Moral Madness: Power of Spoken Truth

The Value of Truth Spoken in 2 John

You may be seated, and I invite you to now take out a Bible. If you did not bring a Bible of your own, we should have one in the seat pocket in front of you. And, turn with me to the small book of 2 John.

2 John, chapter 1. There is only one chapter, so 2 John, verses 12 and 13. When we get to our reading for Scripture, that is where we will be. On December 3, 1992, Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old test engineer for the SEMA group, sent the very first text message.

From his personal computer to the phone of a man named Richard Jarvis, the message read simply Merry Christmas. That was the first ever text message was a message saying Merry Christmas. From this basic beginning would grow one of the most common methods of communication in the world.

By 2011, 83 of American adults own cell phones, and 73 of those who do own cell phones send and receive text messages. The number of text messages sent monthly in the United States exploded from 14 billion in 2000 to 188 billion in 2010.

The Pew Research Center asked those who text how they prefer to be contacted on their phone, and just a little over half said they like to be called. Most of the rest said they prefer to receive a text message.

They don't want to be called anymore. Where this trend seems to have the most impact is on young people. Young adults between the ages of 18 to 24 are the most avid texters of all, some admitting to averaging over 200 text messages a day.

MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle believes that having conversations is one of the skills foundational in personal development, and that the rise in texting in young people is impeding that area of social development, and as a result, she says she talks to kids who say they actually have fear of having real conversations.

They say they're not really ready for that. In fact, one person said an 18-year-old interviewed by her said someday, but certainly not now, I hope to have a real conversation. That may be a little bit of an extreme example, but you all understand what I'm saying.

Young people are not alone. Many adults that were born before text messaging became popular have given over to the text messaging system as a way of communicating. As a result, more and more of them are avoiding conversations with other people altogether and seeking to have a medium for interaction, and that medium is often the text message or email or social media or some other form of communication.

Communication Changes When You Move from Writing to Speaking

Now, obviously, I didn't come today to preach a sermon on text messaging or Facebook or social media, but in our continuing study of 2 John, in this very tiny epistle, John says something really amazing about communication, and I do want to kind of give you a warning this morning.

This is a different message than normal. Do I have a normal message? I don't know if I have a normal message, but this is a little different than normal in that this message really is highly practical.

We have studied the book of 2 John, this short epistle, for the past four weeks. This is our fifth and final week in this book. It's rare that we get to go through a whole book in a shot like this, but we have.

And over the last four weeks, we've looked at the theology of 2 John. We've looked at the doctrine of 2 John. We've looked at the focus of 2 John. 2 John really is about truth. It's about the desire for truth, the yearning for truth, the value of the truth, the walking in the truth, the loving of the truth that the believer is supposed to have.

And it also talks about the danger of falsehood coming into the church, about how we're not even to welcome the false teacher. We're not even to give him a greeting, but we are to deny his entrance into the body of faith.

We don't want anything to do with false teachers. We don't want anything to do with heretics. We want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God. So that's the theme of the book.

But now we arrive at the end, these final two verses, and we come to a part that I think is interesting in regard to how we relate the truth to one another. You see, John has a truth that he wants his people to hear, but he wants to relate it not by pen and ink, but through the words of his mouth.

And he makes a distinction between those two, and that's what we're going to do today. The value of truth spoken is the subject of today's message. So let's stand and we'll read the text, a very short text, but we stand to give honor and reverence to God's word.

2 John, verses 12 and 13. He says, Though I have much to write to 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.

Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the truth. I thank you for your admonishment in this book to love the truth. And I pray that we would love the truth. The world, Father, is so eager to hate the truth.

It's so eager to put the truth asunder. It's so eager to walk away from the truth, deny the truth, turn its face from the truth. Lord, may it be that our hearts would be open to the truth. And we know that you, Lord, are the only one who can open a heart.

You are the only one who can take out the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh, which beats for you. Father, you're the only one who can change us, and I do pray that today we would be changed by the hearing of the word, that we would see our responsibility as the body of Christ, not just to come together and leave again, but to come together in community of faith, that we might stir one another up to good works.

