The Importance of Knowing Scripture

Read: 2 John

Know the truth by reading scripture. It is the only way to identify a lie and to avoid corruption. It is the only way to remain close to God.

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Vs. 1-4 

•  The elect lady and her children know the truth and walk in it.

Vs. 5-6 

• John is reaffirming the truth, which has been preached from the beginning, that the elect lady   has received. – so there’s nothing new here.

Vs. 7 

•  John warns the elect lady that there are liars that have come into the world (the church, etc.) to deceive and corrupt the Church, the children of God. – There are lies that are in the world right now, that are trying to (or have already) enter into the hearts and minds of God’s children.

Vs. 8 

•  John tells the elect lady what she needs to do, and why.

• To look among yourself (because no one else can do it for you: no one else can see the depths of your heart but you and God) – John shows here that he didn’t know if those liars had entered into their church or not, so they had to search for themselves.

•   So that you don’t lose everything it is that you’ve worked for, so those lies don’t grow and corrupt you, drawing you away from God.

So how do we search ourselves? How do we identify the liars and the lies?

Vs. 9

•   Those who don’t abide (believe and practice) the doctrine of Christ (the Word of God) are the liars that will corrupt you. – Those things that you hear that aren’t in accordance with the Word of God are lies.

• Those who do believe and practice the Word of God are children of God. – Those things that you hear that are in accordance with Scripture are truth.

Sounds easy- but you have to know the Word of God in order to identify when someone or something is a lie.

•     “Federal agents don’t learn to spot counterfeit money by studying the counterfeits. They study genuine bills until they master the look of the real thing.”

o   If you know the truth, if you abide in scripture, if you read it and know it, then you will be able to identify a lie instantly. So the enemy won’t be able to corrupt you with lies, because you’ll know the truth.

Vs. 10-11

• So if you hear a lie, don’t even entertain it. Don’t welcome the thought into your mind; don’t think twice about it.

So you need to compare everything you hear to the truth:

In Acts 17: 10-11 – we see what this looks like,

• The Jews didn’t just take everything they heard at face value, no matter how good it sounded. They went back into Scripture and made sure that it was truth. Once they saw that it was, THEN they accepted it.

If we aren’t living in scripture, lies can creep in without us even realizing it.

In 2 Kings 22 we see how not reading scripture crippled an entire nation.

Vs. 4 

•  We see that the temple was still functioning: there was a high priest, they were still collecting the temple tax – things seemed relatively normal.

Vs. 8 

•  The Word of God had been so disregarded that even the high priest didn’t even know the Law anymore.

Vs. 11 

• The King of Israel hears the Law, the Word of God, for the very first time.

• Josiah tore his clothes because he realized that he and all of Israel were so far removed from God and in such rebellion against Him. So likewise, Christians nowadays walk around with the title of "Christian", but never read the Bible, so they have no way of even knowing how far removed they are from God. - Without reading scripture, there is no way of knowing whether or not you’re believing or living in a lie.