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Sean Kelly
September 2, 2024 at 11:00 AM
1 John 2:24-27
1 John
The Importance of Sound Doctrine
1 John 2:24-27
By Sean Kelly
Thank you. First, John, chapter two, verses 44 through 27, which actually continued thought from two weeks ago. So if you're here two weeks ago for Sunday school, we're going to refer back to that and ask you quite a bit.
If not, we'll try to bridge the gap for those who work here. But before we jump in, let's go ahead and go to prayer. Let me finally just thank you for today and just pray that we would focus on your word today as we spell the first counter.
Okay, let's go ahead and read our passage. First, John, chapter two, verses 24 through 27. Nathan, your hands up already.
Go ahead. Therefore, the lap abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the son and in the father.
And this is the promise that he has promised to us, eternal life. These things I have written to you concerning those who tried to deceive you, but the anointing which you have received from them abides in you. And you do not eat that anyone teach you, but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will buy intended.
Okay, so John continues here to teach on the dangers of the agnostic spots. Before we read farther, my little paragraph, he looks off. And I want you guys, here's my little quiz for this morning.
What does it mean to be agnostic? What's the characteristics of agnostic therapy? Okay, but there's more than life project, too. So what do agnostics believe? They might remember. They believe basically that flesh is evil and the Holy Spirit is good.
Yes, exactly. That's the core of their belief. So when it comes to Jesus Christ, especially here, Jesus the man cannot be God because he is a man.
He's physical, he's fleshly, so that makes him evil. Therefore, what happened is the son of God, Christ, came upon Jesus like the baptism according to them, and before the cross, he left. And this is a, this was a huge heresy in the first century in the church that's going to the church.
So here the command is to let abide. And the word abide is the word meno. It means to remain, to stay, to live, to dwell.
You know, you could say like, I abide at 4102 northeast 44 Drive in the morning. That's where I live. That's where I dwell.
That's where I spent a majority of my time. A lot of good sleep. But they'll say I'm still there.
It's the idea here. John is talking about things, a body living, dwelling in you, spending time in you, taking up residency. That's kind of a concept here.
And so he says, therefore, let that abide which you heard. So what he wants to abide in you is the things that he heard. Okay, what's the things that he heard? Well, this is the teaching.
This is the doctrine that John's talking about. We need to let God's truth and God's teaching work and live and abide in us. It needs to remain in us.
It needs to put a presence in their effect in our lives. So John says that which you have heard and in this context, therefore. So why is he saying therefore? Well, he's taught you about the Gnostic movement.
He was teaching that Jesus is the Christ. That's the core truth of Christianity. Jesus the Christ, that Jesus is God, he's divine.
And he says that truth. If you heard from the beginning, we're talking about why he says from the beginning here, that truth needs to abide in you. So this is the psalm doctrine he's talking about.
And so from the beginning. And the reason why from the beginning is I don't believe that you can be saved without understanding that Jesus Christ is God. This is a core foundational truth to salvation and Christianity.
And as John saying, you heard this from the beginning, from the moment you were saved, you understood the person of Jesus Christ. We talk about that when we're talking about salvation and sharing the gospel. Sometimes we talk about sharing the person and work of Jesus Christ, to share the person, he's God.
And the work, that he died in the cross of our sins and rose again. That's the core of the gospel. You can't have one without the other.
They fit together. So that which you heard from the beginning, this has to be a part of the basic teaching of the gospel, that the savior, he is God, he's God, come to earth to sacrifice himself for us. And so that's a true, that has to be abiding in your life.
And again, remember, he's teaching context to this agnostic thought that Jesus the man wasn't God, that God came upon him and that God loved him. And John said, no, no, no, that's not what you're taught. That's not how you heard the gospel.
That's not the teaching that God, he saved. He says, let that abide in you. And if you do that, if what you heard from the beginning abides in you, there's a promise you will abide in the Son and the father.
You're going to remain, you're going to live, you're going to dwell in the Son and the father. You're going to be experiencing the christian life the way it's meant to be in the presence of God, and God working and being active in your life. So the idea here is that if your body is in a good teaching of what was taught in the word of God, that God is going to be with you.
You're going to be with God and you're going to be in him. So if one of your hurt abides in you, if it's true that Jesus is with Christ, you will abide in the Son and in the body. And again, this is important.
