In a World of Diotrephes, Be a Gaius

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Well, I invite you to take out your Bibles and turn all the way back to the book of 3rd John.
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You'll remember that we are going through the little letters, and we spent two weeks going through the 13 verses of 2nd John, and tonight we are going to look at the 15 verses of 3rd John.
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And when we examined 2nd John, we noted that there was a dual theme that ran through the book.
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The dual theme was that of truth and love.
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And we looked at the value of truth and the danger of deception.
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And this theme carries over into 3rd John.
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The letter of 3rd John is not a sequel to 2nd John, as I mentioned before, but it does, in a sense, go on the same theme and ride the same ideas, and what it does is it gives us specific examples of men who are to be commended and one man in particular who is to be condemned.
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Before we read, I want to just mention something.
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We live in a world, and I think you all know this without me even saying it, but we live in a world that has convinced itself that the only sin is making a judgment call against someone in their sin.
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But the only thing that's wrong is to say that something's wrong.
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And how dare you tell anyone else that something is wrong? You have no right to make a judgment claim.
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You have no right to make a claim against anyone else's peccadillos or peculiarities or their particular pet sins.
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And they often claim Jesus as their reasoning.
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They say, Jesus said, Judge not lest ye be judged.
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And He did say those words, but that isn't all He ever said.
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And if we interpret the words of Jesus only on one sentence from His life and ministry, we certainly will fail to understand what He has commanded us to do.
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We are called to be a discerning people.
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Now, that does not mean that we are called to be people who pick at knits.
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You know what that is, right? A nitpicker.
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Okay, I'll just make sure.
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People who are always trying to find something wrong with someone else, always trying to find.
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And honestly, I have met people like that, and they are exhausting.
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They're always looking for something to attack.
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And that's not what we are to be about.
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But there are times when it is necessary to call out the dangerous man.
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There are times when it is necessary to mark out the one who is bringing a problem, whether it be in the church or, well, primarily it should be within the church.
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Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5 that when it comes to the world, we shouldn't be surprised when the world sins, but we do have to be discerning within the church.
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We have to be discerning within the body.
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We have to look at what's going on, and sometimes people need to be commended, and sometimes people need to be corrected.
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And so tonight we're going to see three men.
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And what I think is interesting as we read, and we're about to read the whole letter, we're going to read all 15 verses, but as we're reading, I want you to just keep this in mind.
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When we read this letter, it reminds us that this is a real letter written to real people in real history.
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It's going to name three men, Gaius, Diotrephes, and Demetrius, each one of them named forever in God's holy word.
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Two of them are going to be commended.
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One of them is going to be condemned.
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Can you imagine yourself, your name, in God's word? To be commended in God's word would be awesome, but to be condemned in his word, or at the very least corrected in his word, would be a weight difficult to bear.
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And so let us read this text, and then I'll say a short prayer to ask the Holy Spirit to give me the power to say what he wants me to say.
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So let's look at 3 John.
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John begins the letter the same way he does 2 John, by identifying himself as the elder.
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The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth.
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Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you, and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul.
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For I rejoiced greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth.
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I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
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Beloved, it is a fateful thing you do, and all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church, you will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God.
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For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles.
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Therefore, we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.
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I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority.
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So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us, and not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to, and puts them out of the church.
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Beloved, do not imitate evil, but imitate good.
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Whoever does good is from God.
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Whoever does evil has not seen God.
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Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself.
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We also add our testimony, and you know that our testimony is true.
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I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink.
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I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face.
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Peace be to you.
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The friends greet you.
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Greet the friends, every one of them.
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This is God's word.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for these personal letters.
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Lord, this correspondence, as we see here, and we'll see later in Philemon, a very personal pastoral letter that John is writing to Gaius.
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Father, I pray that you would, tonight, keep me from error as I preach.
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Open the hearts of your people to hear the truth.
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Lord, bless us as we study this little letter.
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In Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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What we're going to do, I did ask Brother Andy, and he helped me out.
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He brought in the whiteboard.
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I'm going to simply make a few notes on the board.
