1 John 2:18

6 · Oswald makes his polemical claim explicit: focusing on identifying a single Antichrist figure is pastoral malpractice

And so, so much of the preaching about Antichrist focuses on the individual, which I just think is pastoral malpractice. I think that the text is actually not saying, watch out for this one guy who emerges from this one place at this one time, and he's this ethnicity, and he's going to have this appeal and so on and so forth. The pastoral approach that's happening in this letter is there are spiders all over the place. I want to help you to have a general strategy to avoid getting bit in the face by any of them. And so that's how we're going to, you know, go through this text. It's really more about an ethos than an individual.

7 · Oswald anticipates and addresses a major objection: the existence of a 'final boss' Antichrist in other biblical texts

Now, just as an aside, you may say, well, Chris, are you saying there is no kind of final boss Antichrist? And I'm telling you, as a reader of church history, a couple things. One, if you would like to say that the beast in Revelation or the man of lawlessness is the Antichrist or the little horn in Daniel, you could do that. But that is not just a clear, simple reading of the text. You're doing hermeneutic things. You're doing interpretive things to get there. You may be right, you may not be right, but you are engaging in some speculation even to get there. Secondly, you need to understand that plenty of people throughout church history have believed that all of these things are the same guy and that there is this one massive sort of final boss. But many people in church history believe that that was something that happened in the first century. And there are good textual reasons for believing that, that the Antichrist appeared in the first century. And that's a legitimate, consistent belief throughout the ages. And so even if you were to say, yes, there individual extra big spider, a lot of theologians believe that happened in the first century, and some believe it will happen in the future. My point is, is that you could go down all of these lines of speculation if you wanted to. But pastorally, as I preach the passage, I can see what John's doing. Pretty simple. He's not trying to warn you about some figure that either emerged in the past or in the future. He's just trying to warn you about a particular spirit, a particular set of beliefs that are dangerous to the believer, and that he wants to make sure that his people, who he loves, he calls them his little children, are not deceived. And so that's what I'm going to do this morning.

8 · Oswald provides a structural roadmap for the remainder of the sermon, outlining his four main points with a memorable alliterative pattern (location, lie, love, loyalty)

I've got four points, and the first three are about kind of the spiritual ethos behind Antichrist. The first point is, is that the location of the Antichrist, it's not Eastern Europe or Israel or anything like that. It's different. The second is the lie of the Antichrist. What is it that they're saying? The Antichrist ethos? What's wrong with it? What's it saying? It's untrue. And then the love of the Antichrist ethos. Location is simply the first point.

9 · Oswald introduces the first major point: the Antichrist ethos is not an external threat but an internal one

And that is location is within Christendom. This ethos, this spirit emerges from within the church, or at least from within Christian presuppositions. We usually think of the Antichrist when we get into this final boss kind of thinking, the individual thinking. We usually think of him as a predator lurking outside the church. But all of the texts that deal with this error, this issue really describe Antichrist as more of a parasite within the church than a predator on the outside.

10 · The predator-versus-parasite distinction is made vivid through a cultural reference to nature documentaries and a medical analogy

You guys ever watch those simulations on Discovery Channel where it's like bear versus tiger and things like that, and they show these animals like shark versus, you know, pterodactyl or whatever, and you know, don't take me literally there. That's not. That's not a real one. That was just my weird brain. But anyway, they have these, and they talk about which animal is the most dangerous and so forth. And one of the things that they always do is they talk about, well, you know, over 50 people in the last five years died from grizzly bear attacks or whatever, you know, and you're like, that's too many, of course. But let's compare that to cancer, which is something not lurking on the outside of you that could maybe grab you and bite you, but something that's lurking on the inside of you that is far more deadly. A lot more people die of cancer, of viruses, of cells gone wrong, of parasites than they do from predators.

11 · Oswald grounds his parasitic-threat claim directly in the text of 1 John 2:18-19, emphasizing the phrase 'they went out from us' as textual evidence that the Antichrist ethos originates within the church

And I think it's very important if I'm going to fulfill John's mission here of warning you and keeping you from being deceived, to just help you to understand that when this ethos emerges, it's not outside the church coming in. It's happening from within the. within the church, within Christendom. You can see that in verse 18. Children, it is the last hour. As you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they are not of us. Really, when you scan all of the New Testament literature about deception, about false prophets and so forth, one of the things you've got to say is that locatively, they are far more like parasites than predators. They exist within the church.

