2 John Weaving Truth and Love

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series, Short Letters, Big Stuff, a study in 2nd and 3rd John, and also Jude. Let's listen in.

Truth and Love in 2 John

Well, good morning, Recast Church. We're going to dive into God's Word here, and I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and one of our stated core values as a church is truth. So, most all of you know that Recast is an acronym for our core values, replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth, and we value truth, we love truth, we seek to live out the truth, and we seek to live out the truth by growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service.

And so, you're going to see that truth is a theme for this morning. We come to the text of scripture this morning. In this text, we find a text that majors on the truth. It's actually mentioned 22 times in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John.

It is a major theme there, and the letter of 2nd John is a book that weaves the call to love one another with a commitment to the truth, and it puts those two things together, vitally connects them together in the church, and right now, I think, is a time when we need that.

Right now is a time when we need to recognize what is and isn't true, and then we also need to be loving one another, and loving one another right now obviously looks like you being in your home, and me being here, and all of us doing what we can to love our communities and love our neighbors by not spreading this illness any further than it needs to go, and just taking care of that.

So as we come to the text of scripture this morning, it's going to major on truth, it's going to major on love, and the core of this book is a warning. Now we're seeing warnings all over the place, warnings about the spread of this, but this is a different kind of warning.

We're going to see the core of the book is a warning in verse 8, to watch ourselves for false teachers. Watch out for false teachers. And yeah, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to keep preaching this rather than just taking us off into some kind of comfort in terms of studying a psalm together or something like that.

I just really am convinced that God's word has power for his church, and that we set out to kind of go through 2 John, 3 John, and Jude, and we're just going to continue to do that. And I believe that God has a plan for it and will bless us in it, because his word, all of his word is truth, all of it is sharp, all of it is able to transform and change.

And I think you'll see as we go through this letter this morning together in our own places, that you're going to see that it has an impact on you and on your family as we get an opportunity to do this together.

So he is going to give that warning to watch out for false teachers, and after, he only gives that warning, though, after he clearly ties love in the church to the truth. Once he ties those things together, then he gives the warning.

And see, the fact of the matter is, in our minds, the truth and love can sometimes seem at odds. Like, sometimes the two don't seem to go hand in hand. But God defines love according to the truth. And by truth, I mean the truth that we are all sinners.

I mean truth like Jesus is the only hope for us. The truth that God has designed us, he's put us together. The truth that he has the right to tell us what is indeed best for us in every area of our existence.

Like, that kind of truth.

So let's watch the way that the Apostle John, in our text, rather than just taking truth and saying, run with that, or rather than just taking love and saying, run with that at the exclusion of the truth, he's going to weave those two together for us to form a warning against enemies of the church and even enemies against Christ.

So I'm convinced that God wants to press this truth into each one of our hearts so that we would overflow with a rightly ordered love for him and a rightly ordered love for each other and also a rightly ordered love for his word.

So let's open our Bibles there in your family. If you have a Bible there, hopefully you've got one available to you or you can just jump on a device and read it together, follow along. But I am going to go ahead and read the entirety of the letter of 2 John.

It's a really small book, actually it's the smallest book in the entire New Testament, but these small letters pack a huge and important message for us as the church that belongs.

To Christ.

And so follow along as we read this together, 2 John verses 1 through 13, the entire letter. The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us.

Forever.

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son in truth and love. I really want to read verse 3 again because I think that this is a verse that I was planning on preaching this before the crisis has hit and all of this quarantine has happened.

But let's listen to that verse one more time. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son in truth and love. I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded.

By the Father.

And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love that we walk according to his commandments.

This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.

Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourself so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God.

Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. And so if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him in your house or give him any greeting. For whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

Though I have much to write you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete. The children of your elect sister greet you.

Let's pray.

Father, I do pray.

I recognize that right now our culture and our society, there's so much fear. There's so much misinformation. There's a lot of people who are swinging the pendulum one way or the other, all the way over to just kind of a terror, and then all the way over to a laissez-faire attitude about this whole thing.

And so, Father, I pray that you would help us to be a people who are people of the truth, are people of the center on these kinds of things, that ultimately our hope comes from Jesus Christ, our hope comes from you, and the recognition that you are in charge and you are in control.

And so, Father, we lean on you this morning. We ask that you would be honored and glorified, that you would be honored and glorified even as your church is dispersed right now and unable to gather for a few weeks.

I pray that you would strengthen us, build us up, give us an increase in faith, give us an increase in love for one another. Even in the absence of community right now, Father, I pray that you would even create within us a longing for community that is absent from us right now, because we are apart and that that would just create in us a hunger and a longing for that gathering that we're going to have eventually here.

