Faith That Doesn't Unravel

2 John. 13 verses. It's a one-pager. And I'm going

to read it to us in a moment. Before I do,

let me just help you listen to it. I would

encourage you as we read this letter to listen for

the emphasis that John has regarding continuing to walk in

the truth. Continuing to walk in the truth. It's all

over the letter, especially in the first four verses. It's

about holding on to your faith. And how? And John

lays out for us this braid of three strands. A braid,

that is to say, these things are distinct strands, but

they are also inseparable from each other. He brings it

up in his big brother letter, 1 John. That's five chapters.

Don't have time for all that. If you want to

check out 1 John, Richard Cobb preached excellently on that

this summer. Took three sermons to do it. Which is

why I'm doing 2 John. But all those strands are

present in his big brother letter too. In 1 John,

the five chapter letter. And here they are. Loving God.

Believing and obeying. Pretty simple. Pretty serious. Loving, believing, obeying.

How are we going to continue to walk in the truth?

How are we going to hold on to our faith?

How are we going to have a faith that doesn't unravel?

This is what he gives us. Let's listen. In fact,

I would encourage you, if you can, to stand for

the reading of God's word. I will read this letter

to us, and you can read along while I read aloud.

Second letter of John. The elder to the elect lady

and her children, whom I love in truth, and not

only I, but all who know the truth, because of

the truth that abides in us and will be with

us forever. Amen. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with

us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the

Father's Son, in truth and love. I rejoiced greatly to

find some of your children walking in the truth, just

as we were commanded by the Father. And now I

ask you, dear lady, as not as though I were

writing a new commandment, but one that we have had

from the beginning, that we love one another. This is love,

that we walk according to his commandments. And this is

the commandment, just as you've heard from the beginning, that

you should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone

out into the world, those who do not confess the

coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one

is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, so that

you may not lose what we have worked for, but

you may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on

ahead and does not abide in the teachings of Christ

does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has

both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to

you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive

him into your house or give him any greeting, for

whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. Though

I have much to write to you, I would rather

not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come

to you and talk face to face with so that

our joy may be complete. The children of your elect

sister greet you. This is the word of the Lord. Amen.

I want to talk with you this morning about faith

that doesn't unravel. Faith that doesn't unravel. I've seen Those

who have professed faith in Christ, I've seen that profession

of faith unravel. And as I've seen that happen, I'm

sure lots of people are wondering, how? How does that happen?

I've seen faith that seemed to be unraveling actually become strong.

And the same question arises. How? How? What happens to

see that happen? And often the question comes up, can

real faith unravel? We're going to pick that up before

we're done. But this is the kind of thing that

2 John is focused on. He's focused on those things.

Those simple yet serious things that keep us walking in

the truth, that keep us holding on to the faith.

You see it here in verses one through four, and

I won't spend much time this morning on the opening

greeting or the closing greeting, so I'll just do that

right now. You see it in verses one through four, like, hey,

to the elect lady whom I love in truth, not

just I, but all who know the truth because of

the truth, right? Right? I rejoice greatly to find some

of your children walking in the truth. You can kind

of see what he's on about, right? Walking in the truth.

Continuing to walk in the truth. Continuing because you see

how often he refers to things like, hey, we're called

to walk in this. And in verse 7, there are deceivers.

He says twice, so watch yourselves. Don't lose what we've

worked for. John wants us to have a faith that

doesn't unravel. And so, he calls us to some specific things.

Some simple but serious things to take hold of. These

three strands. They're distinct, but they can't be divorced from

one another. Loving, Believing, obeying. And again, if you're familiar

with 1 John, you know he goes back and over

those things, weaving them together tightly. Loving, believing, obeying. So

let's get into each of them. Here's the first strand. Loving.

How will we have a faith that doesn't unravel? It

has so much to do with loving one another. You

see it right there in verse five. It's very simple.

Love one another. Sounds simple at least. Super serious. He

says in verse five, now I ask you, dear lady.

Dear lady. That's a weird way to talk about churches.

That's who he's referring to. He's writing to a whole church.

He's writing to a whole church and he's saying, I'm

asking you, dear lady. You see that in verse 1 too.

From the elder, that's how he calls himself, the elder

to the elect lady and her children. Also in verse 13, right?

And your elect sister, the church I'm a part of,

and her children, we send you greetings. John is odd.

He just is. He comes with his own particular literary

style and his John mind style. But you can see

right away, though, that this is such a congregational imperative.

It doesn't fit with our contemporary American hyper-individualized way of thinking.

He's talking to an entire congregation. Actually, almost every letter

in the New Testament is written to a church, not

a person. To a church, or if it's to a person,

it's almost always the pastor of a church telling him

how to lead a whole church. It's such a congregational imperative.

