I John, 2:24-27

Okay, well today we're on chapter two and verses 24 to 27. And could I have someone, I'd like to go back and read, if I could get a volunteer to be willing to read in chapter two, verses 18 and 19, and then we'll skip down to our verses here, 24 through 27.

Little children, it is the last time, and as you have heard, that Antichrist shall come. Even now are there many Antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time. 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.

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. And this is the promise, that he hath promised us even eternal life. These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye not He need not that any man teach you, but as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

Great. Thanks, Doris. So our passage here, as we start off, if you'll notice the as for you and as for you down here, in kind of researching this a little bit, it seems like that could be rendered but as for you. And some say, and I don't really pick up on it, The U in the Greek, the su, is a sharp contrast. And I personally could not pick that up, but taking what others have said, it seems like it's contrasting with what Doris read in verses 18 and 19. We've been studying the last several weeks about the antichrist or the mini-antichrist, the spirit of the antichrist. And so what John is doing here, he says, in sharp contrast to that, I'm going to tell you all these things, where you should be at. is basically it.

So, as for you, let that abide in you, and so on. Then down here, as for you, the anointing which you have, and so on. So, those phrases, as for you or but as for you, seem to be a contrast to what the false antichrist information that was going out before them. Okay. So now let's just kind of move on and we'll... Yikes. Okay.

So just take the first sentence in verse 24, As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. And if you think about that, that's a very familiar kind of phraseology with what we've seen before. In fact, look down here in the first chapter, the first verse, and I kind of condensed it. What was from the beginning, what we have heard, and then it goes on, what we have seen, what we have touched, and so on, concerning the word of life, The name, Word of Life.

So I've asked this question back when we were in 1 John 1.1, the what? And actually what I did here, I basically, you could diagram this verse, but I basically just put it in kind of subject-verb order and the two clauses there. So the two clauses in verse 2a, 24a are, You have heard what from the beginning and let that abide in you. So what do you think? The what and the that, what do they refer to?

This isn't going to be rocket science. Hopefully I've laid it out enough that it seems clear. Right. Right. I think, you know, actually, on the next page I'll show this a little better. It seems like John will use these replacements for the Lord Jesus, the what and the that, and he used that in the first verse, and he's using it here again. You heard what from the beginning? The word of life, I believe, in that context is the word of life, which is the Lord Jesus. And let that, the word of life, or the Lord Jesus, abide in you.

So we're going to look through that in more detail here. Also, the word, and we've been through this many times, the word heard is a kuo to hear, and it's in the aorist tense. So it's saying that it's a past fact. They heard the Lord Jesus in the past, from the beginning. and it's true, it's a reality in their lives. So, he's basically said that you heard what from the beginning?

Let's just go on here to the next. There we go. Okay, so I replaced the two words with the word of life. You heard the word of life from the beginning, and let the word of life abide in you. So, as we go through here, we're going to spend a fair amount of time looking at this idea of abiding, which is a really important thing to understand in scripture. And one of the key verses in abide is this word meno in the Greek, to continue, to dwell, to endure, to be present. And it's the idea, and I like what Hal says, you know, to be at home. Abiding with someone is to be at home with them, to be in this fellowship, if it's in terms of our Savior, be in fellowship or abiding with the Lord. And one of the key verses on that is in John 15, 4. And the Lord says, abide in me, and I in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.

And if you notice, it's a present tense. So this is to be presently occurring in the believer's life in John's time and by application in our lives. in the imperative mood. So what would you say? Vern talks a lot about different kinds of imperative moods here.

Is the Lord appealing to, is this a stern thing, abide in me? Or is he appealing to something else? Or is he appealing to, hey, the only way you're going to have fruit, or you're going to live the Christian life, right? Abide in me and I in you. He says, a simple illustration, as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.

It makes sense. You have to be in this relationship with the Lord Jesus to live the life, Christ's life. So the encouragement here is that you've heard the word of life from the beginning and let that abide, let that life abide in you. If you notice, it's a reciprocal relationship. You're allowing the Lord to live his life in you. As you abide in me, I abide in you.

Our part is to continue to dwell in all the words there, and the Lord will do his part. And this phraseology is used a lot in scripture. And there's just a lot of other verses. And I want to look at a few, I think, that would be helpful. And actually, Abide appears, I think Josiah's keeping count, 18 times. Manoah appears 18 times, according to my count, in 1 John.