He's not saying this to just kind of put words in here. Part of his point in the last lesson that we studied was, again, that Jesus, the Son is in the father, the father is in the son, right? That they're one and the same, that they have the same essence. They're both God.
They're both in God. They're three persons in one essence, the trinity. And so he's making this point again, you see, he's bringing the same points back together.
He'll be in the Son and he'll abide in the Father because they're the same. Let's look at some verses and just kind of look at this side. We'll say first John for a second here.
First John, chapter four, verses 1315. By this we know that we have guided him and he and us because he has given us of his spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son as the savior of the world.
For whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God. Okay, so there's a number of things in here. And again, abiding John likes this word.
By this we know we abide in them. How do we know? Well, first thing is that we have a spirit. So the Holy Spirit's a big part of that.
If you have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in you, you know that you abide in God. And we know that this happens. When, when does a Christian have the spirit guide? The more they accept Christ.
Yeah, the more they accept Christ at salvation. The Holy Spirit comes and dwells us. That's the first test there.
Secondly, he says, and we see a testify that the Father said the Son has saved the world. Again, he's bringing this idea in of salvation is an important part of this understanding truth about what salvation is. So on to verse 15.
Whoever confesses that Jesus is what? The son of God. And the Son of God is a term. And I'm reading through John in my Bible.
I read this this morning where Jesus Christ said that he was the son. And John wrote and the Pharisees, basically, he said he's being glass because he's making himself equal to God. So this term, son of God is a divine term.
It's a term that refers to Jesus being God. It's not that. It's not like the Mormon saying where God has two sons and Jesus is one of them and he's not really God.
No, this is saying that Jesus is God. When you say, you confess that Jesus is the son of God, you're saying, I believe that Jesus is God. So whoever confesses the son of God, what happens? God abides in him, and he ain't God.
Again, we look at this, the heresy that was going on, that the man Jesus wasn't God. John is saying, no, you need to confess that Jesus is God. That's how God abides in you and God.
So let's look at a couple of other guests here. Verse, chapter two, verse 23. This is from two weeks ago.
We studied this. We'd like to read. Go ahead, Rachel.
Whoever denies the Son does not have a father either. He who acknowledges the Son has the father also. So here the idea of, you can't have one without the other.
You can't say, Jesus is not God, but I believe in God the father. If you believe in God the Father, it goes hand in hand that you even got the son. And that's true Christianity.
That's the way Christianity is. And you can't separate them. There's no distinction.
When you're talking about God, you're talking about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. All three. God, Jesus Christ is Jesus, who was God.
God had become man. So we see that there. Let's look at a romance.
Romans 8910. I do it not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If indeed the spirit of God dwells in you, without anyone who does not know the spirit of Christ, he is not his.
And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is right because of righteousness. There's a very interesting verse here. You're not in the flesh.
This is not the Christians, of course. You're not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If indeed the spirit of God dwells in you.
So here is the Holy Spirit right. Now look at the sex part of the verse. Now, if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ.
Well, what does that say there? Well, Christ is God, right? And the Holy Spirit of God is also the Holy Spirit of Christ. Okay, so we see that. And then in verse ten, he dropped the Holy Spirit and says, if Christ is in you, how is Christ in you? It's through the Holy Spirit who indwells you.
Right. And so the body is dead because of the spirit is like, he's a righteous. So here we see that this is all.
And I'm not saying that the father is son, Holy spirit here, each have different roles, each have. They're different persons in the Trinity, but they're all God. They have that same divine essence.
And therefore, you can say, the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ, and you drop it and say, christ is in you, because this is talking about God being in you in your life. And so abiding needs to abiding. How do we abide in Christ? Well, it starts with the doctrine that we're in the word of God.
As we're understanding the truths of God, we are going to abide in God. It affects the way we live. It affects the things that happen in our life.
And we're going to look at that just a little bit more later on in this lesson here. So hiding, Lisa. Hiding .2
God promises eternal life, verse 225. And this is the promise that he's promised us, eternal life. Sometimes when you read through John, you kind of go through and you go, okay, what is John doing here? It seems like he's changing thought, right? He's talking about our body and the father and the son, and this was talking about eternal life.
Now, well, this goes together again, that you let that abide in what you heard from the beginning, the truth of who Christ is. And now John is saying, because of what you understand, because of the truth that's given, we have a promise of eternal life. As you believe who Christ is and what he's done.