12 · Oswald transitions from the first point (location) to the second (lie), while also connecting the second point back to his opening etymological work

So, first l, first point, Antichrist location. Where does this ethos come from? It's parasitic. It comes from within. Number two, what is the lie that this Antichrist ethos is telling? Well, I've already given you that point. Really? When I said that the word anti doesn't mean against, it means in replacement of or in addition to.

13 · This unit delivers the sermon's core doctrinal definition of the Antichrist ethos: Jesus plus anything equals heresy

So what is the main lie of this Antichrist ethos? It is simply that Jesus plus something else is necessary for salvation. That's the Antichrist ethos. Everybody wants to get into incarnation and this and that. And we'll get to those texts when we get to them. I'm just telling you that the name is intentional. It tells you all you need to know. What the Antichrist spirit is, is a diminishment of Jesus sufficiency as Savior, a deficient, a diminishment of Jesus authority as Lord and the addition of something else that is necessary for a person to obtain eternal life.

14 · This is the sermon's most ambitious historical-theological survey, tracing manifestations of the Antichrist ethos through two millennia of church history

In the early church that came from the Jews, there were a group of people called the Judaizers who went back into the Gentile churches in order to get those Gentiles to add adherence to the ceremonial law to the Gospel in order that they might be saved. In the second, third and fourth centuries, that was the season of dualities. A lot of theologies emerged, Manichaeism and Gnosticism and Platonism. And these are duality philosophies that believe, you know, that materiality is bad. And what this one would say, this season of error in the church would have been like Jesus plus secret knowledge is what you need. And then in the 4th century, Islam comes onto the scene. Chesterton rightly says that Islam is a Christian heresy. It is essentially monotheism without the God man. And there they honor Christ as a prophet, but honor Muhammad alongside of him. So you can see the anti in the classical appearing in all of these things, right? So you've got the first wave, which is the Antichrist, which would be the ceremonial law, plus Jesus. And then you've got the second wave through the next three or four centuries, and that would be Jesus plus secret Gnostic knowledge. And then you've got Islam emerging. It's Jesus plus Muhammad and the Quran. And then you, right around that same time, you begin to see shifts in the church where you begin to see something like Roman Catholic theology that we know today. And now you've got Jesus plus Mary plus the Mass plus the sacraments, and you've got that whole season. And then of course in the 16th century, you get the Reformation faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone, His glory alone. And something called Arminianism emerges, which is you need Jesus plus your free will to be saved. And after that, Spiritualism, which began to be, you need Jesus plus spiritual experiences. And this was the age of seances. And many don't realize that this age of spiritualism and seances is actually from whence feminism emerged, amongst other things. But this is also where you get Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness and toxic charismatic theology. It's Jesus plus Personal experience, Jesus plus spiritual experience. And so really there's an Antichrist for every century. And sometimes we put them away and sometimes they linger, and sometimes they come back and circle back. I think you could see a lot of overlaps. If we wanted to spend the time talking about it. You could see a lot of overlaps between Mormonism and Islam, for instance, right? Both have secret books, both were discovered by dudes alone when they probably shouldn't have been alone. Secret visions, second books. Jesus is less than you've got it. So you can just see, like this, this spirit, this ethos, it's just going to keep coming.

15 · Oswald places the Antichrist strategy within the grand narrative of redemptive history

I think the thing that you need to really appreciate about what John's doing here is he's saying this is essentially the last legitimate play. The enemy has to run. They tried to keep Jesus from being born. That's the Old Testament, all the way through the infanticide of Herod. They tried to kill him on the cross. They've tried to kill all of his believers. All of these are relatively ineffective or completely ineffective. The one that's really effective is just the parasitic move. It's the reason why so many people die of one particular thing. The stuff that grows on the inside of you, the viruses that need your biology to live and yet are intent on killing you at the right time after they've manifested to extent the same with cancer cells. And so you can see that this is probably the main strategy to take Christianity off the rails.