And I pray, Lord, that you would bless this message. I pray that you would keep me from error, for, Lord, I am a fallible man. I am capable of preaching falsehoods. And for the sake of your name, for the sake of the consciences of your people, for the sake of my own conscience and our spirits collectively, Lord, I pray that you would keep me from error.

Lord, shut my mouth if I were to preach untruth. And I pray, Lord, that you would speak through me today. In Jesus name, amen. As I said a moment ago, the nice thing about preaching through a book is that you get to see the author's intent all the way through.

And it's not often that you get to see the author's intent in such a short amount of time and go all the way through the book. I've preached since my beginning of ministry here in the church. I have preached through the books of Luke, Hebrews, James, Romans and Genesis all the way through verse by verse in the last 10 years.

I've been able to cover those books both on Wednesday evening, Sunday mornings. And I've never had one go in less than two months. Some of them have taken years to go through. So I'm grateful. Hopefully you all are as well, those of you who've been here.

And as we've said, this book is about the subject of truth. And he yearns for the elect lady, he says in verse one, to the elder. That's him, that's John. He's an elder in the church as well as being an apostle, the elder to the elect lady.

Now, the elect lady we talked about the beginning, this is possibly a woman who hosts the church in her home. It's possibly also that he's speaking euphemistically about the church in general, the elect lady, the bride of Christ.

And the text isn't extremely clear as to who he's identifying. And it might even be that that was by design. This is written at a time of persecution for Christians. So he doesn't identify too clearly who he's talking to.

But he's simply identifying himself as the elder and the recipient as the elect lady. And he's writing to her about being concerned about the truth and about being concerned about falsehood, about being concerned about those who would bring falsehood into the church.

He wants her to walk in the truth and to walk away from those who are not in the truth. And now that he comes to the end, he makes a simple statement in verse 12. He says, I have much more, I have much more to write to you.

But he says, I would rather not use pen and ink. I have much more to say, but I don't want to use the pen and paper to do so. I want to come to you. I want to speak to you face to face. And though this is a short passage, and I must admit, if you look through the commentaries on this particular passage and you look through the sermons on this particular passage, even great men of God who preach verse by verse to the scripture, most of them go right past this.

Very few spend a lot of time exaggerating on what he's saying here. And I certainly don't want myself to read into the text anything that's not there. But I do think that there's a point being made here that's often missed.

And that is the value of interpersonal communication, the value of fellowship in the church. Church has become like so many other places in life where we come and we leave and we don't communicate with one another while we're there.

We sort of come and do our thing. Maybe we see our buddy who we like to go off with. Maybe we don't. We come in and we don't have real relationships. Most of us see each other more on Facebook than we do in real life.

Most of us see each other more in communication on text messaging than we do ever hear each other's voices. And where that becomes the most problem, problematic rather, where that becomes the most problematic. Is when we really need one another.

When times of difficulty really arise, when when we really need to address something in the life of another individual, that's not the time to go to Yahoo. That's not the time to go to Facebook. And yet, are we investing enough in one another's life that we're really willing and able to go and really interact with one another?

And so that's the focus of the message today. And I have three truths regarding communication that I believe we can infer from this passage, three truths regarding communication that we can infer from this passage.

They are in your worship folder. No, they're not. I'm sorry I didn't give them to Pat. So that's my mistake. That was my bad. That was not not Pat. She does a great job. I thought I gave them to her. But if you'd like to write them, there's a handy blank page.

And you'd be welcome to write them down. But there are three things I want us to glean from this passage. Number one, communication changes when you move from writing to speaking. That may seem simple, but that is a profound idea.

Communication changes when you move from writing to speaking. There is a different form of communication which takes place when a person is talking rather than when a person is writing. In fact, if any of you have ever wrote for an English teacher, and several, I guess most of you have gone to school, and you've written something for your English teacher, and she wrote you a note on there that said, no, you're writing this like you're talking.

