Lord's Day: July 6, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Assurance Scripture: 1 John 4:2–5; Romans 1:25; 1 John 5:19; John 12:31; Ephesians 2:2; Mark 3:28–30; James 4:4; 2 Corinthians 4:2–4; Romans 8:37; John 15:17–21; Matthew 16:15–19; John 8:32; Matthew 18:18; 28:18–20; Hebrews 2:14–17; 1 John 2:19–20

4You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 1 John 4:4

• Those who are not from God deny Him instead, and “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” (Rom. 1:25) — Either/Or

I. Conquerors & Overcomers

• 1 John 4:4 2—Law or Gospel?
  • The apostle showers God’s people, “my little children,” with gospel indicatives
• What does the world mean in this passage?
  • Unregenerate society as a whole, which is influenced by the spirit of the antichrist that “is already in the world” (1 John 4:3) and lies under the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19)
• Who is “he who is in the world”?
  • Satan

II. Haven’t the Antichrist and the antichrists overcome the world?

• John 16:33
• 2 Corinthians 4:2–4
• There is no cosmic, dualistic struggle between God and the devil, Christ and Antichrist

III. Haven’t the Antichrist and the antichrists overcome the church?

• Matthew 16:15–19
• What is the church? taen ekklesian, the called-out ones chosen by God
• Roman Catholic Church-State claims to the papacy, Peter as the 1st pope

IV. Amazing promise: No one and no thing—not Death, not the Devil, not any other power, nor anything else can ever prevail against us—God’s church, nor separate us from His greater love (Romans 8)

• 1689 LBCF 26.3: “The purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error,1 [though] some have degenerated so much that they have ceased to be churches of Christ and have [instead] become 'synagogues of Satan'.2 Nevertheless, Christ has always had, and always will have to the end of time a kingdom in this world, made up of those who believe in him and profess his name.3” (1) 1Co 1:11; 5:1; 6:6; 11:17-19; 3Jo 1:9-10; Rev 2:1-3:22 (2) Rev 2:5, 1:20; 1Ti 3:14-15; Rev 18:2 (3) Mat 16:18; 24:14; 28:20; Mar 4:30-32; Psa 72:16-18; 102:28; Isa 9:6-7; Rev 12:17; 20:7-9
• The churches and people who fall away and become apostate do not belong to Christ, Christ did not “lose” them

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

Lord's Day: June 29, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Discernment Scripture: 1 John 4:1–4; Luke 11:23; 9:49–50; Acts 20:26–32; Hebrews 5:14; 2 Corinthians 11:13–15; Matthew 15:13–14; Revelation 3:17; 1 John 2:22–23, 18; Matthew 7:15

2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. 1 John 4:2–3

• To confess Christ is to deny Antichrist
• Law of Excluded Middle: Luke 11:23 and Luke 9:49–50

I. There are many false ways of relating to God, and “many false prophets have gone out into the world”

• Acts 20:26–32
• Those who are in error are often completely unaware of their own biases and imbalances—self-deception
• They often assume that their errors/traditions are biblical, instead of carefully investigating them, instead of discerning all things, instead of testing every spirit
• Gresham Machen’s Christianity & Liberalism—Either/Or, Excluded Middle

II. Confession

• What does it mean to confess Jesus Christ who has come in the flesh?

III. Repentance

• Repentance is a form of discernment, a rejection of lies and acceptance of truth

IV. What is “the spirit of the Antichrist” (v. 3)?

• Zeitgeist, spirit of the age, mindset that is of the Antichrist,[1] allegiance

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

[1] Gordon H. Clark, First John: A Commentary, Trinity Paper, No. 2, 2nd ed. (The Trinity Foundation, 1992), p. 126 .

Lord's Day: June 22, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Discernment Scripture: 1 John 4:1–3; Acts 20:30; Hebrews 4:9–13; 5:9–14; John 7:24; 2 Peter 1:3–4; 1 John 2:18–25; Matthew 7:13–14

1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.... 1 John 4:1–2

• Discernment in a sense illustrates law and gospel: It is both a command (law), a daily necessity and duty that we all must practice constantly, as well as a good, gracious gift from God (gospel)

I. Discernment is definitional to the Christian—to be a Christian is to discern

• Discernment is the mirror that allows us to see who we really are

II. How then do we grow in our discernment? In our ability to test every spirit?

• Discernment and sound judgment are closely related in Scripture, go hand in hand, frequently overlap
• You cannot judge righteously unless you first discern properly
• Grasping God’s Word, understanding it, requires discernment

III. Beware—A lack of active, consistent, constant, daily discernment points to and leads to a lack of understanding

• It leads to forgetting things that we previously learned, even to a lack of desire to understand, “dullness of hearing” (Heb 5:11)
• Discernment is cumulative

IV. One of the main reasons we must have our “powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” is because the devil and his antichrist spirit are master counterfeiters‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

• One of the necessary qualities of biblical discernment—in addition to knowledge of Scripture and of sound doctrine—is logic

V. There are many, many erroneous ways of relating to God, many false claims to the true God

• Matthew 7:13–14

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com