2 JOHN 7-9 | Identifying fake "Tortillas."

We celebrated our Rachel has a family reunion that we do and

it's in East Texas and this is the 14th year of us doing this

family reunion and we like to call it Country weekend.

So Country weekend pretty much is her massive family shows up

at a lake house with some of our super close personal friends.

And we just spend a few days together playing at the lake Jet

skis just, you know, I see, I understand what you're talking

about the sun like I look like 50 Shades of brown up here.

So the I don't know why I said that I'm a little sleepy this

morning so so like it's it's a great time now in year three or

four of our country weekend we started a tradition where Friday

night was the fajita dinner. Like that was like, that's what

they want. You know, that's what everybody

wants to do. If I eat a dinner Friday night,

chicken, steak, whatever they have.

And what I realized real quickly is that cultures are different.

For you guys that don't know my wife, she is country white girl,

He's Texas, you know, Southern belle.

And so we grew up a little bit differently.

And I I quickly realized that the way that people view fajitas

and Mexican food in some cultures are a lot different

than in our culture. I say ours because the it's the

Mexicans adopted me back in the Texas.

They're like, we want Ricky, you're like, we'll take you, you

know, you know we'll take him. You could have, you know one got

real on our side but like we want him, right.

So, So I remember like the first time we did it, I was like that

ain't it. This is not going to work for

me. So I volunteered to bring the

meat and all that stuff the next couple of years.

So now it's like me and Mario we grill it all out.

So the next year I went to meet meet Pueblo the kind of city

right and right yeah shout out and and I mean that's like the

best one so so I wanted to show out so I brought like the pounds

of the fajita meat and the the chicken, the marinated chicken

and. Grilled it.

They loved it. But the problem was like, they

brought the sides. Yeah, you know where it's going,

right? Not all tortillas are the same,

right? You know, so I had the meat and

everything, and they busted out with the mission packets of

tortillas, the flour tortillas. And I was like, no, like, no,

this is so fake. Like this is the audacity that I

have Pueblo kind of city on me. And you decided to bring

mission. No, that's that's terrible.

And then they just warm him up in the microwave, like, come on,

bro, No, no, no. So then the next couple of

years, I was like, I'll handle it.

You guys just show up and eat because, you know, like the real

flour tortillas, You have to cook them.

You know, you put them on the hot grill and like, you flip

them with your fingers, you lose all the hair on your knuckles.

That's how you know it's hot enough.

And and then, like, when it bubbles, you flip it over real

fast. You see, I know what's up,

right? So, like, and then you're cooked

like, that's how you could tell the real flour tortillas from

the fake ones. Now here's the crazy thing.

Some people are cool with the Mission tortillas.

They're they're cool with the fake stuff because that's all

they know. They don't know the good stuff

yet, right? They haven't been introduced to

the good stuff. I could easily tell a fake flour

tortilla from a real one, right? I mean, I'm pretty sure y'all

could too. And if you can't, we're going to

pray for you. Let's meet afterwards, let's

talk and we'll fix that. You know, so so it's it's like

this whole fake versus real when it comes to that.

And some people just don't understand.

They don't know because they haven't been introduced to like

the real flower tortillas. And what John is going to look

at today is that, you know, he, we've been talking about truth

and he's going to say, you know, there's some guys out there that

he's going to call deceivers. And they're like they're going

to come off as real tortillas, but they're actually mission

tortillas. They're fake.

Right. They they look real, like you

could buy them at the store. They served its purpose, but

they don't preach the truth. They're actually preaching a

false gospel. They're they're they're teaching

a false doctrine. And and John's even going to go

a little bit deeper here because we got to pay attention to the

word studies. It's not just deceivers talking

about false things. It's also the way they live

their lives. So it's not just false things,

but it's false motives. And and John's going to be like,

man, you got to watch out with these guys.

You got to watch out with deceivers, like don't let them

pull you away from the truth. And then he's going to go and

talk a little bit about what it looks like when you encounter

somebody that is a deceiver. So that's going to be next week

though. So.

But, but it's really evident here, so even in the Christian

realm, even in Christianity. You know, our world is full of

fake tortillas versus real ones. And we got to realize what makes

them deceivers, what makes them fake.