And so, Father, I pray that your word would go forward with strength and with power, even though this is just a weird format and different than anything that we're used to, I still pray that it has a powerful impact through your spirit in the lives of everybody who listens to this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Paul’s Teaching on Speaking the Truth in Love

Let's take this seriously and jump back into 2 John. The Apostle Paul, and I'm starting with the Apostle Paul, I know that we've been going through Romans and then we're here in 2 John. John is the author of this, the disciple John who wrote the gospel, then he wrote 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation.

And so he accounted for some good chunks of the New Testament writing, but I want to start with Paul here and I want to just give you a snapshot of the atmosphere and the culture of the early church. You see, the Apostle Paul gave these instructions to the church in Ephesus in Ephesians 4 .15.

So this is what he said.

He said, rather speaking the truth in love, let me hear that again, rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head that is into Christ. You see, the context of that statement where he is talking about truth and love is the context of deceitful teachers coming into the church of Ephesus.

And Paul told the church to combat that false teaching, to fight against it by speaking the truth in love.

What did he mean by that?

He said, you speak what is accurate, speak what is true of God, speak what is true from his word out of goodwill and out of kindness toward others. You see, there is a way of speaking, there is a content that's necessary and that content.

Is the truth.

But then there's a way of communicating that truth and there's a motivation for telling.

That truth.

And that motivation is love. It is the goodwill that we have towards others that we would speak the truth to those around us, to speak the truth in the church as well as to speak the truth outside of the church.

And so I start out talking about 2 John, but I reference Paul to only point out that this is a theme in the New Testament that covers more than one author. Peter also addressed the issue of false teachers.

And so false teachers, that concept, that idea, that problem was a significant problem in the early church. You see, what I really want to point out is that the context of the early church was dangerous.

Not dangerous because of a coronavirus, not dangerous because of illness, but dangerous because there were false teachers that went out on speaking tours trying to divide the church, looking to make a buck as traveling speakers.

And in doing so, they would presumptively lean on the hospitality and the loving welcome of churches while they were spouting false teaching and heresy. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally, but whatever they could do to try to make a buck and travel around and speak and disagree with churches.

And so in this sense, the context of this letter is a war for the heart and soul of the Christian faith. And it's a war, I want to point out. Recast, this is a war that's still continuing today. John writes this tiny, tiny small letter to a specific church that isn't clearly identified in the text.

But he was obviously concerned enough for the church that he wrote to them this small letter even while he was planning to visit them soon. So he's planning to go and hang out with them. And he says, I'm coming over.

You see that at the very end of the letter in verse 12. He says, I'm planning on coming to visit you. But that means that this message was so pressing that he couldn't wait until he arrived. He didn't want to wait until he got there.

There is a desperate nature to this letter. Really first, second, and third John all have a desperate nature of trying to protect, trying to warn the churches that were under John's care. And the message is helpful, is a helpful explanation of the way, and this is the corrective that he's trying to bring them, that he's desperate for them to hear.

It's an explanation of the way that truth and love are to be woven together in the church. So the question that really this book is posing is how can we be both a loving community and a community that is committed to the truth?

Let me explain why this matters before we walk through the text. I know this has been a lot of introduction, but we're introducing a new book. And so you might be saying, where's the Bible in this, Don?

We're going to get there here, and trust me, we're going to walk through it. But it really helps to explain this a little bit first. You see, here's the problem. Churches today specialize, and they don't even know they're specialized.

They specialize in certain things. You see, there's two particular categories that a church can swirl around without even thinking about it, without any intention. There are churches, even in the greater Kalamazoo area, that focus on love at the exclusion.

Of truth.

Love at the exclusion of truth. The goal of a church like this is to make people feel comfortable at any cost. Their number one goal would be for people to leave the congregation, to leave Sunday morning feeling good about themselves, regardless of what the Bible is saying.

They would try to blend in with the world and skip the truth wherever it might offend somebody. So the goal of a church like that would be to never offend, and they might not necessarily even think or state directly that their goal is to skip the truth, but they would.

You see, and that's on one side. Those that would take love over truth, but the flip side of that is equally problematic. There are those who pride themselves at truth, even though at the end of the day, they're excluding love.

They're completely pushing that out. Cold and heartless, doctrinal precision is a thing. And these would be churches who approach each other with doubt, with skepticism towards one another, with even some level of fear towards one another.

These are churches that are powder kegs and are ready to blow up in just a moment. There is no focus on love in a church like that, and instead, there's a focus on judgment and rules. And so we are such a people of extremes.

