3 John - The DNA Of A Healthy Church
Main Idea: A healthy church is marked by a love for God’s people and truth.
A HEALTHY CHURCH LOVES SACRIFICIALLY
Sacrificial love takes time, resources, words, faithfulness, and a reliance on seeing God daily.
A HEALTHY CHURCH LIVES DAILY ON GOD’S TRUTH
Truth demands action, produces joy, and invites participation.
A HEALTHY CHURCH LEARNS TO RECOGNIZE FAMILY
Fellow Christians are known by truth, deserve investment, and need support, defense, and friendship.
A HEALTHY CHURCH LOATHES ENTITLEMENT
To combat greed and entitlement, invest in others, listen to others, defend others, spend time with God, and build a report of love.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)
We are starting a new six-week series that I've entitled Tabernacle DNA. Your DNA determines so much about you. It determines many of the things for your health.
It determines what kind of nose you're gonna have. It might determine who you get to marry, depending on how it shapes your face or your looks, or perhaps many other things about you. Your DNA is vitally important.
Now, for many of us, we would realize, once we're here at this spot, we can't really do anything to adjust or to change our DNA. What we've got, we're kind of stuck with.
But as a church, the DNA that we have, the building blocks that make up who we are, what we do, how we do it, how we present ourselves, we are called to be consistently conforming to the word of God. I think many of us would know this.
If I were to ask the question, is Tabernacle Baptist Church, with everything that we currently are and have in this very moment, are we perfect? Are we ideal? Have we reached perfection?
I think all of us would give the same answer. No, we're not perfect. We're not Jesus.
We are not enthroned in glory. And so for our church to be biblically faithful, I've heard it phrased before, a church that's growing is always in transition. There's always something that we want to be conformed to the image of Christ.
This series is not going to be. Here are six ways in which we can be more hip and relevant to today's day and age. I think many of you in this room would realize we don't really want to be conformed in many ways to this day and age.
There's not many things that we could look at in our society or on the news and go, yeah, we just really need some more of that in the church. We would realize, okay, the world's a mess. So what do we conform to?
Do we say, okay, this church was started 74 years ago. We celebrated 74 years, I believe this past February. Do we say, okay, let's go back to 1950.
And, you know, anyone that wasn't alive at that point, you guys can go to a different church. We're going to recreate exactly what this church was in 1950. I think all of us would realize that's not what God has for us.
That's not a healthy growth. That's not a healthy confirmation. But we also don't want to say, all right, well, let's imagine perhaps what a 13-year-old, what their dream church would be.
I see some of the McCoy boys here. If I were to ask them, all right, guys, we can make the church in your image, whatever you say we're doing. I think all of us might realize, ooh, okay, that might get a little weird.
And there might be some more dinosaurs on things. You might not have these particular decorations. You might have some video games on the screen instead of some things.
Who knows? But we want our church to be conformed not to individuals' preferences. We want to be conformed to the word of God.
God's word is the standard by which we live and breathe and do everything that we do. So over the next six weeks, we're going to be looking at what the Bible says about the future of our church.
I think I have a slide in here that has what the next six weeks entail. I'm not keeping you in the dark about this. This week, we're going to be looking at the book of 3 John, and we're going to see the DNA of a healthy church.
The following three weeks after that, we're going to be looking at the three statements that I've included in many of our materials over the past three months, knowing Christ, growing in His word, and showing His love to others.
And we'll dive into those in the upcoming weeks.
Then the fifth week, we're going to be looking at the biblical case for church membership, that church membership is not something, at least biblical church membership, is not something that people invented.
It wasn't an idea that someone came up with in the 1800s that said, you know what would be really cool? We've heard of Costco. We've heard of Sam's Club.
We've heard of a country club, and we want in on this membership thing. So we're going to be looking at what biblical church membership is. And then in the last week, we're going to look at what the Bible says about spiritual leaders.
So this is going to be what the next six weeks at Tabernacle entails. This is not going to be, hey, what does Bryon Self think about these topics?
Lord willing, as we look at scripture, you will all be able to read the exact same thing that I'm reading, see the exact same truths that I am advocating for. But here is how we need to go into the next 74 years at Tabernacle.