Don't write like you talk. Have you ever heard that? I've taught grammar and things like that in homeschool in different scenarios. And oftentimes people turn pages. And I'm like, this is like he's talking to me.

This is not, he doesn't know how to write. So he talks like he writes. And they're not the same form of communication. The medium of communication is different between writing and talking. John understood that.

He says, though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. I have much to write, but I don't want to write it with my hand. I want to write it with my mouth. I want to talk. That's what he's saying.

It's a euphemism here. He's, I don't want to write with my hands. I don't want to write with paper and ink. The words paper and ink, they're kartu and melanos, are interesting Greek words. Kartu simply means papyrus, or the type of paper that they would use for the day.

But melanos is where we get the word melanin. You know what melanin is, right? That stuff in your skin that makes you darker or lighter, depending on your particular national heritage, ethnic background, right?

That's how we're different shades. Some of us have a lot of melanin. Some of us have very little. But that word melanos simply means it's a tint of black. And it was what they used for the ink in that day.

It was a type of ink that they would use to write on the papyrus. He says, I don't want to use paper and I don't want to use ink. I want to use words. I want to actually talk to you. In fact, if you could take something home to this, take something home, a little like statement for the sermon, we need to talk.

Because that's what he's saying. I don't want to write to you anymore. I want to talk to you. There are times in our lives where written communication between us and another person is woefully insufficient to communicate the information that we want to convey.

Over the years, I've dealt with a lot of conflict, not intentionally and not because I wanted to, but I've dealt with a lot of conflict because ministry is conflict. Ministry is dealing with conflict in life.

It's dealing with ministry with people. People have conflicts. People have issues. We have to counsel. We have to deal. Ministry is life and life is conflict. So over the years, I've dealt with a lot of conflict.

And you know what? It almost always boils down to. We need to talk. Almost in every case, people are willing to talk to other people, not willing to talk to the person who they need to talk to. They're willing to write a letter.

Oh, boy, have I seen some ugly letters. Because they'll write something they would never say. And as I mentioned in my introduction, this is becoming increasingly problematic in the world of texting and social media because you cannot express inflection in a text message.

You cannot express a lower or higher tone in an email and you cannot slow your cadence in a Facebook post. There is something valuable at looking at a person face to face as opposed to interacting with them on a screen.

I'm not saying those things are always bad and I'm not saying that there's no value in text messaging or Facebook or any of those things. They have their place. But I will say this. They have opened the window for endless amounts of miscommunication, misunderstanding and even more conflict than ever before.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to have a follow up conversation that if I would have just had that conversation in the beginning and hadn't sent the email, it would have been better. But I had to have the follow up conversation.

Why? Because I sent the email. It was misunderstood. And now not only do I have to deal with the first issue, now I've got to deal with what was miscommunicated in the second issue. And everybody in here is doing this because you've all had that.

You've sent the email. They misunderstood it. So now you've got to have the conversation that you didn't want to have to begin with. And now it's worse because you've made it worse, i .e. we need to talk.

There's real value. Again, this is highly practical, a little different than what I usually preach. But this is a practical message about a practical thing. We as a church need to be talking to one another.

We need to be relating to one another. We need to be sharing with one another because if we're not, we are not in a real relationship with one another. We are in a synthetic relationship if we're not talking to one another.

We're in a virtual relationship. And you know what happens when you get tired of a virtual relationship? You unfriend them. And guess what happens? Nothing, because it wasn't real. But this is real. This is real life.

This is the community of the faithful. This is the community that you will be in for the rest of eternity. Oh, that's scary. You realize that these are the people that you're going to go into eternity with, right?

I love my family, my extended family, my cousins and everything. I grew up with cousins who were much more like brothers and sisters than they were cousins. And so we grew up as family. Most of them are lost.

And though I proclaim the gospel to them and I love them and I try to see them get saved and I pray for their salvation, I know that several of them have died, even now have already died and have died lost.

