Well, good morning everybody.
Let's turn together to 3rd John. To 3rd John. We have a few more weeks here
as the Lord. Desires however long he wants
us to be here. There was a time in my ministry
and when I say my ministry and my service to the church. As
a pastor where I pretended a whole lot. I pretended because it was
required of me, unspokenly, to be a certain way, to dress a
certain way, to stand a certain way, to speak a certain way.
And believe it or not, there have even been times in my life,
in my younger days, where older men would take me to the side
and say, son, this is how you should communicate at a podium.
This is how you should look. This is how you should sound.
A lot of crafting. goes into the work of ministers
these days. And it's in every circle. It's
in every circle. So much so that if you know the
circles and you hear a young pastor, you go, I know who's
influencing him. And even if it's not intentional
in the context of mentoring, it can be indirect through the
context of adoration. Somebody can say, well, look,
I like this pastor. They listen to this pastor. They
begin to sound and talk and speak like this pastor. It's why in
my household all of our voices are in the lower range. We all
have a lower voice versus a higher voice. Even my wife, we speak
in a lower tone. I expect that. No, I'm just joking.
It's just through observation. You better lower your tone. It's
just through observation. It's just through experience.
It's through exposure. It's not taught. It's just learned. And some other things that I
learned is that pastors should always appear to have everything
together. What does it mean? You've got
to always be early. You have to always have your
clothes prepped. I still take my clothes to the
cleaners. I mean, I still have them pressed. Imagine the budget
when I had to wear suits. Why? Because that's what pastors
wore. That was their outfit. That was their costume. Batman
wears a cape, Spider-Man wears a red web, and pastors wear suits. That's just the way it works.
And nothing could be further from the truth. And basically
what I found by the time I was in my mid-20s is I was just a
copycat in a visual sense and an emotional sense of those people
who had groomed me in that way. But yet I was not a copycat of
their theology, and it was an extreme dichotomy for me. talked to a brother last night
about these very things and you know we've been reminiscing back
even in the 80s and thinking about what we believed and what
we learned and how we would be excited about certain things.
Look what the Bible, look what I see in these older men in our
lives that go, now that's just nonsense son. You put that away. Not, let's look together. Nope,
I know the best, I know the truth, this is nonsense son. Put that
away. Now what do you do? You go, well, I guess I'm an
idiot. Could be true, but it doesn't mean that you're wrong
about what the Bible taught you. And one of the things that God
really worked out of me, not because of maturity or anything
else, but because he took me in his hand and sort of like
he smushed me like a Play-Doh frog. And he let the juices of
my soul run out on the ground and he dropped me. He didn't
drop me on the ground, he just dropped me into his other hand
so that he might mold me some more, you see. I thought it was the
ground. And emotionally, for years, I never shared the truth
of what I struggle with. I never shared and opened myself
up to be sincere and to be true and honest about the fact that
I was scared or angry or fearful. Because in the small times that
I ever did, I say, I'm really having a hard time. Well, maybe
you're just not cut out for the work of God. That was the advice
I'd be given. Well, I'm worried about something.
You just have no faith. Maybe you shouldn't be a pastor.
I'm thinking, my goodness. And I've told the story of my
childhood where the pastor that I remember well, I used to think
he sort of like stayed up in heaven or somewhere close to
the celestial cities and sort of floated down into the pulpit
on Sundays and then poofed back out later. That's how we saw
him. Not only was he very tall and very high above the congregation,
but his pulpit was very wide and bold and his voice was very,
very pronounced. God, I mean when God has five
syllables, you know that's some powerful authority right there. So men of God, pastors, shepherds,
could not be human in my eyes. That's the way I saw it. If you're
depressed, then you're in sin and you cannot serve. If you're
sad, then you have no faith and you cannot serve. If people see
any sin in your life whatsoever, so what do you do? You lie. You
lie. You lie indirectly. We're taught
to lie. You know what it's called? Acting. You know what the Greek
word for acting is? Hypocrite. But yet there is a sensitivity
there. We can't be really honest. I can't make this my confession
podium. and tell you everything that goes on in this weird brain
of mine and every struggle that I have because if I did that
it would wear on the conscience of you who look to me as someone
who should be mature and should be maturing. So there is a sense
in which there is wisdom but I'll tell you this beloved, if
my candor rustles your jimmies or flusters you or ruffles your
feathers or aggravates you in any sense Because you think that
a man called of God is not a human being, I hate to tell you, you
are in for a surprise. And Grace Truth Church may not
be your spiritual family, because the elder brothers of this fellowship
are going to be as sincere and as genuine as we should be. And
by the Lord's mercy, hopefully and prayerfully, he would cause
us to be wise in how we share these things. And I say that
because I think if I put on airs, and if I pretend to have everything
together, and I'm not honest, then you're going to pretend
to have everything together. Then you're going to come into this
assembly and say, well, I can't go to church today because my
life's in shambles. Great, that's the very time you should be there. If we're a family, then we should
be able to come into the living room of our assembly and say,
I'm a mess. Why is your hair not done today?
Because I don't care anymore. I'm going to pull it all out.
Why aren't you dressed? Did you bathe? No, I don't want
to bathe anymore. I'm trying to keep my head above water.
