A Church That Loves and Guards the Truth

Well, friends, I don't think I need to convince anyone in this room that in our culture there is a split between love and truth.

Love is often defined as affirming whatever someone else believes or thinks, and that can include their wants and desires, and truth is whatever each individual person determines what truth is.

But when we look at the Apostle John, especially in this second letter, we see that love and truth, according to the Lord, go hand in hand.

You can't separate love and truth.

Some try to, but if you separate one, you lose the other.

For example, there are some churches that might be known for their love, but they aren't known really for the truth.

Or some might be known for vastly holding on firmly to the truth, but not being very loving as they do.

But according to John, to the church he's writing to, he's encouraging, exhorting pastorally these Christians to understand that love and truth go hand in hand.

We're going to walk through this entire letter today, and I want us to focus on this main theme that I see here from John, which is that the church that loves well is the church that guards the truth well.

The church that loves well is the church that guards the truth well.

Let's start out just looking at verses one through six, real briefly.

This will be one of my shortest points ever, but looking at first, a loving church walks in the truth.

A loving church walks in the truth.

Just to give a little uh context disclaimer here.

When he opens up, referring to himself as the elder, and he says to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth, some have wrestled with this and think, well, is he writing, is this like a New Testament love letter?

He's writing to a woman.

I would suggest no.

Many take the stance that he is clearly talking to a church, a church congregation.

When he's using this language, elect lady, he's referring to the congregation.

And when he says her children, he's just referring to the members of this congregation he's writing to are walking in the truth.

We actually see John use similar language in his other letter where he refers to Christians as his beloved children.

He's not saying that all the people he's writing to are his biological children.

He's just using an affectionate term for the saints of this local church.

So, either way, even if someone took another stance, it doesn't change the application.

But he is referring, I believe, pretty clearly, when you look at the contextual clues, especially verse 13, the children of your elect sister send you greetings.

He's saying the church is sending greetings to another church.

So there's like a sister church involved here as well.

But when you look down at verses one through six, what we see clearly is the theme of love.

Notice how many times the word love shows up and how truth comes right after it.

He says, To the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth.

And not only I, but also all who know the truth.

And remember, you know, when we go back to like the books of first and second Peter, this statement of, you know, obeying the gospel or the statement that's used, the truth.

When that statement is used, it's referring to a body of doctrine.

The truth would have been the message of salvation through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

So when John says the truth, that is what he's referring to.

Verse 2, because of the truth that remains in us and will be with us forever.

And I love whenever you see promises of scripture, we should just pause and just meditate on them and say, Amen, that I can receive this.

Verse 3, grace, mercy, and peace might be with us from God.

Doesn't say that, does it?

Grace, mercy, and peace.

That's not a subjective peace.

That's not a, oh, I don't feel anxiety today type of peace.

That is a theological peace, a positional peace.

We are reconciled to God the Father.

There is no more anger or wrath in his heart or condemnation, because we have grace, mercy, and peace, which will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father in truth and love.

And don't think for a second that John isn't being tactful here with his verbiage, because as you remember in 1 John, he is still addressing some false teaching that was denying the humanity of Jesus and the fact that he was truly the Son of God.

And so John is just continuously doubling down, saying, Yes, Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth, in love.

And I think in verse 4, John is just being a good pastor who loves this congregation, and he's just bearing his heart.

I was very glad to find some of your children walking in truth, in keeping with a command we have received from the Father.

Now you might think, why would he even need to say that?

Like they're Christians, they're a church.

Of course they're walking in the truth.

Well, friends, we live in a fallen, broken world, as our sister just prayed.

Even in the quote unquote healthiest of churches, members fall snare to sin and temptation.

People go astray and pursue their self-centeredness and their sin.

So it is a blessing when we look out at each other as a faith family and know, praise be to God, that my brothers and sisters are remaining in the truth.

Praise be to God that the Lord is keeping us here at Redeemer, that people are persevering in the faith with God's love.

And when I say persevering in the faith, obviously still holding to the truth, once and for all, handed down to the saints, but also as John emphasizes, walking in the command we have received from the Father.

And he says in verse 5, not as if I am writing you a new command, but one we have had from the beginning that we love one another.