And really, it's the truth. It's if they get away from the

truth. So, man, my, my prayer today is

that you guys leave here in courage.

That you guys leave here with like just like a little bit more

pep in your step in. The last Sunday was a little bit

heavy. So I was like, man, can we

lighten it up a little bit? So, so let's go ahead and read

we're we're only going to look at like 3 verses today.

And then we'll wrap up the book a second John next week.

So let's start on verse 7. And I'm only going to read to 9.

And this is what the Word of the Lord says says.

I say this because many deceivers who do not acknowledge

Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh have gone out into the

world. Any such person is the deceiver

and the Antichrist. Watch out that you do not lose

what we have worked for. But that you may be rewarded

fully on in verse 9. Anyone who runs ahead and does

not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God.

Whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and

the Son. I'm just going to read verse 10

and 11 just for context. If anyone comes to you and does

not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or

welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares

in their wicked work. So let's pray real quick,

Father, We thank you so much, Father, you're doing.

We thank you because you are faithful to us.

Father, we thank you for the rain this morning.

Just cool things down a little bit.

And Father, I pray that that you just help us to hear your word,

Father, and help us to to see what you have to say to us.

And Lord, we also want to thank you for our children, Father.

It is such a joy to hear kids in this place to hear them running

and playing and and and yelling. Father, it's it's just it's it's

evidence of a growing church and a joyful church.

So Lord, we thank you so much for all of them and then we pray

all these things didn't matter. All right.

So let's go ahead and start on verse 7.

So last week we talked about truth.

John, continue to remind. Hey, know the truth.

Abide in the truth. You you have to make sure that

that everything about your life is about this truth.

And then last week we talked about that.

We know that truth reveals certain things.

Truth reveals our truth. So truth reveals truth.

Truth truth reveals the truth about ourselves.

So whenever we line our lives up with the truth of the gospel,

which is the good news, it helps us realize the bad news.

So it is like the good news of Jesus Christ versus the bad news

that we are sinners, we are terrible people, and that we

need a Savior. But truth also reveals a

solution. Who is Christ?

And then truth also reveals complete joy.

Now John is going to take all of that and he's going to give us a

reason why he tells this fellowship his body believers

when he told them last week. So look at verse seven.

It says, I say this because. Many deceivers.

The reason I'm telling you guys all this stuff, the reason I

keep bombarding you with this whole idea of truth and love and

how we have to abide in it, is because there's going to be a

whole bunch of fake tortillas in this world.

There's going to be a bunch of deceivers who do not acknowledge

Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, and they have gone out to

this world. So I started thinking like,

deceiver, what does that mean? So remember, the Old Testament

was written in Greek. So that word deceiver is planos.

It's kind of where we get the word planet from.

And the word planos means a wanderer.

It means to wander. Any Marvel endgame fans out

here, Right? So think about the name Thanos.

You know it comes from the Greek word here.

Plainos. It's like a wonder it he just

goes everywhere, but also not just a wonder but also he's

going to you wander from the truth of scripture.

So when you hear the word deceiver, that means it's

someone who is going to try to get you to wander away from

scripture. They're going to corrupt it.

They want to lead you astray. They're they're imposters.

And then when you look at the scripture like.

Man, what? How else do they talk about

deceivers? So I'm just going to spit some

verses out here. It's not going to be on the

screen, but you can just kind of just cross reference.

Paul says that these people are like false brothers or false

brethren in the church. That's out of Second Corinthians

11/26. In the Book of Jude, verse 13,

Jude calls them wandering stars, which are headed for the black

darkness of eternal judgment. Jesus in in the book of Matthew

24 chapter I'm sorry, the book of Matthew, Chapter 7, verse 15.

Matthew 7:15

Jesus calls them their wolves and sheep's clothing and he

warns them. He warns us in the Olivet

discourse, which was another sermon that we did in Mark, he

says false Christ and false prophets will arise and they

will show great signs and wonders so as to be misled if

possible even the elect. So a lot of even like a lot of

deceivers, they're going to do some crazy stuff.

They're going to, they're going to heal people.

They're going to do some signs and wonders.