I mean, how can you love one another if you're

ignoring one another? He says, now I ask you. This

is his lead punch. This is important. This is serious.

He says, verse 5, this isn't new. You've had this

from the beginning. This is fundamental. This is fundamental. It's serious.

It's simple. Love one another. How serious is it? Well,

just consider what Paul says in Galatians chapter 5. All

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

that really matters is faith working itself out in love.

There's so many things going on in the externals that

really don't matter much. They don't amount to much, but

here's what counts. Faith working itself out in love. And

as he says in 1 Corinthians 13, man, if I

could speak in the languages of all the people in

the world, if I could speak the angels' languages and

I didn't have love it wouldn't be anything. If I

gave away everything. that I had, if I was that sacrificial,

if I was martyred, didn't have love, wouldn't amount to anything.

If I understood everything about the scriptures mentally, if I

had that in my head, If I had the kind

of commanding faith that could move the landscape around, I

could just say to mountains to move and they move,

that'd be super impressive. And he was writing to people

who love to be impressive and he's making this point.

But without love, it really amounts to a big fat zero.

And John just comes along and quite simply, but quite seriously, says,

now I ask you, congregation, love one another. And he says,

verse five, verse six, sorry. This is love. This is love,

that we walk according to his commandments. that we walk

according to his commandments.

It says, essentially this, that obedience to scripture is the

most practical guide to loving people that you'll ever find.

So this is from the beginning, verse six. You've had

this commandment from the beginning. This is remaining in the faith,

having a faith that doesn't Unravel is not about leveling

up into some strange new understanding. It's the same thing

that you've been told from the beginning. In fact, knowledge

puffs up, but love builds up, Paul says. Which is

not to say that he is against gaining knowledge. This

is the Apostle Paul, for crying out loud. He's saying,

don't gain mere knowledge because what knowledge is there for...

is that we would understand how to love one another.

Really love one another. As it says in 1 Corinthians 13,

love is patient. Love is kind. It doesn't envy. It

doesn't boast. It isn't proud. It isn't proud. It's not resentful.

It doesn't insist on its own way. Like this is

a whole approach to one another that is way beyond

what we usually and sort of simplistically called loving people.

I would call it sort of emoji love. It's just

a sense of warmth that I wanna have toward you.

I call that loving you. Like, there you go. I

just loved you. Didn't you feel it? Biblical expression of

love is actually so much richer and deeper and challenging.

You actually got to be with people Can't post that.

In fact, John makes this point in his closing greeting like,

I've got a lot to write to you, but I'd

rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to

come to you and talk to you face to face

so that our joy may be complete. I actually want

to get in there. Look, writing you this letter was

loving you, but if I'm going to really love you,

I want to get in there. Our elders were talking

about this this week, and we decided that that's a

biblical case against Zoom. Well, I guess it's face-to-face, so. Listen, loving,

if you take on, if we would take on this

one spiritual challenge to actually learn to love one another better,

we would be challenged for life. We would find ourselves

so confused Deeply growing in the Lord. So deeply growing

in his word. Consider this. This is your question as

you meditate on scripture. How does understanding what God's word

says here help me to love God and other people better?

You take that one question to your Bible study and

you will understand scripture so much better. It's not emoji love.

It's not what 1 John chapter 3 says, love in

1 John 3 · chapter mention

talk and word, but in deed and truth. Love one another.

Commit to deepening in that and grab a hold of

that strain. And we've gone a long, long way towards

faith that won't unravel. That's the first strand. It's not easy,

but it's not complicated. It's simple. It's serious. Without it,

this is nothing. Love one another. But what's braided together

with loving? That's what John gets to next, and I'll

just use this term for it, believing. Braided together with

loving in a faith that won't unravel is believing. And

I'm talking about this phrase in verse 7. Confess the

coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Confess the coming

of Jesus Christ in the flesh. It's the simple truth

of Christianity. And it has serious, profound, glorious implications. Right?

That God became also a man, died and rose. Listen. Listen.

Your soul has an enemy. And that enemy would love

to steal away this truth. Jesus Christ coming in the flesh.

Verse 7. There are deceivers that have gone into the world.

And those who would deny, would not confess the coming

of Jesus Christ in the flesh, that's the deceiver. That's

the antichrist. Watch for that. Battling for this truth has

always been at the front lines of the battle. You

will forever. We have, throughout church history, always had. And

you will, in your life, always have. And if you

get started down this rabbit hole on the internet, the

algorithm will feed you endlessly. influencers and philosophers who are

happy for you to have morals they're happy for you

to have a higher power they're happy for you to

have spiritual myths and sacred stories but not have Jesus

Christ in the flesh over and over again the gospel

writers say this is serious You don't understand, we saw him.

We saw him, and now we understand none of it

makes any sense without him alive. We thought it was over.

