How To Function With Unction! 1 John 2:18-28
Last week during the message, I was preaching about how King Jehoshaphat knew that the ministers of King Ahab were fake and phony and I said that we should be able to spot a fake. I received some funny looks. I am well aware of the fact that sometimes we are fooled by people and our discernment is either not working properly or is not well honed enough by the Spirit or we simply do not trust our discernment.
I am also well aware of what Jesus said: John 6:69 And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God. 70 Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? 71 He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.
Now with all of this in mind, how in the world can people, saved people, detect a phony? Let’s look at our text again: 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. 20 But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. 21 I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.
In verse 20, we are told that we have an unction from the Holy One and we know all things. So what is this very special, very significant and very vital yet very often neglected anointing from the Holy Spirit of God?
Luke 4:14 And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. 15 And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. 16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. 17 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. 20 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.
When the Lord Jesus came back to Galilee, He came back filled with the Holy Spirit, KJV says returned in the power of the Spirit but the Greek actually says He came back full of and under the influence of the Holy Spirit. In verse 18 it says that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus and anointed Jesus. It was this anointing, this filling that enabled the Lord Jesus to perform miracles, to heal, to deliver, to set free captives and to declare the Word of God!
Now 1 John 2 tells us that we have an unction from the Holy One. If it was vitally important for the Lord Jesus to be filled with the Holy Spirit, how much more so is that true for all of us that are saved? In John 14, the Lord told the disciples that it was necessary for Him to go away in order for the Holy Spirit to come. Now John has already told us that through this anointing, this unction, we can know the things of God!
1 Cor. 2:14 says But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. This unction and anointing are absolutely vital to understanding the Word of God. No person can take the Word of God and comprehend it unless that person has the Spirit of God and that is what Paul was saying in 1 Cor. 2:14.
I have heard people say well I would like to know more about the Word of God and be better able to understand what God’s will for my life is. Most Christians don’t realize that there is so much more to the Christian life than church attendance and do’s and don’ts. That is why so many Christians end up frustrated or even going back to their old way of life because they have not experienced this unction from the Holy One.
John said 20 But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. 21 I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth.
How do we know these things? Jesus was teaching about the Holy Spirit in John 14 and listen to these verses: (John 14:23-27) 23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. 24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.
25 These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. 26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
God’s Word itself is saying that you can get alone with God and the Bible and that God Himself through the Holy Spirit will reveal the Word of God to you, He, the Holy Spirit will teach you. People are sometimes amazed at what some preacher or Bible teacher will dig out of the Word of God. They do this by spending time alone with God and His Word and the Holy Spirit teaches this to them.
But even though this great and mighty power is available to every believer, not every believer has taken advantage of what God has made available. All too many Christians are so devoid of the power of God on their lives that they live just about like the world does except they go to church. God did not intend for it to be that way. God intended for His people to live a life of joy, peace, blessedness, success and even health.
3 John 2 says Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. Jer. 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
We have it preached to us and taught to us that all of the talk about being in health and prospering is that health and wealth theology and is unscriptural. That shows an ignorance of the Word of God. It shows a wrong view of God the Father. It shows a lack of understanding of the basic will of God in the life of every believer! You that are parents consider it this way.
Matthew 7:9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? A literal translation of that reads: 9 “You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? 10 Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! 11 So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.
The Word of God is chocked full of precious promises to the followers of God but because so many Christians do not have this unction from the Holy One they do not know these things and therefore remain in darkness. Notice verse 8 of 1 John 2: Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.
Jonathan Edwards was perhaps one of the greatest theological minds of our nation. Yet, he had no computer, no internet, no seminary, and no great library of books. What he did was this. He took his bible apart page by page. Between each page of Bible text he placed a blank sheet of paper and then put the Bible back together. He would spend hours reading the Word of God and would make notes of what God has said to him on those blank pages and that is how he came to know the Word of God, through the Holy Spirit.