But it's not going to be in the name of Jesus that you and I

serve. It's going to be in something

else's name. It's going to be to pull you

away from the truth to Scripture.

And I'm even seeing that today. Acts 2029.

Paul talks to the church and he says false apostles, deceitful

workers disguising themselves as apostles of Christ, disguise

themselves as servants of righteousness whose end will be

according to their deeds. So what's Paul telling us here?

They're not just going to be able to talk about it, but their

lives are not going to match what they preach.

So they're going to know all about the Bible.

They're going to know all of this information.

They're going to know the Scripture.

But their life's going to look totally different.

That's a deceiver. That's somebody that you cannot

trust when it comes to Scripture.

Their lives don't align with the truth.

So when we talk about deceivers, we got to not just look at false

doctrine, but we also have to look at false motives.

Why are people like, what is it about people that want people to

know Christ? And what we see here is that

instead of uniting, they divide. You know, Jesus talks about the

church being a United Church. That's how the world's going to

know that that that we love each other.

But if somebody's in there trying to divide the church in

the name of God, that means that they are deceptive.

They're deceiving. They're not loving, but they're

selfish and they're prideful. They want you to join their

misery. And then my last thing I got a

question is like, are they trying to make followers of

Christ? Are they trying to make

followers of themselves? Everybody loves the crowd.

And when you see some of these guys that they just want people

to listen to them. They're like, man, are you

really trying to make disciples? Are you just want people to

follow you? You see, there's like that inner

pride that we got to watch out for.

So I say this in verse 7 because many deceivers who do not

acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, remember

John is writing to the Gnostics here.

A lot of people deny. Jesus Christ as being 100% man

in 100% God. So they accept his deity but

they deny his humanity which does not work because if we

think about Jesus. Christ being Lord, even His

name, it's Jesus, Yeshua it's Lord our salvation.

And He's the Messiah, the coming 1, the Savior.

He has to be 100% human and he has to be 100% God to be the

atoning sacrifice for all of the sins of the world.

So if you deny Jesus Christ being Lord and Savior and truly

God, you are denying the existence of God.

And and to be honest with you, when you deny who Jesus really

is, then that is the beginning of a false religion, a heresy or

a cult. Because the truth is Jesus is

not the Archangel like Jehovah witnesses claim Jesus is not a

prophet like Islam claims. Jesus is not a good example like

Hinduism claims. And we could go on and on about

what Jesus. Who Jesus is to various cults

and religions. Some people say like he's the

son of God, but he's not God. So if you deny the deity of

Christ, then that is not the same thing as Christianity.

You're you're you're following something totally different, but

not just who Jesus is. But if you deny the work of

Jesus in your life, you're you're following something

false. So if for you, if if salvation

is not only by grace and not only by faith, if you have like

this workspace salvation, you're following something totally

different. That's not the gospel.

It's false. And John is calling you out

here. He's like, man, anything that

you're following, you're following a deceiver.

They're they're trying to hustle you.

They're trying to get something out of you, because that is not

what this is. So he's saying who?

Those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ is coming in the

flesh. All these folks have gone out

into the world. Any such person is a deceiver,

and he's the Antichrist. Now there is an Antichrist that

they talk about in the Book of Revelation, but this isn't it.

What John is referring to is the spirit of the Antichrist.

So anything against the gospel, anything against Christ, that's

which is the word. Antichrist is the Spirit.

Of Antichrist. It's the spirit of I want to go

against the truth of the gospel. Now look at verse 8.

Now look what he says. Then watch out.

So he's giving us a warning as a fellowship.

Now he's addressing this fellowship of believers.

He's saying watch out that you do not lose what we have worked

for, but that you may be rewarded fully.

So what he's talking about here and he's he's warning the

church. He's like be vigilant, be

discerning, be suspicious. Or like the kids say, be suss,

Ask questions. Because what's at stake is

extremely vital for the future. You know, John wants them to

experience the full reward. Now there's two things where

John is talking about when we look about when we talk about

reward here, he wants them to to experience the full fruit of

their work. Now, like any faithful pastor

like John and Paul are talking about, is concerned that they

don't lose ground spiritually of the people that God has put

under their watch. And I know we see this a lot.