And he specifies what is that love in verse 6?

That we walk according to his commands.

This is the command as you have heard it from the beginning, that you walk in love.

Repetition is a marvelous teaching tool, by the way.

He's just constantly from 1 John to 2 John reminding them love each other, love Jesus.

Love each other, love Jesus.

Love each other, love Jesus.

That should tell us how stubborn we are spiritually, that we have to be constantly reminded of stuff we already know and believe, but we need to be reminded, love Jesus, love those Jesus loves.

And these are commands, aren't they?

We are commanded to love one another.

John doesn't say in this letter or in 1 John or anywhere else in the Bible, does the text ever tell us, love those who you choose to love the most?

Uh maybe some of you are old enough to remember back in the day with some of our cell phone plans, for example, where you could choose like your top five, and whoever's in your top five, you had unlimited texts and calls to those people, right?

God does not come to us and say, like, here's your relationship plan for your church.

Choose your top five members and just focus all your love and attention to them, and everybody else will be taken care of by somebody else.

No, we are to love one another.

Imagine if Jesus Christ, the savior of his bride, the church, said, you know what, I gotta, I'm a sports guy, so I love it when like the NBA comes out with these lists of like the top 75 players of all time, and then there's debates about, well, how come this guy's on the list and not this one?

Imagine if Jesus had like a top 75 list, right?

And he's like, I'm gonna devote all, like I will answer their prayers, and everybody else, you're like on a waiting list.

He doesn't love us that way, does he?

He extends grace, mercy, and peace, which will be with us from God the Father for all eternity.

And we have to keep in mind, you know what, we are commanded to do this because we are prone to not do it.

So we need these loving exhortations.

Uh uh imagine as I'm staring out in this sanctuary, imagine church membership is like everyone who's sitting in a pew right now is a born-again Christian who's a member of Redeemer Church.

And let's say someone new walks in the doors and says, Hey, I want to join you guys.

I want to join the church.

And one of you says, Come in, enter into the aisle.

And if they have a credible profession of faith, they enter into the aisle, they sit next to sit next to you.

And then let's say all of us as members, we all locked arms.

We grabbed each other's hands.

And let's say one of us wanted to walk away from the faith or we wanted to go pursue our sin.

It would be like someone standing up from your seat right now and trying to walk out of the sanctuary, but you're still holding on to their arm, pulling them back.

Saying, wait, wait, wait, hold on, where are you going?

You're one of us.

I have to pursue you.

This is the type of love that John is talking about.

I'm not saying that the bulk of the Christian life as church members is we're pursuing each other in their sin, because it's certainly not, but it certainly encompasses that, right?

I mean, if I had right now, as I'm standing on this stage preaching to you, if I had food in my teeth and no one said anything before I got up on this stage, I'm going to be backtracking, like, who did I talk to before I got up on stage?

Because I want to reach out to them.

Do you really love me or not?

If we say we love one another, we must love the way Christ loves us.

And we must always remember we have two enemies ourselves, the remaining corruption of sin in us, and we have our adversary, the devil, who is seeking to devour whomever he can.

One pastor put it this way: consider how precious a soul must be when God and the devil are after it.

We play a privileged role in the hands of God to be an instrument for Jesus to help one another persevere in the faith.

But a lot of this is repetition from what we have seen in 1 John, and John is just reminding them of this same command.

He's like, hey, this isn't a new command, this isn't unique to me.

I'm just repeating what you guys have already heard, what you already are walking in.

I'm just going to make sure you hear it again.

Walk in love, love one another, remain in the truth, and keep the Lord's commands.

But I would suggest the bulk of this letter is addressing this issue of false teaching, which we see primarily in verses 7 through 11, which brings me to my second point.

So, first point, a loving church walks in the truth.

Second point, and we'll spend the bulk of our time here, a loving church guards the truth.

John's main concern is revealed down in verses 10 and 11, in which he warns against this church being complicit in the advancement of false teaching.

So if you jump down to verses 10 and 11, he says, This is I'm sorry, wrong book.

Second John verse 10.

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your home and do not greet him.

For the one who greets him shares in his evil works.

Now, some might read that and think, well, wait a minute, is John saying that I can't have a friend of mine who's a Jehovah's Witness over for dinner?

