Second John and today we start a new series having just completed first John And I thought about Maybe we'd go to something else, but I, I think I'll take all three epistles in, uh, in order here. Just kind of the way that they run in our, in our Bibles and, um, and, and really, uh, really, um, preach on those. They, they do. Well, there's short epistles, short letters, but there's a lot that we can glean from them as individuals and as a church. And so I trust that 1 John was a blessing, and I believe that 2 John and 3 John will also be a blessing as well. This will be kind of a short introduction to the, to the, letter. but, let's go ahead and read it in its entirety just to kind of, kind of get the, uh, the full context here. So second, John beginning at verse one, the elder to the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth. And not only I, but also all who know the truth for the sake of the truth, which abides in us, will be with us forever. Grace, mercy, and peace. will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in truth, just as we received commandment from the Father. Now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning that we love one another. This is love that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment just as you have heard from the beginning that you should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world. Those who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh This is the deceiver in the Antichrist. See to yourselves that you do not lose what we accomplished. but you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. The one who abides in the teaching, he has both the father and the son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house and do not give him a greeting for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds. Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink, but I hope to come to you and speak face to face so that your joy may be made complete. The children of your elect sister greet you. So that's the letter that John wrote to this elect lady and her children. Very short letter, very personal letter. Second, John is one of those epistles that I would classify as being a general epistle, meaning that it's not addressed to a church, but it gives us a glimpse into the early church. It gives us a glimpse into perhaps early church life, but it's not directly written to a church. John is identified here as only the elder, and you might say, well, how in the world do you know it was John that wrote this? Well, there's a couple of ways that we know. One is, at this point, we have some 2,000 years of church history. A lot of people have written about these things, and controversies have been stirred up about a lot of different things. One of those that has never been stirred up is who wrote the book of Second John. It's always been assumed, it's always been anybody and everybody who wrote about Second John said, this is John's writing. Somebody might come along and say, well, what if somebody was wrong about this? Well, I think we have a good clue here. Having spent some time in 1 John, even though all scripture is given by inspiration of God, it is all God-breathed, the writing styles are preserved. And so there's a difference in writing style between Paul and John. There's a different writing style with Peter. And the writing style of 2 John is definitely the same writing style of 1 John in the Gospel of John. And so this definitely matches as being something that John wrote. And so we can say of a surety that this is titled correctly as 2 John, that John did indeed write this, even though he identifies himself simply as the elder. This, by the way, is not uncommon. Even in our day, sometimes a pastor might say he's the pastor. Sometimes he might identify himself as the elder. Church may call him pastor or elder. Even Peter, in 1 Peter chapter five, 1 Peter chapter five, in verse one, Peter wrote this, he said, therefore, I exhort the elders among you as your fellow elder, witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker also of the glory that is to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God among you overseeing, not under compulsion, but willingly according to God and not for dishonest gain, but with eagerness. nor yet is lording it over those allotted to you, but being examples to the flock. And so, Peter says, I'm an elder too. Now, John, apparently, John named himself, used this title more frequently, as he got older. This letter, 2 John, was written later in life. And so it does kind of bring with it his maturity in age, being a spiritual father to many in those days, and also older, elder man in the church and among the Christians of that day. He was, after all, as we mentioned before, the last living apostle. The purpose of this letter is encouragement. We read something of that in verse four. He says to her, I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in truth. just as we received commandment from the Father. So we see that encouragement being given. We see also exhortation in places like verse five and six. He says, now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning that you should walk in it. So we see that exhortation being given to her. So there's encouragement, there's exhortation, but there's also admonition. Admonition found in places like verse seven there. For many deceivers have gone out into the world Those who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Antichrist. We see that again, verses 10 and 11. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house. Do not give him a greeting for the one who gives him a greeting, participate in his evil deeds. You see, 2 John deals with the same problems or similar problems as 1 John did. False teachers had influenced the early churches. the churches of the New Testament, before the ink had dried on the Isle of Patmos, before the canon was closed, there were false teachers who had crept in to the churches, and these false teachers were influenced by the beginnings of Gnostic thought and practice, and this was a threat to Christianity, a threat to the churches. John was very much concerned about this, as he should have been. And of course, the Holy Spirit was using him mightily, not only for that generation, but for the generations to come, because Gnosticism did not die out in those early days. Indeed, as we dig in into this more and more, we'll look at some of those things and maybe consider some of the modern Gnostics that we see in our day as well. There are some interpretive issues that come up. differences of interpretation. Even though this is a small book with just one chapter, there are differences of opinions of how to interpret certain things within it. Among the many commentators, pastors, preachers, theologians of all sorts, there are differences of what some of these words mean. Indeed, when you add to that some 2000 years of people examining this book and talking about it and writing about it, there are different views about how some of these things should be taken. Indeed, after nearly 30 years of preaching myself, I come to a book like this, and I do have my own preconceived ideas, but after studying and looking at this afresh, I'm settled on my interpretation here. What I'm talking about is the identity of the elect lady. The identity of the elect lady. Now, understand something. Even though there are differences of interpretation here, whoever got the original letter knew exactly who it was written