We're not only to hold it, so to speak, with our hands, we're to let it abide in our hearts. Because the Holy Spirit himself, in fortifying the believer against these assaults upon the gospel and on the Lord, he gives us that inspired word that we might have it in black and white and formulate it in propositions. Let it abide in you, says John, so that it abides in you richly, and you know your New Testament, given by the Holy Spirit of God, amongst other things, to protect you against false teaching. Then finally, the final exposure. The Lord Jesus is coming. Notice the term that is used, his manifestation, when he shall appear. And John says, when he appears, we don't want to be ashamed before him at his coming. Let's think briefly of three groups that will be horribly ashamed. There were those that professed to be believers and weren't believers at all. Like Adonijah, Solomon's son, who, when David was dying, seized the kingship, though he hadn't been appointed king, and was having his great party, being celebrated as the new king, when King David, with his last breath, officially appointed Solomon to be king. And at the king's command, they came down the streets of Jerusalem, with Solomon riding on the royal ass, and sang, Long live the King Solomon. And when the true king was manifested, the false king was horribly ashamed, and all who followed him were horribly ashamed. The Lord Jesus is going to be manifest, says Paul. The great and only potentate God the Father one day is going to stage the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then people shall see who is the true king. They who have followed false things will be horribly ashamed. And what about us, true believers? The Lord is going to be manifested. Won't it be nice if in that day we can walk up to him and say, yes, Lord, in my college, in my street, alas, sometimes in my church, men came and preached doctrines that were disloyal to you. Lord, I never compromised. I have espoused you as a chaste virgin to Christ, says Paul. I'm afeared lest Satan get at your thoughts and you become intellectually disloyal to the Lord Jesus. How should we explain it, my brethren, my sisters? When the Lord Jesus comes and we have to stand before him, he has to say, but in your essay, young gentleman in college, you compromised my deity, didn't you? You were intellectually disloyal to me. In your church, you permitted doctrines that were disloyal to me. What do we say, my brethren? And finally, we think of the apostles. That we might not be ashamed, they say, he's talking as an apostle, isn't he? Well, he is charge of the flock of God. And when the Lord comes, he wants to be able to say, Lord, as a shepherd that you appointed me shepherd over these sheep, and Lord, I have guarded them. God grant to all of us who he has put into positions of responsibilities as elders and shepherds and teachers of his people, that we may do our task faithfully, so that when he comes, we may render our account with joy and not with sorrow. Now, seeing we started late this morning, I'm sure our chairman won't mind, and it's Valentine's Day, as he told us, so he'll, he won't mind at all. Uh, he'll allow you five minutes extra, and uh, if you don't get all through the questions, you didn't get through them all, but if you don't get through all the questions in this session, later on today, uh, you will have sessions of much greater length by my arrangement, and you will be able to go back over questions that didn't get properly answered in this