I don't care about how I smell. But none of us would dare to
enter into this area in that mindset, would we? No, we'll
be late trying to be nice looking. I'm not saying that that's just
a social thing. Beloved, in the true spiritual
sense, we're family. And if someone is offended by
your lack of care or concern about your physical well-being,
or the lack of the fact that you don't have everything together,
let them be the weaker. Let them be the unspiritual.
Let them be the infant. That's what the Bible teaches,
right? That's what's wrong with the gospel in America, is that
even so many people who have the gospel right, they impose
such legalistic ideologies upon the assembly that the assembly
has become this posh, pomp and circumstance. We're not going
to be like that. We're going to be an intimate
family. And I'll tell you, brothers and sisters, my heart is burdened. and I stay on the edge of turmoil
these days. 2020 did a number on me. It was like 20 good years of
everything that you know, everything that you've always done, and
I'm a routine guy. You should've seen me trying
to buy shoes. I wish I should've just bought 10 pairs of the same set of shoes
so for 10 years I could not change shoes. I don't like to change
stuff. I don't like to think in the
morning, what am I gonna wear? I don't care, I just want it. I wish
I did have a uniform, you know? When are we gonna get the silver
suits and the silver caps? When are we gonna get those things
and the sun shields? Look like David Bowie. I mean, when are
we gonna get there? It would be easy for me. I don't like
choices. I wanna go to the restaurant
that serves food. Y'all want food, what kind of
food? The food that's on the menu today, there it is. That's
what I like. So I don't like change, and 2020
was a day of change. It was a day of difference, because
when there is change, then my brain goes into overload, processing
change, processing hypothetical things. That's why I don't like
hypothetical questions. Not because I think that they
run a fool's errand. Moreover, that it's selfish.
I don't want to stay up all night then implicating the possibilities
of what could happen if this were true. I'm sorry, I'm crazy. There's nothing you can do about
it. I'm clinical. There's nothing you can do about
it. But it's who I am. And so God in his infinite mercy
gave us 2020. and all of the trash that came
along with it, and everything that I knew about shepherding
people, and that I had locked, it wasn't in my hand to look
at and loose, it wasn't on the shelf, I mean it was locked away,
lock box, it was locked away, y'all. You're getting all my
comical references now. It was locked away, and it was
unchangeable. And then it changed, you see? You ever opened up a silverware
drawer and there's nothing there but the handles of silverware?
There's no fork heads or spoon heads or blades? No, me either. That's what 2020 was for me.
Is this a fork? Is this a spoon? I don't know.
It's just a handle. All I had was handles. I was walking around
with tools, handles, and no tools on the ends. Screwdriver, hammer?
Who knows? It's just a handle. And then
I read first genre, second genre, third genre, and then I'm overcome
with, oh no, how am I going to apply this to the body? Who's
not here? You know? What do we do? We're
going to paint the wall? Where's the wall? We don't have
it yet. Just start painting it. We're going to wash the floors? What floors? We don't have a
floor. Just start washing it. That's the nonsense. And so when
we see The things that come out of these instructions, when we
see these things, understand this is not an academic pursuit
of just saying, okay, this is what it says, and I'm gonna tell
you what it says. You can get what it says at home by yourself.
But what does it mean? And what does it mean in its
own context? What does it mean in the gospel? What does it mean
in the body of Christ? What does it mean for us to live
it out? You're here to learn to live out the faith. And John
has already done in his first two letters, he's made clear
the gospel. His gospel is so perfectly clear. It is just,
I don't have to go on. You know how I feel about John
and his writing and specifically the gospel of John. And so we know the gospel, we
know the truth, we understand that we love in truth the teaching
of our Lord. We do not embrace those who divert
away from the truth. We correct them, we engage with
them, we desire reconciliation. And I want you to understand
that, beloved. No matter what it is in life, whether it be
ministry application, whether it be study, whether it be work,
whether it be cleaning or painting, there is always the idea of reconciling
something. Finances? Reconcile. We don't
just spend and hope it comes out on the wash. We start getting
a lot of gift cards from the bank. This must be gift cards.
Let me throw up their notices. We reconcile. We reconcile the truth that the
scripture teaches us with the brain that's in our head and
the thoughts that go on in our mind. We reconcile. We reconcile
and we judge and guard them by what the scripture teaches. Then
we reconcile how we study the Bible and how we read and how
we interpret. We reconcile that with what the Bible actually
says in its simplicity. We reconcile when we hear something
different from a brother or sister in the body. And we say, well,
that's not right. We reconcile in our own mind,
then we justify what we know by the scripture, then we engage
for reconciliation to bring the conversation to the point where
we're having a conversation about the differences. It's long suffering. It's not immediate. Beloved,
our philosophies and the way we process truth is set in us
from the day we are born. And it begins to grow and ebb
and flow and change and develop. And by the time we're adults,
the way we process information is locked up. It's locked up. And what we often have is just
a whole box full of handles and no tools. And when someone else
comes along and says, well, I hear what you're saying, but what
does it say? I hear what you're thinking,
but what about this? I understand what you're trying
to communicate, but the Bible teaches this. It's as if 2020
starts all over again. It's as if something we've never
experienced all of a sudden comes along and we don't know how to,
we don't know what to call it. We don't know how to feed it.
