8/10/25 “Hold On!”
“Hold On!”
1 John 2:18-29
Do we have any roller coaster fans here this morning?
You like being shot hundreds of feet into the air…flying through loop after loop…upside down…side to side…
Well…If you’re a fan of these crazy things – more power to you.
My family and I – we don’t really do the coaster thing….
About 15 years ago, we took our girls to Great America near Chicago….
We thought it would be a fun day – we’ll play some games…eat some unhealthy carnival food….ride a bunch of roller-coasters…
So we boarded our first ride…we’re all laughing and smiling…
…we didn’t even know what the coaster was called…we just saw a short line and said “Hey, let’s go over there.”
So the ride began nice and slowly…life is good at this point…
But then we sped up…faster…and faster…and faster…soon we’re pulling 3 G’s around each corner…
…Our once-smiling faces have now melted into faces of sheer terror.
After the ride ended, we all stumbled off the platform…
…Lindsay was groaning…Lexy was doubled-over a trash can somewhere..
Lisa and I were nauseous….partly from the ride – and partly from realizing that we just dropped a couple hundred bucks things that will make us violently ill…
…So we finally regained our senses…and all of us came to the conclusion that roller coasters are not for us…
I looked back at the ride we were on and realized that it wasn’t even one of the adult rides…
….We were in a children’s section of the park!
…We couldn’t even handle a kiddie ride!....pathetic, right?
Well – there are a lot of crazy rides at Great America – and at other theme parks across this country…
…And it seems as though they’re always trying to build a coaster that’s more and more impressive.
But as extreme as all of these new rides are – they will never be as dangerous as something many of us grew up with when we were kids…
And it was a Children’s ride!
This ride was sooo dangerous that it’s now been outlawed in many parts of the country…
…Yet – as kids - we were drawn to it like flies to a bug zapper.
…Deep down, we knew that if we could last just 60 seconds on this thing – then we could handle literally anything life threw at us…
…we could be legends of the playground
That’s right, I’m talking about – “The Playground Spinner”
(Show Picture of Spinner)
This archaic instrument of torture was for only the bravest of young souls…
Multiple kinds of injuries – even death – could easily come into play while riding this thing..
As I recall, the most frequent means of injury from this ride was “The Fly Off”
This is when a kid makes the poor life decision to be on the outside of the spinner – rather than the inside –
…The spinner begins rotating – powered by 2 people stationed across from each other…
These 2 individuals were usually older siblings of the riders…whose sole intent was to see how many fly-offs they could indeed accomplish…
If you were not holding on like your life depended on it – chances are, you would soon find yourself hurtling through the air at a high rate of speed…
Eventually landing 30 or 40 feet away from the spinner…perhaps in need of a body-cast.
Playground Spinners meant job security for an entire generation of orthopedic surgeons…
Of course, there were also the usual injuries from the spinner stopping too quickly…one would usually sustain some sort of metal-bar-to-the-head injury…
But then….there was that one injury that no one dare speak of…
An injury so devastating that when it happened to someone, you just knew - they’d never be the same again…
I’m referring to – “The Suck Under”
Once in a great while – during a ‘Fly-Off’ - a kid would be only partially ejected from the spinner…
For a brief second, the poor soul would still be hanging onto a bar with one hand while the rest of his body would be dangling off the side of the ride – flopping around like a Raggety Anne doll…
…Then in the blink of an eye, gravitational forces would suck the kid right under the entire ride!
When that happened, everything came to a slow stop…mostly due to the frictional drag of a small human being pulverized underneath the rotating platform…
No words were necessary…Everyone understood the gravity of the moment…
We all knew that we’d most likely never see that poor kid again…or if we did…he’d be just a shell of what he once was…
Every neighborhood kid knew that the “Suck Under” was a possibility…
You just prayed it never happened to you.
Well – all joking aside this morning – our passage of scripture for today does instruct us to hold onto something….
…but it’s not a metal bar on a playground spinner…
Rather – it’s a command to hold on to the truth of the gospel, found in God’s Word.
Just like losing one’s grip on a playground spinner will most-likely result in physical harm….
…losing one’s grip on the authority, sufficiency, and truth of God’s Word will always result in spiritual harm…if not spiritual death altogether.
We begin today’s passage in verse 18 (1 John 2:18) where John introduces a sense of urgency in regard to recognizing those who deliberately teach doctrines that are in opposition to the truth of the gospel.
John mentions that this is the ‘last hour’….
Theologically speaking, the ‘last hour’ is the age in which we live today as well….it began when Jesus came to earth as a baby…
…and it will end when he returns as a conquering King.
Through the centuries, Christians have been living with a sense of urgency within this ‘last hour’….and this is by design.
If we knew the exact date of Jesus’ return…it would result in the temptation to shirk our responsibility to tell others about the Savior….as well as remaining vigilant in our own spiritual lives.
We always need to live as if Jesus could return at any time….
John also uses the term ‘Antichrist’ here in verse 18 (1 John 2:18)
For many of you, when you hear this term, you immediately think of “THE Antichrist’ – also called ‘The Beast’ in John’s prophetic book of Revelation.