God promises that eternal life. So here he gives a promise. This is a promise.
Eternal life. So sound doctrine and eternal life go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other.
Again, this is why it's so important to be clear in preaching the gospel. Some of you know, Pastor Kevin, he would talk a lot about the tracks are sometimes very confusing. They're not meant to be, but the way people write them.
And he pulled out. He would pull out several different tracks and say, what do you need to do to be saved according to this track? And some tracks would have, like, precepts or pens, pray, believe some of the tracks that have five steps. It gets very confusing.
We need to be very sound in what we're teaching as far as the gospel. And what does the Bible teach about being saved? I think you know, John 316 is a very fair verse. Where God so loved the world that he gave is only the God and son that whoever leaves in him shall not care if I have everlasting life.
Chapter 18 says, he who believes that the son of God is not condemned, but he does not believe that the son of God is condemned. Already it's believed. Bible is very clear about that.
How are you saved? It's through faith. Like grace. You've been saved through faith.
It's not yourself, it's not a word. So no one can go. It's that kind of idea.
It's faith. It's belief. And we need to have a very clear teaching on that.
And John saying here, you've heard him again. You've heard the truth of who Jesus Christ is. You've got this clear teaching, and because of that you have the promise of eternal life.
So psalm doctrine, eternal life will hand again. Let's look at a couple of verses out of John here. John 526.
Who wants to read? I think it's all your anniversary. I'll give you a next time. So where does our life come from? Ultimately it's from the father.
The father is the one who is the author and giver of life. But he's granted to the son to provide life for us. And we get that through belief in him.
And so he's branded the Sunday of life in himself. And it goes on to say that that life is given to us. John 2031.
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believe in you may have life in his name again. And we read over this so quickly, but there's doctrine here that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the messiah, the anointed one of God, the son of God. He's God.
You have to have that correct belief, that sound God, and that once you're believing in that, you may have life insane. So sound doctrine and eternal life go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other.
And so, you know, I had a friend in high school, he was a mormonization. He tried to talk to me about it several times. He wasn't very great at it.
It was okay because I wasn't really great at Christianity back then either. And he would show me stuff from the Bible, from the King James that's all they used. And he would say, look at here.
Look at what this says. I don't believe that. I believe the truth from what the Bible teaches here, that Jesus is the son of God, that Jesus is God.
And we would kind of go back and forth on it sometimes. Neither one of us did. So I don't know if anything happened with that.
But it's important because I don't believe that as far as he stays in that Mormon church and gets that Mormon teaching, he can't be saved because anyone teaches the right things about who Jesus Christ is. Without that sound document about knowing what the truth is, you can't be saved. They go hand in hand.
So the promise here is eternal life. That is promised to us because of that sound doctrine that we just bought. And the promiser, just in case you wonder who's promising this, verse 25 says, this is the promise that he has promised us and that he can go back to verse 24 where he abides the Son and the father.
So I think the promise is both the father and the Son, that they're promising eternal life for those who believe. I also have two Timothy, one, one who would like to give that. Go ahead, sir.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life, which is in Christ. So here he's an apostle by the will of God, and he's an apostle according to the promise that God has given eternal life, and that promise of eternal life from God is in Christ Jesus. So that's the prompts are there again of this eternal life.
Titus, 1123. No. Peter.
Yeah, go ahead. All of the bonds, servant of God and the apostle Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's lips and the acknowledgment of the truth, which according to godliness and hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before time. He came, but has in due time manifested his word through preaching, which was committed to me according to the commandment of God our savior.
So here I look especially verse two, where it says, in the hope of eternal language, God, who cannot lie, prompts for him, God promises. And then even this kind of fits in with our study here. Verse three says, due time was manifest manifold.
I can't talk. But as the due time manifested through preaching, that's through proclamation, that's through telling you what the word of God says. Life comes through sound doctrine, and it's promised by God, by Jesus Christ.
And so we have the promise of eternal life. Now, this is important because as we go into verse three, here, verse 26, we see that God promises eternal life because there's people deceived concerning God's promises. Remember, we go back a few weeks ago, the lesson was about Antichrist, and Antichrist had come into the church, and they're preaching these false things and they're preaching these false doctrines.
And we probably. Has anybody dealt with a Gnostic recently? We don't see that a lot. But guess what? There's other heresies in the church.