We don't know how to take care of it. We don't know where we should keep it. We don't know
if we should send it on to our neighbor's house or get rid of
it. What do we do? Is it going to kill us or is
it going to love us? I mean, it's like an animal that comes up on the porch.
We don't even know what it is. I don't know. I have friends
that live in Australia and they send me pictures of these crazy
things. They send me pictures of spiders
the size of this podium top and stuff. And I'm going, don't send
me that. That's the things nightmares are made up. There's only one
answer to that, nuclear bombs. It's an island. It won't take
much. I mean, it's a joke, you know. Let's get everybody off.
Let's all take a vacation and bomb the spiders. There we go.
We'll get back over there. But knowing my luck, mutated
versions would emerge. From the ridiculous now to the
sublime. John writes this letter. And I believe John is going through
in his heart and mind a lot of what I go through as an elder,
a lot of what Jesse and Dave go through, a lot of what other
elder brothers across the world go through every week as they
labor thinking, okay, you know, it's not hard to get to the meaning
of the text. It's hard to communicate the
text and trust in the Lord. I'm going to say that again. It's not hard to get to the meaning
of the text. It's hard to communicate the text and trust in the Lord.
It's hard to teach and let the results be God's. God's results. Cause as a father, I know how
to whip folks. As a leader, in the sense of
I'm leading others, I know how to guide folks harshly. It's easy. And get that shovel
and stop standing around and go dig. Don't throw that brick
like that. You call that a line? I mean,
you know, no, it's not. And even in our work, we have
to guide and lead as God has called us to. But in the church,
we have to guide and lead ever so patiently. And it's hard for
me to trust the Lord when I want the results today. You see, I
know he will bring them, but I want them today. It's like
Burger King and McDonald's. When they tell you to go pull
up to number two, you know why they said not number one? Because
somebody else is already in it. You know you're in trouble. Fast food, huh? And we literally waited like
16 minutes yesterday for a box of cookies. You're microwaving
these things anyway, folks. Come on. I mean, I'm complaining
about this cookie thing. 17 minutes. I mean, I drove up
to get a cookie, not wait. I didn't need a vacation. I didn't
need a break. I don't want to waste gas. And we think that
the Lord's going to work like that. We expect him to work that
way. Pastor, elder, brothers, we cannot
think that God's going to work that way. God's going to work
in his timing and only in this time. And until he works, then
we are to be patient. Until he responds, we are to
be patient. Until we see reconciliation or until someone says, I will
not be reconciled to the truth, we are to be patient. I will
not be in the assembly. There's nothing we can do with
that. We are to be patient until that time. And here's John overseeing
all these different churches. as an apostle with the heart
of a pastor wanting desperately for their joy to be full knowing
that they will not have the joy first if they don't have the
gospel which they had because he taught it to them the spirit
taught it to him through John and we need to understand too
when the apostles lived and acted they weren't they weren't infallible
they did stupid stuff They had stupid philosophies, they had
stupid and fleshly interpretations and implications of certain things,
but when they were corrected by one another and when they
sat down and wrote under the umption of the Holy Spirit, it
is infallible. So in Antioch in Galatians chapter
2, when Peter was acting like a fool and wanting to save face
with his Jewish friends, Paul stands up and says, you're a
fool. This is false gospel living. What are you doing? And that
was embarrassing for Peter. Peter wasn't unconverted. Peter
was foolish. Peter was fleshly. Jesse and
I make that joke a lot of times. Maybe we should remind these
people we got flesh still. No, because both of us are fighters
and we'd be busting on some people. We don't want to do that. Dave
is the only sane mind in the group when it comes to busting
heads. We don't want to get fleshly.
They make mistakes, but when the word of God is written, there
is no mistake. There is no truth. There is no error. It is all
truth. There is no truth that has been delayed or deleted or
lost in the context of the scripture. It is sound. So therefore, we
trust the Lord that his promises, according to his word, are certain
to bring the reconciliation that we need. John is seeking reconciliation
with a man by the name of Diotrephes. But more importantly, he's seeking
reconciliation for the body, for the family of faith in this
area, to acknowledge the authority of the writing of the apostles,
the lordship of Jesus Christ and his redemption of his people,
and the command that Christ had given the apostles to teach them,
and then the implication of loving together as the sole means of
life in your physical body unto the glory of Christ. Because
if you have all the truth, but you aren't loving, you have nothing.
And a matter of fact, you are nothing. You are nothing. You
are worthless. And this isn't my, I hate that. The papa daddy loving guy in
me hates to say those words. There is nothing worthless in
my mind. Nothing. Everything has value. Don't believe me? Ask my wife.
Everything to me has value, and I keep it, and I store it, and
I put it away, and I stack it up. I've had a sack of bolts
that my grandfather gave me when I was in high school, but one
day I'm gonna need those. So for me to say what the scripture
says is that without love we are worthless, it hurts me. So sometimes I de-emphasize those. Purpose and you need to get it
better. Come on Tiffin's just say what
the Bible says If we are loving one another
in the truth of Christ and we have the gospel of grace free
and sovereign Then we must We are implicated by the command
of God to live accordingly as a family of faith And that's
why we're here today beloved It's a family room. It's a gathering
of saints who have been purchased by Christ. And it gives me great
joy when we gather together, when we're able to, but the next
step is yours to take. The next interaction is yours
to understand. We have to have intimacy beyond
this assembly. And let me tell you what, intimacy
in the body of Christ, it's not about just eating together and
cooking out together and doing fun things together. I can do
that with anybody in the world that I have an affinity with.
