19 - The Purpose: The Indirect Strategy of Envelopment Controls True Progress in the Church Age **NEW**

© Charles A. Clough 2014

Charles A. Clough
1 John Series

Lesson 19 – The Purpose: The Indirect Strategy of Envelopment Controls True Progress in the Church Age

16 Feb 2014
Fellowship Chapel, Jarrettsville, MD
www.bibleframework.org

Tonight we’re going to be on our 19^th session and I would like to open with a word of prayer.

“Father, we thank You for the fact that you have preserved Your sacred text, Your inerrant text down through the corridors of time, and that You have provided the Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds today, centuries after the Scriptures were created and put down into history, and that we can ask Your Holy Spirit to illuminate our hearts to just those truths of the Scripture we most desperately need in our day. For we ask these things in our Savior’s name, Amen.”

We’ve gone through the structure of 1 John [Slide 2] and I pointed out that it’s patterned apparently after general, epistolary ways that writers wrote, and we see there are two spots here, two types of groups in the epistle. There’s, of course, the “prologue”, which is just the first four verses, which is sort of like a big title. Then there’s the “preamble”, which is the setting forth of the overall core truths in the document.

Then we come to the “purpose”, and we’ve been on the purpose here for a number of lessons, and the purpose is to call—John wants to call to resist the doomed world system and it’s Christ-denying teachers. So John wants to lay out the target; he wants to lay out in the purpose the dangers to this Christian community so they’ll be aware, not only of the dangers, but of the positive things that God is doing to overthrow unbelief.

So that’s where we’ve been. We’ve been reviewing that, and today we want to look particularly at 1 John 2:17. We’ve talked about 1 John 2:12–14. You’ll see on your handout, that’s the three lusts where John is talking about the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. {Slide 3]

1)      The lust of the flesh, if you look at the handout, it’s kind of looked at as a self-evaluation formula for us to check on the lust of the flesh. The way to think about this, to evaluate it in your life and mind, is to ask ourselves, “Am I responding to an inner feeling in order to violate God’s design?” We have to separate that from legitimate feelings of hunger, thirst, pain, and sorrow. But am I managing my flesh or is it managing me? The thing to remember is that our flesh has no right and wrong. The flesh is just programmed to respond to how we choose to live.

A simple illustration, I think I’ve given this before, is to think of a pianist who practices and practices and practices on the piano until his or her fingers automatically hit the right keys and they hit the notes at the right time. All of that involves many, many different muscles; it involves a lot of neurons in the brain, and all that has to be coordinated. And everyone knows that to become good at something like being a good pianist you have to practice and practice and practice.

Now let’s think about why practice works. Practice works because we put a demand on our flesh to do something and the flesh responds by adapting to what we want to use it for.

The problem we have after the Fall is that we’re fallen beings and as fallen beings now the flesh responds to our sinful things, to our sinful thoughts, to our sinful behaviors, to our sinful choices, and the more we choose to sin in a particular way, the easier it becomes because the flesh adapts to it.

In other words it’s like the flesh has a computer program in it that says if you want to do this, then I’ve got to focus and get better at whatever “this” is. You want to understand that the flesh works both ways: athletically, musically, it can do wonderful things. But on the other hand, because it’s morally neutral, the flesh will adapt to sinful behaviors.

You know in people who have a tendency to be angry, to carry around anger, the flesh becomes so adapted to being angry it’s almost subliminal; it becomes automatic and we start responding in life by being angry, and that’s because we taught the flesh that that’s what we want to do and the flesh is abiding by whatever we to choose.

The lust of the flesh is no small problem and John is right to warn us about it; it’s part of the world system, a part of the fallen world system.

2)      The second one is the lust of the eyes, and the lust of the eyes, he’s talking about the “outlook”; the way we see things. If you look at the handout, you’ll see self-evaluation: Am I my responding to some externally attractive object that I see and that I want intensely enough that I’m willing to disobey God’s Word to get it? In other words, am I my managing my sense of aesthetics and beauty or has it been taken over by a covetous spirit?

Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden. They saw the fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that it tasted good—there’s the lust of the flesh. And it was beautiful to the eyes and attractive, so there’s the lust of the eyes. It’s related pretty much to covetousness, and so we have a lot of covetousness in the world system.

