Knowing the Truth

Knowing the Truth 

Acts 20:28-30: Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. 29 For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves.

·        Paul calls the leaders of the church of Ephesus for some final instructions to them, knowing he may never see them again to warn them that “savage wolves” would come in among them perverting the truth.

·        These savage wolves are among the sheep, so they look like sheep. They are in the church, and their intention is to draw the sheep away from the flock and devour them.

·        In our days, we are “tolerant.” The church is struggling to be relevant and has allowed the culture into the church rather than changing the culture outside the church.

·        But what you believe will eventually lead to what you do and how you live, and will lead to certain inevitable outcomes.

·        In every time, every century… since the resurrection of Jesus, heresies, or false teachings work their way into the church.

·        Since the devil could not kill the church, he decided to join the church. John also addresses this:

1 John 2:18: 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.

·        John writes these things more than 30 years after Paul said something similar.

·        The term “antichrist” seems to mean the person is against Christ, and it does mean that… but it can also mean “instead of Christ.” It’s someone who comes in the name of Christ and says he is declaring truth, but when you look closely it is “contrary” to God’s word

·        And John warns us about these same people and gives us important information on how to recognize them. In these last days…great confusion is coming and it’s important to have this understanding.

·        John calls the time “the last hour.” He doesn’t mean that Jesus return was imminent; it means we must always have a sense of urgency in this threat.

·        But John warns, “the antichrist is coming and many antichrists have come.” This is part of events that cycle over and over again though the centuries.  History repeats itself because the enemy uses the same tactics that have worked before!

·        But there is one thing we can know for certain, as the time rolls by, these events are moving with an accelerating pace. We are moving rapidly towards the return of Jesus, therefore we will see more antichrists and eventually “THE antichrist.”

1 John 2:19: They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

·        John warns us that these people always begin within the church. They begin in the church, but leave the church and take as many followers with them as possible.

·        So these heresies begin or have their root in the midst of Christian doctrine.

·        Our Lord predicted this would happen:

Matthew 13: 24-30: Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.  But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”

·        Jesus warns that the enemy plants these antichrists in the church… and at first they are difficult to recognize. For a while they walk like the sheep and talk like the sheep, but they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

·        The wheat and the tares look alike as they are growing, but the Lord seems to be suggesting that as the wheat grew up would recognize them as evil.

·        But the Lord instructs them not to uproot the weeds because they may accidently uproot some wheat. How many times has that happened in history?

·        There is a long list of these people; Mary Baker Eddy, Ellen G. White, Joseph Smith, Charles Russel, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and so many others.

·        They use the same terminology or words that Christians use, but they substitute other meanings of those words. These people then use these words to deceive many and call themselves prophets.

·        They pervert the terms such as resurrection, evangelism, and even the gospel.

·        They do not believe the concepts of New Testament Christianity which is to change men from death to life. Without that… it is not the gospel.

·        John says that these will go out from among the flock to deceive others. And when they do they claim that only they know the real Christianity and the rest of us are wrong.

·        Heretics will cut themselves off from those who share the “life of Christ,” by the word of God, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. If you suggest studying the Bible with the people who are in heresy you will soon feel their dislike of the word. If they read it at all, its to take certain parts out of context.

·        There are many today that are “trapped” in these heresies and genuinely want to know the truth. Don’t worry about that—get them back into the scriptures. The word of God has an amazing ability to correct error.

·        It’s always the word that brings us back to truth in the midst of antichrists.

1 John 2:20: But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 

·        When you received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit came to dwell within you and from Him will flow rivers of Living Water as Jesus said.

·        Perhaps you didn’t even feel anything. This often leads people astray because they are expecting to feel something. This is His life coming into you, and you don’t need to feel it to know that it has happened.

·        You are now capable of knowing truth, as it was intended from the beginning.

·        That which was lost in the Garden of Eden and the great fall has been restored; your heart and your spirit, and now you have the Holy Spirit living in you… giving you the ability to know God.

Ø You have all the “necessary equipment” to know the truth.

John 16:12-15: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. 14 He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.

·        The disciples couldn’t understand everything Jesus wanted to tell them because Pentecost had not yet happened. They didn’t have the “necessary equipment.”

·        They didn’t have the Spirit of Truth. They didn’t have “the Spirit of Christ,” the Holy Spirit.

·        How does the Spirit of Truth do this? He guides us into all truth. How does He guide us into the truth?

·        He speaks what He hears and declares it to us.