We get to choose as a church body what our DNA, what our building blocks, what the essential elements of what we do and say and practice and believe, we get to choose what those are.
So over the next six weeks, let's choose to build our church on the word of God, that these truths would be built into who we are, what we believe, what we say, and what we do. Today, we are in the book of 3 John.
So I would encourage you to turn in your Bible over to there. If you have one of the handouts that was in the bulletin this morning, on the back sheet of the handout, it's got all of the points for the sermon so that you know where we're going.
But it's also got the passage. It's a whole book of the Bible that's written on the back of your handout sheet. This is the shortest book of the Bible, at least in the Greek language.
3 John is normally paired with the book of 2 John. Now, I know many of you might not be as familiar with this particular book of the Bible as you think about Scripture.
You might say, okay, I kind of know the Gospel of John, John 3.16, was there a sequel and another sequel where John was like, all right, well, this was a good Gospel, but now I'm adding in some more things.
The books of 1, 2, and 3 John were written by the same author as the Gospel of John, but these were letters that he wrote to some churches, the book of 3 John to a specific individual, in which he is describing for them what faith in Christ looks
like, what's real, what actually matters for the Christian faith. So the book of 1 John, he's detailing for that particular group of believers.
There had been some false teachers that had come in, that they had kind of blown in, blown up, and blown out, and the people that were left were wondering, okay, were we wrong about this? Is Jesus really that big of a deal?
Is holy living really important? And John writes to encourage them, yes, absolutely. And here's the things you need to know.
The book of 2 John in particular, he dives into, these are what false teachers look like. He even goes so far as to say, when the false teachers are coming in, don't even tell them like, have a good day or Godspeed.
He says, don't even wish them well in that way, because they are trying to lead you astray, lead people into damnation by not believing in Christ, but believing in something else, mere religion or mere works salvation.
The book of 3 John, the apostle John, writes to a man called Gaius. And Gaius had welcomed some faithful traveling gospel teachers, some missionaries into his home. And so John writes to commend him for doing that.
He writes to him to warn him about a nearby pastor who was really overreaching and ruling God's church, a congregation in a way that was deeply biblically unhelpful.
So John writes to Gaius to warn him about that and then has a few more things to say about it. This book is only 15 verses. Let's take a few moments today.
We're going to read through it. Normally, we'd work verse by verse all the way through and take our points from that structure.
Because this book is so short, what we're going to do today, we're going to read through it, and then we're going to look at four themes that are interlaced throughout this passage. So let's start off with 3 John 1, and if you would, read with me.
The elder to my dear friend Gaius, whom I love in the truth. Dear friend, I pray that you are prospering in every way and are in good health, just as your whole life is going well.
For I was very glad when fellow believers came and testified to your fidelity to the truth, how you are walking in truth. I have no greater joy than this than to hear that my children are walking in truth.
Dear friend, you are acting faithfully in whatever you do for the brothers and sisters, especially when they are strangers. They have testified to your love before the church.
You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God, since they set out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from pagans. Therefore, we ought to support such people so that we can be co-workers with the truth.
I wrote something to the church, but diatrophes who loves to have first place among them does not receive our authority. This is why if I come, I will remind him of the works he is doing, slandering us with malicious words.
And he is not satisfied with that. He not only refuses to welcome fellow believers, but he even stops those who want to do so and expels them from the church. Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good.
The one who does good is of God. The one who does evil has not seen God. Everyone speaks well of Demetrius, even the truth itself.
And we also speak well of him, and you know that our testimony is true. I have many things to write to you, but I don't want to write to you with pen and ink. I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face.
Peace to you. The friends send you greetings. Greet the friends by name.
From the book of 3 John, we see this central truth that a healthy church is marked by a love for God's people in God's truth. Once again, a healthy church is marked by a love for God's people in God's truth.
Let's pray, and then we'll look at the four DNA markers, if you will, that set apart God's people. Dear Lord, thank you for today.
God, I pray that you would please help us as we dive into your word, that it would encourage hearts, that it would challenge us to conform what we do and say and think to the image of Christ.