Or I can't invite my Muslim friend to my house or be friends with them?

Am I supposed to be like a modern Christian monk and just close myself off from all believers in the world?

Well, no, that certainly is not what John is teaching.

So to give some context, because I think here as modern American Christians, we tend to think of hospitality primarily as inviting someone over our home for dinner, which is certainly a hospitable act.

It's a very loving and kind gesture.

But that is a rather reductionistic view of hospitality.

So in this era, hospitality was actually primarily seen as showing love towards a stranger, someone you did not know.

And in this day and age, they didn't have what we are used to here.

We have hotels, you can go on an Airbnb or Verbo and get a place to stay.

Back in these days, to travel to another place was a rather dangerous endeavor.

And they did have ends, but a lot of Jews kind of like banned staying in ends because they saw them as uh unsafe and the ratchet people hang out there.

And so it was customary for someone to come to, especially a traveling preacher or teacher, to go to a new town and to be housed by someone that maybe they had a connection to or were referred to.

And that housing of that person was seen as a great act of hospitality where they would essentially the people housing them are saying to their community, we vouch for this person.

While they are here doing their ministry, we co-sign them to the point where we're hosting them in our home, we're showing them hospitality and love, we're feeding them, giving them a place to stay, however long that may be.

So in Jewish culture, this was a very significant thing.

Just like in Jewish culture, it's very significant to share a meal with somebody.

That was a sign of acceptance.

So what John is getting at here is this is the issue of offering hospitality to a traveling false teacher, not just someone who you just disagree with their views on something in life, or not for us in modern day, that doesn't mean you can't have someone of a different faith as a friend or over for dinner.

That's not what John is uh against.

What he is against is as I just described that cultural framework.

If if you, church, who he's writing to, if you house one of these false teachers, you are complicit in their teaching.

If you know that they are coming to teach other than what you have received, the truth in Jesus Christ, if they are coming denying that Jesus came bodily and died and rose on the third day, you are complicit in their message advancing in your community.

And John is warning against such a sin.

And we could understand that, couldn't we?

That doesn't mean you don't love that person, you don't hope that they maybe come to a knowledge of the truth of the gospel, but what he is saying is do not become complicit and promoting a false gospel that would lead people astray, which is a fair warning.

It reminds me in First Timothy chapter 5, where Paul is giving Timothy this uh admonition of being careful about not being too quick to appoint a man as an elder in the church.

1 Timothy 5 · chapter mention

He says in 1 Timothy 5 22, don't be too quick to appoint anyone as an elder, and don't share in the sins of others, keep yourself pure.

It seems the warning in that context he's giving is hey, if you're if you're a little too hasty in appointing a man as an elder and he's in sin or he ships shipwrecks his ministry, like you've played a hand in that.

Instead of being slow to train and assess and vet, he says, don't be too quick to appoint anyone as an elder.

So this is a this is a a good warning and a source of encouragement for us today as well to be careful how we leverage our influence, our homes, or whatever the Lord has entrusted to us to make sure we're mindful of what I am propping up.

Because some might take that as a cosign, as me approving of this thing.

Now, there's some contexts where you know maybe that might look a little bit different.

So, for example, if someone invited me to go speak or preach at a church or an event which I know is heretical and has a false gospel, I would entertain going because if they know who I am, if they know what I believe, I'm gonna go preach the Bible and deal with the aftermath later.

But that's a little bit different.

But what John is warning against is do not, Christian, be complicit in promoting the devil's message, but rather guard against giving opportunity to the devil.

So he says, and so I think that's the that's the heartbeat of this letter, verses 10 and 11.

He keeps reminding them, remain in the teaching you have received, receive the reward for what you have worked for.

But even in verse 9, when he uses this language, when he says, anyone who does not remain in Christ's teaching, he doesn't say in my teaching, in Christ's teaching, uh, he uses this language but goes beyond it does not have God.

Now we don't know for certain, but I wonder if contextually that phrase but goes beyond it is him making reference to the false teachers we saw in 1 John.

Where maybe, because again, we do see in 1 John the contextual clues that they were claiming to have some kind of private special revelation from the Spirit.