And let's look at the Gospel of John for a second. Gospel of John, chapter 5. In the Gospel of John, Chapter 5, verses 37 and 38. And the Father who sent me, he is going to witness with me, that neither bread was at any time, nor seed was born. And you do not have the word of I in you, for you do not believe him whom he sent.

All right. So, you know, and there's another another aspect for that. And this is somewhat starts to point it out here. There's sort of a conditional aspect and a positional aspect. What would you say? I'm going to step away from this versus for a second. I'm kind of going backwards here for a sec. But just what would you say? Is this speaking about our condition, John 15, 4, and hence, the letter to Biden and John 24a, you think it's speaking about our condition or our position in the Lord? Is there something? I wasn't sure. The computer is blowing up. I don't know what's going on here.

So, is this making reference to our condition or our fellowship in 1 John or is this making reference to our position? Something that the believer already has. Condition. Good, good, excellent. I mean, I don't know, to me it's pretty straightforward. He says, you know, condition is his fellowship, as in 1 John, fellowship is a primary theme of 1 John. It's fellowship. Well, what I found is, as I looked at other phrases in Scripture, in the Gospels, I found that it wasn't focused as much on condition, it's more on position. You know, we are immersed into Christ, we're in Christ, and we can never be separated. That's a positional truth.

And so I think this verse here, what do you think about the one we just read? And now I'm probably getting back to what we just read. John 5, 37 and 38. Now, of course, he's talking and I didn't, he's talking here to probably the Jewish people, but, and he's basically saying in verse 38, you have basically, you don't have His word, God's word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him who He sent. So he's basically saying they don't know Him as their Savior, from what I can tell. So this is kind of referring to a positional. That's what I thought too. Okay, that's what I was trying to have. I mean, it's a little complicated to get there, but there's another verse in Turn of the Gospel of John, chapter 8. And let's see, can someone read verse 31? 831 in the gospel.

Jesus therefore was saying to those Jews who had believed him, if you abide in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine. Okay, would you say this is talking about their position or their condition? It's interesting that King James doesn't even have Remember the definition right here, Doug? You're going to see it translated, continued, while, endure, it can be other words, remain, but it's the same memo. So, in verse 31, it says, Jesus therefore was saying to those Jews who had believed.

It seems to me that he's encouraging them, it's not that they've already believed him. If you abide in my words, then you are truly my disciples. So to me, it seems like that's probably condition. Okay, now let's look at some future verses. Let's go to 1 John now. We're going to see these in the future here, not too far away. 1 John chapter 4.

And can I get someone to read 13 through 15? Thereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us his place. And we have seen and have testified that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. Okay. Now this is interesting.

In this verse, I don't know. So what do you think about the word abide here is used in 13 and in 15? Is it used maybe the same way in 13, in the conditional position, or do you think there's some different things going on here? Let's start with 15. I think 15 is the more obvious one.

He makes a direct statement here, right? I think that's the position. Exactly. Whoever confesses that Jesus is... Whoever believes in God. Exactly. God abides in him, and he in God. Positional, done deal. You can worry yourself. Some people do. They worry themselves sick. What did I do? The Lord cast me out? It says right here, if you confess Jesus, the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. But then,

13. What do you think about 13? I don't know. I'm not sure I have a total answer. It's the same Greek word for abide. No, it's the same. It's meno. It's the same Greek word. And, of course, I didn't check the tenses. I haven't done... I know, there's all this stuff you need to do. And we'll get a chance. We'll get a chance to do this more. This isn't our final shot at this word. So, it seems like this is saying, by this we know.

He wants them to know about their fellowship, it seems, about their walk with the Lord, that we abide in Him. because he's given us of his spirit. Now, you also could argue that, hey, every believer has a spirit as a permanent, and we're going to see that in a couple of slides here. Every believer has the Holy Spirit given a permanent possession, never to be removed, not like the Old Testament. So, I don't know, 13, it seemed like I first thought it was conditioned, but I don't know. Is the by this we know, is it referring to the first? And that's a good. And OK. And that's a good point. I haven't really. But First John is challenging. You've got to really keep your head, you know. So have you noticed?

I noticed that it seems like the truth will set you free. It's been a big buzzword in the popular media today. The truth will set you free. The truth will set you free, whether it could be the truth about, you know, soap detergents or, you know, whatever. It's going to set you free from washing your clothes every day or something. I don't know. Who knows? Okay. All right.

Well, this is my all-time favorite. In terms of abide, I think Hal nailed it. So this is a believer with his two natures, and hey, he can abide. He can abide in his new nature, and that's exactly where the Lord in John 15, verse 4 said, abide in me. That's how you're going to live the Christian life. But he also can abide. He can hang out, dwell over there in his sin nature.