Are we willing to expose ourselves in some real way to the body? Because the scripture says, I
don't have to find it, I'll just quote it for you. The scripture
teaches, that Paul says in 2 Corinthians, that God has put together the
body as he sees fit, and that every part of the body is for
the encouragement and the building up of the other. That all the
spiritual gifts that each of us hold are not confined to the
stupid 1970s little dumb pamphlet that somebody wrote that became
a book series, that became a lecture series about find your spiritual
gift, it's one of these 11, that's baloney. Your spiritual gift
is that you have the Spirit of God within you. Your spiritual
gift is that you have a passion for certain things that can help
serve some other people. Your spiritual gift is that you
are good at you. Well, that sounds like some prosperity
garbage. No, it's not. It's what the Bible
teaches. You have giftedness and you've been created in the
image of God and you've been created to do good works that
God has prepared beforehand. What are those good works? That
we might serve the body unto edification, unto maturity in
the headship of Christ. That we may grow in the likeness
of Christ. In what way? Every way. Are we
growing in holiness? Are we becoming more set apart?
No. We're certainly learning to set our lives apart for the
sake of each other. Thus, for the sake of Christ.
And this is not new. Beloved, I've been preaching
this since John 17. Since John 14. Romans, Hebrews, it's all there. Let brotherly love continue.
This isn't an addendum that's not important. These writings
are as authoritative and as equally viable as a command as the gospel
itself and the doctrines of Christ itself because they are the doctrines
of Christ. Oh, now you're a Lordshipper.
Man, hush that lie. That's the devil's tongue to
call me that. And it's the devil's tongue to call me an antinomian
too. You just keep speaking Satan. And that's how I'm coming to
that from now on. And that's how you should come on. Just
say, that's just the devil speaking. Moving right along. Don't waste
your time and throw your pearls before swine. Swine accuse you. Let them have it. Give it to
them. Let them all sit in the same hog pen and accuse one another,
because that's where we're going. That's what Deatrophies is doing.
You see, what's the context here? Deatrophies. This is what's happening. The good, the bad, and the godly
here. I don't know how to name sermons. This isn't going to
make sense. But John wrote a letter to Diotrephes, and as far as
we can tell, Diotrephes tore that thing up, and nobody else
saw it. Because nobody else in the church had heard that John
had sent a letter. It's like Diotrephes saw the messenger,
he happened to be the guy in town that day, and said, hey,
I got a letter from the apostle John. Oh, let me see it. Wanting
to be big in his own shoes, looks at it, goes, this is about me.
Or this is to me. He burned that thing. Nothing was happening. Then all
of a sudden, what's going on? Let's look at verse 9. I have
written something to the church. I've written a letter to the
church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself before others,
does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come, I will bring up
what he is doing, which is talking wicked nonsense against us. So
you see my sentiment? Tippins, you're just being a
little sinful. I am mimicking John. And I always preach ahead of
the text because I think psychologically it's just the way I've learned
to read it and to teach it and then to prove what I've said
rather than read it then prove itself. And then I think psychologically
it lets the hearers go, I don't sure if I agree with that. Oh,
I have to agree with that because the Bible says so. He's speaking wicked nonsense
against us and he's not content with that. He refuses to welcome
the brothers. In other words, he's going a
further way. He refuses to welcome other brothers and also stops
those who want to welcome them and is putting them out of the
church. And then John says in verse 11
that that's evil. And what is evil but worthless?
What is evil but loveless? What is evil but wicked? You
see? So I don't care. As much as a
pastor, I care as much as a pastor. I shouldn't say I don't care.
I care as much as a pastor, not only about your gospel testimony,
I care also equally about your gospel love for one another.
Because if we don't need that, I am free from you. You don't
need me at all. There are plenty of good preachers
you can listen to at home and never assemble. Go ahead. You
see, we don't need each other. We don't need each other. There's
no reason people should move here, be a part of our family.
We don't need anybody. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. And I'm talking to us. Not about
us. I'm talking to me. I'm learning
as we all learn together. We are growing and being reminded
by this text of what our call is. But we already know that
because we've already gone through First John. We've already seen
Second John about that exclusion that those who are loving but
come in with a false Christ, we are not obligated to them.