for. And so, while there are some differences, even between good brethren on this, the original readers knew exactly who it was for. There are things that we can glean out of it, even even though it wasn't originally written for us, or to us rather, it is for us, and so we can glean from it even if we differ a little bit sometimes about what these words mean. As this letter is written scripture, God has given it, And so we try to treat this and preach it the best that we can. So some say, just to give you a couple of the most prominent views, some say that this is a letter written to a church, that this lady was a church and her children were either her members or churches that she organized. So there's differences of opinion there. And certainly it is true that churches are spoken of in the effeminate language. So we talk about sister churches and mother churches and that sort of thing. And it is true also that churches ought to organize churches. And it is very, very true that churches need members. Church membership is very important. But when I read this text, I don't see any need to read into it something that's not very clearly there. And while I love the church, and I love church members, and I love churches organizing other churches, I see no reason to read the church in every single New Testament passage like some brethren tend to do. in 1 Peter chapter 1 and verses, sorry, 2 Peter, 2 Peter chapter 1. Excuse me. Verses 19 and 20 says that, and we have as more sure the prophetic word to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns, the morning star arises in your hearts. knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes by one's own interpretation. For no prophecy, verse 21 says, was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. So no prophecy of scripture comes by one's own interpretation. It's not given of any private interpretation, the way that the King James translators translated that. Men were being moved by the Holy Spirit spoken from God. God desires to communicate with men. And when he gave the word, he always gave it in the common language. That's why the Old Testament, Hebrew and Aramaic, and then on and on into the New Testament, it's Greek. And then, praise God, it's been preserved and translated into the language of men. And God desires to communicate in our language. When we sit down and read it, There's no reason to think that 2 John doesn't mean anything more than the elect lady and her children to understand a plain sense referring to a woman and her children, rather than trying to interpret into a non-literal sense that some preacher or theologian or commentator has to explain to you. Just like there are some videos on YouTube now who are saying that the identity of this woman has been locked up in the Greek and that the woman's name was Electra or something like that. I've seen I've seen those videos floating around lately and maybe it's just because I've been studying this but But understand something When you get to that first section there, and he talks about the elect lady and her children. In the same way, when you get to the end of the book, in 2 John, in verse 13, the children of your elect sister greet you. I believe we ought to take this in a normal way that we can understand it. that in verse 13, he's talking about a reference to nieces and nephews of this individual. And I'll try to insert something that just isn't clearly there. We're not doing damage to the church. In fact, we're helping out in the church because This letter is very pastorly in its tone. Pastors ought to have a concern for the lady and her children. And we'll get into some of those things as we go on. John had a desire, an affection for believers and a deep concern for their welfare on an individual level. When we talk about churches, it's not just as a corporate body. We're digging down into individuals. And that's important to remember. When we talk about let's pray for Sovereign Grace Baptist Church, we're not thinking of a building somewhere. We're not thinking of a title somewhere. We ought to think about and pray for each and every individual member and each and every individual family and think about their individual concerns. And this letter is a good reminder of that as John drills down into some of that. And in fact, as we move along and go through this letter, I'm going to try to follow an outline. And there's a lot of different ways that people outline this chapter because of the way differences of opinions about the interpretation of it. I mean, if you start out in verse one, with a different view of the lady and her children, you're going to outline the chapter differently. But I'd like to outline it in a way that is going to kind of follow what I believe John is trying to bring out in this chapter. And I'm gonna follow loosely the outline that's provided by John MacArthur in his study Bible, as he gives a brief outline of the chapter there. And I know most of y'all have that study Bible, so it'll be easy for you to follow along as we go through this short chapter in the next few weeks. So the first, I'll give you the skeleton outline. The first part, verses one through three, is the basis of Christian hospitality. Verses four through six is the behavior of Christian hospitality. Verses seven through 11 is the bounds of Christian hospitality. And then verses 12 and 13 is the blessings of Christian hospitality. with an overall theme here of being biblical guidelines for hospitality. As he writes to this lady, just like first John calls us to the basics of the faith, reminds a believer of our assurance in Christ. So this book, this letter, reminds us not only that we are to adhere to these basics, some call them the fundamentals of the faith, but this gracious love and hospitality that is commanded of us must be discriminated. Ours is an age of ecumenicalism. Seems like just about anybody and everybody wants to join in with anything and everything. but that can't be. Our hospitality must be discerning because there are false teachers out there and there are those who deny the faith. And so, you know, just like, just like there are people who knock on the door, sometimes we let them in and say, come on in brother, come on sister, come on in AC repairman, whatever. There are other people who knock on the door and We're guarded. They say, hey, we're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Well, we're guarded about that sort of thing. We don't let them in in the same way. There's reasons for that. There's reasons for that. There are people that we know to be good Christians. that we may agree with them on a number of issues, but we don't have them come and preach in our pulpits. Why? Well, there's reasons for that. There's reasons for that. And we see those sorts of things being brought out in this short chapter, even as he wrote to this elect lady. So whether we're talking about someone sitting around our table for dinner, or coming in to tell us about Jesus or even having some Bible study with them, we're guarded about those sorts of things. And anyway, we certainly are to be hospitable, but there's certain levels of it. And I believe that is brought out here as he writes to this elite lady and her children. Well, this is kind of just an overview, an introduction. I trust it will be a blessing. And so Lord willing, we'll dive into the chapter beginning next week and obviously as we go along certainly let me know if you have any questions. Let's go ahead and have a song.