In a picture form, this really kind of captures, you know, it's just would have been helpful to me over the years. OK, I just can't put that in there for. OK, so let's go on to part B of this verse. We only have only part A. So this is a conditional sentence. So you have the main clause is the then part of the fulfillment part. And the if part, so the subordinate clause is the conditional part. So it's saying, let's read the fulfillment part. You will also abide in the Son and in the Father if what you heard from the beginning abides in you. So really, it's a pretty simple statement, a pretty simple condition. And actually, it's what they call a third class condition.

It's likely you will do it. But you may not do it. I think it fits well with the picture that we had before, the conditional picture. It's likely you will abide with the Lord. That's where the Lord wants you, and it's likely you will. But you may not. You may be hanging out, you know, to your detriment.

So basically, if you kind of look at this, again, what you heard from the beginning, you know, it's very similar phraseology to what we had in the A part. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, So for that to abide in you, you must be abiding in the Lord.

You will also abide in the Son and in the Father. You get a package deal here. You get the whole Godhead, basically. You will also abide in the Son and in the Father. And there are several other verses that talk about the wonderful fact that There's this unity between the Father and the Son and actually the believer. We're all in this union together. In the Gospel of John, again, there are a couple of verses that are really good that talk about this. You will also abide in the Son and in the Father. John 14.

John 14.23 says, Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. So I thought this was just really beautiful. It turns about the fact that if anyone loves me, and I'm taking that to be, you know, they know him as their Savior, and keeps his word, and that's Christ's word, remember, it's not the law, my Father will love him and we'll come make our abode with him.

Also, then over in John 17, 20 and 21, I do not ask on behalf of you alone, but for those also who believe in me and your word, that they may all be one, even as you, the Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. Isn't that neat, in 21 there where it says, they all may be one even as we are one, even as you, Father, are to me, and I am thee. So that the union that the Father and the Son has, we're part of that. That they may also be in us.

So the fact that you will abide in the Father and the Son, that's consistent with what we see in other parts of Scripture. Okay, so that's basically verse 1. And this is in contrast to what the Antichrists were putting forth. As for you, or but as for you, let that abide in you what you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you will also abide in the Son and in the Father.

OK. All right. So now let's go on to 25. I just inserted a chart here. We've seen it before about the third class condition. So you can look at that if you like. OK. So what's interesting here is it seems like it kind of takes a detour. But I was kind of thinking about the fact that he's referring to what they heard from the Lord Jesus when he was here. When John's speaking about they heard him, they saw him, they touched him. So now he says, It's like he's reminding him, and this is the promise which he himself made to us, eternal life. So it's like that was something that just really impacted them.

So if you were to diagram this again, you kind of have some phrases here. This is a promise. Literally, it would be, this is a promise. He himself promised us the eternal life. This is kind of rhetorical, but what what's the promise? Eternal life, right? Wonderful, wonderful. So the promise, and you look at scripture, I was just amazed. I was amazed.

I looked and did a search on eternal life, and there's just a tremendous number of verses on eternal life that God has provided for those who love Him, who know Him. And promise is this word, epangelia, undertaking to do or give something as a promise, what Vine says. And a very familiar verse, John 10, 28. One of the ones that we're sure that he's not going to go back on his promise. And I give them eternal life. And I give to them eternal life. No, I give eternal life to them. I'll get it right here. I give eternal life to them. And they will never perish. And no one will snatch them out of my hand.

So I want to look just at a few other verses. Gospel, John, again, we're going to wear it out here, I think. John, chapter six. John, chapter six and verse sixty eight, six, sixty eight. And this is just a small sampling of what I kind of came across. Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. The only source of eternal life is the Lord Jesus. And you see that over and over again. So many wonderful verses about the eternal life that only he has. He's the one that has eternal life.

And then actually just go back to verse 47. I should have done it in the other order. Verse 47 in chapter 6. And this is a very direct statement about eternal life. 647. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. So it's interesting that that's what John is telling them, that they remembered. This is a promise which he himself made. Eternal life. Oh, I have kind of a trick question for you here. I mean, it's not too tricky. When does eternal life begin for the believer?

We shouldn't think that, oh yeah, wait till I get to, quote, eternity, or I get to, no. Actually, John 17, I'll just read that to you. John 17 kind of says that. John 17 verse 3 says, and this is eternal life. that they may know Thee, the only true God, in Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.