We naturally thought, no, Messiah, Messiah's supposed to be the

anointed one. He's supposed to be blessed. He's supposed to

be loved by God. That person doesn't get cursed and die.

And he shows up. And we see him. He's like,

don't you get it? I had to die and then

enter into my glory. Because I wasn't dying for me.

Paul says, I never intended to encounter him. I thought

people who believed in a God become also man and

dying kind of Messiah were wackos, but then he got

my attention. And I see now, it had to be

this way. The God of this creation entered into this

creation to redeem this creation himself. What did we think?

Him giving us some rules to figure out was actually

going to fix all of this? We thought that was

the point? He says, watch out. so that you may

not lose what we've worked for. I don't want you

to lose it. I don't want things to unravel for you.

I don't want you to apostatize. Of course, whenever this

sort of thing comes up, there are real theological questions

that people have something along the lines of, well, can

someone who has real faith, can that faith unravel? And

let's get into it a minute because people approach that

from this, the, the standpoint of this question, like, you know,

I thought Jesus said that none of those whom the

Father gives me will escape from my hand. Like, I've

got them. No one's going to snatch them out of

my hand. I thought Paul said to the Philippians, I

am confident that he who began a good work will

be faithful to complete it. But then you see all

of these other verses in the new testament saying persevere

don't run the race to the end don't fall away

don't lose what we worked for and so i think

people come at this sort of simplistically on the one

hand they might say something like this hey if someone

professes faith in christ then that's it they've professed faith

in christ they've They've said they believe these true things

about God and his work. And we've baptized them with

a credible profession of faith. And if things seem to unravel,

they seem to fall away from confessing Christ in the

flesh and obeying his commands and loving him and his people. Hey,

you know what? Once saved, always saved. They said a thing.

They said a prayer one time. They're still good. On

the other hand, you have simplistically, people would say, it's

up to you. You have to do all that you

can do to hold on to this faith and it

will be fundamentally up to you whether or not you

hold on to your salvation. That doesn't seem to make

sense of the biblical texts. Neither one of those. Rather,

what the Bible teaches is that when God grants faith

to someone, he regenerates them. And we should be very

slow to just assume we know what's going on in

the hearts of others. What the theological, spiritual reality is

in that heart. But his work of persevering that person

is just as real as his work of regenerating that person.

God grants faith and he keeps us in faith. What

does staying in the faith look like? Well, it looks

like these practical things. God himself continuing to call us

to loving one another. God himself continuing to call us

to trusting in the risen Christ. God himself calling us

to continue to obey him. And that gets worked out

very imperfectly, very much stumbling along the way. But the

same God who genuinely regenerates people, genuinely perseveres them, and

it looks, it looks like this. He says, watch out.

Watch out that you aren't deceived. That you don't lose

what we have worked for you. I like to think

of myself as a discerning thinker. We like to think

of ourselves as discerning thinkers. Being able to size up

on a moment's notice what is truth and what is lie.

deception what is real and what is make-believe what is

a false philosophy but the fact of the matter is

john says watch out you're not as discerning as you

think which is not to say that you're not capable

of using discernment it's just usually not turned on isn't

that true I don't have my full faculties turned on

discerning truth from error most of the time, especially not

while I'm just doom scrolling. All kinds of things are

coming at me and my defenses are, I'm naked. I'm just,

it's just coming. It's just coming at me. I mean, consider,

if you think of yourself from 10 years ago, Don't

you think that you were a little foolish? I was

a 43-year-old child. What did I know? And so John

is saying, watch out. Turn on this discernment. Grab hold

of believing faith. Grab hold of the coming of Jesus

Christ and the flesh because Jesus Christ in the flesh,

his death and his resurrection opens up all of scripture.

Jesus Christ in the flesh, his death is what atonement

and justification centers on in the scriptures. Grab onto the

coming of Christ in the flesh. Believing and loving him

and his people. These are the strands that John presents

to us, along with this third one, this third one. Loving, believing.

Loving one another, confessing Jesus Christ in the flesh, and

this third one, obeying, obeying. You see it in the phrase,

abide in the teaching of Christ, right? Abide in what

he taught, right? Simple. That's simple, right? You could say

it this simply. Followers, follow. It's serious. You could say

it this seriously. Those that don't follow aren't followers. I mean,

how serious is it? I mean, he says in verse nine,

Those who, everyone who goes on ahead and does not

abide in the teaching of Christ doesn't have God. Whoever

abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.

That's as serious as it gets when it comes to obeying.