There's other things that are being taught in churches, even good churches, that are not according to the word of God. And John is warning us that antichrists are coming to church fighting to lead people astray. But here he's going back to that warning again.
These things I've written you concerning those who tried to deceive you, it's still going on. We need to be careful. We need to guard what is being taught.
God gives this, and this is one of those purposes in writing. You go and you write that your joint may be full. Chapter five.
He writes that. I write that you may know that you are saved. Here he's writing concerning those who try to deceive the church.
So God's giving us another purpose in his writing here. And so concerning those who are trying to deceive us. This word concerning is a word that means about or account of.
So those who are going about deceiving us, or they're there on account of the purpose to deceive us. So in this context, God is still dealing, or John is still dealing with the same heresy which he describes in one John two two. So let's read one John two, two.
Remember what we talked about. If we still would like to read who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ, he is Antichrist. Who denies the father and the Son.
We talked about that. This denying Jesus Christ is like saying, it's the same here. Say that Jesus is not God, that the man Jesus is not God.
And as John even says, he's a liar. He's an antichrist. This is a doctrine that should not be taught in the church.
They're dealing with it. It's all around them. There's people coming to the church and say, this is the way it has to be.
So people deceive concerning the promise. And that was a pretty short point. I know.
So let's go to. .4. I think this is where I want to spend a lot of my time here.
But God has given us an abiding anointing. Verse 27 says, but the anointing get received from him abides in you and you do not need that anyone teach. But as the savior anointed teaches you concerning all things and his true and is not a lie, it just says it has taught you you will lie in him.
Now there's probably a couple of you that are being smart and saying, hey, this verse says that we don't need anybody to teach us. So I'm going to walk out on Sean's class because I don't need Sean teaching us. That's not what this means here.
We'll talk about that in a second. Because God has given pastors and teachers to teach the church. So if he's given them, that means you need somebody to teach you.
I need somebody to teach me. Right? That's God's provision for us. So that's not what this means.
I can't feel what this means. So here's what it is. The Gnostics believe they have a special knowledge that the average Christian does not possess.
Part of the Gnostic heresy is that the material is evil and the spiritual is good. That you, me and everyone else, since we're evil, we can't understand the good stuff. So you have to reach a certain point of enlightenment, a certain point where you're kind of above and beyond the physical things and meet that spiritual level.
We're really teaching this are like, well, you know, leave a dance Farhan where you're at. You don't get this. We're telling you this is what it is.
You have to believe us. Now again, we don't deal with Gnostics a lot, but my family came out of the Catholic Church. My parents were Catholic until I was five years old and they trusted Christ as their savior.
And my grandparents, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, all Catholics, my grandpa in particular, my mom would try to talk to him about the things of God. And one of his arguments always was that we can't understand the Bible. Only the priests can.
Only they've done the work and the research and have the stuff that understands. The average person can't understand that. So they're not Gnostics, but they have the same kind of idea that the average person just can't understand the things that you gotta trust what's being taught to you.
Well, this is why John is saying the anointing that you have. He's saying, look, that's not true. That's not true at all.
They're not more enlightened than you have. Everything you need to understand, what you need to know about God and what he wants you to do. You have this anointing in you.
So the Gnostic believes greater than the average Christians have acknowledged. And John seeks to show that we have access by the anointing of the Holy Spirit to the truths of God. We can know God's will.
We can know what God wants us to do. We can understand who God is as much as he revealed himself. We don't need to have a special priest telling us what to do.
We don't need to have a special teacher who's been enlightened to tell us what the Bible is all about. It's there for each and every one of us. So the source anointing, what you have received.
So the source is God. You received from him. God has given us this anointing.
Well, again, I've already told you that I believe that this anointing is the Holy Spirit. I'm going to show you. So first, John 220 and 21.
This is from a few weeks ago, again, so let's read that again. But you have an anointing from the Holy Spirit, holy blood, and ye know all things. I have not written you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no light is unlike.
So he's going back to this anointing again, the anointing which you have, you have an anointing from the Holy one, from God. This anointing allows you to know what the truth is and that you can know the truth. You can even discern between what's truth and not true.
You know, you have all the resources that you need to be going around and you hear somebody talking about something, you can say, no, that's not what the Bible teaches. And I know because I looked at the Bible, I've studied the Bible and taught the Bible. I have the Holy Spirit.