I see this a lot, especially talking with other churches and

how our church is thriving and growing and then they allow

someone to come in with false doctrine.

Someone that divides someone and and then with all that they work

for it becomes divided and you lose a lot of ground that you've

already covered. So the fruit that.

That they're talking about is the fruit of watching believers

walk in obedience to Christ. Man, let me tell you something.

If you leave one person to Jesus, you're going to be

hooked. It's going to become your life,

like there's no greater joy, there's no greater feeling.

And to to see somebody go from death to life, it's not about,

like, transforming your behavior.

It's not about, like, I used to say, bad words and I don't do

bad words anymore. No, I'm talking about like a

true heart change. When you experience that

firsthand, it changes you. You're like, man, like, I want

to give my life to this. And I'm going to use every

aspect of my life to tell people this amazing news, how Jesus

changes you and he saves you and he loves you and he wants to

transform you and your family. It's an it's an amazing thing.

That's the fruit that John is talking about.

But if we leave, if we let deception, if we let the anti,

the spirit of the Antichrist come in, if we let all these

things infiltrate the church, you're not going to be able to

experience it because you're going to be too busy trying to

fix with somebody else broke. Instead of being on watch like

he talks about in Berse. He's saying, man, watch out for

this stuff. You know, Paul had the same

fear. I'm going to go ahead and read

it. I don't know if it's good.

I don't think it's going to be on the screen, but. 2nd

Corinthians Chapter 11. I want to reach his fourth quick

verses because Paul is seeing this in the Church of Corinth

and it says this in in 2nd Corinthians 11.

I hope you will not put me in a little.

I'm sorry. I hope you will put up with me

in a little foolishness. Yes, please put up with me.

I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy.

I promised you to be one husband to Christ so that I might

present you as pure virgin to him.

But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's

cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere

and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and

preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached.

Or if you receive a different spirit from the spirit you

received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you

put up with it easily enough. See what Paul's concern for the

the church that he was planning and pastoring in in Corinth was

just that, That people were going to fall for a gospel that

was not one that he preached. And then they're going to buy

into a spirit that was not one that he brought in.

This happens a lot, and he's concerned.

And that's the concern. Now what else?

What is the other full reward? The other reward is the reward

that you receive in glory and eternity, you know, So as

believers, whenever we perish from this earth.

Our life doesn't just end it actually, it just starts to

begin because we'll be in the presence of the Lord.

But the Bible also talks about there's a reward for those

believers who remain faithful to the calling of the truth here on

this earth that you will receive in heaven.

So I always get that question like, well, Ricky, what if

someone denies Christ and they're on their deathbed and

then like 2020 or 10 or 20 minutes?

Before they pass away, they pray and they accept Jesus and then

they go to heaven. What do like, is that fair?

What do they guys like? Yes, that's that's great man.

That's that's God's grace on our lives.

But for those who have been faithful, year after year, day

after day, in the obedience of Christ, there's a reward that

you get in glory. There's an additional reward

that you get. And what Paul is point or what

John is pointing out is like you don't want to miss out on that.

Just because you missed the mark, you know, in 2004, I don't

know how if anybody here watches like the Olympics 2004, the

Olympic Games were in Athens, Greece, and the NBA puts

together this dream team. Anybody familiar with the dream

Team, right? They take all the greatest

basketball players, they put them together and they send them

to the Olympics. And in the 2004 Olympics, they

had this really stacked team and I mean they had LeBron had Allen

Iverson, Tim Duncan, Carmelo Anthony Mulberry, Dwyane Wade.

The list goes on is all this is amazing at group of athletes

there the US is always expected to win the gold medal and

basketball which is like common sense.

Of course, the first game they play and the Athens Olympics

they lose. To Puerto Rico anyway.

So it's true. First game they lose by 19.

Puerto Rico, everybody's freaked out.

Like what? What happened?

So that year 2004 with all these amazing players, they actually,

they win the bronze medal. What happened?

You had all these amazing people and the more you read about it,

it was really the coach. So Larry Brown was the coach in

2004, and what Larry Brown decided to do was he tried to

run the team as it was his own team, the Philadelphia 76ers,

didn't work at all. Even got to the point where

players quit like they went home.

