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I had the privilege a couple of weeks ago of visiting with a missionary to Japan. He had spent a long time of preparation to get him to the place where he now is. He is now ready to plant a church. One of the obstacles to planting a church in Japan was that he had to learn Japanese, which is a very complicated language that is very different from English. He spent 50 hours a week in language school for a year! One thing he realized was that learning Japanese was like learning English. It just took time. He just had to keep at it.
And so many good things in life are like that. To really enjoy it and get better at it, it just takes time. There are two problems with this. First, we can’t do everything. We can’t enjoy everything or be good at everything. We have to focus. We can’t wait too long to choose, either, because time is short. The second is that many things keep us from keeping at it. Some are inside us. Others are outside of us.
One of the most important things that we can do with our lives is joyful fellowship with God and man. There is really no more important pursuit than this. Without it, everything else loses its value. This is the heart of life, to know and fellowship with God and the people He has made. However, in order to enjoy this fellowship, there is one simple thing we absolutely must do: keep at it. This is hard because there are things things that throw us off our game and keep us from keeping at it. Some of those are inside us. Some of those are outside us. Fortunately, we are not left without resources. We have some amazing resources to enable us to keep at it. So, those will be the four ways we will look at this theme of keeping at it: the command, the internal and external challenges, and the resources.
The Command to Keep at It
The key to this section is the command that God gives us to keep at it, to continue in what we have received. John writes, “And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming” (1 John 2:28). Keeping at it means keeping in Him. This means that we continue in fellowship with Him. John tells us to continue in Him so that we will be ready when He comes again. Now, whether we are alive when He comes again or whether we die and go to meet Him, the goal is that we continue with Him in such a way that we are living in fellowship with Him on earth and are ready to simply transition to fellowship with Him in heaven.
How do we remain in Him? We remain in Him by keeping His words in our hearts, trusting them, and putting them into practice. We remain in Him by keeping His teachings active in our minds. He is in heaven, but we have His Word here on earth. We fellowship with Him through that Word. That’s what John says, “As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father” (1 John 2:24). See that it remains at the top of your mind. Don’t forget it.
How are you doing on this? Are you keeping at it? Are you feeling ready to quit? Are you seeing the teaching of Jesus slide to the back of your mind? Take this as a call to keep at it. You can only enjoy this joyful fellowship with God and man, if you keep at it. You’ve got to continue. You’ve got to remember. You’ve got to keep trusting. You’ve got to keep at it.
Why is this command so important? Because there’s a lot inside of us and outside of us that would tell us not to keep at it. There are threats to our enjoyment of the joyful fellowship with God and man that we have in Christ.
The Internal Threats
God calls the internal threats here “the world.” “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them” (1 John 2:15). The love of the world will keep us from love for the Father.
Now, what is the world? Why do I call it an internal threat or a threat inside of us? It would seem that the world would be outside of us. Look at how the Spirit describes the world. “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world” (1 John 2:16). When we hear the word “world,” we may think of something outside of human beings, the physical world that God created. That is not the world. Notice that the description of the world has nothing to do with physical objects. It is how we view those things that makes up the world. The “world” here is an approach to the things around us. It is an attitude. It is a mindset. It is our desires and our pride that make up the world and nothing in the objects themselves. It’s what we bring to the table. And these desires are in us, and they are battling to keep us from keeping at the joyful fellowship with God and man.
Let’s look more carefully at what these things are. The first is the lust of the flesh. This indicates excessive concern over the basic provision of food, clothing, and shelter. Jesus warned us against this in Matthew 6. The Gentiles only think about these things, but we should seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. This is a threat: we become so concerned with the threats to our survival that we are kept from joy and the fellowship we can have with God and one another.
The second part of the world is the lust of the eyes. Solomon in Ecclesiastes says, “the eye of man is never satisfied.” He goes on to say that we pursue all sorts of activities in the world that are not bad in themselves but should not be the focus of our lives. In America, this is probably our biggest threat. It is actually relatively easy to survive here, thanks be to God. The question is what will do with what God has given us? We can easily let our homes, our projects, our vacations, our toys, our endeavors, our loved ones, or even church life become the center of our lives rather than joyful fellowship with God and man. Our interests can become that which we want more and more of, and then we forget the God who made us. That’s the world. That’s what almost every commercial we see on YouTube or TV is preaching to us.
The third part is the pride of life. This means that we want something more than a creature should have. We want to be the center of existence. We want to have a security that no creature can have. We want an immunity to suffering that does not exist in this life. We can do this in two ways. We can make ourselves big and try to get everyone to bow to our will, or we can make ourselves small and retreat into a smaller world where we can be the center of life. This is what many addictions are about.
It’s easy to see that the world is opposed to God. The world tells us to focus on provision for our lives. It tells us: focus on the things you enjoy in this world. It tells us: make yourself the center of everything by building a large or small empire. These impulses are all inside us, and the people of the world have an ally inside us that wants to join them. So, we have to fight these internal pressures to keep at it, to keep at joyful fellowship with God and man.