We have politicians that cater to developing the lust of the eyes by promising that we’ll basically confiscate the property of others and we’ll give some of that property to you. This is why that even in the realm of politics you have the tendency of a fallen society to covet and the politicians know we want to covet so they solicit our allegiance to them; vote for them because they will satisfy our sense of covetousness.

3)      The third one John talks about is the pride of life. Again in the handout you’ll see the self-evaluation question. By the way, these aren’t the only self-evaluation questions. These are just the ones I’m suggesting to you, and as you think about this you can develop your own.

But here’s one: Am I so immersed in my plans and the details of life that I’ve forgotten my “creature” status; that I brought nothing into this world and I will take nothing out? That’s a good way to evaluate the weight we put on the plans for our life. We brought nothing into this world and when we die, we go into a casket and we take nothing materially out of this world. So the pride of life is sort of an arrogant pride that “my plans are going to come to pass.” The Epistle of James has references to this sort of thing.

Now we come to 1 John 2:17, and we want to look at this verse, and we’ve looked at it already several times, but I’m drilling us in this over and over so you get an idea of how much emphasis John is going to place on this. I call it “strategic envelopment,” and it’s 1 John 2:17 that talks about the world and its lusts are passing away.

It’s interesting that it’s the present tense. It doesn’t say that the world and its lusts will pass away, nor does it say the world and its lusts have passed away. This is a process; it’s going on throughout the Church Age. I’ve written chapter 10 in the book by Professor [Christopher] Cone called “An Introduction to the New Covenant,” and you can get that book, if you’re interested, on the Framework website. You will see a reference to “An Introduction to the New Covenant.”

Anyway, I devoted quite a bit of time in chapter 10 to how we look at progress in the Church Age. The reason why we have to be careful here is that there are some in Christian churches, evangelical churches, are what we call “post-millennialists”. They believe that progress in the Church Age ought to be seen in a gradual expansion of the Christian faith in one geographical area over another; a sort of semi-linear progress toward global dominance of the Christian faith. And that once this is achieved, then Christ will return. In other words, post-millennialism means Christ comes post, or after, the Millennial kind of life is reached. We are premillennialists. We believe that Christ comes first and He will bring in the ideal world of history.

So “the world and is lusts are passing away,” refers to progress within the Church Age, and I cite two verses in John; one is 1 John 2:8 and one is 1 John 2:17.

Here’s a slide [Slide 4], notice the first verse: it’s the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining; that’s 1 John 2:8. I also noted in verse 17 that John’s vocabulary is the same as it is in verse 8, so he’s repeating himself. Not only is “the darkness passing away and the true light already shining,” but he says, “And the world is passing away, and the lust of it, but he that does the will of God abides forever.”

Let’s just take the first part of that: “The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” Now if you’ve had any kind of history course, you’ll know there’s such a thing known as the “Age of Enlightenment” and what scholars mean by the Age of Enlightenment is not what the apostle means by “enlightenment”. The secular world views the 1600s, 1700s, and early 1800s as the time when man thought for himself. I kind of summarize the Age of Enlightenment by saying that the Age of Enlightenment featured reasoning without revelation. In other words, the idea was that we want to cut ourselves off from the Bible, we want to cut ourselves off from any idea that God has revealed Himself, and we want to just think by ourselves.

I think you’ve seen this slide if you’ve looked at the Framework series of “The Thinker,” and I had a cartoonist friend of mine have the thinker pondering and then sticking his arm out to resist revelation from God, That’s the spirit of the Enlightenment: We’re going to do it ourselves. Thank you God, but we don’t need You.

Of course, the Enlightenment has fallen apart. We live in the debris of the Enlightenment and have been taken over by more subjective approaches to truth. But the point is that it was during this so-called Age of Enlightenment that biblical criticism began and became very pernicious. A lot of the origin, the solid foundation behind a lot of secularism, was founded in the Age of Enlightenment.

I’m only mentioning this to you because when you hear the term “Age of Enlightenment” what you should do is think about this verse in 1 John. John didn’t see the Age of Enlightenment as something future to his time. John saw enlightenment as beginning with the incarnation of the God-man Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the Incarnation, when the Second Person of the Trinity became united with a human body and soul—and this one Person of undiminished deity and true humanity was walking on this planet and gave a revelation of the highest level of what goes on within the Trinity.