We'll swing the pendulum all the way over here toward fear and doubt of one another, or towards a naive and mindless love. And now what I really propose that we do is we let the text of Scripture weave these two together in a way that makes it more clear how we are meant to balance the truth and love in our gatherings.

You see, in our text, it becomes apparent John has encountered a church that doesn't have a balance. They're not balanced. And so he responds with urgency to address it right away, because keeping these two intentions.

Is vital.

Keeping truth and love in tension is vital for a healthy church. And so the first three verses are really introductory. John identifies himself and then identifies his audience. He says, I am the elder, and this is not likely a title that he designates to himself as the official elder of the church that he is addressing.

Instead, elder is probably a more general title of age, and then general church authority. Whatever we have going on here, we know this, that John writes the letter and they know who he is by his identification.

So maybe it was a term of endearment to some degree to this particular church or this particular set of churches that John was working with. But he's saying, I'm the elder. And they get it. They know who he is.

But then who is he writing to? And it actually says in the text, the opening line, he is writing to the elect lady and her children. The elect lady and her children. And this phrase is a metaphor for the church.

John has some knowledge of this specific church and he loves them. In truth, he goes on to say. By the way, when it says elect lady, I don't believe that that's an actual lady. I don't believe that's a real physical person.

I believe it's metaphorical in the same way that we would talk about the bride of Christ. Many of the early church fathers and even the early church writings would identify the church metaphorically as a woman.

And so because of that, I think that's exactly what John is doing here. But he has some knowledge of this church. He loves them. And he goes on to say, not only does John love that church, but so does everyone who.

Knows the truth.

And I want you to think about the implications of this for just a moment. You could even pause the video and talk about this for just a moment. But if you know the truth, then you love the church. That's what John is saying here.

If you love the truth, then you love the church. You see, he goes on to say the truth abides in us and will forever be with those who have been saved by Jesus Christ. Throughout his writings, throughout 1st and 2nd and 3rd John, John has a habit of referring to the Holy Spirit with a specific term that's pretty unique to him.

He loves to call the Spirit, even in his gospel, he loves to call the Spirit, the Spirit of.

Truth.

And so the Spirit makes the truth clear in our lives. That's what he means when he's talking about the Spirit of truth, the Spirit who brings the truth, the Spirit who is of the truth. And so the Spirit of truth brings the clear value of the Word to bear in our lives.

He, the Holy Spirit, abides in all followers of Jesus Christ, illuminating the truth and convicting us and encouraging us according to the truth, according to the Word of God. So his work in our lives is shown by an increase in our value of the Word of truth.

The Spirit brings the value of the Bible alive to us. So where the Spirit abides, if the Spirit is alive in you, then there will be a treasuring.

Of the Word of God there.

You will value it, you will treasure it, you'll want to know more of it, you'll dig into it, you'll savor it, you'll hunger for it, you'll want more of it. John doesn't give, here in this text, the common greeting of a Greek letter.

So these first three verses are all, like I said, they're introductory. They are the beginning of the letter. We haven't gotten to the body of the letter yet. But most New Testament letters, Paul writes, he says, grace and peace to you from God our Father, to many of his churches that he's addressing.

And many of them offer the grace and peace in terms of the common Greek greeting, which was to wish it on somebody. Or even, as Paul would adopt it, to pray it for somebody. But John here steps it up a notch.

He changes this, and it's significant what he does here. It's significant for maybe some of us who are living in fear and living in doubt and living in anxiety right now. John steps it up, and he guarantees it.

He says, grace, mercy, and peace will be with us. Will be with us, recast. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us. This is strong encouragement that is being offered here to the church. In a difficult time there, in a difficult time here, grace, mercy, and peace.

The grace of God, the mercy of God, and peace with God will be with us. It's his kindness. It's his forgiveness. It is peace that comes from the Father. And he goes on to say, and from Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father as well.

And these things, grace, mercy, and peace, come to us in truth and in love. And there's our two themes, in truth and in love. How did you... Ask yourself this question. How did you obtain his grace, his mercy, and his peace?

You see, our restoration with God and the arrival of grace, mercy, and peace in our lives all comes through the pipeline of his truth. It all comes through the word. Without his revelation, we have no understanding of the meaning of the cross.

And further, it's not just the truth. It's not just the Bible. But further, it has come to us in love, he says. God's love for us has been the origin of our rescue. How are you rescued? God's love poured out on us.