And maybe they were using this phrase of, yes, believe in Jesus, yes, believe in God, but you must go beyond that to embrace what we have come to know, the real gospel, the real Jesus.

I don't I don't want to read too much into that, but I wonder if that's what John is playing at.

Now I understand when we talk about things like this, when we look at these uh passages in scripture that warn against false teaching, I know sometimes some Christians can have the response of, well, is theology really all that important?

Like my creed is just the Bible.

My creed is Jesus.

Do we really need theology?

Is it really important?

Isn't just belief in Jesus enough?

I love and believe in Jesus, that should be sufficient.

We don't gotta get into all this theology stuff and calling people false teachers or calling this a false teaching.

Well, let me put it this way: I am very fond of my wife.

So one of the reasons why I decided to marry her.

Now, if someone were to ask me, okay, you love your wife, tell me something about your wife.

How tall is she?

What color are her eyes?

Where is she from?

What's her favorite color?

Where does she go to school?

If I responded, I don't know.

I don't get into the wee's of all that stuff.

I just know I love my wife.

At some point you would think, well, I'm confused.

Like, how do you love someone you seem to barely know?

As I'm listening to you, I don't even know if you could spot her in a room, depending on your lack of knowledge.

That's how people sound when they say, I just love Jesus, but I don't really want to get into theology.

It's like, well, when you say you love Jesus, what Jesus are you talking about?

The Jesus that the Mormons believe in, the Jesus that Jehovah's Witnesses believe in, the Jesus of Islam that they believe in.

Who is this Jesus?

Why do you love him?

What did he do to make you love him?

Why did he do what he did?

Couldn't you just do that yourself?

You see where I'm going here?

Every question and answer is a theological proposition.

So when we speak of the Lord as, and just like these generalities, right, that is not love.

We must know true things about Jesus.

Now, during this time in John's day and age, he was known as one of the apostles who, uh, it seems was writing against what we now know as Gnosticism.

Some of you are familiar with this false teaching.

Now, in this day and age, it it you know, it was poorly defined.

It was an unorganized set of beliefs.

So, for instance, those of us who might be familiar with Gnosticism is because we are on this side of church history and you might have read some books and you've gained some knowledge.

But in this day and age, there wasn't like some denomination, there wasn't some statement of faith, there wasn't some creed that the Gnostics had that they all kind of rallied around and believed in together.

So it was kind of like this poorly defined, unorganized set of belief, and it had many teachers who actually differed from each other.

So it was kind of hard to pin down like what do these cats really believe?

Because one would say this and another would say something else.

But they did have a stream, a skeletal structure that a lot of them held to.

And, you know, so it was a challenge to refute their doctrine because they used the same Christian lingo as you and I use.

They believed in Jesus, they believed in sin and Jesus dying.

They believed in God, they believed in eternal life.

But they didn't mean the same things by those phrases.

And you can see the subtlety and the danger of false teaching, can't you?

Especially when it uses the same Christian vocabulary that we use.

Here's not an exhaustive, but here's a bullet point summary of what was some of their core beliefs so that you can better understand like what was John writing against in 1st and 2 John.

The first element of their belief is as one author puts it, there are they believe that there are different kinds of gods, little g in the world, and a number of eons were generated from the true, unknowable spiritual God.

And one of these lesser beings fell into error and created the material world.

So that's how the world was created.

One of these spiritual gods made a mistake, was an error, and created everything that exists.

Now that makes sense because so specifically, this being, this lesser being in error created the material world, the physical world.

Their second point of belief was that the world could be split into two categories, light and darkness, spirit and matter, knowledge and ignorance.

And so that view led to them to conclude that our spirits have been imprisoned in our human bodies.

So our physical bodies, which contain matter, are evil, but our spirits are what is pure and spiritual, and we must be freed from our physical bodies.

Well, that changed their view then of salvation.

They believe that salvation comes through secret, esoteric, hidden knowledge, and that Jesus was just a spiritual messenger who did not have a physical body like ours, and who came to reveal this hidden knowledge to us, to humanity, which led them to uh kind of, you know, be like an elitist society.

But that led to the conclusion then the aim of our existence as humanity is to separate ourselves from the physical, fleshly world and be reunited with the transcendent divine being of the spiritual world.