I know what the Bible says, and that's not what the Bible says. Each and every one of you in this class, if you trusted Christ as your savior, has the resources to be able to do that. It just takes work and effort to do it.
But we can do that. We can know the truth. We can know what is a lie and what's true.
And John is saying that second Corinthians four six. For he is the God who commanded, like to shine out of darkness, who has shown our hearts to give the light and knowledge of the glory of God and the face of Jesus Christ. He's shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.
We can know God we can know what his world is for us. He's given us that knowledge, that it's in the face of Jesus Christ. As we're looking at Jesus, as looking at who he is and what he desires from us, we know the things of God.
It's an amazing thing. You don't have to go to seminary at faith. You don't have to have a special anointing.
You don't have to have this miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. Come on, you have the resources to know the things of God. God has given that freedom to all of us.
I think back to the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, one of the things that I had to think about for a while and finally came to the conclusion was in Samuel. Remember when the people sinned against God and they realized they're sinned to Samuel, taught them that they've done wrong.
What did they do? They said that Samuel pray for us, that we may be forgiven. Why did they say that to Samuel? Because in the old Testament, the average Jew did not have direct access to God. They had to go through the priests, they had to go through the worship system that God sets up.
New Testament, the Bible tells us that we are a nation of priests, we have direct access to God. We can go right to him, we can know who he is. This is an amazing thing.
This is something that has not been around for most of history until the church age. We are so blessed in that matter, we can know the things of God. God's given us his spirit, permanently dwelling us, thinking the old testament again, like Saul was a poster, come on in for a little while and then we'll leave it, and then leave.
Eventually it became a distressing spirit that came on him, right, because he was doing what's wrong. And David, you know, psalm 51 says, do not take your holy spirit from me. Why? Because that was something that could happen, you and I, if we trusted Christ as savior.
We have the Holy Spirit permanently indwelling us. He is the guarantee of the inheritance of our salvation. He's there.
We don't lose that. We have such great resources to be able to do what God wants us to do. So the source is God, the recipients is us.
So anointing, which you have received from him, abides in you. And so this anointing abides again. Here's the word again.
It lives in us, it dwells in us, it makes resonance in us. It is permanently there again. I gave you my address earlier and that's my permanent address.
I fill forms once. Your permanent. This is my bananas.
This is where I live, this is where I buy, this is where I belong. This is the house I sort of own, but the bank owns a lot of it still yet. But, you know, they kind of make it as my house.
But here, this anointing lives in us. So yeah. Two Corinthians 121 22.
Another reader, please. Now, he who establishes establishing us with you in Christ and has anointed us in God, who also has sealed us and given us the spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. So here he who establishes us with you is Christ.
Christ establishes us in this salvation that we have. The one who is anointing us is God, and then he sealed us with the Holy Spirit. This all goes together.
These aren't just three separate random things that Paul is throwing out here. This is as God establishes us, he anoints us and gives us the Holy Spirit as his guarantee. And so God is the one anointing us here.
So the fact of the anointing is that the anointing teaches, it says, the anointing which you have received from him abides in. You do not need that anyone teach you. But the same anointing teaches you concerning all things.
And we're going to talk about the other things, but the anointing teaching us, again, what is it teaching us? Well, the agnostics are saying we have the special knowledge that you can't have as a Christian. And John is saying, no, you can know the truth. In fact, he talks about, you can know the difference between truth and a lie.
You already, you already have that. The Holy Spirit teaches you through the word of God what is true and what is not true. Now it's so good to have teachers.
That's one of the ways we learn. That's one of the ways we're taught. And so that's one of the ways the Holy Spirit teaches us is by listening to our pastor when he's teaching, coming to Sunday school and listening to your Sunday school teachers, whatever he's teaching them, when say, nice, coming out, listening to teaching there, we still learn that way.
It's not that we have to do it all ourselves, it's not that we should do it all ourselves, but we don't have to worry about, well, I can't know that. That's beyond me. That's someone who is special, someone with a lot of insight and or spirituality that I can never have.
No, you can have that. You don't need the Gnostics to come and say, hey, look, you guys don't understand this, but this is really how it works. Jesus isn't God.
God came upon him. And if you trust us, you know you can't know this. If you know it's true.