That’s why in this series on 1 John I spent time with the Trinity … this is the Age of Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment is the apostolic age after the Incarnation occurred. So, our view as Bible-believing Christians is different from the secular view that the Age of Enlightenment is in the 1600s and 1700s.

In 1 John 2:17 John says “the world is passing away and the lust of it,” but then he adds this: “He who does the will of God abides forever.” I’m going to come back to that, but I want you to notice the contrast: “the world is passing away, but he who does the will of God abides for ever.” This is very important because it introduces the whole cosmology of the Bible and I want to spend time tonight on that.

Then I have another verse here, Revelation 5:9–10. John again is the writer here, but he’s been given a vision of the future by God: “The world has passed away and the true light is already shining.” In Revelation 5:9–10 he says: “You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals.” This is the angelic choir and the elders looking at the Lord Jesus Christ and they’re addressing Him and they say: “You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals.”

The scroll appears to be a title of some sort to the planet Earth and Jesus opens the seals and the judgments, the final judgments, begin on planet Earth. So view it as Jesus is taking back title to the Earth from the satanic powers that usurped it. “You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals.”

Now watch why. While Jesus is uniquely qualified to begin the judgments, think again, we’re talking about progress in the Church Age. It says: “For you were slain and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God and we shall reign on the earth.”

Notice this sentence: “He has redeemed us.” Out of what? Out of every tribe, every tongue, every people, and every nation.

Now let’s back off and see what we can learn from this. When we look at the Church Age, we’ve had 2,000 years of the church. When we look at what happened with regards to the Christian faith over the last 2,000 years what do we observe? Well again if you look on the handout, on earth, here in mortal life, what we see is ever-changing locations where the gospel flourishes for a time and then declines.

For example, in the early days of the church, Christianity pretty well dominated North Africa. It came across the Mediterranean and began to dominate the Roman Empire on the north side of the Mediterranean and then permeated Europe. Now here’s a question: when you look at the map of North Africa today is there a dominance of Christianity all along North Africa? The answer is of course not, no. There are very few areas that have any kind of significant Christian population in North Africa.

So, what happened? Well, North Africa was exposed to the gospel for many years and then people were either seduced from the Christian faith or were simply conquered and wiped out. So here is one illustration among many others. And, of course, Christianity permeated Europe. And today we see that Christianity in Europe has become very, very weak—very, very scarce. We see in the United Kingdom, that was the fountainhead for missions, Christianity is very weak now and the United States then became sort of the Christian missionary center, and we’re weakening.

So do you notice what we’re saying here about the trend? The trend is that there are ever-changing locations where the gospel flourishes for a time and then declines. So we don’t observe over 2,000 years an increasing dominance of the Christian faith globally. What we see is that in various areas Christianity dominates for a time and then it seems like the Holy Spirit moves to another location and stimulates church growth in that new location while the old location sort of peters out.

That’s the sort of thing you observe on earth but what’s going on on earth is not the whole story; what’s going on in Heaven is more of the story. Think about this, we don’t know for sure, but think how many Christians there are on planet Earth today. Now think about how many Christians are in Heaven. Well, there are many, many more Christians in Heaven than are on earth today. There are 2,000 years of Christians who have died and gone to Heaven.

So, you see that we have a massive number of Christians in Heaven. And so that body that’s in Heaven is getting larger and larger and larger. You’ve got to decide when you think about progress, that is what we see on the surface of the earth, which is only part of the picture. The other part of the picture is what is going on with the growing body of believers in Heaven.

And you’ll notice in this Revelation passage, Revelation 5, where it is that “You redeemed us out of.” Notice the language, “out of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.” When you see those words what do you think about? What do you think this is saying or telling us about the nature of the finished body of Christ? When the body of Christ is finished and Christ comes back for His bride, when that body is finished. It has representatives of every people group in history that have lived on planet Earth. So the body of Christ is growing; it’s growing in Heaven, and will become representative of the human race. Every people group, every language group, will be represented in that final state. That’s what progress is going on.

Now the next question in the handout is the indirectness of God’s Church Age strategy. So we’re looking now at the Church Age, we’re looking at what we see on earth, we’re looking at what we see in Heaven. I’ve called this “indirect strategy” and on the Slide 5 you see that we have a quote from B.H. Liddell-Hart. He was a famous military historian. In fact, he was one of the editors of The Encyclopedia Britannica’s section on the military, and he summarized after he studied many, many different wars and the kinds of strategies that worked and the kinds of strategies that did not work.

