Learning and Teaching the Abiding Truth in a Strange World

The Divine Teacher

(1 John 2:26-27, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, July 24, 2016)

[26] I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. [27] But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

Those who are trying to deceive you

All of the writers of the New Testament follow Jesus Himself in warning the church about false teachers. John says that the heretics that are so dangerous for the church are “trying to deceive you” or lead you astray. There is a pattern of sound doctrine, ethics, and fellowship that the church has always held to. False teachers don't love these pillars of godly life.

The anointing that you received from Him

What is the help of the church in the face of insiders and outsiders who are trying to deceive us? John points to the “anointing” that the church has from God. What is this “anointing?” The exact word, the noun “anointing,” is used only here and in verse 20, “You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.” The verb “anoint” is used 5 times in the New Testament, all referring to the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus and then from God in heaven upon us, the church. We have an anointing. We have been anointed. All of this goes back to the rich Old Testament heritage that prepared us for the ultimate Prophet, Priest, and King.

First, Jesus is anointed by the Holy Spirit.

Luke 4:18 quoting Isaiah 61,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, ...”

Acts 4:27

“for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, ...”

Act 10:38

“how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

Heb 1:9, again quoting Isaiah 61,

“You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

And then because of Jesus, the church, becomes an anointed communion.

2 Corinthians 1:21-22

“And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.”

His anointing teaches you ABOUT EVERYTHING

It was this anointing upon the church that made us more than just individuals of private devotion. We are a new community of prophets, priests, and kings—people who gave their lives for the eternal kingdom of heaven and for the Christian civilization that changed the west so thoroughly over a period of 1700 years. It is this anointing—this gift of the Holy Spirit that is our best weapon in the battle against the prevailing contemporary worldview that rejects the pillars of Christianity and has been slowly dismantling Christian civilization for the last 300 years.

A battle that comes upon a land slowly is hard to perceive as threatening. It just seems like normal life that always has been and always will be. But there is a war going on for the soul of the nations that were once a part of the Christian world. How are we doing in that battle?

If we think of the fruitful impact of Christianity upon a formerly pagan world over a period of 1700 years, we see a Christian consensus concerning doctrine, ethics, and fellowship. If these were the three pillars of a healthy expression of Christianity in the nations of the west, our experience now suggests that two of those pillars are deeply uninteresting to many, or even despised. They are throwaways or worse. The doctrines of the Nicene Creed are a yawn. The ethics of the Ten Commandments have been replaced with a new moral indignation about things that simply do not make God's top ten list. One pillar just barely remains of interest, the old world understanding of fellowship, but how long will that be the case? We Christians are the people of the prayer—not the evangelistic Sinner's Prayer, but the Lord's Prayer that we say together as a community every day. That Spirit-inspired prayer is an expression of what our relationship with God and others must be. In place of the communal, sacrificial, and holy life of love in the Lord's Prayer, the new very inward-directed fellowship of the contemporary world seems lacking. We still recognize its more bizarre expressions as “rude” or “inappropriate.” A young man playing a game on his phone that leads him into places that demand respect, privacy, or at least a concern for safety is a last warning cry to anyone with a desire for real fellowship with God and humanity. Something has gone very wrong and is about to be lost forever. It is not OK to play your own game in a Holocaust Museum, a hospital emergency room, or in the middle of a dangerous traffic intersection. Right?

The Holy Spirit leads the church away from the bizarre individualism of the moment and toward the world of true koinonia of friendship with God and with each other. He leads us to taste and see that the Lord is good, to say the prayer together that Jesus taught His disciples, and thus to rediscover an older, more stable way of life. Only then can our minds be opened again to godly ethics that we too quickly rejected. And only then will we see the right connection between moral behavior and Christian doctrines—teachings that now seem so irrelevant to our society—truths about God and humanity, the Trinity, Christ as fully God and fully Man, the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus, the church on earth and the church in heaven. Without the Holy Spirit, the final pillar of Christian civilization is removed, and without any obvious outside enemy, we yield ourselves to the deadly inward orientation of children who walk into the middle of a busy intersection in order to get something that they very much want for a game on their phones.

Abide in Him

We need to learn again what Christianity is and why it led to an outward expression that gave health to nations and to a broader civilization. We need to learn what people discover when they “abide in Him.” We need to learn so that we can teach. Only when we teach, can we be sure that we have learned. If we do not teach, how will the next generation learn. In the spiritual battleground of this world, and even in the church, we have the anointing of the Holy Spirit which we have received from God. By the power of that Holy Spirit, it is our privilege to resist all spiritual lies by holding on to all truth. By the Spirit of God, we will be the light of the world.

Old Testament Reading—Jeremiah 32:16-44 – Is anything too hard for Me?

Gospel Reading—Luke 8:9-15 – Holding fast in a good heart to what you have heard