God, we pray that you would help our church to continue to be biblically faithful for the next 74 years, that we would be consistently pursuing you. We love you, God, and we pray all of this in your name. Amen.
The first kind of mark of the DNA of a healthy church that we can see is that a healthy church loves sacrificially. We can see this in verses one and two, verses five and six, and verse 11. And we see first that sacrificial love takes time.
We can see this in the passage where Gaius spent time on the traveling teachers. In verse number five and six, Dear friend, you are acting faithfully in whatever you do for the brothers and sisters, especially when they are strangers.
I think many of us have heard before the statement that love is spelled T-I-M-E. As our church seeks to have the love of Christ lived out in our lives, it will require us sacrificially giving of time. The Apostle John took time to write this letter.
He gave it, as we read at the very end, to Demetrius, who then took the letter to Gaius. There was lots of time spent here caring for other people, caring about their needs and doing things with them as a result.
For our church, a healthy church spends time with one another. Now, I realize that it's 2024. All of us have many things that fill up our schedules, things that our calendars are full of good actions that we take, that we fill our time with.
But if we are going to be a biblically faithful church, then we need to sacrificially give of our time to one another. Maybe that might be time, like many of you have taken this morning, to be in the corporate assembly.
Maybe it might be that you would take time and spend some time with other people in a small group throughout the week, or in serving in some way, or taking someone out to coffee, or even having just a Zoom time with someone else, where you would talk
about spiritual things with them. Sacrificial love takes time. But not only does it take time, it takes resources.
I think here of Gaius, when he welcomed those teachers into his home, he didn't just stick them in a corner of his house and say, all right, you guys are good. I'm housing you. Have a great time.
No, no, especially as we think about hospitality in the early Roman world, he would have fed them. He would have given them a blanket, might have given him a pillow or a bed, depending on what resources that he had.
We talked about this two weeks ago with the end of Philippians that we are called to live extravagantly. We're called to give in a way that benefits the lives of other people, that God has not given you your resources. Maybe God has given you money.
Maybe God has given you a home. Maybe all God's given you is time to pray for other people. Maybe all that God has given you is time where you get to spend with other people.
Whatever resources God has given you, if we're to be a biblically faithful church, then we are called to spend our resources, sacrificially, lovingly, on other people.
I have been so blessed and encouraged through our Annie Armstrong Offering this year. And we'll announce the total of what we've raised next week.
So today and the following upcoming days, if you want to give online, are the last days that you have to give to that particular offering.
But that's one way in which our church corporately is giving of our resources to benefit people who have never heard the gospel. Or here, as with Gaius and these traveling preachers, that we're able to send others out for the sake of the name.
Here in verse number seven, they set out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from pagans.
Here what John is writing is, these traveling preachers aren't taking money from the unsaved in order to do the work of God, but it's Christians partnering with Christians to say, here is the work of God being accomplished.
I can think of our church and Brother Dale over the past several decades that we've partnered with Eastern Interfaith Outreach Center and been able to help clothe and feed those that are in need in our community.
But can I tell you, if all we do is corporate things together, but individually, we never care for another person personally, we never give to someone's need or give to help them or give to encourage them, even if it's something as small as time
spent with them or buying them a cup of coffee. Let's not just abdicate our role and say, okay, other people will give, other people will love in this way. Let's take personal ownership of it that says, I'm going to give whatever God's given to me.
I'm going to love others through this. Sacrificial love takes time, resources. Sacrificial love takes words.
We can see this consistently throughout the book where verse number one, he says, my dear friend, Gaius, whom I love. Verse two, dear friend. He is praying for his prosperity in every way, both in his soul and in his health.
Verse number three, he was very glad again and again throughout the book. The brothers and sisters, the ones that have everyone speaks well of Demetrius. There is this constant verbal encouragement of others.
It can be easy to slander. It can be easy to complain. But are we using our words to build up other people?
Are we using our words to bless others, to love others sacrificially? There might have been a day and age in which people go, well, you know, someone knows that I love them. Someone knows that they're doing a good job.