16 · The couch illustration makes the incarnation's cosmic disruption concrete and accessible

It's essentially like this. You can imagine, just imagine with me, a couch full of people like, you know, it's a long couch, and a very large man comes in and he just goes right to the middle of the couch, kind of wedges himself in, plops down. Well, the whole couch is disturbed now. No one is comfortable anymore. Everybody is sort of like accommodating this massive figure in the middle of the couch. Friends, God came to earth, took on flesh so that that flesh could be crucified, and in that crucifixion make atonement for the sins of those whom he called the massive giant. Jesus has plopped down on the couch of the world, and everybody has to reckon with it. Everybody has to respond to it. It's the thing that's changed the world. And all we're living in now are just the ripples of opposition from this massive, mighty victory that took place 2,000 years ago. And so the main strategy seems to essentially be like, well, we can't do anything about the fact that there's this giant, looming big figure who has split history in half, made his enemies, brought his enemies to open shame, reconciling all things to himself. We can't do anything about the mighty Jesus plopping down on the timeline of Earth. So maybe we could just, like, say that his mom is also necessary to be saved. Or maybe we could say, like, well, you know, she's just a good guy, but, like, we've got to have these other things too. See, you can't do anything about the fact that he's arrived, so you've got to figure out a new strategy. And that strategy seems to be something like parasitic.

17 · Oswald introduces the third point (love/motivation) and argues that the Antichrist ethos is driven by self-exaltation

So that's the location. This usually happens within the church. The lie, Jesus plus something, and the loves. Like, why are these people doing this? Well, they're just in love with the world. There's a reason. I won't get into this too much, but there's a reason that John moves from the love of the world to the Antichrist. If you were to just scan all of the false teacher materials in the New Testament, you'd see that the motivations are always worldly ambitions. There's always some effort to sort of make much of themselves. I think it's just. It's kind of funny in a way. The Antichrist ethos is always something like this. Jesus isn't enough. You need something else. And I just so happen to be the guy who has all of the something else. It's Joseph Smith, it's Muhammad, it's the Pope. It's. It's always the same deal. Jesus isn't enough. You need something else. And by the way, I have. I have a lot of something else in stock right here. It's always to make much of self. It's as if you've got these religious people within the local church, and they are thinking, how can I make this about me? And that's really the spirit of the Antichrist. How can I make this about me? How can I somehow turn the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ into something that advances my own personal agenda?

18 · Oswald completes the three diagnostic points and pivots to application

Okay, so those are the three points. Location, lie, love. And the fourth point is like, well, what do we do about this? How do we respond to the spiders everywhere kind of problem? Which gives us a lot more focus than like, and a lot more protection than, there's this one thing. So how do we respond to this? And the fourth point is we respond with loyalty to Christ.

19 · Oswald steps outside the exposition to address the congregation with pastoral self-awareness and humor

This is the least sensational sermon on the Antichrist you'll ever hear. Everything I've said is so boring. It's the least interesting Antichrist sermon you'll ever hear. The application point of an Antichrist sermon is not to avoid barcodes or AI or, or to watch out for black helicopters or to, or to go through the Obama letters and make sure, you know, like, it's none of that. It's just like, stay loyal to Christ and you will successfully navigate the problems associated with this intended parasitic deception.

20 · Oswald introduces C

You know, since we're so close to Halloween, we might as well, you know, we might as well do the trifecta and invoke a little screw tape letters in this conversation as well. One of the things that Lewis, for those of you that don't know Screwtape Letters is a book written by C.S. lewis where he imagines what it must be like for demons to communicate to each other and form their strategies to keep people deceived. That's the book. If you've not read it, everybody who reads it is grateful they read it. It's easy. Recommended. Easily recommended. Anyway, so with Lewis, one of the main themes in the Screwtape letters is the demons are like, we gotta keep using the love of novelty and the interest in fashions. Not like fashions, but like changes and impressiveness, modernity. We've gotta keep people kind of titillated for the new thing. That's the best way to keep them deceived.