John 17.3 Knowing Jesus Christ is when that starts the eternal life for the believer.

It's a wonderful thing. I was confused on that issue for a while. I went to a Baptist church when I was a little kid, actually I was at high school, and I learned the gospel well. So it was taught that the moment you believe on Jesus died for your sins, you'll have eternal life. And the idea was that you'll live forever with the Lord. And then later I heard someone teach it in John 17, verse 3.

And they kind of discredited the idea of living eternally with the Lord. They didn't say that wasn't true. The important thing here is that Jesus is eternal life, so the definition of eternal life isn't. long life forever with the Lord, it's the Lord himself. And so they downplay the eternal life aspect of living there forever with the Lord and emphasize just the knowledge of Christ. That's eternal life. But what I just noticed, what were we in John 6? We were in John 6, yeah. John 6, he says, Jesus says, 6.47. Right, yes.

Now, truly I say to you, he who breathes has eternal life, because I am the bread of life, so he's the life. But then twice in that context he says, I am the living bread that came out from heaven. If anyone eats of the bread, he will live forever. Oh, man.

So cool. You can't you know, you can't downplay. No, no, no, no. That's that's great. That's great. Cool. That's neat. That's neat. All right. So let's go on. That's twenty five. 26. A very familiar phraseology for 1 John. These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you. I just list it here again. I am writing these things to you. I am not writing to you a new commandment. I am writing to you a new commandment. I am writing to you little children. I'm writing to you and have written to you, children, fathers, and young men." So John's doing a lot of writing.

And he's doing it because he doesn't want the spirit of the Antichrist out there, the Gnostics, to deceive him. He doesn't want them to go off on a tangent, go off someplace where they shouldn't be. to know that they have eternal life, and it's a permanent possession.

So let's look at the word deceive here. Deceive is plano, and it's an interesting word. And we're going to see it. In our case, it's in the active voice. It signifies to cause to wander, to lead astray, to deceive. And interesting is the word, it's our English word for planet.

Does anybody know the story about why they Why in the world would they name our planet Wandering? Does anyone know that story? The English word planet is this word plano from the Greek. And they took that word and they said, that describes, well, this is off the subject, but it's interesting. They said that word describes what our planet, actually it's a motion of our planet. Do you know the story?

The story is actually, I think I have this right. Hopefully it's not too. Astronomers looked, they studied the stars for centuries. So they looked and what they discovered was the Earth, they were expecting the Earth to move in a circular, orbit around the sun. It didn't do that. And they said, it's wandering. It moves in an elliptical orbit. And hence, they had to create mathematics, I believe, to describe an elliptical pattern versus a circular pattern. So that's, to my understanding, that's why the planet is the idea of wandering.

It's interesting. Now that's somewhat germane, but basically he's telling them, I don't want you to be wandering. I don't want you to be a cause to wander. And then in 1 John, we'll see this coming up here, little children, make sure that no one causes you to wander, so to speak.

The one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. You notice in 1 John, He's always saying, He just says, A is B and B is A. Don't make this hard. If you do what's right, then you're following Him. If you don't do what's right, you can't be doing what's wrong and following Him. You can never say that. It's very simple, really. But He comes back over and over again. If you practice righteousness, just as he is righteous. Satan actually is a deceiver. He's the one that causes people to wander. He causes the whole world to wander. Actually, I had one more, which kind of picks up the idea of wandering.

In 1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 25. So you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian. Right. So that word continually straying is our word plano. So you can see these words are translated by different words sometimes. So he's written to them so they won't be wandering. They won't be all over the map, so to speak, as we say sometimes. OK, so let's go on to the 27th. Yeah, go ahead. Here you're talking about believers wandering. Wandering in their fellowship, in their condition, right? They're in their position, but wandering in their fellowship. Believers, yes. All right,

27. This is a cool verse. And actually, this is going to touch upon something that Josiah touched on earlier. And again, this is the sharp contrast, as for you, but as for you, the anointing which you receive from him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in him. OK. So once again, this is sort of a diagram kind of thing. You have subject, verb, and so on. It's a little bit sticky down toward the bottom here, but it's really cool. This way, OK, it says, the anointing abides in you. And it says, you receive the anointing from him. So we're going to just look at those first two to start with. Anointing is krisma.

And Josiah went through this. He did a really great job on the Old Testament part. But I kind of focus more on the New Testament part. It's this ointment or oil or herbs. There's a picture in the Old Testament of that. But in the New Testament, it's used metaphorically. And it's really used in this word, I can't pronounce it, metomai. Anyway, Vines uses that word, however it's pronounced. And it's the idea that one word can be replaced by another word, or they're synonymous.