And you know what? Though those relationships are valuable, they're not eternal. This relationship is eternal. This relationship is eternal because this is the bride of Christ. And yet we don't even want to talk to each other.

What are you going to do for eternity? You're not going to be watching old episodes of Hogan's Heroes. You're going to be in a relationship with one another forever. That's important. I don't know where Hogan's Heroes came from.

That wasn't on my notes. But the first thing again, very simple. Communication changes when we move from writing to speaking. John recognized that. We should recognize that. We should understand the value of spoken communication.

True Unity in the Body Depends on Proper Communication

Number two, true unity within the body depends on proper communication. True unity within the body depends on proper communication. Note that John says in the writing. He says, I have much to write to you and I would rather not use paper and ink.

Instead, I hope to come to you stoma pro stoma. The Greek there literally is mouth to mouth. The stoma is where we get the English word stomach. And we think of the stomach, the mouth is the opening to the stomach.

So the mouth was the Greek stoma and stoma pro stoma. I want to be mouth to mouth and not kissing as we think of mouth to mouth or mouth to mouth resuscitation. They didn't have that then. Mouth to mouth was John's way of saying, I want to come face to face with you.

I want to be where you can hear my words. Beloved community is birthed out of communication. John knows that there is a unique blessing which comes in actually talking to another person and interpersonal communication.

Do you realize that the Bible actually commands us to meet together? You know, a lot of people make the argument, you know, I don't need to go to church. I can worship at home. And you can worship at home.

In fact, you should worship at home. We teach something called family worship because we believe you should worship with your family at home. Yeah, we get it. But that isn't the only place that you should be worshiping.

It's a grave misunderstanding when people say, well, I don't go to church. Nobody goes to church. You don't go to church. You are the church. It just misunderstands what it is to begin with. You don't go to church.

The church is something you are, not something you go to. The church is the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the people of God. That's the church. And you belong to it or you don't. But don't say you go or you don't.

You see, when you belong to the body, you have a part in the body. And when you're not a part of the body, guess what? You're not in the body. We're told to meet together. Everybody, just very quickly, and most of you know this verse.

We looked at it earlier. But I want to show you something. Go to Hebrews 10. We looked at it earlier. It was our call to worship this morning. Over in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 25, the writer of Hebrews picking up mid-sentence, verse 25, he says, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as the day, as you see the day drawing near.

He says, we're not supposed to neglect meeting together. Now, most of you probably heard that verse before. You've probably heard someone say, you know, don't forsake the assembly. That's the King James rendering.

And it is correct. Do not forsake the assembly, assembling of yourselves together. That's a correct rendering of this particular Greek phrase, because the assembling together is the coming together of the body.

And you're not supposed to forsake that. What does forsake mean? Deny it or not do it, to stop or to quit something, rejecting it, neglecting it, whatever, however you want to say it. But the point of the matter is this.

He says, don't do that. Don't neglect meeting together. Why? Well, verse 24 tells us why. Let us consider how to stir one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet one together. One of the reasons that we meet together.

In fact, the main reason that we come together is that we might stir one another up toward good works. That's why we come, is that we would encourage each other to live for Christ and to do good works for Christ.

How do we encourage each other to do good works? Well, the first way, when we come together, there's a guy who stands up here, looks a little like me. Oh, wait, it is me who proclaims the word of God to you.

That's one of the ways we stir up each other to good works, is we listen to the word of God preached and proclaimed. But that's not the only way that we stir each other up to good works. One of the ways that we stir one another up to good works is by coming face to face with one another, conversing with one another, interacting with one another and challenging one another in our walk with Christ.

Consider for just a moment the subject of sin and the need for calling one another to repentance. There are some churches that do not believe that you should do that. There are some churches that don't exercise discipline at all.

They say, nope, that's not what we're going to be about. We're not going to call out any sin. We're not going to name any sin. We're just going to live in open rebellion to God and be pleased with that open rebellion.

Well, consider what the Bible says. And if you want to go there, it's Matthew 18. But most of you probably remember this passage. Matthew 18, 15 says, if your brother sins against you, what are you supposed to do?