·        This is the only way we can come to know the Truth. Jesus is the Truth. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life! And all that the Father has will be declared to us.

·        Truth will evade us if we don’t have Jesus in the middle of our lives. Without Jesus we will be deceived.

1 Corinthians 2:10-12: But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.

·        Why do we have a world so filled with confusion today?

·        Obviously there is “something missing in man,” man does not know how to bring himself into the glory the God has intended for him.

·        He is missing the key. He doesn’t have the necessary equipment.

·        No one seems to know the answers to the overwhelming problems we face today.

·        Every cult and every heresy is an attempt to reveal how man can fulfill himself, but they are all “antichrists” because they all offer something instead of Christ.

·        Every cult and every heresy is always offering a way to “unfold the secret nature” that mankind always longs for in searching for truth. Yet they can never come into the truth.

Ø 2 Timothy 3:6-7: For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

·        They cannot get there because the Truth is a Person…Jesus!

·        They cannot even know the reason for their existence and remains forever ignorant apart from Jesus Christ.

·        Therefore unless “Christ is at the center of everything,” there will be more delusion.

·        Truth is always consistent in every circumstance. You do not need to alter facts to make them fit into the truth, because then you do not have truth.

·        Therefore, they always rely on their own abilities, and their philosophies always lead to some kind of humanism where we unlock the secrets buried inside of us and this delusion just leads to more ignorance.

·        The one that discovers God living in him and becomes completely dependent on Him… discovers what he is here for.

·        Truth is absolutely critical so that we don’t embrace the lies. 

1 John 2:21: I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.

Ø First, John says that since we are now equipped to know truth, you can understand error and its nature. Therefore, John can write to you and you will understand what he is telling you because you have the ability to understand and know truth.

·        There is no longer any reason for failure if you will listen to the anointing in your life. The Teacher living inside of you will lead you into the abundance of this life you have been given.

·        There is no reason for John to write to people who do not have the anointing of the Spirit to understand; therefore they will just reject it. You must start with Christ before you can have any understanding.

Ø Second, John says, you have learned that there is no relationship between lies and the truth. In other words, there are no gray areas.

·        A thing is either black (lie), or white (truth), and there can be no mingling of the two. Because of the anointing of the Spirit, a Christian has the ability to know right from wrong and never say there are gray areas.

·        Yet, too many Christians still go along in life as if there can be “shading” of the truth. John says he is writing to them because they have figured this out and are choosing to walk in truth.

·        God wants to establish absolutes and these must be our standards especially when it is inconvenient. There are consequences.

·        The consequence in our circumstances is much less than the consequences in our fellowship.

·        There is no darkness in our God; He walks only in the Light. But if we walk in darkness we will not find Him there.

·        Therefore we must bring everything into the light of His anointing and examine it there.

·        Examine everything, the voices you hear, the philosophies around you, and the explanations of life that are constantly being presented before you.

·        Instead of listening to their lies…. you should bring them to the One from whom you have learned …He is the Truth.

·        That makes you worth writing to.

·        Are you willing to know the truth and then obey the truth?

·        That makes you worth writing to.

·        Will you cease to depend on your own abilities to react in situations and instead rely on His life within?

·        Then that makes you worth writing to.

·        He writes these things because he knows the necessary equipment is there for our understanding. All that remains is for us to use it.

 1 John 2:22-23:  Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

·       There is no truth that does not begin with “He who is the Truth.”

·       This truth is Jesus.

·       They will always pervert who Jesus is.

·       They will always make Him to be something less than God Himself come in the flesh.

Colossians 2:8-9: Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. 9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; 10 and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.

·       The Apostle Paul warns us not to be “cheated” by these empty deceptions. These philosophies and traditions keep us from knowing truth and receiving the benefits of knowing absolute truth.

·       These philosophies also cheat us out of our fellowship with the Lord.

·       Jesus warns us that the enemy is a thief, he will pick your pockets of the fullness that is available in Christ.

·       Paul tells us that since we have “the right equipment” we are complete in Him because we have come to know the truth that is in Jesus.

·       You can understand the things that are happening in the world, and know the One who is leading you and guiding you.

·       You can understand how He intends you to function and respond in all situations. He doesn’t want you to rely on your own abilities of understanding because those are the traditions of men and are false abilities.

·       The antichrist is coming and will establish a one world religion.

·       It will be a false church, and many will be deceived.

·       Instead He wants you to rely upon His life within you. That is why John is writing to you!!!!  It’s a life and death decision!