Monday 20th
1 John 2:26-27
‘I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.’
I want to introduce another word beginning with ‘a’ in our devotion today which is essential to us as we seek to follow and live for Christ in this dark world in which we are living in, it is the word ‘assured’.
In our text we see that John has written the things he has written to warn the Christians of the things and the people who would try to deceive them. He is wanting them to be ‘assured’ in the things that they have heard and received as they have responded to the message of the One who had been made manifest, the One who is the word of life, the One through whom true fellowship is to be found, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us be clear that the evidence around us would tell us that we are in the latter minutes of the ‘last hour’ that John spoke of in v18, because of this the enemy will be on a rampage like never before because he knows that the time is fast coming when he will be thrown into the lake of fire. He will not only throw all the effort he can into keeping blind eyes blinded, but he will be doing his hardest distracting and alluring the believer with the ‘the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life’ (v16). We may think ‘Ah, I’m spiritually strong enough for that to not happen’, but remember we are living in a fallen world, now think about the world that Adam and Eve lived in, it was an unfallen world, it was a perfect environment yet they fell! We need to be constantly watching out for the wiles of the devil. He will also seek to infiltrate the Church with those who John called antichrists who will deceive and divide. Jesus also warned of this in his dialogue with the disciples concerning the last days, he said there would be those who claimed to be the Christ and those who would rise up as false prophets leading many to go astray.
Please hear my heart as a pastor to those who would call Emmanuel Pentecostal Church your spiritual home, make sure you put all the effort you can to attend regularly, for without regular fellowship you are putting yourself at risk of being led into the traps which the devil is laying out to ensnare believers, the trap of ‘Oh I don’t need fellowship’, YES YOU DO. The trap of ‘Oh I can stay at home and watch something on the internet or a video’, THAT LEADS TO ISOLATION, the trap of the allurements of the world, THIS WILL LEAD TO A TURNING AWAY. The local Church is the place where we fellowship together, we encourage one another, we receive instruction together and it is the place where we can ‘be assured’ concerning the things we believe which will help us to stand in a society that is anti-God and anti-Christ and to help us to be careful not to fall into any of the traps I have mentioned or anything else that the devil will do to allure us.