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If you're writing notes, this may help you.
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If not, it may at least help keep us in our minds as to what we're going to be talking about.
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First is Gaius, and then after that we have Diotrephes, and then we have Demetrius.
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Now, really, in one sense, these three men give us an outline for the book, because the book begins to Gaius, and it gives a commendation and a command to him, and then it gives a warning about Diotrephes, this second man, and then it sort of supplies another blessing at the end by throwing in another man's name, who is probably, this man is probably the one delivering the letter.
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That's why he's receiving the commendation.
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We commend this man to you, so therefore, we have these three men and their purpose in the letter.
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And then he finishes, of course, with a pastoral note, which we'll look at when we get there.
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But let's talk about who these guys are, because it's interesting when we begin to examine historically who these men are, we find some things both biblically and extra-biblically.
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And by extra-biblically, what I mean is we find their names not only in the biblical record, but we find their names in the extra-biblical writings.
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You understand that the Bible was not the only thing written in the first hundred years of the church.
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There were other writings that were written.
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In fact, one of the things that I try to encourage people to do is at least be somewhat familiar with some of the writings of early church history, because it can give you a better and broader picture of what was going on at that particular time.
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It's easy for us to think that church history begins and ends with us.
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I've told this story before, but the old Peanuts cartoon, with Lucy and Charlie Brown and Linus and his sister, Sally, I think is her name, and she's writing a paper on church history.
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And he says, well, what are you writing in the paper? And she says, my pastor was born in 1935.
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That's church history as far as it goes back, you know, when my pastor was born.
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And that's the way a lot of people think.
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Church history begins with me, and one day when I die it will end with me.
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But it doesn't.
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And so there are historical records that go all the way back.
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And we have tons of historical records from the first, second, third century.
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In fact, it is said, and I think this is true, in fact, recently I listened to a—Dan Wallace is a textual critic that I like, and I listen to a lot of his stuff.
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And Dan was teaching on textual criticism, and one of the things that he taught on was the reality that if you were to take away all of the early manuscripts of the Bible, and we really don't have a lot of early ones, but if you took away all the papyri, if you took away all the manuscripts, even the Latin manuscripts, which came out and began to show up in the fourth century and things like that, if you took all those away, we would still have in the writings of the early church fathers almost the entire Bible in quotations.
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As they wrote their commentaries on the text, they wrote quoting the text, therefore we have in their quotations the Bible.
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So that's another witness to the history of the text, of how tenacious and broad the copying of it was.
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And so that's just an amazing reality that we have so much writing from that.
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How many of you have ever seen the early church fathers, like Christian Book Distributors? Christian Book Distributors is a book that if you ever bought from them, they'll send you a book the rest of your life.
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So if you do buy from them, get ready, because they're going to send you a magazine every month.
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And in that magazine, there's a thing called the Early Church Fathers, and it's a volume, it's several dozen books of the writings of the early church fathers.
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These are men, some of them that actually learned at the feet of the disciples.
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So these are valuable writings.
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Is everything in them correct? No, not everything I say is correct.
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These are men, they make mistakes, but I've kind of gone on a tangent.
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My point is we learn some things about these guys from those writings.
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So let's look a little bit about Gaius.
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Gaius is mentioned to us in four books of the Bible.
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I'm just going to write up here four books.
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And the four books are the name Gaius, rather, is mentioned in the book of Acts, mentioned in the book of Romans, mentioned in the book of 1 Corinthians, and mentioned here in 3 John.
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Now, here's what we learn.
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Gaius is a fairly common name, and therefore, these might not all be the same guy.
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It's sort of like John.
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How many Johns are there in the Bible? There's quite a few.
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How many James? Well, James specifically, right? You've got multiple Jameses even in the 12 disciples, right? So just because Gaius is mentioned in Acts 19 and Acts 20 doesn't mean it's the same Gaius as 3 John.
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And so a little bit of research and study has to be done to see if it's actually the same person.
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And according to the sources that I looked at and we're studying, it does seem to think that the Acts Gaius may not be the same as the 3 John Gaius, so it might not be the same person.