They were like, I'm not wasting my time with this.

So you have this group of amazing talent, all these All

Stars, and instead of letting them do their thing and letting

them win, and he tried to micromanage their game and it

did not work. So you had all of this set up

nicely. All you had to do was kind of

just got like manage players, let them do what they're best at

and you'll see them win the gold.

But what he did was he decided to try to do his own thing.

And it actually ruined it for the United States.

See, what what John is getting to here is that John is just

telling us he's like, man, make sure that you your focus is

correct. Make sure you don't ruin what's

already put in place. What's put in place is the

truth. What's put in place.

We have his word. But when you try to step in and

try to add your own spin to things, you're going to end up

losing. See, God's truth is what works.

God's truth has always worked. It stands the test of time.

There's been men and women who have given their lives to the

gospel, and it's always been pushed forward.

But when we try to step in and think that we're better than

this, that we could manage this, we're going to fail.

And then the last verse anyone who runs ahead and does not

continue in the teaching of Christ.

Does not have God. Whoever continues in the

teaching has both the Father and the Son.

This is a difficult verse. Y'all.

If you teach anything that's not the gospel, you don't belong to

him. There's a lot of people that say

things in the name of Jesus. There's a lot of people that

claim things in the name of Christ.

And what he's saying is like, no, like if you continue in the

teaching of the deceivers, you don't belong to God.

You're not his. That's a difficult truth for us.

But if you do, then you have both the Father and the Son.

Man, that's a that's a that's a hard truth for many of us.

So what do we do with this passage?

Because the next couple of verses talk about those who come

in your way and that teach something that's not the gospel,

like you're not supposed to help them out, and if you do, you're

actually helping them in their foolishness.

What does that mean? So remember, John is writing

this to a fellowship of believers because that's kind of

not the most loving thing, just to, like, tell people to keep it

moving. But what he's saying is that

you. Are able to do that in love and

you can still treat people with respect and you can still be

kind and even use apologetics but you are not to aid them and

helping get their foolishness out.

You know, I was thinking about this we have we have a close

family friend who doesn't really believe what we believe and I

remember he asked us if. If I would be willing, if if me

and my wife would be willing to get our friends together.

So that way he could kind of pitch a presentation of what he

believes to us. And, you know, Rachel being the

social worker, super kind. Oh, OK.

I'll see what we can do. I'll check their schedule.

And then in my mind, I'm like, hold on a second.

No. Oh, like #1.

You're grown, man. You do that yourself.

And I'm not your assistant, but I'm not going to gather people.

To listen to a teaching that is not the truth and just buy into

your foolishness. If you want to do that, you keep

it moving. I would love to be front row.

I have a lot of questions for you.

But if you think I'm going to aid you and you trying to tell

people what your belief system is, you've got another thing

coming. And that passage is here.

Because if anyone comes to you and does not bring this

teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them.

Because anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.

So I was just thinking about like, man, how do we what?

What? What do we do?

How do, how is this encouraging to us?

Because these are some hard truths.

So what I want to do, just for the next couple of of moments,

John is talking to the fellowship of believers.

He's talking to a, a, a church. We we know that based off of

verses one through 6. So I want to encourage us

talking to a fellowship of believers.

I want to encourage us talking to city posts church and I want

to make some promises and I want to make some truth statements

based off of the text that I hope will encourage you today

and we'll have only got 3 and then we'll be done.

I actually had 20, but then I was looking at the time.

I was like, I'm mine. Let's go to first one, number

one, this is something I want us to know about City posting about

this church. We acknowledge the deity and

humanity of Jesus Christ, period.

We acknowledge that Jesus is 100% man and he's 100% God.

So if you look at verse 7, he's saying a lot of deceivers, man.

They don't acknowledge Jesus is coming in the flesh.

And what I want to tell you is that here at City Post.

We do acknowledge Jesus is coming in the flesh and he did

come as the perfect sacrifice. And I also want to say that he

is the only way to salvation. That's John 14 six.

He said, I'm the way, the truth in the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

And I also want to tell you that he is the only way to salvation.