And I love the joke that John uses here, like

those who go on ahead. I mean, even in the

first century, there were progressives, right? Right? He's saying in

verse 9, there are some who have progressed so far,

they've progressed past the place where God is. This verse

all by itself settles the issue of easy believism. This

idea that you can just sort of like say you

believe true things about God and then just live in

a way that is not what he taught. Jesus says,

if you love me, if you genuinely love me, you

will obey my commandments. You say, well, I thought we

were saved by faith alone. Yes, and absolutely. There is

nothing that we can contribute to our regeneration. There is

nothing that we can contribute to our justification. There is

no way that our work is going to somehow make

us right before God. We are saved by faith alone,

but real faith doesn't stay alone. Real faith reigns. results

in real obedience. Clumsy, struggling, fumbling, stumbling, obedience. But obedience. Obedience.

Or else, faith unravels. Here's what I've seen. A young

person professes faith in Christ baptized with a credible profession

of faith, but then gets ensnared in sin. Could be

any kind of sin. It's usually sexual sin. And he

fights for a while, or she fights for a while.

But then... because they're fighting alone or they're immature or

they're ill-equipped, they become overwhelmed and defeated by their sin.

And repentance starts to seem ridiculous to them because of

how often they return to that sin. So they give

up and they give in. And repressing the truth becomes

easier than fresh repentance. And that repressing in time leads

to reframing. Obedience isn't necessary. I am gonna go out

on a limb theologically and just say, obedience isn't necessary.

I've reframed the faith. And that reframing over time leads

to recanting. There is no God to obey. And all

three strands then have unraveled. Obeying, believing, loving God and

his people. A profession of faith has become a rejection. Rejection.

Was real faith ever there? Well, we should not be

too quick to say, well, they said a prayer one time. So,

you know, once saved, all saved. When I know that

I have seen examples of those who seem to fall

in the category of the word being choked out, the

word withering away. But I would also say we should

not be so quick to say, oh, well, look what

has unraveled. Apostasy must be the final word in that life.

We should be careful about making glib pronouncements regarding the

hearts of others. Because I've seen others. I've seen others who,

after some time of things unraveling apparently towards apostasy, have

an experience of transcendence. The Christ who has come in

the flesh becomes real to them. They trust him. They

trust him. They come to know his love and to

love him back. And they want to love his people.

And abide in his teaching. And they're strengthened in it.

And maybe they understand grace a little bit more than

they did before. And maybe other Christians come around them

to help in their church. Or dead ones. You know,

dead Christians can help you a lot. It's called reading. Reading.

And before you know it, they are walking in the truth.

They are loving and they are believing and they are obeying,

not in perfection, not in perfection, but in sincerity. I mean,

let me tell you, God woos the unfaithful to himself

to be faithful. Christ seeks out lost sheep. If Jesus

seeks out lost sheep, don't you think he'll rescue confused ones?

He didn't die to rescue you from your sins and

then abandon you in your confusion. He is good and

he does good. And these are The practical strands that

he uses to do his work of wooing you to

himself and holding you tight. This is how he works. Yes,

the invisible spiritual theological reality matters. Absolutely it matters. But

so do these practical strands. This is what God uses

to keep you walking in the truth that has been

implanted in here. It's not automagical. He's calling you to this.

And he is spiritually drawing you to himself this way.

That's why John says so starkly at the end of

the body of this letter, don't entertain those who teach

something else. This is too serious for that. He says

this in verse 10 and 11. He says, hey, if

anyone comes to you and doesn't bring this teaching, do

not receive him into your house or give him any greeting.

Whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. You're like, okay, well,

does he mean like, If somebody comes to the house

and they're trying to teach something that's different than the faith,

then I can't actually let them come into the kitchen

and get a drink of water and I tell them

about Jesus, I have to make them stay on the porch.

I can't say hi. I don't think that's what John

is saying. When he says, don't bring them into the house,

I think what he's talking about is into the house

of worship, those houses in which these Christians would gather

for worship and don't give him any greeting, which is

to say any endorsement. Don't bring him into the place

where you all call yourselves Christians and say, ah, I

think he's one of us. And you know what? Let's

all give a hearty hello to this person and let's

all hear what he has to say because certainly we're

all discerning enough to know truth from error. That's constantly on, right?

John says, no, it's more serious than that. So to

take the warning of John seriously about a faith that

doesn't unravel means focusing on these three things. They're simple.

They're serious. Loving. Love one another. That's where the rubber

hits the road. That's where your faith actually gets worked out.

That's what actually gives it life. That's where the life

of your faith happens. Loving one another. Believing. Confessing the Christ.

Everything rises and falls on God becoming also man, dying

and rising. And obeying. Abiding in the teaching. Followers follow.

Those who don't follow, they're not followers. Obedience doesn't save you. No.

But it is what saved people do. Oppressing the call

to obedience might seem easier than fresh repentance. But that's

a recipe for a faith that unravels. John is calling

us to a faith that doesn't unravel.