But, you know, we don't just go around saying I love you. From Scripture, it's a very biblical thing that we would benefit, build up, exhort other people through our words.
You never know how God might use the encouragement from your text messages, from your phone call, from your word of mouth, from your email, or, you know, a Facebook poke. I don't even know if they still have those on Facebook, actually.
But we can encourage other people through letting them know that we care about them and we love them. That's why many times I try and make it a point to tell you when I'm having a conversation with you that I love you. I'm not saying that flippantly.
I'm not saying it because, you know, Pastor Ron or Gary gives me a dollar bonus every time I say it. I'm saying it because it's genuine from my heart as your pastor.
I love you because I know that Christ loves you, and he has a wonderful plan for your life.
As you look at your brothers and sisters in Christ, as you look at people in your life, that maybe they're constantly beat up by the words of people all around them. Are we communicating life and love through what we're saying?
When people come into Tabernacle Baptist Church, do they have to be leery or wary of you because they don't know if you're going to insult their clothes, or you're going to be mad about something that they've done, or are you a life-giving person
that someone goes, man, I can't wait to talk to so-and-so, because I know Brother Jerry has been a consistent encouragement to me over these past several months, and I've been grateful. Every time I talk to Jerry, I know, man, I'm going to be
spiritually encouraged. He's not going to butter me up. He's not going to say, oh man, you're looking real thin today. He's not going to lie to me.
He's not going to say flattery, but he is going to genuinely build me up in the Lord. Let's model that kind of love and that kind of speech towards others. You might be one that would say, man, no one ever does that for me.
And I deeply apologize for that. Can I encourage you, be the change. In the words of the not hymn writer, start with the man or woman in the mirror and ask them to change their ways.
So sacrificial love takes time. Sacrificial love takes resources. Sacrificial love takes words.
Sacrificial love takes faithfulness. I see in verse number five, dear friend, you are acting faithfully in whatever you do for the brothers and sisters.
Gaius didn't just say, here's one or two days that these traveling speakers are with him and he's taking care of them and he's loving them and he's providing for them. It wasn't just two days and then they're done.
From this epistle, it would have been that the traveling teachers had come and they had been there long enough, especially in the first century, that then word would have gotten to the Apostle John.
Apostle John wrote the letter and then it went back to Gaius and the traveling speakers were still there. It was a continuing faithfulness and care for that person.
If we spend time with people, if we spend resources on people, if we spend loving words on people, and it only lasts for perhaps three weeks, and for three weeks, maybe take someone out to coffee the first week, or you tell them that you love them
for three weeks in a row, and then you take a year off, they might wonder, what did I do during week four? What did I do to make them mad at me?
If we're going to love, then it needs to be a consistent love, a faithful love, a faithful love, a love that remains.
It might not always be that you go, okay, great, now I'm locked into coffee for five weeks because Pastor Bryon said I had to be faithful.
No, no, no, just that they would know that you love them, that you are praying for them, that you do care about them. And then lastly, from verse 11, sacrificial love takes a reliance on seeing God daily.
Verse number 11, Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God. The one who does evil has not seen God.
You might say, man, that kind of sacrificial love, that's very different than who I am. Like, you don't know me, but I'm like the world's best vendetta holder. You don't know.
Like, I'm really good at holding a grudge. The trick to loving people sacrificially is not you stirring up emotions in and of yourself. It's seeing God.
It's seeing the one who has forgiven all sin. It's seeing the one who daily loads us with benefits, as Psalm 103 would say. It's going to God daily.
If you're going to sacrificially love people, then you have to go to God. It will not last if you are relying on your own strength or your own emotions or your own resources to love others.
It requires us going to God to say, Lord, I don't know how I'm going to deal with so-and-so this week. I don't know how I'm going to deal with my spouse today. I don't know how I'm dealing with my kids today.
But from God's word, from seeking God's face, from praying to Him, for asking for His Holy Spirit to build that fruit of the Spirit in us, that is how we can have a sacrificial love for one another. So first, a healthy church loves sacrificially.
Secondly, a healthy church lives daily on God's truth. We can see this in verses 3 and 4, verse 8 and verse 12. And first, we can see that truth demands action, both visible and invisible.