Here is what he said: “Effective results in war have rarely been attained unless the approach has had such indirectness as to ensure the opponents unreadiness to meet it. The indirectness has usually been physical. It was always psychological. In strategy, the longest way around is often the shortest way home. The aim is to weaken resistance before attempting to overcome it, and the effect is best attained by drawing the other party out of its defenses.”

Now what B.H. Liddell-Hart is saying here is that the enemy that is attacking you has to be fooled into thinking you are an easy target so that he gets sloppy in how he approaches it. Now what I’m going to do here in the handout, and I want you to follow these verses, is I want to give you some examples of where we see this indirectness.

Remember, God the Holy Spirit is working with the church on earth. God the Holy Spirit is omniscient, God the Holy Spirit is sovereign, and He is strengthening the church, He is guiding the church over against Satan and his minions, the fallen angels.

[Slide 6] Let’s think about John 12:31–32. I’ve also added John 13:27 and 30. Now those of you that know the Gospel of John, what’s going on in John 12 and 13? What’s going on here are Jesus’ final words; His final supper before He’s going to be crucified the next day. It constitutes His last words to His disciples. It goes on into John chapters 14, 15, and 16, but chapter 12 and chapter 13 occur while Judas Iscariot is there. By chapter 14, the Upper Room Discourse, and chapters 15 and 16, now Judas is gone. So John chapters 14, 15, and 16 are addressed to believers; there are no unbelievers there. It’s all believers. In 1 John, I think I mentioned this earlier, the Epistle of 1 John is basically John’s regurgitation of the Upper Room Discourse. The theology that we see in John’s first Epistle is the same theology that you read in John 14, 15, and 16.

Let’s look at John 12 first and keep in mind the indirect strategy. “Now is the judgment of this world,” Jesus said. He’s talking at the “last supper” and Judas is there. “Now the ruler of this world will be cast out and, I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all peoples to myself.”

Then it goes on. He talks a little bit and then later on in John chapter 13 He gives the piece of bread to Judas. Here’s what it says: “After the piece of bread—that Judas received—Satan entered into him [Judas]. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What you do, do quickly.’ Then he went out,” and in characteristic Johannine fashion, “it was night.”

Think about what we’re looking at in these verses. Jesus is talking about the judgment of this world; He’s talking about the ruler of this world will be cast out; future tense. Now He tells how the ruler of this world will be cast out. Jesus is going to have to die: “If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all peoples to Myself.” Satan enters into Judas and Jesus says to him: “What you do, do quickly.”

So, putting it all together, Satan obviously thinks he can stop the Lord Jesus Christ; he can destroy Jesus on the Cross and that’s why he motivates mob actions, he motivates political shenanigans and tricks thinking that he’s going to get Jesus and thereby stop God’s plan of redemption.

But then Jesus is also in the middle of this. He’s saying “if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all peoples to Myself”; all kinds of people. He’s talking about the fact that it’s going to backfire—that Satan thinks he’s got the advantage because Jesus looks weak—Jesus isn’t sitting there with His angelic armies all around Him. Jesus is alone, and so He becomes a target and so Satan goes after Him through Judas.

But in the very act of getting Jesus onto the Cross, foolishly, Satan undercuts the legal claim he has to the earth because Jesus is going to draw all peoples to Himself. We see when the body is complete, then Jesus will open the seals and Satan will be judged. So Satan has undone himself.

But the strategy was indirect. Jesus didn’t come on earth with the mighty angelic army and attack Satan that way; it didn’t come across that way. Jesus almost seduced Satan into attacking Him, and then as a result, Satan miscalculated. That’s what B.H. Liddell-Hart is saying: the strategy of indirectness causes the opponent to misjudge and miscalculate and that gives the advantage to the defender.

Another example is 1 Corinthians 2. This is the Apostle Paul: “We do not speak the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.” Notice again that like John, Paul has no doubt that the end of the time is going to be in our victory: The rulers of this age are coming to nothing.