World.

And that view led to what some call asceticism, meaning that the body is bad, therefore I must punish my body, I must tame it and starve it.

But it also, on the other end, led to hedonism.

The body, since material is evil, the body is insignificant, therefore, do whatever you want with your body.

Pursue sexual morality, whatever you crave, do whatever you please because the body is insignificant and it will have no effect on you.

But lastly, they believe that the hidden knowledge that we need is not like a body of doctrine.

It's not theological knowledge that we need.

No.

But rather this mystical private revelation type of knowledge, which created this like cult-like following where you had to listen to the Gnostic teachers because they have private revelations from God, and you would know the way of salvation from them.

So again, a lot of what I'm describing is no different than what a lot of we see sometimes in false teaching today, right?

There's nothing new under the sun.

It just gets cleaned up, has a new name tagged on it.

So in more modern times, we can talk about antinomianism and all sorts of stuff.

But notice throughout the New Testament, there is a pattern that we see in false teachers.

Number one, they're often, not always, but they're often insiders, not outsiders.

Meaning they come from among the congregation.

We saw in 1 John when he said they went out from us to reveal that they were never truly of us.

We see in the book of Acts, when Paul is speaking to a group of elders, he warns them, wolves will rise up from among you.

Among these group of pastors he's been training for three years.

He says, Among your group, false teachers will arise.

So not always, but often false teaching arises from within church congregations, not outside.

But second, another trait we see in the Bible with false teachers is that they're likable.

They're likable.

According to Paul, the devil and his minions can appear as an angel of light and servants of righteousness.

False teachers aren't always people who, you know, have like a boogeyman costume and say, hey, I'm here to lead you to hell, right?

It's like, no, they're likable.

They can have a charismatic personality.

They can befriend and love people deeply, and so people grow fond of them and want to hear their message.

Or they think, well, this is certainly God's man.

How could he be wrong?

No one follows an obviously wicked teacher.

And the ones that do, we say those are the weirdos, right?

The Satanists, for example.

So how on earth do you fall into that?

But third, a third trait of false teachers is they typically want something, don't they?

Right?

They don't want to lead you to genuine repentance and walking in a matter of worthy of the gospel, most often.

Most often, what's hidden, what's cloaked in their message is a love of money, sex, a following, greed, sensuality.

They're making much of these things rather than making much of the true Christ of Scripture.

John, knowing all this, is warning them, brothers and sisters, you guys are doing just fine.

Continue walking in the truth that you have already received.

Don't be led astray by all these other things that are trying to deceive you and lure you away from the truth.

Remain in what has already saved you.

And you know what?

Sometimes we just have to remind ourselves and remind our brothers and sisters, friend, if you're in Christ, the gospel works.

Like it's what's what's working is not broke.

So why walk away from it?

Remain steadfast in what the Lord has already supernaturally used to save your soul.

But let me give a quick, just sidebar disclaimer here, because I know in our day and age, especially with the advent of the internet and social media, a lot of us Christians can, I think, overcorrect and not have the most God-honoring posture towards false teachers, specifically people who are false teachers.

Now, don't get me wrong, we should always stand for truth.

We should decry false truths that lead people astray.

But we live in an era where people, you know, especially online, can make a whole ministry out of just calling out other people or calling other people heretics.

And I'm a firm believer that a lot of Christians throw out the word heretic way too loosely.

Okay, a heretic is someone who believes in a different gospel, not just someone who is promoting a false teaching.

But here's just here's some helpful applications for the type of posture we should have towards false teaching in general and false teachers who promote the teaching.

But number one, just to be clear, we should be uncompromising about the teaching of God's truth.

We should be uncompromising about the truth.

We should never apologize for the truth of God's word.

Galatians, for example, Paul does not negotiate with the church in Galatia, does he?

He gets straight to the point.

You have veered away from the gospel.

2 John verses 10 to 11 tells the congregation not to offer their house as a place of greeting and to be a home base for those who are promoting a false teaching.

So we are to be uncompromising about the teaching of God's word.

And second, we are to always protect our flock.

We should protect our brothers and sisters in Christ whom we love.