In verses 3 and 4, I was very glad when fellow believers came and testified to your fidelity to the truth, how you are walking in truth. I have no greater joy than this to hear that my children are walking in truth.
Here, Gaius had that inward fidelity to the truth, that he genuinely believed what God said, and he was acting in accordance with that belief. It's an invisible action. No, I can't go up to John and say, hey, I see actual faith in you.
Faith isn't something you can touch or see. It's, as Hebrews would phrase it, it's the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
So there's an invisible action of faith, but there's also a visible action, that they saw that the faith that was in Gaius was working out in action. James, in his epistle, mentions this often.
He says, okay, you've got two people, and one person says, I have faith, and another person says, I have faith that works. He says, show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
And he goes on to describe kind of how this would look in real life.
He says, if someone comes and they go, man, I really need some clothes, I really need some food, and the person that has faith, but no works goes, oh great, may you be warmed and filled. He says, it doesn't help him out any.
The only thing that helps is faith that works, that's alive, that's effective.
So for our church, if we're going to live daily on God's truth, like Gaius here, like these brothers that were going out for the sake of the name, if we're going to live on God's truth, it demands both invisible action of belief in our hearts that
then works out in obedience to God's word, that what God says, we're following. But then we can see that truth produces joy. In verse number four, I have no greater joy than this than to hear that my children are walking in truth.
Some people, they know a lot about the Bible, and it does not result in joy being built up in their life. It results in kind of a superiority complex, or it results in just a consistent anger towards others, a constant bitterness and down looking.
We know from scripture that the Pharisees during the first century were much like this, that all of their knowledge of God, his 613 commands and the commands on commands, it didn't result in joy being brought up in their life.
It resulted in a judgmental and angry spirit. One that resulted in killing Christ. For us, what is the spirit that you have when you hear that someone else has an opportunity to serve?
What comes up in your life when you hear about someone else having an opportunity to declare their faith in Christ or to witness to someone? Is your response jealousy or is your response joy?
If your natural reaction to hearing spiritual good news is not joy, can I encourage you? It's one of the fruit of the spirit. Love, joy, peace.
So if you are not experiencing joy in your Christian walk, pray and ask the Holy Spirit to bring that fruit up in you, that as you see that God's kingdom is going forward, you could have that same heart that Paul had in Philippians 1, where he says,
what then, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached, and in that, I rejoice, and I will rejoice. Is joy what comes up as a result of your understanding of truth?
Then we can lastly see that not only does truth demand action, visible and invisible, and not only does truth produce joy, but truth invites participation. And we can see this in verse number eight.
Therefore, we ought to support such people, these missionaries, these traveling speakers, so that we can be coworkers with the truth. If the gospel is true, and it is, then it demands not merely acceptance, but participation.
The Christian life is not a spectator sport. It's something that we're involved in, now, at different times during your life, it will look different in how you participate.
Sometimes it might be that you are growing and learning and hearing more about God's Word.
But for many believers in Christ, then it's called, okay, we've gone from baby stage, where we're drinking the milk of the Word, as 1st Peter 2 would put it, and then we're putting it into action. Then it's being lived out in our life.
It's 2nd Timothy 2 in verse 2. The things that you've heard from me among many faithful witnesses, teach to others who will be able to teach others also. The Christian life is not a marathon as such.
It's a relay. Who are you passing on the faith to?
The areas in which you serve, who are you bringing along so that when you are gone, if God calls you home, or if, you know, whatever the circumstance might be, if God calls you to a new area, that you have passed on the baton, that you are
continually making disciples. That's the call of Christ from Matthew 28. Make disciples of all nations. It's not just a task for myself or Pastor Ron or small group teachers to do.
It is the task of every Christian who is your disciple. So a healthy church loves sacrificially. A healthy church lives daily on God's truth.
And a healthy church learns to recognize family. We can see this all the way throughout. You can see the words brothers and sisters, many different things.
But as we're talking about family, we're not, I'm not saying, hey, look at a 23andMe test and recognize your family that way.