We are obligated to reconcile that profession. We're talking
about people who come in. from the out, people who sneak
in, who come sideways, people who are evangelists for a false
Christ. We have no obligation to them,
but this letter is that we have an obligation to those evangelists
who preach the true Christ. And I believe that when John
received his revelation, and I believe when he wrote by the
Spirit in chapter two. He says of the church of Ephesus,
I know your works. I know your toil and your patient
endurance and how you cannot bear with those who are evil
but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not
and you found them to be false. And I know you are endurantly
patient and bearing up for my namesake, and you have not grown
weary. But I have this against you, Jesus says in Revelation
2-4, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where
you have fallen, change your thinking and do the works that
you did at first. If not, I will come to you and
I will turn out your light. unless you change the way you're
thinking. Now what is a church without
light? Nothing. Nothing. What did Paul tell the Thessalonians
when he praised God for them? When he said, I praise the Lord
for you. I praise the Lord for you. For
the testimony that you have has come all the way to all the regions
of this area, from Macedonia to Achaia. And not only has the
word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia,
but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that when
we arrive to these places, we don't have to say a thing. For they themselves report concerning
us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned
to God from idols in order to serve the living and the true
God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from
the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. So
Paul was overjoyed at the affection that the Thessalonians had, not
only for the truth of the gospel, and then therefore their disdain
for the idols of the world and the false gospels, but also,
and equally important, he overjoyed that they had love for one another
that far surpassed the totality of the understanding
of love for the cultures around them. But diatrophies. He likes to
put himself first. See, John has commended Gaius. Why did he write Gaius? Because
Diotrephes was intercepting. I guarantee you, once that letter
came, I bet Diotrephes was intercepting everything that came to John. I mean, wouldn't you? You get a bad letter in the mail,
or, you know, somebody's trying to talk, and I don't want that.
The boss man's coming in, putting memos in people's boxes. You're
going, You want to intercept that stuff.
You don't want people to know about you. And not only that,
Diotrephes has gotten control of the church. How did he do
that? Bad-mouthing the apostles. There's no greater way to get
an audience than to say something negative. That's why I've never
heard of a bankrupt tabloid. I mean, you just don't hear about
it. Now you can prove me wrong. I'm sure there have been. Many
have tried. Most have succeeded. Nobody goes
bankrupt when they're spreading bad news. I mean, if the apostles
wrote bad news every time the occasion was there, the Bible
would be in volumes. The New Testament would be like
666 books. We'd have all sorts of things.
We'd have the letters of complaints, the letters of gripes, the letters
of sufferings. Pastoral burdens. I mean, it
would be voluminous. But instead, we have the proclamation
of the truth of the gospel interposed into reconciled issues, written
because of differences that needed reconciled, written because of
behavior, mostly. People's behavior was unbecoming
of the call of God in Christ. and that the testimony of the
family together wasn't indicative of the love of Christ. We sang
it this morning. We ought to be compelled to honor
the Lord in our lives together by being reminded, you didn't
even know you sang it, did you? By being reminded of the glories
of the grace of God and the death of Jesus and the purity of his
death and what it did for us. This is the teaching of the apostles. But Diotrephes puts himself first. He didn't care about the church.
He didn't care about what was going on in the life of the church.
He had made a stance. He had made something and inserted
himself into a position of authority by saying, this is what we're
going to do. This is what the word of God
requires. And he got a bandwagon. He got
roadies. He got folks to follow him in
this reasoning. And the elders lost control of
the church. Because somewhere along the line, the sheep decided
that they were the arbiters of reconciliation and that they
were the ones who were supposed to always bring to the attention
of everyone else errors and sin, and that is the furthest from
the truth, as we'll see when we get into Paul's teaching to
Timothy. Your responsibility as a member of the congregation
is to bring to the elders when things don't seem right or appear
wrong. If you take it to somebody else,
you're wicked. That is gossip. It is always
wicked. And we put each other to the
test, too, don't we? We say something. It's easy to do. Diotrephes had
said so much. He was talking wicked nonsense
about him. I love that. You know what the
real word is there? Murderous gossip. Gossip is murder. I hate that conviction that comes
with that, don't you? I feel so bad. Good. Why do we
feel so bad? Because that isn't how Christ
taught us. Same reason when I'm 47 years old, but I still feel
bad when I do things out of the place where my father taught
me to do them. If I let my oil change go a little bit longer
than it should. Because the book says 10,000 miles, but the sticker
says three. You know? I feel bad. We feel bad about
our earthly fathers giving us instruction on things like oil
changes. Why don't we not feel bad when our Heavenly Father
gives us instruction for our good and for our joy and for
the unity of the faith? We should. But we should not live in despair.
We should not be broken. We should not be corrupted. We
should rejoice. You know what? The Lord gave
this. opportunity for me to realize what he has died for. Jesus died
for the sins of the elect, for the little petty sins, frustrations,
the little sinful thoughts, and the grave, wicked acts of gossip, which is murder. And Diotrephes wasn't content
with just talking trash about the apostles. What else did he
do? He refuses to welcome the brothers. He made himself the
sword of the church. Nope, these evangelists shall
not come to our presence. Remember, guys, we don't welcome
these people. We don't welcome them. Yeah,
we don't welcome these people. What are me and Dave and Jesse gonna
do if everybody here, no, we're not, we're gonna stand at the
door. Call the cops. Not for y'all, for me. I mean,
you know, I gotta get Tippin's under control. He's about to
lose it. And we're all joking. But I mean, I envision that.
I envision that being this near of a brawl if someone had stepped
up and hammered authority. Because there's one thing elders
don't have is rule and authority to destroy the body. They have responsibility to govern
and oversee and shepherd. And when the body no longer listens,
the church goes away. Because that's the whole point
of the assembly of faith. It's not sheep getting what they want,
finding pastors for themselves. We'll see in Timothy that that
is always, always, always the devil's work. That ain't church planting, that's
satanic church planting. That's the evangelical cult methods.