21 · Oswald uses Lewis's personal testimony about 'chronological snobbery' to diagnose the psychological vulnerability that makes believers susceptible to the Antichrist ethos

And I think that all of that is biographical. I think Lewis is actually saying he's describing why he almost went to hell. Because as an atheist, the final issue that Lewis had to deal with was what his friends called chronological snobbery. Lewis main reason for not becoming a Christian sooner was because he suffered from something his friends called chronological snobbery. Lewis defines chronological snobbery as this. The uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. J.I. packer came up with a much better definition later on. He said the newer is truer and only what is recent is decent. And so one of the reasons that Lewis stayed an atheist for as long as he did was he just automatically assumed that the old stuff was less valuable than the new stuff. And he had this really illogical, which is crazy. Such a brilliant mind. He had this illogical blind spot where he assumed that old stuff is less relevant and important and useful than new stuff. And that will get you deceived every time.

22 · This unit connects the Lewis illustration back to John's pastoral strategy in 1 John

You're essentially wandering around a market full of con artists with waiting for someone to sell you the Jesus plus something. That's why I told you at the beginning of this series, that if you really want to understand the key in terms of John's efforts to keep his people safe, it'd just be, do not grow bored with that which you had from the beginning. If you grow bored with what you had from the beginning, if you begin to be a novelty seeker, you will meet your con artist and they will sell you a bill of goods. That is an Antichrist bill of goods. It will be Jesus plus some something else. So John's solution to all of this stuff about the Antichrist ethos is really his solution in general is he wants people to be loyal. He wants people to be loyal to one another, and he wants people to be loyal to Christ.

23 · Oswald conducts a close reading of 1 John 2, cataloging John's repeated assertions that his readers already possess sufficient knowledge

And that's why he uses the language throughout the entire second chapter of you already know what you need to know. That's the main theme, the main rhetorical theme that carries from the beginning of the chapter to the end. You know this stuff, guys. You don't need any new information. You have the information you need. In verse 7, he says you already know the commandment. In verses 13 through 14, he says you already know God. In verse 18, he says you know that the Antichrist is coming. In verse 19, he says their identity is plain, plain to all. In verse 21, I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth. Verse 24. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father.

24 · Oswald delivers concrete application using a memorable personal parenting strategy: 'walk with intention

If you want to keep safe from deception, don't get bored with that which you had from the beginning. When you have spiritual lows, when you have questions that aren't answered, when you have pains that don't seem to come with clear explanations, just stay loyal to Christ. We used to teach our kids. We used to kind of live in a sketchy neighborhood, and we used to teach our kids, walk with intention. Walk like you know where you're going, even if you don't know where you're going. Put the vibes on of someone who is headed somewhere. Why? Because there's a certain kind of person out there who picks up on people who are unfulfilled, who are struggling, who have a lot of questions, who have a lot of hurt. And the people who pick up on that, there's a lot of them that are bad. And they feel your uncertainty, they feel your struggle with the same old gospel every week. And they can tell this person is ripe to be sold some snake oil.

25 · This unit provides the most concrete and memorable application of the sermon: a rehearsed verbal response to false teachers

So if you want to be free from or safe from deception, the main point is that you understand that people are going to constantly come in with their special stock of the thing you need, plus Jesus, and you just have to say, Joseph Smith. No thank you. Bill Johnson. No, thank you. Pope Leo. No, thank you. I've got what I need. Move on. The main application of this passage is simply to abide in Christ.

26 · Oswald returns to close exposition of verses 24-28, emphasizing the sufficiency of what believers already possess through the anointing of the Holy Spirit

Look at verse 24. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us. Eternal life. You need nothing else to get to heaven. You need nothing else to be right with God. You need nothing else to endure to the end. Verse 26 I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing you have received from him abides in you. And you have no need that anyone should teach you. This isn't saying that you have no need for a teacher. It's saying you don't need to be out there listening to every Tom, Dick and Harry that walks in with a new idea. But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it is taught, you abide in Him. And now little children abide in him, so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.