Without his love, we would have no grace. Without his love, we would have no mercy. Without his love, we would have no peace. Because without his love, Jesus Christ would not have come to rescue us. And so from this introduction, Paul makes a strong case that if the church is anything, it is a gathering of people forged by the truth and forged out of the very love of God.

So these are two marks of an authentic church. Truth is held high on the one hand, and love is held high in the other. And the two are woven together. You see, we have them mixed so it can be rightly said that our church recasts, that a healthy church is a place of loving truth and is equally a place of truthful love.

So that we have both truth and love in ample portions here mixed together in such a way that the truth that we hold, we hold it because of love. And that the love that we have for one another and the love that we have from the world flows out of the truth of God's Word.

And so we see in verses 4 and 5 our first point, and that is a call to add love to the truth. That's the first point in verses 4 and 5 out of three points, add love to the truth. You see, John, it says in verse 4, ran into some members of this church, and we don't know what the context was, but it says, I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children talking to this woman who is a metaphor for the church, talking to this church.

I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth. He calls them children, and he caught them behaving well. He caught them behaving well. And the word he used to express his joy in the text is over the top.

It's a really rare word in Greek. It's the word lion, and it's used for super or extra, superlative. It's as if what John wants to say here is, I ran into some of your people, and their grasp on the truth made me mega rejoice.

I mega rejoiced at the meeting of these people. And the thing that made him rejoice is that these people he encountered, he says, they were walking in the truth. So they were living rightly ordered lives according to the plan of God and according.

To God's instructions.

They were living out the Word, and we don't know exactly what it was that they were doing, but he was happy to see them obedient to the Heavenly Father in something that they were saying or something that they were doing.

What he exactly caught them doing is hard to tell, but they were outwardly living the.

Truth.

It may very well be by context that they were a people that he encountered, and they were correcting a false teacher. They were doing something that was right, and so because they were living that truth out, he mega rejoiced, he said.

But verse 5 shows that there may have been a little bit of something lacking in them. And so we put the brakes on a little bit, because when you look at verse 4, it's like the management principle that says that you don't say something, or you always say something rather complimentary before you say something that could be improved.

And so always give a compliment before you give a suggestion or a corrective or a change in action. So the compliment that he gives is not trivial. It's not chintzy. It's not like I'll just throw him a bone so that then I can get to the real heart of the issue, and that's to correct them.

But the truth is vital and important, he says, and you have that. It just is important that you don't divorce that truth from love. Don't have a truth without love. Truth is valuable. Truth is very, very important, but make sure that you also couple that with love.

Now John is pretty soft in his petition and in what he's requesting in verse 5. He doesn't command the church. He actually asks her. He asks the church to love one another. But he does indeed appeal to the commands of God so that the command doesn't rest on.

John, but it rests on God.

And this is really cool, because this is what I see my function is as a pastor. Don't obey me. I don't command you. I'm not going to give you commands. I'm not going to give you thus saith Don. But what I am going to do is I'm going to point you to the commands and the principles and the structure of scripture to show you how you ought to live.

And that's exactly what John models for us here. John doesn't say, hey, church, you need to do A, B, and C. He says, I ask you to just consider what the commands of God actually are. And what I'm asking of you, church, what I'm asking you to consider is that what I'm about to say is a command that's not new.

I want to refer you to an old and ancient command. I'm not giving you new instructions here, church. I'm giving you instructions that have been around for a long time. And it is simply this, a command for God's people to love one another from the word.

The word explained. The Apostle John made this connection more explicit in the first letter that he wrote. And so you can hear it exactly what he means when he's talking about these commands. And he's asking them to consider not a new command, but an old command.

And here's what he's referencing. In 1 John 3 .23, you can turn over there if you want, but he says this, quoting 1 John 3 .23, and this is his command, that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.

Now notice how John in that verse ties truth and love together, truth and obedience together. We are to believe the truth, and we are to love one another. The gospel is one that brings us toward unity and love with each other.

And in this case, it's funny that I wrote these words before the entire quarantine and not allowed to have groups of 250 or more. It's actually a misdemeanor for us to gather on Sunday mornings right now.

Before any of that, I wrote this sentence. Ours is not an isolating truth, but a uniting, love-producing thing that we have been brought into. I wrote that on Wednesday. Before everything started to tumble and spiral, I wrote that sentence, and I think it's kind of cool how God brings these things about, but although we may feel isolated for the next two or three weeks, we have been brought into the body of Christ that is expansive and glorious all around this globe.

And it is a uniting thing that brothers and sisters sitting in their homes right now this morning can be praying for one another, lifting one another up, longing to be with one another, looking forward to the time when we can gather again at this building where I'm standing with a group of 250, 300, I think we're averaging about 300, but to be together.