That when the elders cease, the church is gone. That's why plurality of elders
is necessary, right? Well, we'll just make elders
of ourselves. That's not biblical. That's not how it works. Oh,
you're Catholic now, you're... No, I'm not. Listen, folks, the
authority of the Word of God has not ceased to be the authority
of the church. Diotrephes was a devil in the
midst of the body, doing devilish things, but he was a brother.
And John wanted it straightened out. How many months did it take
for these letters to go back into? Probably a year. And John patiently endured this
while the church ran in the ground to the point that it was so long
that Diotrephes had control of the membership of the church.
that not only were they not believing in John and the Apostles, in
the Apostles writing, they no longer held them as the standard
and the authority to govern the church, they no longer listened
to the elder brothers who had lost control of the church, then
they had the majority agreeing with them to the point that when
missionaries came through to continue the work of apostolic
church planting, they would send them on their way to their destruction
with no food and with no money, no rest, no water. This isn't
talking about a love offering for a man to be able to pay his
bills. This is life or death. This is taking care of people
who are doing the work of the ministry. He stops those and puts them
out of the church. So who was left? The naysayers. That's all that was left. And
then poor Gaius. John's like, well, I'll write
Gaius. I know he's a faithful brother. He commended Gaius for
his love. I've heard that you, Gaius, have
been doing this. You have been going against the
whole of the assembly to love these men who are doing the work
of God. You see? So this is the context
here. Where's the application? Beloved,
let's check our hearts. Let's check our motives. Let's
check the fact that we're looking for reconciliation and we're
not strong-arming in our pet peeves. That we're seeking unity, not
in our way, but in the authoritative way that the Scripture commands
us. First, to know, and then second, to live. We ought to support these people,
verse 8, that we may be fellow workers of the truth. That's
where I ended up last week. Because if we support false teachers,
we're fellow workers with their lies. If we support true teachers,
we're fellow workers in the truth. So we are to be supportive of
teachers. And there's so many things that
are going through my head right now that I'm going to yield until
my closing message of this letter. But there is some application
on how we expressly denote and affirm and mark people in our
day that we need to have wisdom on. Verse 11, beloved, do not imitate
evil, but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God.
Now I want to remind you that this is not an evangelistic letter.
John is not writing about salvation here. John is not writing about
assurance of salvation. He's already done that, hasn't
he? What's our assurance of salvation? The Spirit of God who teaches
us the truth of Christ. Okay. I've been saying this very phrase
for almost 18 years. Hear what I'm saying, not what
I'm not saying. So don't indict me. Don't indict
me on what I'm not saying. Take it for face value what I
am saying. I don't play with words. I don't mince words. Not
on purpose. I may mash them, but I don't
play with them. And John is saying, in the context
of the assembly, there are people who live and do evil things. Don't do like they do. Don't
follow them. Does not Paul say the same thing? I said John,
yeah. Does not Paul say the same thing to the church of Ephesus?
Don't have nasty talk come out of your mouth. Don't use cursing.
James says not to use cursing. Good gracious. Why? Because it's unbecoming. It violates,
you know, and I've got friends who think it's cool to use an
explicative in the bullpen. I'm too far dirty south to ever
try that one. Because I know what it would
be. It would ruin the witness. But yet, some places around the
world, no big deal. Paul did. Okay, then go ahead. Paul stayed in prison most of
his life, too. You want Paul's life? Get it. Go get it. I don't. I do in one sense, but
not in a reality. Don't imitate evil, but imitate
good. This is not a figure of speech. This is not a mystical
phrase that's supposed to teach us to sit and rest peacefully
in the knowledge of Christ and the doctrines of grace. That's
a given. John's not even writing about
that kind of stuff. He's already said, I love you in the truth. We already
know the truth, now we gotta fix this problem in the church.
These letters are written to fix a problem in the church.
So when the pastor preacher preaches this to the church, he reminds
the church continually of the sovereign grace of God that saves
them. And then he teaches the text
that shows that there were errors in the church. Then we make some
sense of application that if we see this type of error, we
should correct it in the same way. And that if we see this
type of stuff coming up into our spirit, we should put it
to death very clearly. We should not imitate that. But
see, we live in a world that's not very disconnected anymore,
do we? Is it? Whatever I'm trying to
say. I mean we can see things like right now there are other
pastor brother friends of mine who are teaching the text who
are streaming live on the internet and people are flipping back
and to and trying to get you know there's a large subset a
large group of folks who just like to just they get up Sunday
mornings and they listen and watch sermons all day long. That
is amazing that we can do that. And praise God that we can have
that connectivity with the world that otherwise would completely
be isolated. Could you imagine back in the
day when I used to write postcards and letters to France and to
West Africa and to places like that, friends that lived there.
And I would wait months to hear back. Because you couldn't afford
the phone call. $7 a minute. I mean, you know, you couldn't afford it. But now
you just text them. You just stream them, you just
FaceTime them, you just Zoom them, whatever. They can watch you,
we can watch each other. So this reality, like I said,
in 2004, I told a group of parents, a couple hundred parents, I said,
one day, when we talk about our youth on MySpace and stuff like
this, I said, the internet is going to be a place where we
live rather than just a tool that we use. And I think 2020
showed us that. So I think sometimes the application
of a text like this, while not in the context, does have to
be understood that there is a relationship that we have with people through
the social media sphere and through online sphere that we also are
subject to in the context of the teaching of this letter. So don't imitate evil online.