“But we speak the wisdom of God … which none of the rulers of this age knew, for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” So clearly Paul picks up on the indirect strategy where the wisdom of God is withheld from the powers of darkness. The wisdom of God is what the Holy Spirit reveals to believers. The rulers of this world don’t understand anything, I mean they may hear it, but they really don’t understand it because if they had, they wouldn’t have engineered the crucifixion of Jesus, because then they would realize that the crucifixion would be their legal end. There are many other areas in the New Testament. Be on the lookout when you read the New Testament for these kinds of passages that show we are fundamentally in a defensive mode not in an offensive mode.

Here’s another slide [Slide 7]; Ephesians 6. We are all familiar with Ephesians 6. It’s the putting on your armor passage. I want you to notice on this slide I put in red the fact that it’s all defensive armor against the satanic attacks on us. In this depiction, Satan is on the offense; we are on the defense.

Notice, “put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to” what? ... “to stand against the cunning trickery of the devil.” It doesn’t say we take the offense. We take a powerful defense. “Take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day.” Now that’s not advancing, that’s withstanding. “Stand therefore having girded your waist with truth and above all taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to” what? … “quench the fiery darts of the wicked one.” We’re not firing the darts; Satan is firing the darts at us. So clearly Ephesians 6 is putting us in a defensive posture, the only offense that’s listed in Ephesians 6 is the Word of God, which is God’s weapon against Satan.

Then I gave you another one in 1 Peter 3:15–16. Notice again, it puts us in a defensive mode against the satanic attacks that are offensive against our defense. “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Be always ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you the reason of the hope that is in you … that when they defame you as evildoers … they may be ashamed.” So again it is our Christian testimony that leads the unbelievers, motivated by Satan, to ask about the hope that we show in our lifestyle, but at the same time they don’t really understand it and they attack us as evildoers, but be ready to give a defense.

These are just examples. You can find more in the New Testament where we are cast in the Scriptures as sort of in a defensive posture. But God is on the offense through indirect strategy. It turns out as unbelievers try to attack us, the Holy Spirit turns the tables and opens their hearts to the Truth of the Scripture.

[Slide 8] The other thing that we want to notice, again for our hope, is that ultimately the indirect strategy will win out and there’ll be a victory. This chart that I’ve shown time and time again, shows that evil in the Bible is bracketed. This is unique to Christianity. Remember, no other religion, no other philosophy has bounded evil. In the Bible, evil does not begin at Creation, evil begins after Creation, at the Fall, and it will be done away, finally, in the future judgment. After that future judgment good and evil are separated for ever and ever.

So we want to look at another slide [Slide 9] and this one is entitled, “The Eternal Quarantine of All Evil”. This is about Hell and the Lake of Fire. You don’t normally hear teaching in our day about this and it’s very important. Hell is good news, and you say: “What? How can Hell and the Lake of Fire be good news?” It’s good news because it’s the permanent solution to evil. There will never be another fall again, because evil has been eternally quarantined.

Let’s look at Revelation 20:11–15: “Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it from whose face the earth and heaven fled away. … And I saw the dead—small and great—standing before God. … And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books …  And anyone not found in the Book of Life was cast into the Lake of Fire.”

Notice that unbelievers are judged for their works. Believers are not redeemed because of our works. We are redeemed because of the work of Christ, and when we believe, we believe that we are justified not on the basis of our works, but on the basis of Christ’s grace on our part.

But what happens in the final judgment is that those who have rejected Christ, those who have rejected grace, obviously the only position they can have is to try to say that they were righteous enough so that they should be allowed to come and into the New Jerusalem and Heaven and so forth.

Revelation 21:1–8 (excerpts), “I saw a new heaven and a new earth. … but the … unbelieving … murderers, the sexually immoral,  … the idolaters … shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire … the second death.” So that’s the good news because it terminates evil completely; it’s the end of evil. No other religion, no other philosophy, has bracketed evil. Evil on the unbelieving side has always existed and will always exist, so that leads to strategies that unbelievers have done.

[Slide 10] Now here is a statement by Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). I want to show you this because Bertrand Russell was one of the most brilliant unbelievers who has lived in recent history. Notice what he says here: “This is all you really have left;” it’s an eloquent quote, and we won’t devote much time to it, but I just want to show you that if you are an unbeliever, you’ve got to make sense of a universe that has evil in it continuously. You have no hope; you’ve got to live in despair.