I'm not saying maybe look in the old family Bible and look at all the genealogies and go, okay, I recognize who my family members are. I'm not saying to do a deep dive into your Facebook friends and go, oh, okay, that's my third cousin once removed.
No, no, no. Biblically, a healthy church learns to recognize their spiritual family, those that are their brothers and sisters in Christ. How do we recognize these people?
From 3 John, we see that fellow Christians are known by truth. So as we've already looked at, the brothers and sisters went, hey, Gaius, he's faithful to the truth. He's living it.
He's walking in it. The teachers, they were living in the truth. They went out for the sake of the name.
They weren't in it for the money. They weren't even taking money from those that weren't believers. The indication there would be that sometimes the unbelievers would go, oh yeah, we'll give you some money.
You're a great speaker. You're a great orator. And they didn't even accept that.
Here he's saying, fellow believers, fellow Christians are known by truth, their fidelity to the truth, specifically of the gospel.
From Galatians 1-3, 1 John 1-4, and Acts 4, we recognize that merely claiming to be a Christian does not make a person a Christian.
One who denies Jesus as God, adds any requirements to his finished work of redemption, or lifts any other name or writings up as providing salvation is anti-Christ or Messiah-rejecting.
We are to love those that are currently anti-Christ because like Paul, they may accept Jesus and his redemption, but we are to mark and avoid their teachings, knowing that they end in damnation. So fellow Christians, they are known by truth.
I think even in verses 11 and 12, where he tells Gaius, imitate what is good, because the one that does good is of God. And then verse 12, everyone speaks well of Demetrius, even the truth itself.
He says even the gospel says that Demetrius is a great guy. And we also speak well of him, and you know that our testimony is true. So fellow Christians are known by truth.
Fellow Christians deserve investment and love. In verse number 8, it says, we ought to support such people so that we can be coworkers with the truth.
This word support here is the word that's used in the story of the prodigal son for when the father runs out to his wayward son, and he wraps him up, he kisses his neck, and he brings him back to the house and throws him a huge banquet party, puts
his ring on his finger, puts his robe on him. It's that kind of support, reception, investment, and love. If we are going to be a healthy church, then we need to give other believers investment and love. Why would we do that?
Is it because the Prodigal Son has done so many wonderful things? No, the Prodigal Son had done everything wrong, but he was loved and supported. Here for these believers, it wasn't because they were apostles.
It wasn't because this was Peter and James, or it's not because it was Paul or someone else. It's not that this particular person or people were so great that they needed support. It was because they were fellow brothers and sisters.
It was because they went out for his name, and so they needed to be supported and loved. In your church, there are people that need the kind of support, investment, time, resources that only you can provide, that God has given to you.
Are you looking for who God has brought into your sphere of influence that you can care for, that you can love?
Many times we build an increasingly shrinking circle around ourselves in order to shield ourselves from any hurt, but we are called to extravagantly love, receive, support, and invest in others.
Then fellow Christians need support and defense and friendship. Verses 9 and 10, we can see that Diotrephes rejected these teachers.
He rejected even a letter from the Apostle John, and in verse number 10, he not only refuses to welcome fellow believers, but even stops those who want to do so and expels them from the church.
When fellow believers are attacked or maligned, step up for them. And think even of Jesus. One of his actions that he takes is that he intercedes on our behalf.
That as Satan, the accuser, we would read in Revelation 12, as he stands before our God night and day going, hey, do you know what Sherry did? Hey, do you know what Mike did? That Jesus goes, hey, paid in full, my child.
If Jesus does that for you, can't you help support other people? That we wouldn't be like diatrophies, but that we would defend our brothers and sisters.
In verse number 12, where John here is commending Demetrius, we ought to speak well of others, which we've already looked at. And then in verse 14, he says, I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face.
And then verse 15, peace to you, the friends send you greetings, greet the friends by name. Do you have friends in church? If not, I'd encourage you, invest in friendship.
Sometimes outside friendships can be more natural to us. We might say, I have more in common with this person. We share the same job.
We share a similar history. We went to the same high school or college, but God has given us his body so that we would be able to encourage one another to build one another up into maturity in Christ.