No, you can know what the truth is. John saying, you've been taught this. In fact, back at the beginning of the past, you've heard all along who Jesus is.
Trust in that. Trust him with, even taught in what he learned. So it's concerning all things.
Second Corinthians two, nine and ten we would like to do next. But as it is written, eye has not seen nor hear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed them to us through his spirit.
For the spirit searches all things. Yes, the deep things from God. So here at ethnic first time that we're talking about, God has revealed unto us through his spirit.
When I talk about the anointing here that's teaching you, this is where I believe that anointing through God's holy spirit, it's God's holy spirit that teaches us. Again, using his word. Mainly, that's the main source of what we learn.
But it's the spirit in us that allows us to know the things of God. Here it says the spirit searches the key things of God, even the things that normally would be hard to understand. God's spirit is going to help us to understand that, because he knows God is God and he goes the mind of God.
So he said, help us understand that. So the fact that anointing teaches us concerning all things. And John, again, we talked about this.
I'm not going into a whole lot of detail, but it's true and it's not a lie. We talked about that. The passage we look at, John 221 talks about that.
You know, what is the truth? You know what is a lie? You can discern between the two. Spirit teaches us that. And so the results, if you think of this verse, considering all things that is true, is not a lie.
And just as he has taught you, you will abide in him. So how do we abide in God? How do we live in God? How do we remain missing that fellowship and that relationship with God? It's through knowing the truth. It's through having the truth working in our life.
And so the result is we abide in God as we embrace that truth, as we trust in that truth, as we know and learn the truth. We remain in God as we know and believe that God's truth. First Timothy 316 17.
Familiar passage. Go ahead, Dave. A couple of months ago, I went through that first part of that verse and thought about the doctrine of correction instruction afterwards.
I want to look, especially at verse 17 here, that the man of God may be complete. What does it mean to be complete? Do puzzles. When is a puzzle complete? Well, it's not missing any pieces, right? Every piece is there.
Every piece is input, but not even just there because it can all be there on the table, a mess, right? So every piece is there in place where it's supposed to be in the puzzle ball connected. There's nothing missing, right? There's no holes. How many of you have that done puzzles and get behind? Like, there's a piece or two missing? You're like, I got the whole thing done.
This is the whole side here and the whole side here. And I'm just so annoyed because I can. Can't find two pieces I'm missing.
When you have younger kids, your puzzles tend to lose pieces. I'm very familiar with this. That's not complete.
There's holes there here. The word of God makes us. There's no holes.
There's nothing missing. We have everything we need to be the people of God wants to be. In fact, he goes on to say here that you're thoroughly equipped for every good work.
What does it mean to be equipped? Prepared. I heard a lot of answers at once. Prepared.
Prepared. What else? Any other thoughts on equips? Like, you have your tools? Okay, you have your tools. Yeah.
That's good. I think back to my less spiritual days when I used to be a lot more into strategic algae. I still like a lot of strategic algae.
I used to be really into it. You'd always have to pick your character for weapons, right? You can have the weapons. And some of you are probably going to be like, what are you talking about? But you can get a weapon, but you had to go in equipment, because if you didn't equip it, it wasn't useful.
This is thoroughly. But you know what this means to me now? I'm taking to, like, my woodworking, my working on projects and stuff like this. That means I have every single tool I need.
I'll do stuff on my car, and I'm not, what do you call an organized person. So I'll get there. I'll go, I need a tool.
And I'll be like, I don't have the tool out here. I get it back to my toolbox. So it's not in the drawer.
Supposed to be in the toolbox. Well, we're going to use the basket. Okay.
Maybe it's on top of the buffet in the house. Maybe it's downstairs in the basement. I should check my other toolbox, maybe over there.
And I don't have the tools I need to do what I need to do because I'm trying to find this tool that I'm missing. And especially with sockets, I lose sockets all the time. I need a ten millimeter socket.
Who uses a ten millimeter socket? Every other car uses a ten millimeter socket. It's like all over the place. I shouldn't buy any of these and I can't find any of them.
I'm not equipped. I can't do the job. The Bible says if you have the word of God, you're thoroughly equipped.
You have every single tool you need. You have every resource you need for every single good work. So the Gnostics are saying, you can't know this, you can't understand this. We have a higher level spirituality than we do and donate. No, you have knowledge, it's right in your hand. You have the word of God.