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I'll read a quote here.
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It says, two of the Gaiuses mentioned in the Bible were known for their hospitality, so it might have been the same guy because they're both sort of known for the same thing.
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And what's interesting, and I know you're, at least I think you're a fan of the Pilgrim's Progress.
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We should all be fans of Pilgrim's Progress.
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What is it? Yeah, and he's, what's he known for? The hospitality, right? He's known for his hospitality.
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So it seems as if even John Bunyan, in looking for a name to apply to somebody who's hospitable, saw Gaius as that name, and so he applies that in his writings.
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The word Gaius means happy or one who rejoices, and the men who bore the name in Scripture tend to be known for that if it is multiple men.
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Bob Utley says this, I've been mentioning him a lot lately.
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He states in his teaching on 3 John that the early church fathers, and this is one thing I like about Utley, he looks into a lot of this stuff, researches a lot of this stuff.
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He says the early church fathers say Gaius, the Gaius that we're talking about, actually became the bishop of Pergamum.
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So the early fathers mentioned this Gaius as becoming a bishop in a church, and you guys remember the church of Pergamum, right? Where is that from? Revelation.
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So it would have been one of the seven churches in Asia Minor.
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So Gaius has a good reputation both in this book, throughout the Bible, he's known for being hospitable, and according to church history, extra-biblical writings, he went on to become a bishop in a church.
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Now, diatrophies only happens once in the Bible, so his name only occurs one time, and it is in the book that we are reading tonight, and his name is actually very interesting, because the name diatrophies actually means nourished by Jupiter.
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So not quite like Gaius, who was named happy, one who rejoices.
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Diatrophies, the name means, it actually, depending on whether you're looking at Greek or Roman, because remember the Greek had their gods and the Romans had their gods, and they were often, they overlapped, but the names were different, like Jupiter and Zeus are the same, so it could either mean nourished by Jupiter or reared by Zeus, either way, it's the same thing.
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And all we know about him is what we're going to learn tonight when we read in this epistle, and it's not a lot, but it's enough.
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It's enough to recognize that he was a man unworthy of imitation.
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And I say that because right after we hear about him, the next thing that John writes is do not imitate evil.
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It writes about him, and then it says, don't do what this dude does.
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Don't be like him.
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Maybe the title of tonight's sermon, if when I post it online, the title will be, don't be a diatrophies.
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It's actually a pretty good title, I remember that.
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And what's the main thing we see? We're going to see that he likes to put himself first.
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What a description.
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Wouldn't it be great if no one ever said that of us, that he likes himself to be first.
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That's a terrible way to be described, and yet that's the way he is described for eternity in the Scriptures.
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And then we have Demetrius.
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His name appears in Acts as well.
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Acts 19, it appears twice in verses 24 and 38.
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But here's the thing.
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I want you to look at this.
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If you don't mind, real quick, just turn in your Bibles to Acts 19.
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It's interesting because we don't know if this is the same Demetrius.
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But if it is, it's a neat story.
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Because what we see in Acts 19, is we see a Demetrius that is actually acting against the church.
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Let's begin in verse 21.
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It says, Now after these events, Paul resolved in the spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia, and go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.
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And having sent into Macedonia two of his helpers, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.
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Verse 23.
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About that time there arose no little disturbance concerning the way.
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Remember the word the way is how Christianity was originally described.
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It was called the way.
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Jesus said, I am the way.
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So this is how it was described.
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So no little disturbance, meaning a big disturbance.
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That's the Bible's way of saying it wasn't little, therefore it was big.
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For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, which I believe was the Roman version of Diana, who was the goddess of fertility, brought no little business to the craftsmen.
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These he gathered together with the workmen in similar trades and said, Men, you know that from this business we have our wealth.
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And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a great many people, saying the gods made with hands are not gods, and there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as nothing, and she may even be deposed of her magnificence, she whom all Asia and the world worship.
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Then we jump down, just jump down quickly to verse 38.