That futuristic individual who – through Satan’s power – will deceive much of the world into following his leadership and godless agenda.
John mentions him here – but he just mentions him in passing…
His focus here is not so much on the futuristic individual we see later in Revelation….
…but on those who were – at one point in their lives – associated with the body of believers….
…only to forsake their professed allegiance with sound doctrine – and teach heresies that were opposed to the truth concerning the nature of Jesus…His nature & purpose.
Verse 19 (1 John 2:19) says “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us…”
Meaning these people once claimed to be genuine followers of Christ, but – like Paul’s associate Demas who I briefly mentioned last week – eventually revealed their counterfeit faith by deserting orthodox truth altogether…
John says that “…Their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”
As a pastor, this passage – and others like it – are especially difficult because it’s a reminder that there will always be a certain percentage of people within every church who have “Let go” of the truths of sound doctrine…in favor of deadly lies…
….spiritual lies that will throw them under the cultural spinner of false religion….or humanism…or naturalism…or atheism.
But John reminds us in verse 20 (1 John 2:20) that all genuine believers are indwelt – or, anointed – with the Holy Spirit…
This means that – through the Spirit’s power – believers are given the natural ability to discern between truth and error…
…between false doctrine and that which is correctly in line with God’s Word.
Personally, I’ve never been approached by someone in a back ally wanting to sell me a Rolex watch…
…you used to hear about that happening in large cities from time to time…
The modern equivalent would be like buying a Rolex on Facebook marketplace, it may be difficult to spot a fake vs the real thing…
…Unless…one knows the real thing inside and out….
If I’m familiar enough with the real thing…than I’m able to spot a fake the minute I see it – or hold it in my hand.
Brothers & Sisters - The same holds true in being able to spot false doctrine…
When we know God’s Word inside and out…recognizing heresy becomes much, much easier…
That’s why we ALL need to stay connected to this book (The Bible)…
…Like a kid on the playground spinner…hold onto the Bible for dear life…because it literally is your life…
God’s Word is the only way in which we come to understand who Jesus is…what he’s done for us on the cross…and how to know him personally as Lord & Savior…
John states in verse 22 (1 John 2:22) that the spirit of antichrist is upon anyone who denies the truth concerning the nature of Christ…
…or to put it another way – the denial that Jesus was who he said he was…
…He was the Messiah (Which means ‘the chosen one’)
…He was who Israel had been waiting on for centuries
…He was also the Son of God – the second member of the eternal Triune Godhead
…Jesus was also fully human as well while in the flesh
…And it is only through Jesus that one might be saved…
These are all essential characteristics of Jesus’ identity that were being challenged by some who taught a false gospel message…
A certain group of early Gnostics held to a heresy called Docetism…
Docetism was the idea that Jesus was never fully God and fully human at the same time…
…they taught that a ‘Christ Spirit’ of some kind came upon a man named Jesus at his baptism, then left him just before his death…
This teaching contradicts numerous passages of scripture that clearly teach how Jesus was both fully God and man at the same time…
Paul says in Colossians 2:9 “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.”
We are also told in Philippians 5 that Jesus “…being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”
One might be tempted to think – well, isn’t this dispute over the exact nature of Jesus just splitting hairs….
…why would any of this matter to my salvation so long as I have faith in Jesus…
Well – as someone once put it – the devil is in the details…
…And in this case, quite literally.
You see, if Jesus was not fully man, he could never have been the perfect HUMAN sacrifice that was needed to atone for the entire human race…
…and – at the same time – if Jesus were not fully God, he would not have been able to live a sinless life and ascend to the right hand of the Father and intercede for us…
So…if you place your faith and trust in anyone (Or anything) not embodying all of these qualities…well – then you aren’t believing in the true Jesus…
because the true Jesus did embody all of these Divine and Anthropic attributes…
Folks - Intentionally Placing your faith and trust in a savior who is anything less than the true savior…is like boarding a train that you wholeheartedly believe will take you from New York to Switzerland…
Well – you’ll get a few miles – but soon you’ll be swimming in the Atlantic Ocean…
Why? … Because you placed your trust in the wrong mode of transportation…
A train is built to haul people, but it lacks the capability of bringing you to the land-locked destination you are wanting…
…only an airplane can do that for you.
In the same way – make sure you are placing your faith and trust in the one true savior who can deliver you where you need to go.
Lastly, John stresses the point that it is our responsibility to hold onto the truth of God’s Word…
If we allow ourselves to be swept away – or, ‘sucked under’ by bad doctrine or man-made philosophies…we have no one to blame but ourselves.
John says in verse 24 (1 John 2:24) “See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you.”
In other words, continue listening to - and obeying - the Holy Spirit who is already indwelling you…
Through rightly dividing God’s Word, the Holy Spirit will teach you the things you need in order to have a proper understanding of who Jesus is - and what he’s done for you.
You will not be sucked under the platform of false teaching…because you are holding fast to the Word of Life.
The final words in verse 27 (1 John 2:27) are “Remain in Him”
These are fitting words to conclude our message today…
“Remain in Him”…Hold on!
Hang on tight to the Truth that will save your soul!
Let’s Pray.