Living in the End Times

Note: This transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for accurate information and meaning.

Sermon Summary

In this message based on 1 John 2:18-27, the speaker explores what it means to live in the “last hour.” The sermon addresses the reality of people walking away from the faith, the assurance believers have through the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and the vital importance of resting and remaining steadfast in Jesus rather than relying on our own strength.

Key Points

• Living in the Last Hour: Believers have been living in the end times since Christ’s earthly ministry; it is not just a future event, but our current reality.

• The Departure of Antichrists: Those who deny Christ may arise from within the church, and their departure reveals that they never truly belonged to the body of Christ.

• Intentionally Sharing Jesus: Christians should maintain steady, loving connections and share the gospel with those who have walked away from the faith in their everyday lives.

• The Anointing of the Holy Spirit: Believers are equipped with the Holy Spirit, who dwells within them, illuminates the truth, and preserves their faith.

• Remaining in Christ: Christians are called to abide in Jesus, trusting in the Holy Spirit’s power to perfectly guide their spiritual lives rather than constantly relying on their own exhausting efforts.

Sermon Transcript

Introduction to 1 John

As we continue in worship, let’s turn our attention to the word of God as we continue through our series in the Epistle of First John. You’ll notice we are just continuing straight on through that epistle that John is writing to a church about various topics concerning the Christian faith, about the person and the work of Jesus for them, and different considerations that he has for that church.

This morning, we turn our attention to a section where he’s encouraging the believers there to look to Jesus, to rest in Jesus, and to remain in Jesus. As he’s doing that, he’s describing the reality that as they are in the last days, or as they’re in the last hours of the world, there are those who are going to leave the church. There are those who are not going to remain with the body of Christ but are going to go out.

This is one of those passages where the end times are talked about. As we’ll get into as we go along, the end times aren’t always what we read about in popular culture, but the apostles had a slightly different understanding of it. With that in mind, let’s turn our attention to verse 18 of First John chapter 2.

Scripture Reading: 1 John 2:18-27

“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. 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.

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. 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. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

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. And this is what he promised us—eternal life. I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.”

This is the word of God. Let’s pray.

Father, thank you for your grace that you love us. I pray that you would open our hearts and our minds to you, that you would help us to consider what it looks like for us to live in this last hour, these last days, as we anticipate and look with expectation to your return to us. May you give us tender hearts. May you help us to rest in the Spirit and look to Jesus. We ask all these things in His name. Amen.

Living in the Last Hour

If you’ve heard about the end times growing up in the church, or being part of different church ministries over the years, maybe you’ve interacted with a series of books and later movie adaptations called the Left Behind series. They kind of talk about this idea of the rapture and what it would be like if Jesus came back, took the church with him, and left people behind in horrific, terrifying situations where they’d have to work through those hardships.

Sometimes when we talk about the end times, we have a weird view of it that’s not necessarily biblical. But what we do see in the Bible—as you look through Thessalonians with Paul, the epistles of Peter, John, and the Revelation of Jesus Christ given to John—you see time and time again that the end times are spoken of in terms of we are already in them.

Some of us are in this place where we’re thinking we’re in the church age and the end times haven’t quite caught up to us yet. But Jesus is clear in the Olivet Discourse, and the apostles are clear: we are in the end times right now. The final days started all the way back with Christ’s earthly ministry, and they are continuing on to today and into the future.

If John’s writing about “the last hour” 2,000 years ago, maybe we’re in the last 30 seconds. I don’t know. Jesus is clear that no man is going to know when He’s going to return. But there is a sense of urgency as John writes this: We’re in the last hour. Jesus is coming. Jesus’s work has been completed on the cross. He lived, He died, He rose again for our justification. So now, let’s look ahead to what’s in front of us. He’s coming. Let’s look to Him and do as He commands and asks us.