If your brother sins against you, go and what? Tell him his fault. Then it also adds this between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother. It goes on to say, if he doesn't listen to you, take two or three witnesses and go and talk to him again.

And if he continues not to listen to you, take him before the church. But the very first part of that is the part that's often forgotten about. People talk about church discipline sometimes, and they forget about the very first part of that church discipline issue is that if somebody sins against another person in the church, it should be between those people alone in the beginning.

And if the person repents, guess where it stays? It stays between them alone. It doesn't become a point of gossip. It doesn't become a point of, hey, look what he did or hey, look what she did. But guess what, folks?

The reality is, this is not going to happen if we're not communicating with one another. If we're not willing to bridge the gap. I will say this, and it's very simple. You understand that Jesus did not say, if your brother sins against you, send him a letter.

It doesn't say, if your brother sins against you, send him an email. If your brother sins against you, send him a text message. What does it say? You say, well, they didn't have text messages then, Pastor.

I'm not stupid. I'm not saying you're stupid. I'm not saying I'm stupid. What I'm saying is the text says, go and tell him his fault. They had written language back then, folks. That's how we got this.

They had the ability to write. But Jesus didn't give that as an option. He didn't say, if your brother sins against you, write him a letter. He said, if your brother sins against you, go to him. Talk to him.

Tell him his fault. Call him to repentance. Talk to him. Unity in the body and growth in our faith depends upon our willingness to communicate with one another. It may seem like such a small thing. It is a huge thing.

The Power of Speaking God's Word

Thirdly, and I'm going to take a little bit of a going a little different direction because I've talked a lot about interpersonal communication. But the third thing we see from this text is that the Bible emphasized the power of speaking God's word.

The Bible emphasizes the power of speaking God's word. Because you realize that John is writing this and he's writing God's word down. He's actually writing God's word. And there are some people who have questions whether or not he knew he was writing God's word or if he's under the inspiration of God, not knowing it, whatever.

I don't think there's any doubt that he understood that he was writing with the authority of God as an apostle of God. He's writing God's word down. And yet he says, I don't want to do that anymore. I want to come and say it to you.

I don't want to write anymore. I want to come and speak to you. Now, before I go any further, I want to say this. There is power in the written word of God. There's absolute authority in the written word of God.

The written word can do things the spoken word cannot. And the primary thing that a written word can do that a spoken word can't is outlive its author. The spoken word is still alive and the authors of it, the writers of it rather, the authors, the Holy Spirit, the writers, are all long dead.

So there's power in the written word. It has the power to outlive its author, its writer. But we are called not just to read the word of God. We are called to do what? Proclaim the word of God. We are called to speak the word of God.

There is a spoken element, even regarding the written word of God, that provides God a means whereby he reaches the hearts of people. I'll show you. Go to Romans 10. In Romans chapter 10, go to verse 14.

Some of you probably can quote this passage. It's the passage we use when we talk about missionaries and preachers and their job and their role. And what does it say? How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how will they believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how will they hear without someone, what? Preaching to them. And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news.

But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord who has believed what he has heard from us. So faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. There is a particular value in the proclamation of the word of God whereby someone hears it with their ears.

God unstops the ears. He allows the scales of sin to fall from their eyes. He removes the heart of stone. He replaces it with a heart of flesh. And through hearing the word, they are converted by the Holy Spirit of God.

It has a particular significance in the church to hear God's word, not to the detriment of reading it, but in line with having read it. This is why Paul tells Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God and Jesus Christ to do what?

Preach the word. The word of God is meant to be spoken. It is meant to be proclaimed. The reason why we are given this book is that men might preach this book. The Bible says in 2 Timothy, All Scripture is breathed out by God and it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The word of God has been given to us that we might proclaim it. This is why I believe preaching is a necessary ministry. I saw a thing on Facebook the other day. Again, I am not totally against Facebook.

I do have an account. And I saw a thing come up. It was about a church. I use that in quotation marks. It says, No sermons. No singing. No, I forget what the other one was like. No, no, no. Just, well, what did it say?