We long for that, and in a season and a time where we don't have that, we want it. Why? Because of love. A love-producing truth. So this church that John addressed needs to weave love into their walking with the truth.

He encountered some of them. He said, boy, you've got the truth down, but you don't have this love component together very well. But now the second movement in verse 6. This is the second point, and it is to hold on to the truth.

Where the first point is add love to the truth, he's afraid that in commanding them to love that they're going to go, well, I guess that means we scrap the truth. We didn't get that quite right. And so he says, no, no, no, I mega rejoiced when I saw the truth.

I just need you to add love to that. But don't let go of the truth. Hold on to the truth is the point. So picture it this way. Here's a good way to illustrate it. John encountered some people, and they were holding on to, some of you know that five-gallon bucket?

I was just about to ask you to raise your hands, but you're not here. So raise your hand right now if you know what I'm talking about, about the big pail, the big bucket of paint. Not the small one, but the big one that contractors use.

Or sometimes they have compound spackle in there. But it's a big bucket. And so imagine that you are hoisting one of those up with both hands in front of you. Because those things can be tough to carry, especially in one hand.

And so you could grab it by two hands and hoist it up. And so he commends them. He says, I caught you carrying this bucket full of truth.

You've got it.

You've got a good grasp on it. So they're hoisting that truth up, and they're holding it in both hands.

And he commends them.

Great job.

You've got a really nice bucket of truth there. Good job. But I mega rejoice to see that much truth in one place, he says. But now he has told them in verse 5, Scripture commands you to add love to that.

So what could be the temptation if you have your hands full, and your boss comes up to you and tells you to pick up something else?

What would you do?

Well, your tendency is going to be to set that down and pick up the next thing. He says, no, no, no. Don't set down the truth. Just add love to it. You see, he doesn't want them to set down the truth in order to pick up love.

Not at all. Instead, we know that picking up a bucket in each hand, so you've got that bucket of love. You transfer that to one hand, and then you grasp, or you've got that bucket of truth. You transfer that to one hand, and then you pick up the bucket of love, too.

Now you're balanced. And how many of you know that it's easier to carry those two? Because the minute that you carry something heavy in this hand and something heavy or equal weight in this hand, it becomes much easier to carry those two things.

So carry the full bucket of truth in one hand, and now pick up the full bucket of love in the other, he's saying. And so in verse 6, he describes that the love he wants them to pick up requires that the truth stays.

He defines the love that they need as a love based on the truth. And I realize that this could really sound like a lot of theory. Truth, love, love, love, truth, truth, truth. And what is this all getting at?

But he says that love is walking according to the commandments of God. And I mentioned in a previous message in the book of Romans that the commands of God are the shape of genuine love. You want to know what love is supposed to look like in our lives?

Well, look to the law. Look to the commands. Look to the principles of Scripture that explain how we should do this. So love, here's the shape of genuine love. Well, it doesn't lie. It doesn't murder.

The shape of genuine love honors parents. The shape of genuine love requires that we do to others what we would want them to do for us. You see, if we trust God by faith, if we believe that He is indeed good, then we will also trust that His revealed instructions for human life are best for us.

So obeying Him leads to the greatest amount of human flourishing. What command is the most important for us in order to come into the greatest and most blessed life? What is the most important command for you to be blessed?

And I would say it is this. Believe the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you might say, well, wait a minute, Don. Didn't Jesus say that the greatest command is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself?

And I would agree with that, except that it's Jesus that's saying that. Following Him is more vital than that, because if you follow Him, you get that too. So following Christ and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ is the thing that frees us up to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and frees us up to love our neighbor as ourself.

And so John is telling us to take up truth and take up love. And that early church that he's writing to had the truth down, but they also needed love in the balance. And the reason they needed to make sure that they had both of these in balance is he goes on to the third point.

There are many deceivers. Now he gives them the third point. John has encouraged them to add love to the truth while being careful not to let go of the truth. And now he gives them a warning, the final point, a warning about truth and love, a warning about truth and love.

You see, he says, there are many deceivers who have gone out on a mission to spread falsehood and divide the people. And without love, they're going to be easily divided. You see, there are some who will go out and they don't confess the coming of Jesus in the flesh, he says.

And the test for a false teacher is centered on the role that they give to Jesus in their teaching and in their ministry.

What role do they give to Jesus?

What's his part to play? And when it says that they do not confess the coming of Jesus in the flesh, I read a bunch of scholars about what is the particular heresy, what's the particular doctrine that they're all disagreeing about here, and what are the false teachers really going on about?