The Departure of the Antichrists

As he’s in that conversation, he starts with a section talking about a character that shows up in our combined collective consciousness referred to as the Antichrist. When you think of the Antichrist, you might think of a demonic figure, kind of like a boogeyman personality. But how does John describe that concept here?

He says, “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. 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.”

John is recognizing that there are going to be individuals who were part of the church, connected, volunteering, attending every week, part of Bible studies, who had heard the gospel and made some outward profession of faith, yet walked away from it all. They ended up in a place where they not only left the church but actively denied Jesus as who He says He is—denying that He is the Savior, that He is the Messiah.

These are the folks who are understood as “the antichrists” in Scripture. Rather than being Christians, they are anti-Christians. They are the opposite of what a believer is. I say all that to help lower the temperature on that term, because sometimes we have a very elevated view of that phrase. John is talking about ordinary people—people who were part of the church, had relationships, and left, ultimately denying Christ.

Intentionally Sharing Jesus

Each of us probably knows folks in our lives who wrestle with the reality of Christ and being engaged in the church. We all know people who have come into the church, been very involved for a time, and then kind of faded away. Are those the people John’s talking about? Perhaps in some cases. In other cases, we experience people who leave the church and we just don’t know where they’re at.

At the end of the day, can any of us accurately pinpoint who is going to finally end up rejecting Jesus? No. Only God knows the heart of man. As my pastor in York would say, “That question is above my pay grade.” God will determine that; we can’t.

So what do we do with this reality? It shows us that we should expect people to walk away from the faith. When we hear in the news about public-facing Christian leaders or influencers leaving the faith, it shouldn’t be a surprise to us. The apostles remind us that it is going to happen.

But it should also encourage us to intentionally share Jesus with people. When people leave the church, sometimes they give good reasons, sometimes they have good conversations, but more often than not, they just peace out. They slowly start to leave, or they just leave, and we don’t really have good conversations. We don’t know why they’ve stopped coming. Maybe there’s a struggle happening in their life that we’re unclear about.

This reminds me that as people do leave the church—and as we notice people who haven’t been here for a couple of months—we need to be intentionally sharing Jesus with them. Maintain steady connections so that you build relationships and can remind them of the truth of Jesus: His life, His death, and His resurrection to save sinners.

A Story of Persistent Faith

I was thinking about this recently. I heard a story about Dr. Frank Barker, who planted Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was the church where our first General Assembly was held back in 1973. He was a very committed evangelist. He would talk about riding the ring road around Birmingham as a young pastor—a very quiet, subdued guy—looking for hitchhikers to pick up just so he could practice his evangelistic conversations with them. He said sometimes it went great, other times they’d say, “Get me out of here,” and he’d drop them off and go find another one.

There was a young man in their church who grew up under the ministry and, as he got older, left the church and started to dabble in aspects of life that are not healthy, drifting into sin. Dr. Barker kind of wrote him off.

But his wife, Mrs. Barker, was very persistent. She said, “God’s not done with this young man.” In humility, she recounted how she told her husband that he was never going to be saved, but she still went out of her way to check on him. The young man worked at a clothing store while in college, and Mrs. Barker would go in once a month to buy a cheap little handkerchief just so she could maintain a relational connection with him. As a mother in the faith to a younger man, she’d say, “Hey, how are you doing? How are your classes going? How are your relationships going? What’s going on?”

Over the years, she maintained that personal connection. Eventually, he called their house drunk at 2:00 AM. He asked to talk to Mrs. Barker, and they talked about relationships, girl problems, and all the situations in his life. After a couple of years, he called again and said, “I gave my life to Christ. Jesus has grabbed a hold of me. Can you help me with that?”

What I love about that story is that it represents everyday life for most of us. We experience closeness with people, we’re in relationships with people in church and family, we get a sense that they know the gospel, and then they drift off. We wonder, What do we do? Do we just go in guns blazing with John 3:16? Do we throw the Bible at them every chance we get?