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It says, If therefore Demetrius and the craftsmen with him have a complaint against anyone, the courts are open, and there are pro-councils, let them bring charges against one another.
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So we see Demetrius' name twice, and he is involved in an attack against the teaching of the gospel because it's hurting him financially.
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He is a craftsman, he is the one who sells these things, and he's seeing his work come under attack, and so he goes out and begins this rabble-rousing crowd to try to stop Paul and his teaching.
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And so this is where he is mentioned.
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And then we get to 3 John, and we see it says, Demetrius has received good testimony from everyone.
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So the question becomes, is this the same guy? We don't know.
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I'm sorry, I can't prove it one way or another.
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Now, maybe later you'll show me something that will prove one way or another.
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I know that depending on the commentary you read, one will say yes, one will say no.
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One will say, of course, this is not him.
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How could a guy who hated Jesus ever start loving Jesus? I'm like, you ever met Paul, Saul of Tarsus? He kind of started out hating Jesus and now loves Jesus.
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So it can happen.
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So could this be the Demetrius of Acts 19? I think it's possible.
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I'll quote you from Alexander McLaren.
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Alexander McLaren.
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By the way, Stephen, Alexander, not Brian.
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I quoted McLaren Sunday, and he goes, that's not Brian McLaren, is it? And if you all don't know, Brian McLaren is a terrible teacher.
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He's a dangerous, false teacher.
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So, no, not Brian.
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It's Alexander.
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Much older, much more sound.
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But he does say this in his notes.
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He says, if this is the Demetrius of the Acts and he became a Christian, the first thing that the truth required of him would be to shut up shop, to give up the lucrative occupation by which he had his wealth, and to cast in his lot with the men that were warring against his idols.
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We, in our degree, will have, in some form or another, the same self-surrender to exercise.
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I love that how he puts that application in there.
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He says he says if this is the Demetrius, what he had to do was he had to give up the idolatry to serve Christ.
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And one day, hopefully, we've already faced these things.
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But but if we are Christians, we have to face those same things.
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What in our life do we jettison for the sake of Christ? I mentioned this earlier.
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Nowadays, it seems like nobody feels like they have to give up anything.
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You just become a Christian and just live how you lived before.
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But that's not what Christianity is.
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The Bible says Christianity is a change to life.
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The old things pass away.
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The new things come and we live a different life.
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If we are the same person we were before we met Christ, there's a good chance we have not met Christ.
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Amen.
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So this is I like to think that it's the same Demetrius.
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I can't prove it.
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And again, I'm giving you some thoughts to take home and ponder.
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And again, Bob Utley mentions this.
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He says that the early church fathers say that this Demetrius, the third John Demetrius, who's mentioned in two books, since I wrote I'll mention there, who's mentioned in likely in two books.
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This became the bishop of Philadelphia.
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Another church in Asia Minor, which is interesting because we know something about it.
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So we know something about Pergamon as well.
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But we know something about Philadelphia.
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It's one of the few churches in Revelation that is commended without a condemnation.
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So it's a wonderful church that he becomes the the bishop of.
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All right.
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Now we've done a little groundwork on these men.
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We've studied a little bit about their history and their names.
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Let's now actually look at the text and we'll spend the rest of our time just walking through it.
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You get a separate.
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All right.
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So begins the elder to the beloved guys whom I love in truth, very similar to second John identifying himself as the elder.
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And he's and he begins in verse two by saying, beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul.
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And then he says in verse three, for I rejoice greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth.
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So what we see here is we see one.
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He's praying for Gaius.
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This is John.
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And he's also rejoicing over him.
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And what we're seeing is we're seeing the pastoral heart of John.
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We're going to see it again at the end because he's going to say there's more that I want to write.
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But instead of writing it, I want to say it face to face.
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The Greek there is literally stoma prostoma means literally mouth to mouth.
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I want to be in your presence.
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And so I'm going to stop writing and I'm going to get going.
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I want to be there with you.
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And so we see this pastoral heart.
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He prays that all will go well with him, that it will remain in good health, that his soul will be well.