When the Apostle John wrote this, the times were terrible. In AD 70 Jerusalem had been trodden down and destroyed and the people of God scattered everywhere. There were false teachers everywhere and John felt compelled to write to believers to encourage them to know and to follow the truth. In 1 John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.
1. WE RECOGNIZE UNTRUTH BY THIS UNCTION!
A. Recognizing Our Unction! Remember John said we have an unction from the Holy One. It is by this filling of the Holy Spirit, this anointing that we are enabled and equipped to recognize evil and error. He said we know the truth. IT is by this unction and this filling of the Spirit that we are able to discern between what is evil and what is good, what is from the devil and what is from God and what is right and what is wrong!
I say again if this was important enough that Jesus was filled as we found in Luke 4, then it is vital and essential that we are filled with this unction. I have said that the devil’s greatest tool is discouragement but the devil’s greatest work, his most damnable work is in making things look like the truth when they are actually lies. He uses this work to cause people to believe that things are from God when they are actually from Satan himself. We need the power of the Holy Spirit, this unction to know the truth and act on it.
John said in vs. 18 1 John 2:18 Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; As John speaks here, antichrist could mean any teaching that is given as a substitute for Christ or against Christ or against the Words of Christ. Entire denominations operate along these lines embracing God but rejecting God’s Son the Lord Jesus Christ and refusing to acknowledge Jesus as God and as Lord. It also means any person who embodies these teachings.
I have said this before as I now say again, it is so important where you go to church and who you listen to. Peter spoke about this: 2 Peter 3:16-17 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. 17 Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.
Peter is saying that some people who really don’t know the truth wrest or pervert the scriptures to say what they want them to say but they do this according to the Word of God to their own destruction. John writes in Chapter of 4 of 1 John: 5 They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. 6 We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
Satan’s most subtle tactic is to simply stop Christians from taking God at His Word, simply placing a question mark where God has placed a period indicating this is truth. WE are living in a day and an age where truth is under constant attack. Listen to these statistics: Barna Research Group periodically conducts phone surveys of American adults. The found:
In 1997, 50% of Christians and 25% of non-Christians said that there are moral truths which are unchanging, and that truth is absolute, not relative to the circumstances. In 2000, 40% of individuals involved in a Christian disciplining process believed that there is no such thing as absolute moral truth. In 2000-JAN, a Barna Research poll showed that 38% of adult Americans believe that absolute true exists.
In 2001-NOV, another Barna poll showed that this had dropped almost in half -- to 22%. Their poll showed an amazing diversity of belief among followers of different branches of Christianity, and adults of different ages. Barna found that the following percentages of people believe in absolute truth: 13% those born in 1965 or later. 15% of adults who are not born-again Christians. 16% of Roman Catholics. 22% of all Americans (24% among women; 20% among men). 24% of those born in 1945 or before. 28% those born between and 1946 and 1964. 32% of those who attend conservative Christian churches. 32% of adults who are born-again Christians.
B. Recognizing Their Dysfunction! How do we recognize error that resembles truth and even be able to say something about so early on that many will say that we are being divisive? Let me just tell you the truth. We are not being divisive because there was already a divide there and we simply recognize it. We recognize that their perversion of the truth is dysfunctional. We are enabled by the Spirit to do this:
19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.
As we press towards the end of the age, we will face more and more of this. Judas Iscariot was numbered with the disciples but he did not continue with them and he went out from them but he was not of them as was manifested by his failure to continue with them in the truth. Let me say that there is a distinct difference between a backslider and an apostate – (deserter: a disloyal person who betrays or deserts his cause).
A backslider is a Christian who is not following the Lord Jesus very closely. An apostate is one who has turned from revealed truth while still attempting to maintain that he is following the truth. Perhaps early on the apostate gave some indication that he was going to be identified with the Savior and with the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, but somewhere along the way he rejected the Lord Jesus and turned away from truth.
Notice vss. 22-23 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. 23 Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also. If we could look into the heart of the backslider we would find the Lord Jesus. But if we were to look into the heart of the apostate we would not find the Lord we would instead find the devil.