It doesn't shield you, beloved. It makes you look foolish. You. It makes us look foolish. That's
the problem with a person speaking, you, you, you, you. You're not
talking to you. You're talking to us. We are talking. It makes
us look foolish when we imitate evil. And we've all done it.
Just like, you know, you've been in the grocery store, right?
And you've seen children that needed to die, needed to be killed
or put out to pasture. And I'm being funny. I might
not, it should be so crude. But they need some good discipline.
And you think to yourself, bring them home to my house, I'll tell
them. And the mother's just whipped, or the father's just whipped,
I'll buy you this toy if you'll shut up. Oh, here's some candy.
Eat these grapes. And we don't know their circumstances.
We don't know what's going on. It's not our business, but we've
got an opinion on it. But seldom do we ever go up to
that person and say, would you shut that child up? Would you
do what you're supposed to do? Here, take my belt. I mean, in
our minds we're thinking that, but we're just cool. And we're
doing our business, and we're going on to the car. But imagine
all of a sudden, if that was happening to you, and someone
third in line came up there and snatched up your child and started
slapping it, and shoved it back down in the buggy. You know what?
It's on. I hope somebody's recording it,
because I'm about to get a million hits. And I'm not talking about
on Facebook or YouTube. It's about to go bad. Grave Truth's
going to be down and elder for a while. You can visit me in
the penitentiary. But yet we'll do that on social
media. Well, it was public! It doesn't give us the right
to stick our nose in it. As a matter of fact, anything public, the
scripture says, if we put our nose in it without invitation,
we're busybodies. Don't! There's some wisdom in it, beloved. There's some wisdom in it, and
we're all guilty of it. Let's not imitate evil in the
body of Christ. Let's not imitate evil in the grocery store. Let's
not imitate evil in our workplace. Let's not imitate evil on our
social spheres. Let's not imitate. Let people
know that we are gentle and that we are patient. We can interact
without evil. You see what I'm saying? We can
ask questions. We can be kind. We can do things. And some of us do so well with
that, but others know better to even turn on the computer.
Some of us are able to handle certain things, and so we who
are weak need to learn from those who are strong. We who are immature
need to learn from those who are wise, and then we grow together.
We grow together. We grow together by learning,
3 John, that there are going to always be people among us,
it may be me, who become a deiotrophies. Because, beloved, I am in a flesh
suit. I have a will and I have a sinful
nature. And by the mercy of God, He has
restored me to Himself through the death of Christ. and He has
given me the understanding of His grace and the substitutionary
work that Christ did on my behalf to be my righteousness and be
my punishment, be the sacrificial lamb, and that the promises that
He's given me are surely mine in Christ, and my assurance lies
there, and my hope lies there, and everything that I look for
lies there, but I have my button. And the Lord has grown me greatly
in so many of those things that I don't know that the buttons
are there anymore, but I don't want to push them to see. That's
why I started out like I did with this reality that people
think pastors are these perfect people. Folks are not perfect
people, we're just being perfected in the love of God. It is the
love of God that compels me to not show out. It is the love that God has for
me in Christ. It compels me not to talk back.
So there is a discipline there that we grow together in. And
when we see each other, we see others that are just acting all,
we just have to be patient. We just need to... We want to snatch them out of
the buggy and give them a good shake. But we have to be patient. We
take them outside, we talk to them, and we say, you do that
again, you're probably gonna get left at the supermarket.
And somebody else can have you, you know. See, Nora was good
at that as a mother. Oh, my goodness, James is just
acting ugly. She'd be smiling, how you doing?
Good to see you, I'll see you next week. And all the while,
those two inch nails were digging into the bicep underneath the
other side of your thing. And you knew if you even said
a peep, she'd take your juggler out. And then when we got to
that 1977 Toyota Corolla, she'd take that flip-flop off and she'd
tear us up. Flip-flop, fly-flap. So you think those fly swatters
at the end of the aisles are so you don't forget it? No, those
are parental emergencies. 9-1-1 breaking, they a dollar? And you knew when that was bought.
You just went ahead and straightened up, because you was going to
get it. It was over. Yeah, there you go. Sister, she's raising
her hand there. And I know her. Yeah, your son
has told me. And that's how you raise kids
in the 70s and the 80s. It's not how we raise kids today. How we disciplined in the context
of our ministry in the 70s and 80s and 90s and 2000s is different
today. Because relationships change,
but the truth never does. How we work together unto our
joy. There is no joy in you if you
worry about coming to church because you're going to get in
trouble. There's no joy in you if you worry about saying something
that you're thinking about because you're going to get defamed. Let's not imitate evil, but imitate
good. Because the idea is that those who are doing good in the
body of Christ are the ones who have been sent by God to be the
ministers. who are from God. See, Jesus
was sent by the Father to do the will of the Father, to die
to himself, to lay his life down for the ransom of the church.
So in the same way, husbands love your wife as Christ loved
the church, wives submit to your husbands as Christ submitted
to the Father, and so on and so forth, so that we as a family
of faith are to learn to do that, and the elders are in the, they're
pushing the buggies. And when all the kids are having
fits, everybody else is saying, why aren't you doing something
about it? Sometimes we just have to wait, we have to be patient.