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And I want to ask this question because we're going to pray in a little while, brother, and he's going to come up here.
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We often pray for sickness and we should.
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I mean, several families in the church are dealing with elderly family members who are sick and we're going to pray for them and we should.
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But how when was the last time? Notice this is what it says.
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He says, I pray it goes well with your soul.
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How often do you pray for the souls? Not just that they would be saved.
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But do you pray for my soul? That things would go well with my soul.
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Do you pray for one another that things would go well with their soul? I don't know about you, but there are times when my soul really is in conflict.
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Whether I'm struggling with personal issues, anxiety, frustration, grief, all kinds of things.
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I mean, I'm not Superman.
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I'm flesh and bone and I deal with all of those things, sometimes really heavily.
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And Spurgeon talks about the dark night of the soul, which is a time of that he himself felt genuine depression.
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Do you pray for one another's soul? I don't know.
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When I read that, it just stuck out to me that, you know, I can pray for Brother Andy's eye.
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And I do.
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And I can pray for Brother Mike's migraines.
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And I do.
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But I should also be praying for their soul.
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That even if their health is struggling.
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That it would be well with their soul.
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It is well with my soul, we sing.
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But is it truly? So it's just it's just very pastoral here.
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I'm praying for you and I'm praying that it would go well with your soul.
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And I rejoice greatly.
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When the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you're walking through.
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And I got to tell you something, that phrase stuck out to me, too.
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Verse three, because when he says they testified to your truth and I thought about it, isn't that a weird way of saying it? I don't know if it says it that way in the King James.
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How does it say it in the King James verse three? OK, I like that better.
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I do.
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Don't get any ideas.
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You can give it to me.
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I do like that because when it says in the ESV testified to your truth, it almost sounds like the modern expression of like your truth versus my truth.
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But that's not what it's saying.
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It's saying exactly what the King James is saying.
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It's saying the truth that is in you.
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It's your truth.
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It's not your truth in that like Stephen has his truth.
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I have my truth.
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Matt has his truth.
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And Andy has.
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No, that's not what it's saying.
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He's saying I'm rejoicing over the truth that you have.
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It's yours only in the sense that it's it belongs to you.
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You you you don't just know the truth, but you possess the truth.
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You don't just profess it, you possess it.
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And he says, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
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And by the way, remember, we debated as to whether or not Second John was to a church or to a woman.
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And we said it mentions her children.
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Well, in this sense, we can know something.
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And it might help us with our interpretation of Second John, because when he says, I, I have no greater joy than to hear my children.
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This is definitely not talking about physical offspring, but it's talking about the children that he has, in a sense, given birth to through the through the gospel.
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It makes him it gives him joy to preach and to see.
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And I'll say this.
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I mean, we have on our wall.
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You'll see it if you come next Wednesday night on the wall of the Foskey home.
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We have Third John one four one for what your verse it is, verse four.
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And it says, I rejoice greatly to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
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And in that sense, a lot of people would look at that and think that we're talking about our children.
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And we sort of are, because I think that's what the person who made the sign was thinking.
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But it's sort of out of context because the context of this is not my children, but it is those who have heard the gospel and believe it's those who like Paul calls Timothy, his son in the faith.
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But I will say this from a father's perspective, it is a great thing to know that your physical children walk in the truth.
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So from for just an extended truth, it's a terrible thing to have a child that's not in the truth.
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And so certainly that application can be made, even if it's not the direct interpretation.
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All right.
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So Gaius has been introduced.
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Now he's commended versus five to eight.
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We have a commendation for his hospitality.
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He says, beloved, it is a faithful thing that you do in all your efforts for these brothers.
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Now, he doesn't say who these brothers are, but he describes them.
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He says it is a faithful thing that you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are.
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You guys remember when we talked about the word fellowship? I'm sorry, not the word fellowship, the word hospitality.
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Remember the word hospitality comes from the word which refers to outsiders.
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Right.
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The word is phylosinus and phylosinus.
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I'm writing it in English.
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It's actually would be in Greek.
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But phylosinus would be what? Would be lovers of outsiders, lovers of strangers.