Here’s what this man said: “Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving.” So that’s meaningless generation; no purpose, no creation, it’s just processes that were pure chance. That “his origin, man’s growth, man’s hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of,” watch this, “accidental collocations of atoms.”

So, where do you get meaning in this? You can’t get meaning and Russell was brilliant enough to see it. That “no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave. That all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system. The whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruin. All these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy that rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”

If you are listening today and you are an unbeliever, what I’m trying to show you is that this is your destiny and you need to think through this option to the Christian position. There is no hope for unbelief in the sense that evil one day will be done away with.

It’s not just in the unbelieving West. Here is a quote about Hinduism [Slide 11]. The reason I quote Hinduism is because as C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) remarked decades ago, Hinduism is the clearest, most well-thought-out statement of pure unbelief and paganism that exists in history. Here are the Upanishads which are part of the scriptures of Hinduism: “There is no plurality and no change. Nature which presents the appearance of plurality and change is mere illusion (máyá).” It’s sort of like pantheism. The universe is impersonal; there’s no change fundamentally. It’s just there. So that’s unbelief.

Now let’s go further. Here is the opposite. In Christianity there is a hope because, while evil is going to be permanently quarantined, it’s that very quarantine—that good news of the Lake of Fire—that keeps evil away from the new Heavens and the new Earth and allows the redeemed to forever and ever and ever live in the presence of God.

[Slide 12] Look at Revelation 20:11–15: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them.” You often hear this verse at funerals: “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. … And then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold I make all things new,’ and He said to me, ‘Write, for these words are true and faithful.’ ” What a promise! You will never find anything like this outside of the Christian biblical faith.

If you think about how God is working in your life; have you ever thought about the fact that He is training you, He’s training me, for the life that He knows we will occupy in the new heavens and the new earth. Things that don’t make sense in our trials; some of our tribulations; some of our hurts; all of this ultimately is to train us how to live in God’s presence because we’re going to be there for ever and ever.

Now I want to summarize John’s argument here. John’s argument is from 1 John 5:19; if you look in your handout, there’s a quote. He says: “The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.” See how passive the world system is? It’s just passively dominated by the principalities and powers of darkness. That’s where we live—the Church has lived on earth, not in Heaven, but on earth, within the fallen creation under the limited control of the evil one.

So that means we constantly face a choice to either align ourselves with this evil order or align ourselves with the Creator-Savior-Judge-Father. There is no neutral zone, because there can only be one ultimate authority at a time that we follow. It’s a very sobering thing and that’s why I spent so much time in this section of 1 John. John uses simple language, but he writes very deeply and very profoundly.

In conclusion I want to address ultimate authority. What do we mean by ultimate authority? We mean your worldview; your set of presuppositions. Either it’s the Creator as our Judge to Whom we are responsible and accountable—that’s one way and that’s because the Creator has revealed Himself to us in His Word—do we listen to His Word or not? If we take His Word as ultimate authority, then we have to use the Word of God to interpret every fact and every situation.

On the other hand, if we reject the Word of God as ultimate authority, as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden, then we have autonomous thinking and irresponsibility. Now because our secular education doesn’t really train us to think very deeply, we learn a lot of facts, we learn a lot of interesting procedures, but as far as thinking deeply about philosophy—about how we know truth, about good conduct, where we get ethics from, where are the justice standards—we don’t really get trained to think that way, so it’s hard to see how presuppositions affect how we live.

I want to give you three levels here, again referring to your handout. For trivial disputes, say, like the price of gasoline at the Shell station down the road—if you want to find out about the price of gasoline at the Shell station you just go and look and factually correct it. There’s not really much of a role of presuppositions in such a trivial issue.

Now let’s get to a deeper issue: think of 9/11, think of abortion, think of homosexual behavior. When we deal with these, we have conspiracy theories about what happened on 9/11; we don’t really know, we claim, whether the fetus inside the womb is a real person or not; homosexuality, whether our genetic DNA determine our sexual orientation or do feelings determine sexual orientation.

So the interpretation of facts in these areas relies more upon one’s worldview than the price of gasoline at the local Shell station. Now, if thinking of 9/11, abortion, and homosexual behavior starts to get us thinking more deeply, then let’s think about creation versus cosmic evolution. Now here in this case it’s almost totally an issue of worldview, not facts, and the reason is because both theories explain all the available facts. So, our interpretation of facts relies entirely upon our worldview and we have to decide between one approach or the other, but facts don’t help because both views interpret within themselves the facts at hand.