And Dr. Schaefer says, anointing of the spirit, of the spirit is my insert, the anointing of the spirit is seen to be like the indwelling of the spirit. present fact in every believer's life and we're going to see that we're going to go through and look at that a lot but it seems like when we talk about the anointing and the indwelling we're talking about the same working of the Spirit in a believer's life or the fact that he's in the believer's life probably is a little more germane to it he's the anointing the believer's life or the in dwelling of the Holy Spirit and a believer.

And of course, if you think about it, that's a New Testament or a Church Age attribute. Remember David in the Old Testament, don't take the Holy Spirit from me. The Spirit could come and go. But in the New Testament, In the church age, the Holy Spirit is given, and every believer is anointed, and hence every believer is indwelt, and they're sort of synonymous concepts.

OK, so let's look at this verse down here. And this uses a chrisma. This is a noun form in our verse, and this is a verb form down here. 2nd Corinthians. Now he who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God. So God is the one that does the anointing. He's the one that does the anointing. And God the Holy Spirit specifically is in view, not in this verse, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge. So actually what I did, on the next page I put in a chart we had for major Bible themes. This is not a total list. This is the Holy Spirit's ministry to the Church.

There's a lot here. He fills you. He empowers you. He gifts you. He manifests in you and through you the fruits of the Spirit in Jesus Christ's glory. He frees you. He has a strong desire for you. He gives you access to the Father. He leads you. He fellowships with you. He transforms you. He conforms you. And lastly, the one we're talking about, he anoints you.

So that ministry, that's one of his ministries to every believer. There's no exceptions. So there's a couple of verses that kind of speak to this. And Christ was... Christ was anointed, was spoken of as being anointed. Many times what we see occur with Christ occurs with a believer. Obviously, he's God, and we're not God.

Luke 4, verse 18. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and to set free those who are oppressed. So the word anointed here is the verb form of our word. And so actually, this is a quote from Isaiah, which we'll probably get to study this here at some point.

This is cool. And I have one other one here in Acts chapter 10. And there are others. This isn't all, but there are others. Speaking about the Lord Jesus being anointed, 1038 in Acts. Acts 1038. I'll go ahead and read this one. You know of Jesus, you know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how he went out doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.

So just as Jesus Christ was anointed, every believer is anointed, or indwelt. So they're synonymous concepts. But I noticed, just a quick looking through different Some people will have in their chapter heads that they'll have, we're going to study the indwelling and anointing of the Spirit. And they'll just, they just treat them together.

I don't know whether you noticed that Josiah. You know I didn't, but I did notice on that verse you just read that it says that God anointed Christ, the Holy Spirit, with power and went about doing good. When did that happen? At baptism. Okay. Right. When he was... When the Holy Spirit descended on him. Right, okay, okay.

Josiah, wasn't there a sense in which you were anointed for a purpose? There was that aspect of it, too, and I wonder if that's the sense that this was the beginning of his ministry. Obviously, from birth, he was divine, but at this point, that began his ministry. He went out for three and a half years, so there's a sense in which anointing is sort Anointing for a purpose. And we're anointed for a purpose too. We're indwelt for a purpose. To show Christ's life. So let's go on here.

So basically I went through here in these two little phrases here. The anointing abides in you and you receive the anointing from Him. I just looked at the the tenses of the verbs, and just kind of make observations about that. You know, abide here, minnow again, it's the present tense indicative of moon. So, the anointing is a present tense reality in the believer's life. So just from that little part of that verse 27, the anointing abides in you. The anointing is a present reality in the believer's life.

He doesn't have to ask for it, he has it. And the next part tells us how we got it. We received it as heiress, so it's a past point fact and it's a statement of fact. Therefore, the anointing from him is a past completed action and it's a reality for the believer. So we didn't have to ask for the anointing. The Lord gave it to us out of His grace. We have it. We received it from Him. It's wonderful.

It just nails things down. You don't have to go off and say, I feel like I have anointing coming on. It's sad. It's really sad. It's right there. It's black and white. It's right before you. Scripture is there, you know, careful observation, careful, and we're going to, this teaching part is coming up, I mean, just being careful. Okay, at what point? When he believes, at the moment, when he believes, yes.