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See, that's what Gaius is giving testimony.
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That's what the testimony here is, is he's loved people that he didn't even know.
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He has shown hospitality to people that he didn't even know.
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He's welcomed them in and he has loved them.
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It says, beloved, it is a faithful thing that you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church.
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You see, these men came in, were loved by him.
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Then they went out and they testified.
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This guy, Gaius, he knows how to love.
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He knows how to open himself to strangers.
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You might say, but wait a minute, isn't that dangerous? It is dangerous sometimes.
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That's why you go back to 2 John.
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And there are some there are some standards that you have to propose.
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And 2 John, that's why I do think these kind of go together, because 2 John deals with those people who come who shouldn't be welcome, who are preaching a false gospel and things like that.
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Yes, of course, there has to be some standards.
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But at the same time, we are to love the brethren and even those that we don't know.
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And he says, you will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God, for they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles.
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Now, that phrase right there is is I don't want to get caught up.
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But that particular phrase.
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Is an example that is worthy of imitation.
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We ought not solicit the world to do the Lord's work, but we ought to give sacrificially and with our own money to see the Lord's work done.
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And here's here's I heard this is so funny.
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Years ago, we had a youth.
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I was a youth leader here from 02 to 05, before I became the pastor.
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While I was a youth leader, I was teaching a class and I don't remember who said it.
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I think it was actually an adult, but it was a class of young people and there was happened to be an adult in there.
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And she said and I said something about how the church runs off the generosity of its members.
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We receive tithes and offerings and we use that money to pay the bills and do the things the church needs to do.
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And she goes, I thought the government funded the church.
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And I was like, oh, first of all, what a terrible idea.
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Because if the government is funding the church, what does the government then have the ability to do? Demand what the church says and doesn't say.
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I'll say this even on the issue of things like taxes.
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You know, we are a 501c3.
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People say that all the time.
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People don't know what it means.
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What that means essentially is that we are not taxed like a for profit business because the church is not out for profit.
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Therefore, we are under the banner of a not for profit business.
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That's the way the church does.
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And so we have certain tax benefits because of that.
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However, if having that ever stood in the way of preaching the gospel, that's got to go.
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We pay the taxes.
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We preach the gospel.
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You cannot let anyone with their hand of money to you demand what you're going to say.
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That goes for the church.
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That goes for you as an individual.
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Brother Mike, I hope he doesn't mind me telling the story.
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I'll ask him later for permission.
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Years ago, he was, I think it's okay.
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I think he's told this publicly.
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He was doing, he's gone around a lot of places.
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Like he preached in England during the Olympics.
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He's gone to Jerusalem and done open air preaching and stuff.
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He's been all over.
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And brother Mike said there was a man one time who was not a believer, but liked Mike and wanted to financially contribute and say, he said, I'll send you wherever you want to go.
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Mike would not accept it because he said this verse compelled him that he did not want to be funded by an unbeliever.
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That he felt like if God had called him to that, the church would provide for them.
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And that's what he believed.
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And that's where his commitment was.
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And this is the text that he that he cited.
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And so, again, we are, as a church, commanded to be generous and to give and not expect the world, but expect ourselves to provide for the ministry.
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Again, I said I wasn't going to go off on a tangent, but I did.
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So, so there, there's verse seven.
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And then, of course, verse eight, it says, therefore, we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers.
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You realize when you give to missions, you are, you are actually helping them do the work.
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See, that's the thing we miss is when we give to Scott Phillips, we are actually it's as if we're there with him because we can't all go and not everybody's called to get on a plane and go to Indonesia.
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Some people think that everybody is called to be in foreign missions.
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Not everybody's called to be in foreign missions.
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Everybody's called to be a missionary in the sense that we're all called to be gospel proclaimers, wherever God has planted us.
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And we're called to bloom where we plant, bloom where we're planted.
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But we are not all called to get on a plane and go to, you know, Indonesia or anywhere like that.
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It's, it's, that is not because if that were the case, there wouldn't be churches here.