27 · Oswald explains the theological significance of the repeated 'abide' language, connecting it to Jesus's farewell discourse in John 13-17 and demonstrating that 1 John functions as a commentary on Jesus's teaching

Now, somebody should count the words abide real quick. I don't know how many there are. I didn't count them. I can't count really well, not in real time anyway. What is going on here? Why is he using this word abide constantly? Well, two things. One is, is that if you're visiting with us today, one of the things that's going on in First John is, is he's just doing a commentary on Jesus's farewell discourse. So from John, the Gospel of John, chapter 13 through 17, first John is just a commentary on this section of Scripture in which Jesus Jesus does a lot of teaching. And one of the things that happens in that farewell discourse is Jesus emphasizes abiding. So one of the things he's doing is he's just bringing up again another section from the farewell discourse. But do you guys know what the word abide means? It just means stay put, settle in, reside. All he's saying is, don't get flaky on me, Church. Jesus was enough yesterday. He's Enough tomorrow. And I love that. Josh, read Galatians 1. If anyone comes in with anything new, selling you anything new, even if it's me or an angel of God, let them be accursed. For the gospel that you have received is the good news received once and for all for the saints.

28 · Oswald introduces Chesterton's distinction between linear progress (a road leaving the past behind) and rooted progress (a tree growing upward while remaining anchored)

I think that one of the things I read from Chesterton this week would really help us, and it's more broad than this passage, but I think this is just really helpful. He talks about two visions of progress that are portrayed in the world. And I think the worldly vision of progress is something like a road. This is how Chesterton describes it. You move down the road. And so the further you move down the road, the more progress you're making, the further away you get from just the basics. And you think eventually, like, well, I have to move beyond those things and keep going and keep going. And so the worldly view of progress is very linear. And it's like all that stuff's in the past. But Chesterton portrays the Christian view of progress like a tree growing out and up and beautifying, but always rooted in the same truth it started in from the very beginning, beginning. So I think the world is constantly trying, and this is the screwtape strategy, right? To get you to think about growth as a moving out, of moving beyond, and so on and so forth. It gets you to almost feel contempt for the former you that thought Jesus was enough. It gets you to almost feel contempt for church history because, oh my goodness, look how sinful those people were. And so, like, as if we're not this other view of progress. However, the Chestertonian view of progress isn't linear in the same sense. It's simply the tree rooted in Gospel soil that continues all of its days to continue to continue to continue. It's an abiding loyalty to Christ, and the growth emerges out of that abiding loyalty, not because you needed something new.

29 · Oswald shares his personal testimony as a vulnerable teenager who nearly succumbed to the very deception he's warning against

As a teenager, I really did want to follow the Lord, and I was just so gullible and vulnerable. Thankfully, the Lord protected me, but I would really wanted to follow the Lord. I just didn't feel like I was growing fast enough. And so I started looking at all the other things that are proposed as another option, or this was the missing ingredient. This is why I haven't grown. It's because I haven't had this, it's because I haven't had that. I started just dabbling and looking at all the possible additions to that would make sense of my Christian life. And eventually, thanks just to the Lord's kindness to me. He helped me to realize that all I really needed to do and all I could do is trust Christ every day of my life. And that eventually, as I just stayed put and stayed loyal to him, the grace of God would transform me from one degree of glory to the next.

30 · Oswald addresses younger believers directly with specific application: resist the pressure to find a secret key to growth

So I do have a particular word for some of you who are maybe on the younger side. And you're just thinking, it's just not working. I'm just not growing. I just say, walk with intention. Don't look as confused as you are. Don't open yourself up to all of these snake oil salesmen who will tell you, oh, but don't you see? This is what you've been missing. And if you just had this, you would be a fulfilled Christian. Nonsense. Abide in Christ. Take root in Him, Take root in his gospel and let him grow you according to his faithfulness.

31 · Oswald concludes by connecting the sermon's message to the Lord's Supper, framing communion as participation in 'this very old, old, old, faithful, true grace

Well, as we introduce communion, if you're here today and you're a follower of Jesus Christ, committed to abiding in him, we want you to partake in communion with us even if you're not a member here. And the gospel ground that we are taking root in is portrayed at this table. This week, Dov posted an excellent article about just this basic Gospel ethos that we see. And one of the key passages is 2nd Corinthians 5, 20, 21. This is the gospel ground I want you to abide in. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God for our sake. He made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God even in the midst of all of the possible antichrists that were rising just very early on in the Church. You had founding fathers of Christendom in some sense say things like the following from the late three hundreds. Gregory of Nyssa says, for having transferred to himself the filth of my sins, he communicated his purity to me, making me a partaker of his beauty. So would you come and celebrate this very old, old, old, faithful, true grace that God has given us? Jesus Christ became sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.