The External Threats
The second challenge is external. It is outside us. It tries to get us to deny the truths of our faith. “Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18). The external threat is described as antichrist. Now, the Bible speaks of a son of perdition whom we call the antichrist who comes at the last time as a final manifestation of rebellion against God and is defeated by Christ at His Second Coming. However, the antichrist is just a manifestation of a spirit in the world that opposes Christ and of which there are many examples. Who is the liar? “It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
It’s important to see that there are people who specifically teach that Christ is not the one true God and Savior of the world. In John’s day, there were people who taught that the material world was evil and so Jesus Christ did not come in actual flesh. He only appeared to be, they said. This was combined with a host of other errors. Perhaps this is what John had in mind here. He also could have had in mind those of his own nation who denied that Jesus was the manifestation of the Father. They claimed to follow God but did not because they denied Jesus. “No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:24). This is precisely what Jesus said in John 5:21–24.
In our day, the spirit of antichrist manifests itself in false teaching, to be sure, but there are really two big antichrist teachings that I want you to think about. The first is that all religions are equal. People get a certain fascination with religion in general. Now, I think we can learn things from other religions, but different religions make contradictory claims that cannot both be true. Above all, all other religions deny that Jesus Christ is the one true God and that He is the only way of salvation. This is a fatal error. Any attempt to conflate other religions with Christianity will end up denying the central truth of what Jesus did on the cross to save lost sinners.
Second, the spirit of the antichrist is manifested in indifference toward religion. Why do so many leave the church? It’s because they have come to believe that it is not that important. Other things matter more. This is the real spirit of antichrist that dominates the West. This is what we have to battle against. This is what we can so often think in our own hearts! We’ve got to be careful that we don’t miss the fact that joyful fellowship with God and man through Christ is the most important thing. Let’s not get distracted.
The Resources for Keeping at It
Some of this may be a bit discouraging. It’s not designed to be. We need to be aware of the real threats. However, we should not despair in the midst of the challenges because God has given us some amazing resources to enable us to keep at it.
The first resource is the promise of His Word. “And this is what he promised us—eternal life” (1 John 2:25). What we really need in our inmost being is joyful fellowship with God and man. This is what God promises. Eternal life is to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (John 17:3). This life lasts forever but it is also a quality of life. It fulfills our desires. All the things that we see with our eye that promise to give us life won’t give us life. God will. “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:17). These promises of everlasting blessedness can help us say “no” to the internal and external threats to keeping at it because we know good will come about.
The second resource is the new life that God puts within us. God has given us what he calls an anointing. In the Old Testament, they would pour oil on someone’s head to set them aside to a specific calling such as a priest or king. All Christians have an anointing. It is not literal oil poured on the head, but it is baptism by the Spirit into a new way of life. Listen how John describes it: “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth” (1 John 2:20–21). There is something within us who believe in Jesus that enables us to know what the truth is. God has given us the light in our hearts.
We should see that this new life is closely related to the Holy Spirit. This new life is a life lived by the Spirit of God, it is a work of the Triune God but uniquely ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is often connected with anointing in the Old Testament. When someone was anointed, the Holy Spirit often came on them with visible signs. So, when we think of the anointing that we have, we should think of the Holy Spirit. There is a new life within us by the power of the Holy Spirit. The desires of this new life are completely opposed to the way of the world.
We should see that this is also a power of life that moves toward righteousness. “If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him” (1 John 2:29). This new life keeps us keeping at it, doing the right things.
Let me make one more point about this life. This life remains. This seed of life cannot perish. Now, you may ask, what about those who walk with Jesus for a time but then turn away? Well, John tell us exactly what to think about this: “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us” (1 John 2:19).
Third, we have the church. We might miss this point because it is implicit not explicit. But what is happening in this letter? John, a leader in the church, is writing them to urge them to keep at it. We have the antichrists in the world who tell us to give up, but we have the pro-Christ people like John who are encouraging us to keep at it. We are not alone in this battle.
What ideas are threatening to keep you from keeping at it today? Do you feel that you are drifting? Are you letting the spirit of antichrist tell you that Christ doesn’t really matter? We’ve got to talk about these things and help and encourage one another. If you’re struggling with this, come and talk to me. If you have questions, come and talk to me or one of the elders. We will talk to you with patience and give a listening ear to your concerns, by God’s grace. We want to help you process these things before the Lord and not crush you. It’s so easy to let these things simply take over our minds without much thought, so let’s help each other.
Conclusion
And so, what should you take away from this sermon? You are the people who have kept at it. You are here, and you continue to be Sunday after Sunday. You are taking these things and serving the Lord day by day. You are reaching out to the people around you. Don’t get discouraged. You will see many things that will try to keep you from keeping at it. Don’t give up. You have many resources to help you! Amazing resources!
I remember one pastor was talking about last year’s election. He said, what if my side doesn’t win? What will I do tomorrow? What I was doing yesterday and more of the same. I really appreciated that thought. That should be our attitude. Whatever happens today, we’ll do the same thing tomorrow that we’ve been doing, indeed, more of the same. We’ve got tremendous resources to keep us moving forward and keeping at it. So, let’s use that and lean into the joyful fellowship with God and man that is our inheritance in Christ. Amen.
Benediction: as you go out into the world, remember that you have some amazing resources. You have the promise of God, you have the new life of the Spirit, and you have the church to help you. We can overcome the world by faith.
Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash