3 John 1–8

0:01 Good morning. All right, let's do a little participatory introduction here for the sermon. Raise your hand, and I'm very serious. I don't want you to just stare at me if this is true of you. I actually want you to raise your hand, and not just a little bit like this, okay? I want to see your hands. They've got to go up. Raise your hand if you're a fan of the University of Louisville. Good, good. Okay, keep them up. Keep them up, keep them up, keep them up. You're going to have your hands up for maybe a minute.

0:31 All right. Keep your hands up, but now join these people in putting your hand up if you're a fan of the University of Kentucky. Wow, there's more of y'all than I expected. Okay, so we ought to have hands up for UofL and for UK. Now put your hand up if you're a fan of Western Kentucky University. Okay, a few. Great. Keep your hands up, all of you, all three of you. Now, put your hand up, join them, if you're a fan of Yale University.

1:06 Keep your hands up. Keep your hands up. Now, keep your hand up if your team is still in the tourney. Me, just me, that's it? Oh, my goodness. I really would not have pegged my school as more of a basketball school than every school in Kentucky. But here we are, at least until tonight. Somebody showed me this morning, the memes have just been hilarious about Yale winning that basketball game, what, Friday night.

1:45 And somebody showed me a tweet this morning as I walked into church that was by at Yale MBB. which, you know, most people would think is Yale men's basketball. But the tweet was, hi, everybody. Our mentions are getting slammed. We need you to know that we are not Yale men's basketball. We are Yale molecular biology and biophysics. So please redirect your tweets somewhere else. All right, well, that has nothing to do with what we're going to talk about for the rest of the morning.

2:19 But it happens so infrequently. You just have to give me a moment of not even really pastoral privilege. It's just that I happen to be up here to say something to you about that. All right, turn in your Bibles to the book of 3 John. That's really what we're going to be talking about today. We are continuing this study that we've been in through the books of 2 and 3 John. We didn't actually do 1 John this time around because I preached on that some years ago. If you want to hear those sermons on 1 John, you can find those on the website somewhere. 2 and 3 John, believe it or not, it's not that hard to believe as you look at them, are the two shortest books of the New Testament and the two shortest books of the entire Bible.

2:58 Both of these books were written, we think, sometime near the end of the first century by the Apostle John. It's a little bit hard to figure out the circumstances into which they were written. But 1 and 2 and 3 John seem to have been written all together to the same church, at least initially, and probably delivered all at the same time. Because what you have in 1 John is essentially a sermon that's meant to be preached to the church or read to the church, but then circulated, it seems like, to other churches in the region. 2 John seems to be a more kind of personal letter to that one particular church.

3:33 And what John the Apostle is doing with them is encouraging them in a difficult situation that they're in and telling them, you need to hold fast and continue to walk in truth and continue to walk in love. That's the point of that book. And he's saying, hold on to the gospel, don't let anybody, any of these false teachers that seem to be in your midst, don't let anybody take you away from the gospel. That's 2 John, it's written to the church. 3 John, which we're turning to today and looking at the first eight verses of, is a personal letter to one person. It's not to the church, it's to a man named Gaius.

4:04 We don't really know a lot about Gaius. He was obviously, though, a member, more probably a leader in whatever church it is that John is writing to. And John writes to him here in 3 John to encourage him essentially to stand firm in a dispute that's broken out in the church. Now, the last couple of weeks we've talked about the dispute where some false teachers had come in or they had grown up anyway. They had proved themselves to be false professors of Jesus. In other words, they had a profession of faith, but it turned out to be false and hollow and untrue. and those false teachers and false professors of Jesus had abandoned the church and therefore left what was left of the church very, very unsettled.

4:44 So that's the kind of main dispute that's going on. But it seems to have spawned a kind of different dispute as well. And so 3 John focuses on that one. I'll try to explain what that is a little bit later. So all of that's in the background. So what you've got here is a letter to this one particular person. And the aim of the letter is for John to encourage him to continue being hospitable to people who are coming through in order to go preach the gospel in far-flung nations of the world. So apparently that was kind of the nature of what Christian mission looked like, is that people would leave their churches, they would be sent by their own local church to another land, and along the way, because you couldn't just hop onto a plane and find yourself there in, you know, 12 hours, you had to be helped along the way by other believers.

5:30 And so as churches were planted, right, further and further away from the sort of center, the core of the whole thing, those became sort of outposts for the gospel to get even further as missionaries were supported and sent on their way. Well, the dispute that seems to have risen up, and we're going to read the whole book here in a second. It's not that long. But I need to tell you a little bit about the dispute that had risen up before we read it. The dispute that had risen up was that there was an argument about whether supporting those missionaries was actually a good thing or not.

6:04 So on the one hand, you have Gaius, who has marked himself out and kind of gotten a reputation as being a very hospitable kind of guy. He's a guy who brings these traveling missionaries into his home. He feeds them, gives them accommodation, a place to sleep. And then when they leave, either to head back home, if that's the way they're going, or out to the nations, he gives them a little money to help them along on their journey. He had built a reputation for that kind of hospitality for missionaries. And so John writes and says, good job, keep it up. Well, on the other hand, you have this guy named Diotrephes.

6:34 You can see him show up in verse 9 there of 3 John. Diotrephes, we don't know anything about him. But he was apparently arguing against showing that kind of hospitality. We'll talk next week, not this week, about maybe why that was. It's going to be quite a lot of speculation and just taking little pieces of evidence to try to see a picture that's very unclear. But we'll talk about maybe why he was working against hospitality. In fact, you see in verse 9 there, he's actively working to prevent members of the church from taking these missionaries in.

7:06 So John writes to tell Gaius, look, Diotrephes is wrong. He's wrong to be saying that we shouldn't bring these missionaries into our homes. He's wrong to say that we shouldn't support them on their way. So you, Gaius, keep it up. What you're doing is right. You're walking in the truth and you're walking in love and you need to continue doing that. And don't be intimidated by this Diotrephes fellow into stopping. What's interesting about the book, though, even though it's this personal letter with a very particular aim, right? That's a very narrow aim. Encourage the guy to keep showing hospitality to missionaries.

7:39 even though it's that particular the process of giving out that encouragement leads John fascinatingly I think to lay out some of the foundational building blocks for how we as Christians have done missions now for the last 2,000 years you ever thought about that you ever thought about why Christians do mission the way we do mission and the way we do mission right is that people feel an assignment from God they have a desire to go to the mission field the gifting to do that and the Lord gives them an opportunity for it and they head out from their churches onto the mission field and and how do we go about making that possible we support them we give them money right we give money to the churches and the churches give money to them or we give money to a convention and a mission board which then gives money to the missionaries so they can go out why do we do it like that and why for the last 2,000 years couldn't Christian mission have taken a wholly different shape. I mean, maybe it could have taken the shape if we send people out onto the field and we just tell them, what you're going to do is do odd jobs to support yourself.

8:43 That's how you're going to do mission. Or we could have told them the way we do mission is just that we move to another place and we get a job, right? And we just settle in with life and we live our life as Christians. That could have been the shape of Christian mission. Why did it take the shape That it did. Well, it's at least in part because of books like this. And even though we don't even think about it, it's just second nature to us. We don't even give it a second thought. The shape of Christian mission has been put together by books just like this one.

9:14 So let's look at it. Here's what John writes to his friend Gaius. The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. 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. For I rejoiced greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church.

9:46 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. Therefore, we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth. Okay, so you can start to kind of see the outlines. I'm not going to read the rest of the book. We'll read the entire book next week. But you can see the outlines of what John is doing in this letter. In verses 1 through 4 there, you've got a very kind of typical opening to the book.

10:16 Down in verses 12, 13 through 15, you've got a very typical closing that ends the letter. And then you've got the body of the letter running from verse 5 down through those three paragraphs and ending in verse 12. That body, you can see it broken up into three paragraphs. It really consists of three parts or paragraphs. And those paragraphs organize themselves around three different characters. There are three different named people here in this book. So in 5 through 8, the main focus of that paragraph is Gaius himself.

10:47 This is the guy that the letter's being written to, John's beloved friend. And what's going on in that paragraph is that Gaius is being encouraged by John to keep showing hospitality. In that second paragraph, 9 through 10, the focus shifts away from Gaius, John's friend, to this other fellow named Diotrephes. And John makes absolute crystal clear his utter disdain for that guy and the way he's behaving. That's what happens in that paragraph. We'll look at that next week. Then, in verses 11 and 12, the focus shifts again into another man named Demetrius, who is probably, we don't know exactly, but the way he's talked about here, probably is telling us that he's the messenger who carried this letter, and probably 2 John and 1 John as well.

11:34 In fact, he's probably, maybe I should say possibly, but I think probably himself, one of these missionaries who should be shown hospitality. And that's why John commends him to his friend Gaius. Well, today we're going to look at these verses that we just read, 1 through 8. We're going to be looking at the greeting in verses 1 to 4. And then that section that focuses on encouraging Gaius. If you let your eyes just kind of wander over verses 1 through 8, especially verses 1 to 4, you can see again, like we did last week, what one of the main themes of this whole section is going to be.

12:10 It's going to be truth and it's going to be love. Because that's what John talks about, right? I mean, in the gospel, in 1 John, in 2 John, and now we're seeing here in 3 John, John talks about truth and love. In fact, in those eight verses, truth, the word truth, is used five times. Love is used four times. So nine words out of the 90 or so words that make up the whole section are either truth or love. 10% of the whole thing is those two words. But John's aim here, you've got to understand, is not just a generalized sort of, to all Christians, walk in truth and love.

12:48 And so, you know, I'm not going to preach it like that. I'm not going to just say, let's generalize this, and now I'm going to tell you to walk in truth and love. We're going to get there, but I also want you to see how this letter is functioning in Gaius' life in particular. Because it's in his encouragement to this one particular guy, Gaius, that it becomes encouragement and exhortation to us as Christians as well. It's through that. So the main idea of this text, the thing John's trying to get across to his friend Gaius, and since this letter's gone public to us as well, it's this.

13:20 The mark of a Christian is to live in light of the truth and to work to make that truth known to others. The grand mark, the hallmark of being a Christian, the character of the Christian life is to live in light of the truth And to work to make that truth known to others. So two points to the sermon, just kind of breaking that main idea in half. First point's looking at verses 1 to 4, roughly. Second one is looking at verses 5 to 8.

13:51 Two points to the sermon. Number one, walk in the truth. Walk in the truth. And number two, work for the truth. Walk in the truth and work for the truth. All right, so let's dive into it. Point number one, looking at verses 1 to 4, walk in the truth. I want you to notice as you look down through verses 1 to 4 that the phrase walk in the truth is not so much an exhortation that John makes as it is him just recognizing something that is true about Gaius.

14:27 You see that in verses 1 to 4? 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. I rejoiced greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. It's not a command. It's not an exhortation. He's just recognizing something that's true about Gaius. And so he takes the opportunity here in the greeting of the letter to encourage him. It's like, you're walking in the truth. Good job, buddy. Keep it up. That's what he does.

14:59 Verses 1 to 2 there are a very typical greeting for an ancient letter. So just like in 2 John, John there in verse 1 identifies himself as the elder. We talked a little bit about why he does that when we were studying 2 John. It's probably because in the latter years of John's life, he settled into at least what we think was a long pastorate in Ephesus. At least that's what Christian tradition teaches us. But he probably also calls himself the elder. Because by the time these letters were written at the end of the first century, John was a very old man.

15:34 I mean, think about it. He was, you know, of some age when he was a disciple of Jesus, and Jesus ascended into heaven at 33 years old. So we're talking, you know, probably 29 A.D., 30 A.D., something like that. John was an adult by then, and he's writing these letters at the end of the century. So something like 65 to 70 years later, plus however many years old he was when he was a disciple of Jesus, he is an old guy. By the end of the first century, when he wrote these letters, he was also the last of the apostles to still be alive.

16:07 So he would have occupied this kind of unique position in the worldwide, empire-wide church, this unique position of respect and dignity, right? He is the last of the apostles, and he's a man who is very old and has been walking in the truth of the gospel for a very long time. So that might be why he identifies himself as the elder and not just an elder. He's the last eyewitness to Jesus and his resurrection. Well, he goes on to address the letter to the beloved Gaius, which is an ancient way of saying my dear friend.

16:41 It's not a particularly Christian thing to say. It's just my dear friend Gaius. We don't know much about Gaius. There are three Gaiuses mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament. I'm not going to take you to where they are because they don't matter. And some people have tried to make a case that, well, maybe this Gaius in 3 John is one of those other three Gaiuses that's mentioned in 1 Corinthians, Acts, Romans. Probably not. And one of the reasons that's probably not the case is because Gaius was also the most common name in Roman society.

17:13 If you had a little baby boy, the odds were awesome that you were going to name that kid Gaius. And you know why? It was an honor to the most famous Gaius of all, Gaius Julius Caesar. So even though some people have guessed, well, maybe the Gaius here is the Gaius in Acts or whatever. That's probably not the case. All we really know is that Gaius must have been a leader of some kind in the church. John wouldn't be, for example, talking about diatrophies the way he does if Gaius isn't also at least a leader in that church.

17:44 So he's probably a leader in the church. But we don't know exactly what he is. We don't know what position he holds. I mean, is he an elder? Maybe. Is he the sort of senior elder, sort of the position that I hold, the main teacher of the church? Maybe. I mean, maybe he's just a fellow elder with diatrophies. It may even be that Diotrephes was sort of the senior pastor figure in the church. And that Gaius was an elder alongside him. And the reason we say that is because if you look at verse 9, it looks like there that Diotrephes has some kind of authority or power to prevent John's letters from being read in the church, right?

18:28 I wrote something to the church, John says. It's not have written, it's wrote. I wrote something in the past to the church, but Diotrephes doesn't acknowledge our authority. So it looks like there was a letter written sometime before 2 and 3 John that John sent to the church, and Diotrephes said, no, we're not going to read that letter to the church. It's been lost. We don't know exactly what that letter is. So it's a little hard to figure out what's going on here, but you've got two leaders in the church that are in this conflict. John likes one of them, and he doesn't like the other.

18:59 He loved Gaius. You can see that. In fact, as he tends to do, if you look at verse 1, he says that he loves him in truth. Gaius, my beloved friend, I love you in truth. So what does that mean? Well, I mean, it could just mean I love you truly. I truly do, in fact, actually love you. I love you in truth, right? It could mean that. But given the way John uses the concept of truth and the word truth in other places, it probably, in all likelihood, means more than that. What it means is that John loves Gaius in the truth, capital T, the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

19:35 Now, if you just stop and think about it, that is an interesting way to talk about love, isn't it? I love you in truth. Why does he need to put that little part at the end? I love you in the truth. Why not just say, Gaius, my beloved friend, I love you. Why doesn't he just stop there? It's just such an interesting thing to put the words in truth on the end of love so that the love kind of becomes something new and unique and with a special character to it. It's very interesting, isn't it?

20:06 I mean, we all know what love is. Everybody in the world has some sense of what love is because you love your family, you love your friends. But what John is talking about here is a specific kind of love. He's specifying a love that is born of and shaped by the truth, the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he's even talking about it in a way that makes it something unique and special. Hey friends, there is something unique and special about loving people in and because of and through and with the shape of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

20:41 There is something unique and special about that. You can love your friends, you can love your family, and that's its own kind of love, especially if they're not Christians, but there is something special about a love that is fired not by natural affection, not just by shared experience or interests or stage of life or bloodlines. There's something special about a love that's fired by a recognition that the two of you have both been forgiven by the same Jesus Christ. There's something special about that.

21:14 There's something special about loving someone because you know that both of you have the same destiny before the throne of Christ and in the meantime, you have the same mission to get there. That's love in the truth. Do you have that for your fellow believers? Did you ever even think about it? Like what is so special about the love that we are called to have for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ and how is that different from the love that we have for anybody else who's not a Christian? I wonder if your love for your fellow believers is something different than love for just your friends.

21:51 Is it a love that's shaped by the truths of the gospel? It should be. Well, verse 2, John continues with this greeting. It's super interesting, actually, because it's so different from all the other letters of the New Testament. See, in all the other letters, whether you're talking about Peter, Paul, even John himself, In the other letters of the New Testament, this portion of the greeting would typically say something distinctly Christian. I mean, you've noticed that in other letters that we've studied. You know, Paul will say, you know, my prayer for you is that you would know the depth and the height and the love of God in Jesus Christ.

22:25 Or, you know, even in 2 John, if you turn the page back, you get this greeting. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father, Son, in truth and love. It's distinctly Christian. But not here. Not here. Here, John actually uses an extremely common form of greeting that was very common even among pagans. He prays essentially that Gaius would enjoy worldly prosperity and good physical health. See that? Look what he says.

22:56 Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health. So that phrase there, all may go well with you, that's just a general common phrase. meaning it has to do with a journey, but it's the journey of life. I pray that the journey of life will be a good one for you. I pray that you'll have good circumstances. I pray that your business will prosper. I pray that your children will be good, proper Romans when they grow up. I pray that you'll have a lot of money to do the things that you want to do. I pray that the barbarians don't overrun your farms.

23:27 It's just I hope the journey of your life is good. I hope it all goes well for you. And then you can see that he prays for good health there also. I mean, that's interesting, right? Here's the elder, the last living apostle of Jesus Christ, the guy in the whole empire-wide church who holds the greatest place of honor and dignity. And he writes, I pray that you'll have material prosperity and good health. I mean, imagine you got a chance to meet like your hero in the faith and you decided I'm going to get him to sign my Bible.

24:04 And you walk up to John Piper or whoever it is, and your eyes are all white. Will you sign my Bible, Dr. Piper? And he signs it, and he gives it back to you. And it says, I pray you'll have money and physical health. You'd be like, what the heck is that? I thought John Piper would be way more spiritual than that. I thought he would say something spiritual to me, but he's just wished me material prosperity and good health. I think it's easy to think sometimes that being a Christian, especially being a good Christian, means that we are not supposed to care about earthly things like circumstances and money and good health.

24:42 We're not supposed to care about those mundane things. We're supposed to be free, in fact, of mundane things like that. But that's not how John acts here. I mean, here, John says that he's praying for his friend, that all those things, prosperity, job, career, children, all of it, He prays that all those things would be good for him, and he prays that the guy would have good health. And that is a good thing for you to do too. Now, my guess is that most of you, if you think about your prayers, will realize that you don't have much of a problem doing that, right?

25:16 You don't have any problem praying for somebody's health. I mean, we did that this morning in the pastoral prayer for Theodore, right? We do it every Sunday evening. You know, you may have a little more trepidation about praying for material prosperity, but we do pray for people's jobs. You know, Lord, let him get this promotion. You know, we pray for things like that. My guess is you probably don't have much problem doing that. But if you ever do have just a twitch of guilt for doing that kind of thing, let that die right here. If John prays for the prosperity and health of his friend, it's a good thing for you to do that too.

25:49 Now, are health and prosperity the most important things in life? Can you now, you know, go like, yep, there it is. I'm going to go run off and the prosperity gospel is correct. No, of course not. And I'm not even going to take the time to make that case to you. I trust you know that. But they are important. And they're worth praying for, just like John prays for Gaius. Let's look at it a little bit more, because the logic of this verse is really interesting. Look at that last phrase in two. He says, my beloved friend, I pray that all may go well with you, the physical stuff, and that you may be in physically good health.

26:22 And I pray that those things will go well for you, just like it's going well with your soul. Right? So he's assuming that Gaius is walking well in the truth. His soul is healthy. He's a mature, growing Christian. Everything is good. And he prays that his prosperity and his physical health would reflect and match his spiritual health. It's very interesting. There's one pastor who was reading through 3 John and he thought, wow, that's a beautiful little verse right there, verse 2.

26:56 I think, he was an author, and he said, I think when I'm signing books for people that I've written, I'm going to sign my name and then I'm going to put 3 John 2 as the kind of life verse, right? Beloved, I pray that all will go well with you and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul. But the more he thought about it, he realized that for some people, If physical health and physical prosperity is supposed to match their spiritual state, he realized that if he prayed that for some people, they might drop dead and bankrupt on the spot. Now you chuckle at that, but it's an interesting little self-test, isn't it?

27:34 What if somebody started praying for you that your physical health and your financial health would match the state of your spiritual health? I mean, some of you would cringe away from that as if they were saying Avada Kedavra to you. You'd take that as a curse. No, please don't pray that my financial health would match my spiritual health. Don't do that, please. Because if the Lord ever granted that prayer, some of you would just shrivel up.

28:06 Some of you would drop dead and bankrupt on the spot. Because there is no spiritual health. But that's what John prays. And he prays it because he's confident that Gaius is, in fact, spiritually healthy. I want your physical health. I want your material health, your material prosperity, excuse me, to match your spiritual health. It's a fascinating little prayer. Well, how can he be so confident of that spiritual health of Gaius? Well, he's confident of that because of what he says in verses 3 and 4. These brothers, whoever they were, had come back to where John was.

28:37 They'd probably been sent out as missionaries to somewhere, accomplished their goal. They were on their way back, and they finally made it back to John. And this was probably in Ephesus, and basically they brought him a good report about Gaius. They said, Gaius is a great guy. He's growing spiritually. His soul is healthy. He's a hospitable man who welcomes missionaries that are coming through. We don't know exactly who these brothers were, but they were apparently completely unknown to Gaius beforehand. Verse 5 there calls them strangers to him. And given the way John talks about them in the rest of the letter, they were, in fact, missionaries.

29:09 They had been sent by the church in Ephesus, most likely, to go preach somewhere. We don't really know where, and they've been helped on their way by Gaius and probably the whole church. Well, when they got back to Ephesus, they testified, he says there, to Gaius and his truth. It's a confusing little phrase. I rejoiced greatly when the brothers came back and testified to your truth. We use the phrase my truth and your truth in an extremely stupid way in our modern society. We say things like, well, I don't care what you think, that's my truth. Or we say, I'm going to stand on my truth, thank you, and you can have your truth.

29:43 It's an absolutely absurd way of talking about truth because that's not how truth works. And that's not what John's talking about here. What they're saying, what they're testifying to is your life that is shaped by truth. You are a person of the truth, again, meaning the gospel. And so that's what they testify to. It becomes really clear in that next phrase. It's explanatory of what he means there. You are walking in the truth. And then in 4, John restates that same idea.

30:15 He says, there's nothing in all my life. I have no greater joy than knowing that my children are walking in the truth. We're not sure exactly why John calls Gaius one of his children or includes him as one. The apostles do that from time to time, but there are different reasons for why they do that. So, for example, it could be that John led Gaius to the Lord at some point. It could be that John was the one who planted the church or got the church started in whatever city that church was in. It could also just be that John, because he's this old man now, because he's the last eyewitness to Jesus, just has this heart of concern and affection for all Christians.

30:52 That could be it, too. Well, it's in verses 3 and 4, though, that you kind of get to the main thing that John encourages Gaius about in this section. It's that little phrase that Gaius is, in fact, walking in the truth. He's walking in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So what does that mean? To be walking in the truth, walking in the gospel of Jesus. It's not that hard a phrase for us to understand. We say similar things, right? You might say, use the same metaphor to talk about the manner in which someone lives their life.

31:22 It's talking about a long, steady course of life. So to say that somebody walks in love or they walk in kindness or they walk in dignity is to say that the long, steady course of their life is marked by love or kindness or dignity. If you say that somebody walks in anger, right? Well, that means that their long, steady life is marked by a course of anger. That's what it's talking about. So here, to talk about walking in the truth is to live a life that is just long and steadily characterized by the truth of the gospel and the things, the virtues, the characteristics that the gospel gives birth to in a person's life.

32:00 It's to be characterized over time, even decades, by the things that characterize Jesus and by the fruits that the Holy Spirit living in you brings about. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If you're a person who's walking in the gospel, it means your life is marked by those things. See, that's the thing about the gospel of Jesus Christ. When it takes root in a person's life, it doesn't sit still. It doesn't just sit there idle. It moves forward.

32:32 I mean, you can see the action of the gospel in the way John's talking about it here. But can you see the action of the gospel in your own life? Can you see how the gospel is shaping your walk through the journey of this life? Friends, it is worth taking some time to just examine your life and see where you see the gospel working. where you see the truths of the gospel shaping your life and bringing it into conformity to Jesus. I think it's also super interesting and encouraging here that John uses the word walk.

33:09 He doesn't say you're running in the truth. He doesn't say you're sprinting in the truth or you're dashing in the truth or pole vaulting in the truth. It's just walking. In other words, it's steady progress for a long time. It's not some short, explosive burst of energy for a few weeks and then exhaustion. It's just walking one foot in front of the other for decades. Look, I think that's especially important for you to hear if you're, say, under 25 years old.

33:42 And if you have ever attended any sort of a Christian conference. Because what Christian conferences and general youth will try to convince you of is that I need to burn myself out for Jesus like a Roman candle for the Lord. And then you're just spent, you're just done, right? That's what so many young people do. So many young people are trying to dash in the truth, or run in the truth, or sprint in the truth.

34:14 And what it winds up being is a few weeks or a few months or maybe a couple of years, if they're really good at it, of burning themselves out for Jesus. And then it's just over. But I can tell you, because I was there and now I'm here 25 years later, that that's not how the Christian life works. John is probably 90-something years old at this point. And he has learned that the way you live the Christian life is by walking for decades in faithfulness. Walking is not spectacular.

34:45 It's just, it's not, right? That's why they've never made walking an Olympic sport. And if you're going to argue with me and talk about speed walking, I don't know what to tell you. That's not really walking. It's something completely different. But those brothers and sisters that walk, that have walked for decades and decades and decades, should be honored, just like old man John honors Gaius. Make that your ambition. don't make it your ambition to make a name for yourself so you can therefore make a name for Jesus. Don't make it your ambition to burn yourself out like a Roman candle for Jesus.

35:22 Make it your ambition to walk in the truth and to do that for a long, long time. Here's the second point. Work for the truth. Work for the truth. So in verses three and four, John basically honors Gaius for doing just that very thing, for walking in the truth. In five to Eight, he turns to encourage him to keep on doing what he's doing in terms of working for the truth. So really that subheading in your Bible right above verse 5, it really shouldn't be there.

35:55 It ought to kind of be up above verse 2 because those two paragraphs work together. In the one, he's encouraging guys, keep on walking in the truth. And now he's going to turn in the second paragraph and encourage them to keep on working for the truth, right? He actually uses the phrase work for the truth or work together in the truth, for the truth, at the end of verse 8. So you can see where I got the title there at the end of verse 8. But you can see what he means by that in verses 5 and 6. Let's look at them. He says, my dear friend, beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are.

36:31 They testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. So I think the picture here is pretty clear. These brothers who were strangers to Gaius, but not to John, because it was John's church that had sent them. They were strangers to Gaius, and they had come to him in the course of their mission, and Gaius had been faithful in welcoming them and showing them hospitality. John calls that there in verse 5, making efforts for them. And specifically, if you look in verse 6, he had sent them on their way, John says, in a manner worthy of God.

37:03 Now that doesn't mean that he treated them like they were God. That's not what that means. It doesn't mean like a meal fit for a king as if the king is going to eat it. It just means in a manner worthy of the God that you both serve, right? You should send them on their way, send them along in their journey in a manner that is worthy of the calling that you both have to be servants of God. A manner worthy of your Lord. Practically, that probably meant that he provided some food for them, provided accommodations for them, a place to sleep. And when they left, he probably even gave them money for the next phase of their journey.

37:35 Ancient people would use these kind of euphemisms for that, you know, supporting us or sending us on our way or, you know, that kind of language. And it means money. If you look there at the first phrase of 6, when they got back to Ephesus, of course, they told the church about Gaius' hospitality. And so in these verses, John's writing to say, keep it up. That's probably why he puts that last sentence of verse 6 in the future tense. Do you notice that? It's a little bit weird. Beloved, it's a faithful thing that you are doing in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, testify to your love before the church.

38:10 And then he puts it in the future. It's not that you did well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. It's you will do well in the future to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. The reason he puts it in the future tense is because this is going to be an ongoing thing, right? It may be that these same brothers are going to come back through on their way on another missionary journey and John wants Gaius to show them hospitality again. It may be that another set of missionaries that he doesn't know, who are yet strangers to him, will come through, and he wants him to show hospitality.

38:41 I mean, just by the way, that phrase there, you will do well, is not a kind of veiled threat, even though it comes across that way in English, right? When we say something like that, we usually mean it as a kind of, or else, you know. You might say to your kids, you would do well to obey me. And they know that's not a well-wish. That's a threat, right? That's not what John's doing here. He's not saying, you would do well, Gaius, to send them on their way or else. It literally just means you will do a beautiful thing.

39:16 You will do a beautiful thing in sending them on their way in a manner worthy of God. It's an encouragement to them. You look down at 7 and 8 there. He gives three reasons why Gaius and, in fact, all Christians should give this kind of support and hospitality to missionaries. Look at the kind of logic of it. It starts with for there in verse 7. Do you see that? We talked about the meaning of for last week. It means because. So it connects it to the sentence that came before. Right? You'll do well. You'll do a beautiful thing in sending them on their journey in a manner worthy of God because.

39:50 And then he gives reasons for why it's a good thing. Because they've gone out for the sake of the name, they've accepted nothing from the Gentiles, and because of that, therefore, we ought to support people like these so that the result will be that we may be fellow workers for the truth. That's how it works, right? You'll do a beautiful thing by supporting them because of this and because of this. Therefore, we ought to do this so that this will happen. That's kind of the structure of it. It gives reasons for sending them on their way in this way, for showing them hospitality, for supporting them.

40:21 And there are three, so let me give them to you. First of all, first reason he says we should support missionaries in this way with hospitality, with financial support, with everything he's talking about here is in verse 7 there. It's because he says they have gone out for the sake of the name. What name? Obviously, Jesus' name. Now, I wonder if you've noticed yet that this letter actually doesn't mention Jesus by name. Except here, and that's obliquely, right?

40:54 This is the only letter in the New Testament that doesn't have the word Jesus in it. It's the only book in the Old Testament that doesn't have the word Jesus in it. But the amazing thing about it is that John doesn't need to specify whose name they're going out for the sake of. And the reason he doesn't need to specify it is because there is only one name that is above every name. That at the mention of which every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that it is that man who is Lord. And that's King Jesus the resurrected. There is one name given under heaven by which we must be saved.

41:32 And it's for the sake of that name, for the fame and renown and glory of that name that these missionaries go out. Now I couldn't, if the Christian church writ large was going to have a flag that they fly as they take the gospel to the nations, I can't think of a better slogan to put on that flag than for the sake of the name. It's beautiful. And the reason it's beautiful is because we know what it's talking about. The name for whose sake they go is the name of the one who saved them.

42:05 The name of the one who forgives sins of everybody that puts their faith in him. You know, one of the great pains and yet one of the great glories of being at this church in particular is the opportunity to see so many people go out from this place for the sake of the name. I often tell people, look, in terms of material wealth, Third Avenue Baptist Church is not a rich church.

42:39 We're just not. And I'm in a network of pastors, and, you know, you line up all the churches by their per-member giving each year. And ours is nowhere near the top. We are not a rich church in terms of financial resources, but, oh, my goodness, in terms of people. We have to be one of the richest churches on the face of the planet. This little church is a mission-sending juggernaut. We're sending people out all the time.

43:11 I get sick of standing up here on Sunday nights and saying, well, we've come to one of those bittersweet times. Y'all know the phrase. I say it so much, and I can't come up with a synonym for bittersweet. But people go out from this place all the time. They forego dreams and plans and ease and comfort, and they go for the sake of the name. On our agenda as elders, the literal printed agenda, we keep a list of all of those people whom our church supports.

43:44 It's literally not even everyone that has gone out. It's missionaries that have gone out that our church supports in our very formal way of supporting them. And we put all those names on our agenda, and it takes up like a third of the page, and it's really small print. Because you know how many people are on that list right now that our church supports? 42, 42 that we have this sort of all-in relationship with. Not even just a person came here for a few months and then they left, came here and then went somewhere else.

44:15 It's not those people. It's people that we have taken in for ourselves and then sent out. There's 42 of them on the list. Mark and Meg Collins, Josh and Jenny Manley, Mark and Mandy Zabo, Chris and Lisa Phillips, Matt and Emily Tyler, Ryan and Kristen Schultz, John and Alana Pentecost, Corey and Ada McCarter, Andy and Meredith Sims, Doug and Laura Reed, Lauren Whitmore, Brian and Emily Spears, Craig and Cindy Wilson, Kyler and Maria Henry, Rochelle Wilson, Michael and Ali Stille, Jared and Zoe Mays, Evan and Amy Smith, Ramazan and Shamsi Arafi, who are actually here, they're sent from another church to come here, but we support them too.

45:01 Alderton, Leon Voorster, Duranon, Rochester. All of those people have gone out for the sake, not of their own dreams and plans, not for the sake of their own names, but for the sake of the name. Speed thy servants, Savior speed them. That's worth our honor. It's worth our support. Here's the second reason, comes at the end of verse 7. We've got to support these missionaries, John says, because they're not getting their support from the Gentiles.

45:36 In other words, if we don't support them, who else is gonna? I mean, the Gentiles there is actually just the word people of the nations. That's what the word translates as. Sometimes in the Bible, that word is used to distinguish Jew from Gentile, right? Here and several other places in the Bible, though, once the church has kind of taken root, it's used often to distinguish Christians from the nations. Christians from those who are not Christians. So John is saying, look, these missionaries that are going out to take the gospel of Jesus to the nations are not getting their support from non-Christians. Now, that may sound old hat to you. You might be going, well, why would they even do that? Why is that a thing? You need to understand that it was, in fact, a thing 2,000 years ago.

46:20 It's actually a really unique characteristic of Christian missionaries at the time that they didn't go looking for support from non-Christians. Usually what would happen in this polytheistic Roman society was that these teachers would rise up, and they would want to tell everybody about this new God that they've found or encountered or whatever, and so they would go from town to town to town telling people about this God, but also begging for money from anybody. You didn't have to be an inherent of that God. It was just seen as a normal thing in a polytheistic society that you give money to these itinerant preachers of every God under the sun.

46:55 But not Christians. Christians had made it their practice based on the teaching of Jesus not to make themselves dependent on unbelievers. Instead, supportive missionaries was understood to be the responsibility of churches and other believers like Gaius. Now you think about that again. It was what we were talking about a little bit ago. It's super interesting when you start to think about it because it's little passages of the Bible, like there's little phrases in the Bible that have shaped for 2,000 years how we do missions.

47:27 It didn't have to be the way that it is. It could have been that we send, like I said, send them to do odd jobs or tell them to just go get a job or just, you know, go around and beg and try to get all you can from non-believers. But no, it's passages like this that have shaped how we act today in sending missionaries out who are supported by churches that send them. And we do that here at 3rd Avenue. We have a multi-pronged strategy of providing that kind of support to missionaries who are going out. And one of the prongs of that, a pretty significant one budget-wise, is that we give money to the Southern Baptist Convention's cooperative program.

48:01 And a good chunk of that money goes to sending missionaries to the nations. That's one prong of it. Another prong of it is these 42 people that we give direct support to based on a strategy that we've developed over the years. But we try to be a church that's doing exactly what John is saying here. We support these missionaries because they're not going to get it anywhere else. In fact, they've been forbidden to get it anywhere else by Jesus. Third reason, end of verse 8.

48:35 In giving this support to these missionaries, we become or we are fellow workers in the truth. We become or we are fellow workers in the truth. Now, you have probably heard when it comes to missions the saying that there are those who go and there are those who sin. This is one of the verses that gives rise to little aphorisms like that. Now, before we talk about that, we should acknowledge that in a sense and in some ways and in the way people have sort of co-opted it and messed with it and twisted it up, That little phrase, there are some who go and some who sin, gets used often as a total cop-out for people who are afraid to tell the people around them about Jesus.

49:22 And you know that, right? It gets used as a total cop-out. Well, I am not one who goes. I am not one who tells other people about Jesus. What I do is that I give money so that the pastors and the missionaries can tell people about Jesus. I'm a sender. I'm not a goer. Friend, if you have that thought in you, that's a cop-out. The Great Commission is not given to the apostles. It's not given to the missionaries. It's not given to the pastors. The Great Commission, go and make disciples of all the nations, is given to the church.

49:56 All of it. And if you're a member of this church, then that Great Commission is on you. If you're a believer in Jesus, that commission is on you. To go into all the world and proclaim the gospel and make disciples. It can be used as a cop-out. But in another sense, that little aphorism is true. There are those who go, and there are those who sin. There are those who drop everything to go to unfamiliar cultures and lands that are foreign to them.

50:27 Where they don't speak the same language that they grew up in or eat the same food that they're used to eating. There are people who go to those places, and then there are people who make that going possible. There are those who go and those who sin. Gaius was one of those people who made the going possible. He's not a missionary, but he's one who made it possible for missionaries to carry out their work. Look, I know that Christians can sometimes be made to feel guilty if they're not a missionary. If they're not one who's hopping on a flight to go to a foreign land.

50:58 But, friend, you need to understand that nothing in the Bible, nothing in the Bible creates or encourages that kind of guilt. Missions is something that ought to be driven by desire, not by guilt. It ought to be driven by I want to go, not by I'll feel bad about myself if I don't. And John says that those who stay, those who get well-paying jobs, those who have long careers and then use the resources that those careers create to support those who go, he says, you're not a second-class citizen in the kingdom.

51:34 You're not just support staff for those who really matter. You are a fellow worker in the truth, not second class, but a partner, a worker for the truth of the gospel, for the proclamation of the kingdom, right alongside the ones who go themselves. So look, friend, if that's you, I know you probably don't get it very often, but if you are one of those, a sender, a supporter, one who makes the money, that buys the plane tickets, that carry the missionaries to the nations, thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for going to work every day. Thank you for living through that long career and making the money that buys the tickets that sends the missionaries. Keep doing that. You're a fellow worker for the truth, and that's a good and deeply, deeply honorable thing. Well, I hope you can see the situation here that John is painting.

52:35 He's looking at this man, Gaius, probably a leader in his church. We don't know kind of what level. Probably an elder of the church, though. And he's saying, Gaius, you're living right now a simple but glorious life. You're walking in the truth of the gospel. You're working for the truth of the gospel in the nations. And that's beautiful. Keep it up. Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you that you are a God who has called us into mission with yourself.

53:12 Into the task and the purpose of taking the gospel to the nations and making disciples of people all over the world. Our Father, we thank you for the many, many men and women who have gone out, who have been sent out from our church to go to the nations. And we thank you for the opportunity that you give to us to support them and encourage them in that work. Our Father, we thank you too for the many members of this congregation who do the work that creates the money that sends those missionaries. God, we pray that you would encourage them in that work and help them to do it well.

53:44 Father, we pray, whether we're going to be senders or whether we're going to be goers, Lord, we pray that we, like Gaius, would live this simple but glorious life of walking in the truth and working for the truth until you come back. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.