In the New Testament, almost every warning is addressed to the sheep, not to the wolf.

Have you thought about that?

Every warning against false teaching is written to congregations to do their job to guard each other from false teaching.

It's not primarily written to the wolves who are leading people astray, which shows that God's aim is guarding people, not to equip us to just win arguments against people.

Does that make sense?

We want to protect the sheep, which is why, and I'm maybe some of you might, maybe I'm stepping on some toes, but that's why I like to say things like when you join a church, like your business is my business.

You have no business.

I remember being a part of a church where, you know, there was a marriage in shambles, and the couple wanted to reach out to me for counseling, and they were very adamant about, but I don't want anyone to know that we're talking to you.

As a matter of fact, when we meet with you, can I go through a back door and wrap around the side of the building?

And again, I understand some of the guilt and maybe the shame in there.

But if we understand the New Testament, we are literally a family.

We are brothers and sisters in Christ who have a biblical mandate to love and hold one another accountable and to protect each other from error.

So if I find out one of you is listening to something whack that's starting to influence you out of love, I should say something to you.

Like, hey, bro, that is whack.

Why are you listening to that?

Why are you reading that?

Why are you following that person?

Now, again, we could do it more tactfully and lovingly, obviously, but but we want to be that type of brother or sister to one another, to guard each other from the truth.

I look back at when the Lord saved me, you know, I didn't grow up in the church, and so the first church I ever was a part of was the church I was saved at.

And I just, and again, it wasn't a false church in any sense of the term, but I just assume everything going on in my church was just biblical because it's all I knew.

Like God saved me here, so clearly this is the greatest church in the universe.

And then I started reading my Bible and started realizing, okay, there's some things that are a little different than what I'm seeing in the Bible than what's being held up in my church.

And so some people just don't know what they don't know.

But the third posture we should have is a spirit of gentleness toward the person and hopeful about repentance.

Now, when I say a gentle spirit toward the person, I mean the person who might be believing or sharing the false teaching.

I believe, and I think I stand on biblical grounds here, we as Christians should at first fight to have a spirit of gentleness towards the person with the hope that God might bring them to repentance.

Where am I getting this from?

In 2 Timothy chapter 2, verses 24 through 26, Paul is describing what a minister of Christ should be like, and in it he says this the Lord's servant must not quarrel, but must be gentle to everyone, able to teach and patient.

2 Timothy 2:24–26

Listen to this, instructing his opponents with gentleness, perhaps God will grant them repentance, leading them to the knowledge of the truth.

Then they may come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil who has taken them captive to do his will.

Now sit on that.

I would hope, with God's help, that if I have someone in my life that I have strong disagreements with, maybe they're a part of another world religion, maybe they're a straight up false teacher.

I would hope that the way I interact with them and hopefully have the privilege of instructing them in God's word, if God were to open up their eyes to the truth and they came to repentance and turned from their false teaching, they won't look at me with a side eye and be like, Well, why did you treat me like a jerk when I was believing this?

I would hope they would look at me and say, I want to go to Cam and learn more.

Help me open my Bible and correct my doctrine.

But if we have a heart posture towards these people as if you are Satan incarnate, how dare you even exist?

Kind of a posture where we just stiff arm people.

Well, what if the Lord wants to use you to win them to Jesus?

So if we, if anyone in this room has in your orbit someone who is Muslim, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, anything apart from your faith in Christ, I would hope that we would not stiff arm those people, but show hospitality.

Love them.

Ask them, hey, have you ever just read a gospel all the way through on your own?

Or is your beliefs about Christianity just based on what you've heard outside of churches?

Would you be willing to read a gospel with me?

My point is in verse 25, Paul says, instructing his opponents with gentleness.

The aim is to persuade them towards belief.

Perhaps God will grant them repentance, leading them to the knowledge of the truth.

A fourth distinction or hard posture would be be careful to distinguish between the confused and the deceived and the corrupt.

Be careful to distinguish between those who are confused and deceived and from those who are corrupt.

There is a difference in those who are false teachers and they know it and they desire to amass a following or pursue their fleshly desires, and those who might be deceived who are sitting under their teaching.

Maybe the best example is Apollos in Acts 18, verse 26.