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There has to still be churches where we are and gospel functioning churches here.
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And so, but we are called a term used in missions work is called holding the rope.
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And the idea is if a man is down in a hole or a man is in a well or a man is down in a mine, somebody's got to stand on the outside of that mine and hold the rope and make sure that rope is steady for him to be able to come back.
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If that rope is let go, if that rope is not held, then that man's in peril.
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So what we do for missions is we hold the rope and we pray for them and we give to them and we give sacrificially above them.
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By the way, next week we're going to be doing the manger offering and that's going to go to missions because that's what we want to do.
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We want to do something different or something different than our normal giving.
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We want to go above and beyond to support and hold the rope.
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So that is what we're called to do in verse 8.
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Now verse 9, it seems as if John takes a little turn here and I'm going to take a few extra minutes tonight because I do not want to stop like I did last time.
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I want to finish this because this is good.
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This, it all flows together because in verse 9 he says, I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority.
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Who's our? I think in this sense, and again, this is somewhat of a, we could debate a little bit on this, but when he says our authority, could be that he's identifying himself as an elder, but in that sense, elders are local because you have elders in church.
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Like Andy and I are elders in this church.
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We don't have any authority of churches across town.
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We certainly don't have any authority in a church in another state, right? But as an apostle, John did have a certain authority that transcended.
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And when he says they don't recognize our authority, I think Diotrephes was not only denying the leaders of the church, I think he was denying apostolic authority.
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That's my opinion.
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Again, we could debate and disagree, but you understand what I'm saying.
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I don't think this was just local authority.
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I think this was, there was a authority higher than that, and that was the apostolic authority which existed at this time.
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And Diotrephes just ain't having it.
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You know why? Because he likes to put himself first.
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Ain't no man going to tell me what to do.
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You ever heard somebody say that? You ever heard somebody say that in the church? I have.
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You are just a man like me.
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How are you going to tell me what to do? That's the attitude.
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I put myself first.
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Or Diotrephes puts himself first.
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He does not acknowledge our authority.
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So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing.
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Talking wicked nonsense against us, and not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to, and puts them out of the church.
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So Gaius is commended for welcoming strangers.
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Diotrephes is condemned for the opposite.
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He not only won't welcome them, but he's got people in the church who want to, and he's kicking them out.
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Notice what it says.
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It says, if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us, and not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, that's the outsiders, and he stops those who want to, and he puts them out of the church.
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Literally the word is ekbale in the Greek.
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Ekbale, the word bale means to throw.
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It's actually the word ball comes from the idea of that.
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Ekbale, ek is the prefix, means out.
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Literally throw them out.
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He's going around the church, and he's throwing people out who want to support the traveling missionaries.
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Wow.
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This guy is hungry for power.
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He doesn't want anyone who would challenge his position.
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These traveling evangelists, I don't want any of that.
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Get them out of here.
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I am the head guy here, is the idea.
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It's like Dr.
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Powers, one of my favorite professors, he went to a church, and he was doing some interim work because their pastor had left, and they needed an interim pastor.
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So he went to do interim work while he was there.
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He went the first day, met the deacon, one of the deacons, and the deacon met him at the door, and he goes, I want you to know I'm the head of this church.
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And Dr.
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Powers said, I'm glad you told me.
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I thought it was Jesus, but it's good to know.
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Which I've always thought was a great response.
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I mean, Dr.
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Powers nailed him.
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But it's the truth, right? Jesus is the head of the church.
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And when we want to put ourselves first, we're saying we want to put ourselves in a sense above Christ.
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I know that it's easy to want to have our way.
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And at the same time, we have to be willing to consider one another.
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We have to be considerate of one another, love one another, be merciful to one another, not always demand what we want or else we will be.
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Like diatrophies, so verse 11.
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We are reminded not to be that way, says beloved, do not imitate evil, but imitate good, whoever does good is from God, whoever does evil has not seen God.
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And I wrestled with that one because I still struggle with the flesh, just like all of us.
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And it says here, it says whoever does good is from God, whoever does evil has not seen God.