If our only friendships are outside of the church, then we are missing out on what God has given us his church for. So a healthy church loves sacrificially. A healthy church lives daily on God's truth.
A healthy church learns to recognize family. And then lastly, a healthy church loathes entitlement. And as we've read through, the entitled one in this book is Diatrophes, a power-hungry pastor who wanted everything to be about him and for him.
To combat greed and entitlement, because none of us, if I were to ask you, hey, are you a selfish person? I'm sure most of us would go, oh no, I'm not selfish. If I were to ask many of your spouses, hey, can they be selfish?
Then we'd get the real answer. For many of us, we tend to think the best of ourselves, but all of us can be tempted by greed and entitlement that we think we are deserving and worthy of accolade and time and resources and everything.
But here John gives us some ways in which we can combat greed and entitlement. First, we can invest in others. In verse number five, where he says, you're acting faithfully in whatever you do for the brothers and sisters.
And then in verse number six, you will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. To combat greed and entitlement, invest in others. It's really hard to say, I deserve all this when you're giving it all away.
Not only can we invest in others, but we can listen to others. I think I talked about this a good bit in the book of Philippians, so I won't belabor the point here. Others have the Holy Spirit of God, and other people have the Word of God, too.
If other people have the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, then there are things that we can learn through them talking with us that we would not have known otherwise. That God might have a message for us through that other person.
Not in a creepy way like, hey, Mike, God told me that you better drive on 695 at 810 on Tuesday. Again, that's not how this works, so don't actually do that. I don't know if that takes you out off of schedule or something, but don't do that.
That's not how it works, but God might bring up something in someone's heart that they might have an encouragement for you. They might have a challenge for you from God's Word.
They might have something that would just encourage you in your Christian walk. So listen to others. That's something that I want to consistently try to do as a pastor, that I want to listen to God's people.
God doesn't have secret things that he tells me that he doesn't communicate to you. And so if I'm going to be sensitive to the Spirit of God, then I need to be sensitive to the people of God.
So to combat greed and entitlement, invest in others, listen to others. Other people have good ideas too. God has not given you all wisdom.
God has given sometimes little nuggets of wisdom to other people. So listen to others. Defend others.
And we can see here John encouraging guys, defend these people from diatrophies. Then to combat greed and entitlement, spend time with God. We already talked about in verse 11, the one who does evil has not seen God.
So let's have a desire to daily see God in his word, to see him in prayer. And then lastly, to combat greed and entitlement, build a report of love. Verse number 12, the testimony of Demetrius.
Everyone speaks well of Demetrius, even the truth itself. And we also speak well of him. If someone was to say, Dave has a testimony, if someone were to say, Jimmy has a testimony, what would that testimony be for you?
If someone said, so-and-so is like this, what would that report be?
For our church, we're going to have biblical building blocks, a DNA that lends itself towards a healthy, God-centered existence for the next 74 years in this area, should the Lord tarry, then we have to have these building blocks.
We must love sacrificially. We must live daily on God's truth. We must learn to recognize our spiritual family, and we must loathe entitlement.
This isn't just something that we say, okay, as a church corporately, we all have to have these things, which we do. But if our church is going to have that health, it means that we individually, me personally, we need to embody these.
How can we do that? It's only through what Jesus has done. It's only through His Spirit.
We can't be loving enough on our own. We can't stay firm enough in God's truth on our own. We're all liable to bend one way or another.
We can't personally recognize and care for our spiritual family enough on our own. We can't combat greed and entitlement in and of ourselves. We can only do it through the Holy Spirit of God living inside of us.
But really, it starts off with, will we ask Him for that? We pray and ask the Lord, God, will you build these building blocks into me? And God, will you build them into our church at large?
Today, a healthy church is marked by love for God, His people, and His truth. Does it mark you? As you read through these truths, these things that are brought out from God's Word, what describes you?
What doesn't describe you? Can I encourage you today? Turn to the Lord.
Ask Him to, as David would say, create in me a clean heart, Lord my God, and renew a right spirit within me. God, make me on the inside more like you.