Acts 18:26

He believed in the Messiah.

He was preaching an incomplete gospel, and he got taken aside by Priscilla and Aquila, and they said, Hey man, let's do a Bible study, let's help you iron out your theology.

And what happened?

They won a brother over who more effectively went out and proclaimed the full message of the Messiah.

So that's an example of someone who is deceived.

There are some people who categorically are just wrong theologically, but we got to be careful not to attack.

Remember, ideas are attached to people.

Get to know people's story.

If someone says something that you know, that is unbiblical, that is false.

Well, don't just automatically say, well, they're a heretic, they're a false teacher.

Okay, where did you come to believe that?

What church are you a part of?

Who is influencing you in your walk with the Lord?

Understand their story, so you better understand why they believe what they believe.

How many of you in this room believe things right now as you're sitting in that pew that maybe you did not believe five years ago?

But because someone came or a book or you studying your Bible more diligently, now you see things a little more clearly and theologically accurate.

That doesn't mean you were a false teacher.

It just means you were in error.

You were confused or deceived.

So some people are wrong and some people are wolves.

Treating the first like the second is its own kind of Christian malpractice.

And we don't want to do that.

But throughout the Bible, we see this language of the truth.

Abide, I love the song we sang, abiding in the truth.

John is clear that he is reminding them of the truth of Jesus Christ, not his message, not his truth.

We see the New Testament talk about how we have been given a just a deposit of truth.

In 2 Timothy 1, Paul says, Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

And you might say, Well, that was a charge specifically to Timothy, who was like an elder.

Yeah, well, what was what was Timothy's job as an elder?

To equip the saints for the work of the ministry, to instruct them in God's word so that they too could guard the good deposit.

Think about that.

Every last one of us in this room, if you are in Christ, you have been entrusted with the deposit of truth, the message of salvation, and we have a privileged role to guard that message.

Truth matters.

According to an early third century work known as the apostolic tradition, it was common practice to ask three questions of every person who uh who just came to faith in Christ and wanted to be baptized into the church.

And these questions echo the apostles' creed, if you are familiar with that creed.

Those three questions go: number one, do you believe in God the Father Almighty?

Number two, do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was dead and buried, and rose again the third day, alive from among the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead.

Very specific, isn't it?

Do you believe in that Jesus, specifically, who accomplished those things on your behalf?

The third question: do you believe in the Holy Spirit and the Holy Church in the resurrection of the body?

So each baptism can a baptismal candidate will be asked those three questions, and they would have to publicly affirm, yes, that is the faith that I affirm, that I believe the Lord saved me by.

Why would they do this?

Because they understood, even in the early centuries of the church, that truth matters, that theology, that doctrine matters.

We can't just say in general terms, I love Jesus, and not know who is that Jesus, why should we love him?

Truth, brothers and sisters, matters.

This is why when we gather, we preach God's word, not some word.

This is why we choose the songs we sing.

This is why we do everything we do as a church family.

We want to center it around God's truth.

And keep in mind, you know, uh the beauty of church history is just learning how faithful saints have walked with the Lord as churches all throughout the centuries since Jesus' ascension.

The formation of doctrine has always been at the heart of the Christian faith.

If you haven't thought about that, from the earliest days of the church, after Jesus ascended into the heaven and the apostles died, new commerce who were baptized into the church were required to make a confession of faith.

Statements of faith, creeds, church covenants, all these things have historical roots that were meant to help churches preserve truth and to persevere into truth and to unite around truth.

To say, when we say we're Christians, when we say we love Jesus, when we say we are saved, what do we mean by those things?

And they would summarize that doctrine into all sorts of creeds and statements of faith and church covenants to hold one another accountable as well, to say we agree that this is the faith handed down once and for all.

This is why, again, I mean, I believe every church should be committed to the primary role of the word in its corporate gatherings.

I have no right to stand up here on any Sunday and say, thus is Cameron's opinion.

Who gives a rip about my opinion?

I am here to open up God's word and to bring God's word to God's people and God's people to God's word.

Why?

Well, last I checked, my opinion isn't living and active.

My opinion isn't God breathe.

The Bible is living and active.

It is the Bible that is divinely inspired by God who created the universe and sustains our very breath in this room.