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And I'm like, I've struggled this week, I've struggled today with things in my mind and things in my flesh, things that I do.
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And I say, how am I to understand this? I think we have to come to the conclusion that we mustn't press a simple truth beyond what John is saying.
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This is not saying Christians don't struggle and it's certainly saying Christians can't fail, but rather that our lives will be marked by good and not by evil.
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And our lives should be marked by good.
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Shouldn't it be hard to say that? That our lives should be marked by good? That we shouldn't be marked out as people who are deceptive or people who are ugly to each other or people who are hateful to each other.
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Jesus said this, by this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you what? If you love one another.
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So if we don't love one another, then that's a problem.
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And then he gives the example.
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The contrast to diatrophies is Demetrius.
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He says, Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself.
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Interesting way to say it.
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He says, we also add our testimony and you know that our testimony is true.
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You ever think about what your testimony is to others? What does our testimony say about us? And I don't just mean how you got saved.
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That's what we normally think of as testimony.
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But what this the phrase here of testimony is not the idea of how Demetrius got saved, but rather how his life has changed.
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He has a good testimony among us and his testimony is known by us.
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We know him and it is true.
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Do we live a life that makes people feel like they're going to have to lie at our funeral? That's just, I mean, I think about that sometimes, right? I do a lot of funerals and sometimes I'll call the family and I'll say, I'm going to send you something.
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I want you to write down some nice things about your loved one that I can say at their funeral.
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You know, I have a little list for them to write down some things.
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And sometimes there's a lot of struggle to find anything nice.
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I mean, it just is.
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And I've added several times because I say the word eulogy actually means good word.
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So I say, write some good words about your loved one.
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And I get words like ornery, mean, and I'm like, did y'all miss the assignment? I don't think it really is.
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It's like totally not good words, but that's all they can come up with.
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It's how we knew him or her.
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Well, it ends on a pastoral note.
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Verse 13, he says, I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink.
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I hope to see you soon.
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And we will talk stoma prostoma face to face.
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Peace be to you.
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The friends greet you.
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Greet the friends each by name.
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I'm going to finish with this.
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And Brother Andy talked about this in Sunday school a few weeks ago.
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You see, y'all think I don't know what goes on.
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I watch Sunday school.
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I don't get to be in there because we're doing music, but I'm thankful for the live stream because I get to go back and hear.
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And Brother Andy, I don't know if I'm going to say this exactly correctly, but y'all were talking about greeting one another because that's one of the one another's.
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And notice what this text says.
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Greet them by name.
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Ministry is personal.
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Ministry is people.
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It's not power.
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It's not prestige.
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It certainly is not prosperity.
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If you do it right.
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It is people.
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One of the most difficult parts of ministry is the turnover of people.
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I'm just going to be real frank.
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Wednesday night group, there's 20 or so people in this room.
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Half of y'all were not here a year ago.
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And look around two years ago, at least half of y'all weren't here.
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Seeing people come is exciting.
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Seeing people leave.
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It can be heartbreaking.
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Depending on the reason.
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But we are called to know and love each other.
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So even though you might only be here three weeks, three months, six months, I want to know who you are.
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And I'm going to encourage each one of you to know who you are.
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This is not impersonal.
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It's the ministry of persons, people, each one of you made in the image of God, saved by the blood of the lamb, or have value.
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This is why I want you in my house.
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I want to be at your house.
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I want us to have that relationship because you matter.
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And these people mattered to John.
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I'm not just writing you a letter.
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I want to come see you.
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I want to be with you.
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And I want to know you by name.
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It's a powerful pastoral thought.
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And we'll close with that.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this time.
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And I pray now that his brother Andy comes and leads us in a more dedicated time of intercessory prayer that you would be with him.
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The Lord help us to understand what we have learned in this little book that we see here, the promotion of truth.
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And again, the condemnation, not just of falsehood, but of overbearingness in the church.
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Lord, both of these books have addressed the subject of love and truth.
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Lord, help us to be out those two things.
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Help us to love in truth and to share the truth in love.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.