It didn't say just fellowship. That would have been too churchy of a word. But it was another word for fellowship. It was like no preaching, no singing, no this, no that. Just community. That's what it is.

It was community. Sorry. I had to get my brain back in gear. So just community. That's all. So there was no proclamation of the word of God. There was no speaking of the word of God. It was just people sitting around a coffee shop talking.

And this is where I think it can go too far the other way. I do think we need to understand the balance here. We do need to be in interpersonal communication with each other. But we also need to be about hearing the word of God.

And we need to be about speaking the word of God to one another. When somebody comes to you and has a problem, has an issue, do you share with them your wisdom and opinion that you've gained from a life of sin?

Or do you take them to the word of God? That's an important question. Do we actually point them to God's word? Do we know the word? Do we care enough about the word to use that in our ministry to one another?

The Bible says that we're supposed to be ministering to one another. It's also a reason why, and this may seem like a hard right turn, but it's not. This is also why I believe that street preaching is actually a valuable and true ministry.

I know a lot of people have questions about it. We have a street preacher here, a guy who goes out and preaches on the street. I go with him. I hand out tracts and talk to people. But I believe street preaching is important because I believe the word of God is meant to be heard.

And while I would never ever diminish the handing of someone a tract, because that is a valuable ministry as well, I do believe that tracts serve the purpose of beginning conversations at best. Sometimes you don't have time for communication.

Sometimes all you can do is hand somebody the tract on the elevator, they're out as soon as they came in and that's all you had. And you know what? I'm not diminishing that. That's a valuable ministry.

Some people have been saved by finding tracts on the ground and reading them, and God used that to save them. So I'm not diminishing that at all. But I am saying this, where the real value often comes in is when we communicate.

The tract becomes the tool by which we start the conversation. The guy out there proclaiming the gospel becomes the tool where the other guy's walking around, somebody comes up, can you believe that guy's doing that?

Why do you think he's doing that? Because he actually cares about your soul? You think he wouldn't rather be out doing anything else in regard to fun? Why does he come out? Why does he drag that big speaker out?

And why does he come and stand and be ridiculed, spit upon, have things thrown at him, have people pick up his backpack and run away with it? Why do you think he'd submit himself to that? Because he actually is enjoying being hated?

No, he enjoys God's Word being heard by unbelievers. And there's ministry, important ministry in that. Time and time again, the Bible emphasizes the power of the spoken and proclaimed Word of God. And we mustn't ever forget that important truth.

Now, I want to begin to draw to a close here. The three inferences regarding communication in this passage are again, and I'll give them to you one final time. Communication changes when we move from writing to speaking.

We need to understand that when we're relating to one another. Because number two, true unity depends within the body on proper communication. And number three, the Bible emphasizes the power of speaking God's Word.

Particularly when we speak to one another. And as I said earlier, this message is a little different. I focus more and more today on practical than I usually do. But we need practical messages. We need something that we can apply to our daily living.

And how can we apply this to our daily living? How are you communicating with your brothers and sisters in Christ? Are you communicating with your brothers and sisters in Christ? Are you loving them enough to invest in each other's lives?

Or is this just a place where you warm a seat for an hour and a half on Sunday morning? And I don't say that to be ugly. I'm asking you to examine yourself. Do you open your homes to one another? Do you reach out in love to one another?

Do you seek to be the church rather than just go to church? That's the call of the gospel. That's the call of the community of faith that we have. It's to come out of the world and become the church. And beloved, this is the beauty.

And something I have seen and experienced over and over and over. When the body of Christ collective comes together regularly and speaks to one another about things related to God and His Word and His truth, you become better witnesses outside the body of faith.

When you are faced with the people that you work with, when you're faced with the people that you come in contact with in the restaurants and in the stores, and when you come to contact with your family members and friends, you will meet those people and be better equipped to share with them the truth because you have had opportunities of conversation with people who also know the truth and you have challenged one another about what you believe.