Where she settled in the relational rhythm was simply showing up. “How are you doing?” Making a regular connection part of life. That requires intentionality. For you and I to share Jesus in these last hours, it requires us to be intentional. Our lives are busy, but as we look at Mrs. Barker’s example, it doesn’t have to be anything crazy. Stop in the store you were already going to go to. Send a text. Send a Facebook message. Call a couple of times a year. Maintain connections because we never know who God is going to draw back to the church.

The Anointing of the Holy Spirit

We also must consider how we remain in Jesus ourselves. In verse 20 it says, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.”

When you see the word “anointing” in the Old Testament in particular, it is closely associated with the Spirit of God coming down and indwelling a person. We see that with Saul as he’s anointed king, with David, and at Pentecost. Here, he is speaking of the fact that as you believe in Jesus, the Spirit of God dwells within you. You have received the Spirit of God as you trust in Jesus, and as far as that’s real, He reveals the truth to you. You clinging to Jesus is because of the work of the Spirit in your life.

This means we can rest in the power of the Holy Spirit. As we are saved, it’s not us that moves the needle forward in terms of our faith and growth; it is the anointing that comes from Christ. It is the Spirit that comes from Christ that indwells us, giving us those realities, helping us grow, transforming us, and sanctifying us until we are finally glorified on that last day. Our own salvation is a continuous application of that salvation to our lives through the Spirit.

Sometimes we think we have to keep tinkering. We have to keep working. We have to keep moving the needle. If we’re going to stay in the church, we have to keep trying and doing in our own power.

I was replacing the AC compressor in one of our vehicles this week. When you take the alternator out to put the new AC compressor in, you deal with a pulley tensioner. In most cars, there’s an automatic tensioner—you just crank it back, release the tension on the belt, move everything out, pop the drive belt back on, put the tension back, and it automatically sets the tension where it needs to be so the engine and belt run smoothly.

The car I was working on doesn’t have that. Instead, it has a bracket where you manually adjust a bolt that swings the alternator up and down to adjust the tension on the belt. I got it all put back together, drove it down the block, and as soon as I hit the throttle, it was squealing like nobody’s business. The battery died shortly after. I had to get in there with a ratchet, asking myself, “Is it good now? Is it good now?” Finally, I got it right.

Remaining in Jesus

I think most of us view the Christian life that way. We think our spiritual life essentially has a manually adjusted alternator. We’ve got to tweak it just so. We’re always in a spot of, “Oh, it’s out of alignment, I’ve got to tweak it now.”

But what the Scriptures show us is that the Spirit is that automatic tensioner pulley. As soon as that lever is pressed, it snaps into alignment. Everything is at the perfect tension. Everything is moving smoothly, not because of what we did, but because of what the Spirit has done. We don’t have to manually adjust it; it’s the Spirit at work within us, growing and shaping us. Yes, there’s activity on our part, but why is that occurring? Because the Spirit is powering it.

Our own knowledge of Jesus does not come from us; it comes from the work of the Spirit. If we compare ourselves with those who reject Christ, we shouldn’t do it from a place of superiority or pride, but from a place of humility. I got in the car, and it drove today, and I have no idea how it all works or why the tension is the way it is, but it’s working. I thank God for that, and I pray that others experience that too.

We must interact with those around us with deep humility, resting in the power of the Spirit to give us what we need. As for you, the anointing you received from Him remains in you.

So remain in Jesus. Rest in the work of the Spirit. Recognize that it is through the work of Jesus for you—His body and blood—that you are spiritually fed and nourished. Remain in Him, because Jesus is where all this comes from.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your grace, that you love us. I pray that you would open our hearts and our minds to you. Show us that we can intentionally share Jesus in these last times. Help us to rest in the power of the Spirit and to remain in Jesus through the indwelling power of your Spirit. May we look to Him for all things—for life, for godliness, and for salvation. May we not rest in our own strength, but in His alone. May that empower us toward greater obedience and love for you and love for our neighbor. We ask all these things in Jesus’ mighty and precious name. Amen.