He is the only way to God. It is only through grace that we

are able to be saved. There's not anything that you

can do to earn God's acceptance so that any man could boast he

is the Lamb of God that the the John the Baptist was telling us

about. Where John the Baptist says I

must decrease so that way he could increase like I'm not

worthy to tie his sandals up. He's the Lamb of God.

He's the one. That saves us.

He is the absolute truth. He is the only way to eternity,

and he is the only one worthy of our worship.

So there's some of us in here who don't really believe this.

I'm telling you with love and truth.

Jesus Christ is Lord and he's the one we're worshipping in

here. If you don't like it, I'm sorry,

but Jesus Christ is God. He's the one that died.

He was buried and he resurrected.

And listen, I'm going to say this with a lot of love.

He doesn't need his mom's help. He is Lord.

He's the one who is reigning at the right hand of God right now.

Here's some promises that I want to give you based on the text

City post church. We will watch out for certain

things. We're going to be on the watch

out now I know a lot of people are like, well church should be

inviting to everybody. Yes it is.

We want the whole world to come in here.

But if you think. That you're going to come in

here and start teaching things and running things and

influencing people. If you don't believe that Jesus

is 100% man and 100% God, that's not going to work in here

either. So what are we going to do?

We're going to watch out for non biblical ideologies here at this

church. We look at everything through

the lens of scripture. I know a lot of people like to

use other authors, and that's great to subsidize some of the

teaching, but if it ain't in scripture, it's not going to be

taught here. So we're going to look out for

non biblical ideologies. We're going to call out bad

theologies. If something don't match up,

we're going to call it out in a loving way.

We will point to false doctrine and we are going to call out

wrong motives. So if you're not about Matthew

28, if you're not about the Great Commission, about making

disciples of Christ, if everything that you're about is

about you and about your organization, about what you're

trying to grow, if anything about Jesus, then we're not

going to push that forward. We will call that out.

What's difficult about this, a lot of church kind of lean and

sway on these things. For the purpose

Because in all honesty, the the church in America has come very

become very consumeristic. And when things are

consumeristic, they're run like businesses.

And when you have a business, you need a higher bottom line.

It's all about like how we build this thing, how do we get more

money, how do we get more staff. And you have to be very, very

careful. So we will not lean, we will not

sway. We're going to stay straight

whether people like it or not. That's who we are.

So City Post is going to be about that.

We have to check those things. And and we're going to and we

don't say this to try to be like mean or proud or prideful.

We do this because scripture requires us to the Our Lord

tells us to do this. Then the third one, we will not

lean and we will not sway, but we will take a stand.

We will not lean and we will not sway, but we will stand, you

know in in the culture that we live in today.

And I've seen this especially as pastors and as churches, we are

called sometimes to lean in certain directions politically,

culturally, kind of what's happening in in, in, in what's

going on in our world. But what City Post will not do

is we're not going to do either lean or we're not going to sway

from the truth, but we're actually going to stand on the

word of God and the truth of the gospel.

So we're going to call, we're going to stand on the truth.

We're going to call sin whatever the Bible calls sin, we're going

to call holiness. Whatever the Bible calls

holiness, we're going to preach an allegiance to Jesus Christ.

We're not going to like oh, it's okay if if no, like whatever the

the truth it is, that's what we're going to stand on and

we're not going to sacrifice our kids on the altar of sports or

other activities. Our kids are going to be our

focus and we're going to raise them in the truth of the gospel.

So whatever the world calls parenting, we're going to ignore

that and goes exactly to what Scripture calls parenting.

We're going to stand on the truth of the family, on how men

should be the the the leading roles of the household, how we

should be the spiritual leaders of our house, how we're held up

to a higher accountability. Because that's what God says.

So we're going to stand on these truths at City Post Church.

Now one last thing I will say, we're going to do all of this

for the next one. We're going to do all this in

love and truth. So we're going to stand on the

truth. We're going to lean on it.

We're going to, we're going to tell, we're going to, we're

going to call some things out. But we're going to do this with

the spirit of love and we're going to do this standing on the

truth of the gospel. Because we want to make sure

that we find ourselves as as be, as having our hands clean to

what God has called us to do.