It is the word of God that is profitable for equipping you in godliness.

This is why John said, do not part away from the truth that saved you.

It is the word of God that creates new life, not any man or woman's opinion, which is why we are foolish whenever we apart or depart from God's word for something we think is more entertaining.

And let me just speak to us men in the room, especially us fathers and husbands, what a privilege we have to be prophets, priests, and kings of our homes in the image of Jesus, so to speak, to wash our families with the scriptures.

If we get more excited about a sports team or some hobby than we do about getting excited about telling our family, our loved ones about the truth of God's word, something is desperately off.

Truth matters.

Truth matters.

We sign statements of faith as a church.

When, you know, we're a church that has a statement of faith.

We have a church covenant.

And when every member joins, we ask every member to sign our church covenant.

Our church covenant did not fall from the sky from the Lord Himself.

It is us just summarizing what we see the New Testament teach about as Christians, as a church.

How are we to live out this Christian life together in community?

And we're all signing it to agree.

We believe this is what the Bible teaches.

You are, I invite you to hold me accountable to live this out.

And I also pledge to hold you accountable to live it out.

Our statement of faith exists to say this is what we believe Christians believe.

This is why our statement of faith doesn't get into the wheeze of all kinds of second-tier or third-tier issues that aren't important to be a Christian.

But we try to put things in there that if you say you're a follower of Christ, you must believe this.

Now, we have the privilege of affirming a church covenant, putting it on our website, signing a church covenant in a nice air-conditioned building with no fear, no anxiety about our safety whatsoever.

We are very privileged in the 21st century to openly affirm and proclaim our faith.

But brothers and sisters, there are our ancestors in the faith who have gone before us, who have done the very such things at the cost of their own blood.

There are brothers and sisters who have literally laid down their lives so that you and I could have access to this book in our own language so that we can know God for ourselves instead of having it interpreted to us by a priest who was the mediator between man and God.

One of my heroes in the faith are two sisters.

I think sometimes we gravitate towards, you know, the big heroes, and I understand the George Whitfields, and you know, we can go on and on, the John Calvin's and the William Tyndales, excellent people that the Lord has used.

But I love reading stories of so-called average church members like you and me, who the Lord has used for his glory.

Let me tell you, or give an illustration rather, a real story of how truth matters for a lot of Christians to the point where they're willing to lay down their lives for it.

Two women named Perpetua and Felicity who lived in Carthage in the early 2000s.

Vibia Perpetua was a 22-year-old noblewoman with a nursing baby when she was arrested as a brand new Christian.

She just came to faith in Christ and for her faith was arrested.

Her father came to the prison to visit her and begged her to recant her faith in Jesus.

To turn away, you're a new mother, you're 22, you have your whole life in front of you.

Just recant your faith in Jesus and you will be released.

For your family's sake, recant.

From her prison cell, she pointed to a water pitcher and asked her father if the pitcher could be called anything other than what it was.

He replied, No.

She answered that neither could she be called anything other than what she was, a Christian.

She kept a prison diary, which still has survived to this day, making it one of the earliest writings that we have from a Christian woman.

And what was her fate?

In the arena there in Carthage, which was a big open-air stadium like the Colosseum in Rome, she and Felicity, an enslaved believer who had given birth in prison just days before, were brutally tossed in the arena by a wild cow.

She survived, and when a young gladiator was sent to finish Perpetua off with his sword, his first stroke of the sword faltered.

What a perpetua do?

She took the soldier's trembling hand and guided the sword to her throat and lay down her life in a public stadium because she refused to deny the truth that she knew saved her soul.

Why on earth would a twenty-two-year-old new believer and mother be willing to leave her child behind and lay down her life in a gruesome public execution?

Well, I believe it's because she believed what Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away, and see the new has come.

Everything is from God who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation that is in Christ.

God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

And he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.

We plead on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Theology matters.

Truth matters.

And they saw it as their privilege to lay down their life for the God who sent his son to redeem their souls.

So, friends, to be a follower of Christ is to believe in truth, it is to defend truth.

And if anyone has the privilege, it means to lay down our lives for the truth for the glory of the Savior.

Amen.

Let's pray.