We're just not doing it to your satisfaction, but we must do
it to the Lord's satisfaction. What was the reconciliation here? I think when John got to Gaius,
I think Gaius went to Diotrephes, and I think Diotrephes saw the
handwriting on the wall. Why? Because I don't see another letter,
unless Diatropes tore them all up. I don't see anything else
in any other place where it talks about the fact that he was kicked
out of the church or anything of that nature. But John was
handling it. The church was going to have
to answer for it. But sometimes that's the things
that we need to remember too, that all the New Testament letters
are written to either deal with the suffering, deal with the
problem of behavior, or deal with the doctrinal issue that
should be put out of the church. And who do we think we are to
think we're not going to go through the same thing? Because as Christ
suffered, we who are in Christ are going to suffer as Christ
suffered. We're going to be maligned, we're going to be belittled,
we're going to be all sorts of things. It doesn't mean that
we're not in Christ. Being the body of Christ, being
the family of faith is not a place of perfection and a place of
constant peace. That perfection and peace is
in Christ alone. He is our perfection. He is our peace. And that's the
only unity that we really have. So we strive for the other parts
of unity through reconciliation and we're all different. I think
that's why so many American churches have so many affinity groups
so that they can divert, they can dilute the congregation to
the point where it overcomes some of these differences. Oh,
I don't want to mess up that because I really like the skateboard
ministry. I don't like that guy. Thank God he's not in the skateboard
ministry. He's in the knitting ministry. You know, nothing wrong,
I mean, we can minister to each other in our affinities, great.
But it's not a federation of the congregation, it's not the
congregation's part to put those things together. We can do it. But we come to understand that
we're not going to find a perfect family. We're gonna find a family
that is perfected in the love of God. through Jesus Christ
alone. And we are rehearsing the reality
that one day we will be with him and then one day we will
also be like him and none of us will ever bother the other.
Could you imagine not being bothered by something? I can't. That bothers me. And I don't want to because then
I'll stay up all night thinking about it. Beloved, do not imitate evil
but good. Whoever does good is from God.
Whoever does evil has not seen God. Demetrius has received a
good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself. You
see that? We also add our testimony and
you know that our testimony is true. I had much to write to
you, but I would rather not write with Pinnanique. I hope to see
you soon, and we will talk face-to-face. Peace be to you. The friends
greet you. Greet the friends each by name."
This is a very intimate writing, and it exposes a very intimate
relationship with the church that he wrote to and with Gaius
and the people in his life. Beloved, the church is a very
intimate relationship with each other. And we need to understand the
impact of when that intimacy is corrupted or that intimacy
is broken. It is disastrous. Personally and then publicly,
it is very disastrous. We need to recognize that and
we need to know that our intimacy is directly related to our understanding
of the intimacy that we have with Christ. So that as the Bible
teaches us that Christ gave himself for us, he sacrificed his life. He came into flesh. And I've heard people tell the
stories throughout the years, it's like the king putting on homeless
man's clothes and walking around living on the street. No, it's
not. No, it's not. I mean, that helps
a child understand in a similar way, like a simile. This is the creator of the universe
taking on the body of a creation. and subjecting himself to that
which he created to be hated and reviled and killed by his
own will that he might present himself as a sacrifice and replacement
for his people who hate him, who hate him. Now think about
that for a second. So when we remember the death
of Jesus and the life of Jesus and what Christ did in His passion,
we should be remembering one another because just because
I am a recipient doesn't mean that I am the point. We are the point. Well, no, it's God's glory. I
know that, but we are that which God's glory is manifest. God has determined in his infinite
wisdom that we would praise him for his glorious grace and be
made like Christ forever glorious for the fullness and the completeness
of joy and satisfaction and peace together. He is glorified in
our existence. So beloved, he needs to be glorified
in our lives. And we need to be at peace with
that. We need to know that and we need to understand that. And
we need to know and pray and be intimate with each other by
name. Let's pray. Father, as we are
thinking about the gospel, as we're thinking about intimacy
that we have with you through Christ Jesus, we thank you for
this letter, for this practical teaching that you've given us,
Lord. Not that we are dealing with the same things, but Father,
we are all dealing with the same flesh. We're all dealing with
certain ways in which our relationships with others has been strained.
Father, we are dealing with false teachers who like to parade themselves
in our social spheres. Lord, help us to give time to
one another. Help us to not put ourselves first. Help us to understand
that the gospel shows us that Christ put himself last. That Christ gave himself up.
And that we likewise, according to his instruction, together
should do that for one another. And that in that doing, Lord,
help us to realize that we will receive the same blessing. Joy
and ministry. For if we consider ourselves
all the time, nobody will receive our ministry. And in turn, we
will receive no one else's. So as we think of the body of
Christ and all that it accomplished and the blood of Christ and all
that it set free, help us to be reminded of one another. To be reminded of the cost of
redemption. and to be reminded of the purpose
of the assembly that you have put together for your glory. Paul has taught us that already
as he wrote to the Ephesians. That your glory is seen in the
people you have saved. Through the son whom you have
sent. In whose name we pray. Amen.