He has all these wonderful grace gifts, like Hal and Vern, we don't even have a clue. We don't know what we got. We never realized it. Okay, so the next part of the verse is that you have no need for anyone to teach you. This could be a hot topic here. So okay, we'll just all go out and we'll dischurch and hey, we'll go out and have a great time. Nobody needs to teach us. Done deal, right? I don't think so. And we surrenders it and no need.

You are constantly having for anyone to be constantly teaching you. So it seems like he's he's trying to refute the fact that you've got to find a special guy. This guy over here, man, this guy, he's got it. Unless you find a special guy, you're not going to really be in on the real truth. You're going to miss out. I think that's kind of the. So I ask why. Why don't you need this constant interface with a. Why don't you need that? And it's pretty, shouldn't be real hard.

Basically, and we can't read all these, but basically like in John 14, 26, it says, he the Holy Spirit will teach you all things and bring all things to remembrance. As Dr. Schaefer says, the Holy Spirit is a master teacher. And I'm just going to cut it short here. I mean, I'm going to go into high frequency. And we would do it. And scripture tells us that. It says it's given gifts to the church. It's given us teachers. And so the question is, how do we learn something in a scriptural sense from what scripture says?

How does that happen? Do we sit down and I take careful notes and I say, well, I'm going to listen to Vern. I'm going to take whatever he says. I'm just going to memorize what he says. Is that how we learn? Or is there a different methodology that you see in place in the church? How is a believer to learn? That's part of it, certainly. I believe for each one of us it's different. I think the Holy Spirit might teach me something different than the Holy Spirit teaches others. What I need might be, you see, if you take a group of people and finish your lessons, what did you learn? I learned that, I learned that.

The thing is that as the word is given out and the teacher, which God has given to the church, give out the word and they carefully try to go through and try to say, well, here's what it says, here's the best I can... That allows the spirit to use that to teach us. So the job of the church is not to be the... It's to enable people to learn the scriptures from the Holy Spirit. So, so you have to be kind of careful. You can take that, take that and go off the wrong direction. And you can, you know, it can. Exactly. Exactly.

I think I often think if this makes it, you know, I think when I teach, I think, man, this is an impossible thing. My job is to make you see what the scriptures say. And the thing is, you may come from a different background, and I may see it, but to get you to see that, and the Spirit show you that, in a way I can't just say, Ann Marie, don't you get it? I can say that. Many times, if Hal says something or Vern says something, I'll say, well, I'll trust it.

But I'm going to check it out. I want to see it. I want to see it for myself. If I don't see it for myself, you're kind of on shaky ground. In some cases, you can't. You can't say every verse in detail. It's overwhelming. He said that, and at some point I'll be able to really check it out and make sure that I see it for myself. If you don't see it for yourself, and that's what you want the body to be doing, right? You want the body to see it. If they don't see it for themselves, then they're depending upon somebody else.

The bottom line is what the word says. I don't know if you guys have experienced this, but I have. It's when I'm focusing on a man, whoever it is, whether it's somebody I knew in junior or somebody I read. When I'm focused on one person's writings or teaching only, that's when I ended up getting off balance.

That's a good point. It's funny that that's sort of the context. Right. Right. He's telling don't, you know, don't get hung up on whoever these people were. These don't get hung up on that. You know, I had a teacher one time. One thing you must never do is use commentary. Yes. Going from that kind of taking that that way. Well, OK. So this is the actually this is the last chart. Perfect. OK. OK. So this is this is really interesting. So the question, what's the mechanism that the Lord wants us, where does he want us to be as we're being taught?

And I think this, as you kind of diagram it here, it says, in the right reason in English, that you abide occurs at the very end, but actually, The dashes here, they modify. As He has taught, as His anointing teaches you concerning everything, they modify, abide. And it's in the imperative mood. You abide in Him. So the Lord's command, which is a logical command, if you're going to You must be in me, you must be abiding in the vine. As he has taught you, that modifies abide. He's taught us that's the mechanism.

And as his anointing, his indwelling teaches you concerning everything. And it's true and it's not a lie. There's actually more I could do here, but I just was kind of impressed by the fact that you abide in him is kind of the main thrust. And then as he taught you, and his anointing teaches you concerning everything.

So we have to be spiritually abiding to really allow the Lord to teach us, it seems like. If you're hanging out, Hal's picture, if you're over there and there's other issues and you're not abiding in Him, it's going to be very difficult to be taught. Very difficult. Well, let's close then. Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for your word, Father. We thank you for the blessings we have, Lord. that your spirit is the one that teaches us, Lord, and we're thankful for men that you've gifted and given the church, Lord, to guide us, Lord, and we thank you for that. In Christ's name, amen.