You have everything you need to do what God wants you to do. You have everything you need to know, everything that God wants you to know about. You're thoroughly quick, you're completely happy.
And that's the one thing about here. You'll see them for a while. When you get to a certain point, therapist will start saying, well, you don't really understand.
You don't know. You can't understand the sister, trust us on this. We know what we're talking about.
And you can say, no, I've studied this. I know what we're doing. My pastor has preached on this.
I know what he's shown me from the word of God. I've learned this in Sunday school. The Holy Spirit has shown me what is the truth, I think the Lord's truth and why God has given us that.
So God's abiding identity. And again, I think that's mainly through the Holy Spirit using God's word. Okay, so quickly, some takeaways.
So first of all, sound doctrine needs to sound good. I'm thoroughly convinced of that. I had a talk the other day with someone and they asked me, how do you deal with, like, the first thing is that the word of God, you have to be the word of God.
You have to be immersed in that. If you don't have a sound doctrine, it's going to affect the way you live. You're putting garbage into your life.
Garbage is going to come out. The whole computer thing. When I was a kid.
I don't know if they do this anymore on that desk office, but GI garaging garbage output in wrong commands and you this type stuff not going to run. You got to put the right stuff in. Christian life is like into what are we putting in our life? Are we immersing ourselves in the word God? Is that or focused.
If you're not doing that, then don't expect godly things to come out of you. You know, one of the things I struggle with, losing weight. Over the last several years, I've tried to stop drinking soda.
Eric Duncan came over yesterday and got me like a 32 ounce soda. And I'm like, I really appreciate that. I really do.
And I drank it because I leave that way. But yeah, I'm really trying not to because I know if I put that soda in, what's going to come out is when you do that in North Carolina where there's a lot of limestone in the water that really digs into that. But putting garbage in my body, my body's going to be garbage.
Right. That's the whole thing about heating, right. And so I can do that better.
Christianity, if you put garbage in, don't be surprised when you're struggling with sin. Don't be surprised when you're struggling to serve God the right way because you're not putting the right stuff in there. So psalm doctrine, this is especially true of the fundamentals of the faith.
This is especially true of the very basics. We need to have the strong congregation. We build a compact.
And John here is talking about congregation. It's not about very basic truth in Christianity that Jesus is God. Jesus is the second person trinity.
This is a very basic truth. You need to dwell on that. You need to have that body, you need to have that faith.
So we need a solid foundation. We need to build our faith on a firm foundation so that as we grow our faith, we'll be steady for sure. I've never built a house.
I think I understand a little bit about the concept of building things though. And you start with the foundation, you start at the bottom, make it solid. If you have the solid foundation, you can build solid on top of that.
Our fish and legs are the same way. And we do that strong foundation. Once again, point to here we are once again being warned about falls teach in our midst in the church.
I think this hasn't changed 2000 years. I think there's still a lot of false teaching out there. I think it's more prevalent because you can turn on a tv and get somebody that's preaching stuff that sounds pretty good, but it's not biblical.
You can read books that give themselves a self help, and they give you some Bible verses, but then they give you some humanistic philosophies in there that don't help you be godly. And so I think it's a lot easier even now. So we need to be vigilant that what we are being taught, and it's not just in conforms to the doctrines of the word of God, some doctrine in our lives.
Is that important? That's the way we live. I'm thankful that Pastor Jordan is committed to teaching us the word of God. I'm thankful that, and I'm not myself, but I know them.
They love the word of God. They want to keep us from. We ought to all have that discipline that we want to know the word of God.
Finally, we are reminded that the anointing we have in God is holy spirit. And that once again, God has given us the resources to know what is true and what is lie. Those who can study and to know the truth so we can remember that when something is not true.
So again, I reiterate this over and over. I think it's in second Peter, where Peter says that God has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness. We have everything we need to live for God, to live godly life's glory, we need to take evangelicals resources.
If I gave you 100 grand, use of a really nice car and said I wanted to do this, make use of it, and you leave us in the driveway and just have 100 grams of in the coffee container and recovered or whatever, and I'm like, yeah, it doesn't do a lot of good. I might as well just keep that, right? God's given us resources and we're not using them. You know, we're ignoring the blessings that God has given us.
And so we need to be diligent to use without the students. So any, any thoughts, questions, concerns, habits? Okay, let's go ahead and close in prayer.