Now let me go through some of the great promises. These are illustrations that we have in the text of the Bible of men who did it right; men who acted on the basis that the Word of God was the ultimate authority in interpreting and understanding where they were in life.

Romans 4:17–21, “God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not yet exist as though they did.” Notice that sentence. “He calls those things which do not yet exist as though did.” Remember Abraham was told he was going to have many, many descendants? But look what Abraham had to do. “Abraham, contrary to hope, in hope believed according to what was spoken, and not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead.”

It’s talking about sexual death since he was about 100 years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. This was an old, old couple by this time, but God promised he was going to have descendants and He didn’t mean he was going to adopt somebody. It didn’t mean to go in to Hagar and have a baby by her. He meant you, you and Sarah, are going to give birth to your descendants. This is a great, great promise when you think the Word of God is challenging you.

“He did not waiver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform.” That was such a great promise. You ought to memorize that. He was fully convinced, fully convinced, that what God had promised He was able also to perform. That’s why you have these verses listed toward the bottom of your handout.

Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” I have a little section there, the Lord is not the end of knowledge, “but fools despise wisdom.” It says the fear the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. It’s not the result of a whole chain of logic. When you start with the fear of God, you don’t end with some serious, illogical conclusions. The fear of the Lord is the beginning, not the goal or end, of knowledge.

Romans 3:4 talks about surveys. Everybody’s talking about what the latest Gallup public opinion poll is. Look at what Romans 3:4 says, “Let God be true and every man a liar.” In other words, we don’t really care what statistical observations of human opinions are. God is the One who is the authority, so let Him be true and every man a liar, Romans 3:4.

Colossians 2:3. We don’t normally think of this, but Colossians 2:3, talking about Christ says, “In Whom—that is in Christ—are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Do you see a word that’s missing there? See, the way most people read Colossians 2:3 is in Christ are hidden all the treasures of religious wisdom and religious knowledge. There’s no adjective “religious” in that sentence. It means all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That means the Incarnation of the God-Man-Savior, the intersection of God and His creatures, is the source of truth. You have a transcendental standard of truth here.

So in conclusion, if we follow the evil order, and we choose to follow the evil order, the world system—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—if we do that, we invest our life in choices that have no eternally productive consequences. It is a waste of life to go according to the world system. Most of the time it’s very easy; it’s hard to be loyal to the Lord against the world system, but remember the strategy of envelopment—the indirect strategy.

Yes, it is hard for us because the world attacks us. The world attacks us for the same reason it attacked Jesus. The world system thinks that we are the weak ones, so it comes after us. Then when we trust the Lord, the Lord vindicates us.

It shows, for example, with the persecuted believers that are around the world. Do you realize that so many are murdered today? We have more martyrs in our day than we’ve had in any other century in church history. Think of these poor, poor believers—they’re slaughtered. But you know what is the victory? Their faith is rock solid. They could get out from being killed by simply denying Jesus, but they refuse to deny Jesus and they are killed. But that is the witness that spreads the gospel into the realm of the persecutors.

Anybody remember a New Testament story about a terrorist who was dramatically turned around because he watched the martyrdom of Stephen? Paul, the guy that wrote most of the New Testament was an ex-terrorist, and instrumental to his conversion was watching Stephen, who appeared to be the weak one, who was stoned to death, really wasn’t that weak. He rejoiced. Remember, as he looked up into Heaven and he sees the Lord Jesus standing to welcome him into Heaven? It was so powerful it rocked the Apostle Paul.

So finally, in 1 John 2:28, here’s an exhortation to address to us. And he says: “Little children, abide in Him; that when He appears, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.” Do you see that second verb?

It is possible for us, if we’re diddling around with the world system and we’re not all out for the Lord, that we will be ashamed before Him at His coming. Folks, we don’t want to be a believer that is ashamed when the Lord Jesus suddenly shows up, so let’s be careful, let’s abide in Him as John exhorts us to do.

“Father, we thank You for our time tonight. We ask Your Holy Spirit to bless our hearts and give us insight into our daily life as to whether we are operating by abiding in Christ, relying upon Your grace, or whether we’re being seduced by the world system. For we ask this in our Savior’s name, Amen.”