How do we know the difference? How do we discern between the two? Is important to have this discernment or this ability to recognize? Jonah 4:11 And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; Now if you study this passage it means that there were more than 120K people in spiritual darkness.
They had no ability of discernment. How do we discern? Vs. 20 But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. 21 I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Remember that no lie is of the truth. Eyewitness or false-witness. No mixture of truth is really the truth, it is a lie. I say again, error is a mixture of truth with that which is not truth and it is a lie. We have an unction from the Holy One and we know the truth. 1 John 4:6 We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
2. WE REMAIN TRUE BY THIS UNCTION!
According to the Lord Jesus, The Holy Spirit instructs us, teaches us, and enables us. The Holy Spirit helps us to lay hold on all the Spiritual Blessings given to us in Christ Jesus according to Ephesians 1:3 and 2 Peter 1:3 According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. The Word of God teaches that the Holy Spirit is doing one work in the world and another work in the lives of believers.
A. With The Unction We Are Victorious! 1 John 2:24 Let that therefore abide in you, which ye have heard from the beginning. If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father. 25 And this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life. If that which you heard from the beginning shall remain in you then you shall continue or remain in Christ and in the Father. By the Spirit we receive the truth and by the Spirit we can walk in the truth.
There is more to the truth than receiving it, we must walk in it. We must be doers of the Word showing our faith by our works. When we walk in the truth we are going to realize that Jesus Christ is the Victor. The people in John’s day were hearing all sorts of frightening things. Paul said in the last days perilous times would come and I believe we are there now. Many people are worried about the future and what it holds.
But we can remain true because we have an unction from the Holy Spirit, an anointing, a filling of the Spirit that helps us to remain true in the midst of uncertainty. But we must chose first to receive this truth from God by the Holy Spirit. In Matt. 17 Jesus asked the disciples who they thought He was. In verse 16 Peter answers: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father in heaven.
But after we receive the truth, we must act on it, allow it to remain in us and change our thoughts and the way that we live. We must operate by faith in the unction we have received from the Holy Spirit.
B. Without The Unction We Are Victims! Let me say that you cannot do this on your own. Apart from the Spirit of God we will never know true victory. We will be in bondage to all the things we were prior to our conversion just maybe not in the same measure. As we abide in the Lord He will reveal unto us that He has conquered all things and hath placed all of these things under His feet (Eph. 1:20). I don’t know what you face today but I do know that it is under HIS feet! There is not a problem that is not under His feet! Don’t be a victim when God meant for His sons and daughters to be victors! We have this eternal life!
3. WE REMEMBER TRUTH BY THIS UNCTION!
1 John 2:26 These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. 27 But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. 28 And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming. 29 If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him.
A. There Are Seducers In The World! I am very saddened by the amount of people being led astray. Most cults are comprised of people who were once in a mainline church who somewhere departed from the truth. Many of them have just enough truth mixed with error to lead the weak and feeble astray. I believe that there is even a spirit of deception in the world now that seeks to lead people astray. Notice 2 Thess. 2:8
8 And then shall that Wicked (antichrist) be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
B. We Are Sons and Daughters Of The Lord! Let me say that none of that has to happen to the children of God. And now, little children, abide in him; When you face a crisis, you do not have to feel as though you have been orphaned by God. John 14:17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. That word comfortless means orphaned. In the GK it reads: No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you. Remember the truth that you have received. The Holy Spirit will cause you to remember what the Lord has said and what truth has been revealed to you. We are sons and daughters, the children of God and we will never be orphans.
C. The Savior Is Coming Again! Notice vs. 28 And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear… I love that, when He shall appear not if. We have this unction, this anointing or filling of the Holy Spirit and He reveals to us the fact of the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have been made more than conquerors through Him who loved us and gave Himself for us.
Let me ask you something, do you feel more like a victim or more like a victor? Do you feel like you have been under foot or your problems have been under His feet? Have you realized, do you remember today that you are a child of God? Or has your light gone out and it seems as if you have been walking in darkness?
Come To Jesus!
