We are going to continue this morning our study in this wonderful little book, a book, though short and sweet, is rich with theological treasures. And I'm going to continue to use these first four verses as a springboard into a continued discussion on the issue of the truth. This topic is incredibly important. It's important enough that John would emphasize it in what is likely his last letter that has been recorded in scripture. He may have written others, but at least from the standpoint of what we understand, it's one of his last. coming late in his life after his exile to the Isle of Patmos, having written along with this, in all likelihood, the Gospel of John. And so it's important for us then to take heed to this last letter that we have from one of the best known apostles, if you will, to the church. And it's to the church. It's to the church here in Beloit, Ohio. It's to Community Bible Church. The words that are written by John are as relevant today as when he first penned them some 2,000 years ago, if you will. And so we need to take heed to them and we need to understand the point that John is making. By and through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, this short little letter has been kept for us. You have it open in your lap. which is significant. And it's by no mistake that we're here. You know, we work through books of the Bible here at Community Bible Church from an expositional, exegetical format, letting God's words speak to us as we open up these passages and hear what they have to say. And so we should take heed and we should pay attention to what John is writing because it's important And it's something that clearly the Lord wants us to understand and to know. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. Thank you for our time here today. Thank you for the encouragement that we've received thus far in word and song. We praise you, Lord, for your good providence in bringing us together today. And we thank you, Lord, for the good providence that you have provided to us in preserving for all of these years and ages this wonderful, sweet little epistle. Help us, Lord, to grasp its meaning. Help us to be lovers of the truth. Help us to walk in the truth, as Gaius is commended for doing, and help us to understand the significance of what that means. We ask, Lord, for the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit. Help our minds understand your word. You intentionally have given us this little epistle. Help us to grasp it, understand it, and to take heed of its contents. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Let's go ahead and read 3 John, beginning with verse 1. the elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. I want you to pay attention to something. The word love, which is agape in the Greek, is used three times in the first two verses by John. So agape, or a derivative of it, is used, we find it in verse one, the elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Verse two, beloved. I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers. For I was very glad when brethren came and testified to your truth, that is, how you are walking in truth. I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. Beloved, you are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brethren, and especially when they are strangers, and may have testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God, for they went out for the sake of the name, that is, Jesus Christ, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore, we ought to support such men so that we may be fellow workers with the truth. I wrote something to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say. For this reason, if I come, I will call attention to his deeds, which he does. unjustly accusing us with wicked words, and not satisfied with this, he himself does not receive the brethren either, and he forbids those who desire to do so and puts them out of the church. Beloved, 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. Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself, and we add our testimony, and you know that our testimony is true. I have many things to write to you, but I am not willing to write them to you with pen and ink. But I hope to see you shortly, and we will speak face to face. Peace be to you. The friends greet you. Greet the friends. Bye. Well, there you have the short little epistle, and the content of which is significant and something that we have been working through over the last several weeks as we examine the meaning and the purpose behind the epistle. What we're going to begin to shift into is the concept that we find that John is speaking to here in part, and that is to love in the truth. And the word love is often bantered about by Christians in many circles and in many ways, and often it doesn't mean what the word actually means. It's actually often used as a means of capitulation or acquiescence or giving up ground. We do this in the name of love, people say. That love somehow is disconnected from the truth or standing in the truth or walking in the truth. And that's certainly not what the scripture speaks to. As we understand then from this short little epistle, John is very concerned about the truth. We should be concerned about the truth. What happens when we're no longer concerned about the truth? Understanding that the word truth necessarily speaks to the work and person of Jesus Christ and what he taught and what his word contains. John, of course, is very concerned about that. In the Gospel of John, he begins with the statement that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And we understand that Word ultimately is encapsulated in the work and person of Jesus Christ. It is who He is, and it speaks to who He is and why He came and what He is doing and has done for us. When the church loses sight of that, when the church loses that focus, when the church becomes encapsulated in other things, whether they be personal relationships or cultural agendas, it's devastating the church and the church begins to fall apart and loses the focus of its primary calling. We saw that in part this past week when the United Methodist Church and its conference gathered together and decided to just basically reject the entirety of God's Word and God's creative order with respect to its position on homosexuality and a litany of other issues. They have abandoned the truth. And as a consequence, you see a parade of things that are nonsensical. I watched some of the proceedings of this conference and I've seen others that are affiliated with it in conjunction with local bodies of the United Methodist Church gathering together to lend their support or their claim to what is taking place on a national level. People parading up in front of a group of people and identifying themselves as either queer or cisgendered or trans or gay or whatever, none of them ever speaking about their relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ or even saying that they were a Christian. Well, that's what happens when you abandon the truth and you no longer walk in the truth. Dear friends, this idea of the truth is so important for us. It's important for John. John is concerned. He's concerned because there are those who are moving about within Christendom at this point in time who are attacking Jesus Christ, who is the truth. and they're undermining his work in person. And so John is concerned about that. And so it's interesting to me that as a pastor, John deals with the issue of the truth by commending someone who is walking in the truth, Gaius. And his demonstration of walking in the truth is so very simple. He has been hospitable to those who are the messengers of God, that those who are carrying his word, John's letters, to the churches in the greater Ephesus, Asia Minor, Lycra Valley area. That's what's going on. Gaius receives them. He's apparently a man of means, has resources, and he uses those for the propagation of God's word. He gives to them. He invites them in. He stands with them, even in the face of someone like Diotrephes, who apparently is fairly powerful. So much so that he would merit a personal visit from the aged John. That's how important the truth is. We're told in scripture to buy the truth and sell it not. And the meaning behind that is simply that you love the truth. Jesus would tell the woman at the well that we worship in spirit and what? truth. The truth matters, capital T truth. Does it matter to you? My concern for the church today and even our own church is that as we withstand the assault from the outside on these various cultural issues, that there is a tendency to want to acquiesce on the issue of the truth. that we give ground that we ought not to because we know that if we hold the ground that it's going to be controversial, people will be upset, people will become angry. Well, clearly, Diotrephes became angry, so much so that he's throwing people out of churches over their stand, apparently in support of Gaius and what John is writing in an effort to receive these letters that John had sent. That's significant. And so, for John, truth is important. It ought to be important for you, and I hope that you will receive this epistle and that exhortation that we have here from God's Word. As we have noted before, the truth is tied to and incorporates all that the Bible tells us about who Jesus is and why he came. That's why the truth is so important. Indeed, Christ himself says that he is the truth in John 14.6. In John 17, in the high priestly prayer, Christ Himself would say that He was praying that the Father would sanctify His people in the truth. The truth, of course, being God's Word and the work and person of Jesus Christ. The truth shapes and forms our spirituality, which is what flows out of our union with Christ. And I want to talk about that for a minute. What is the impact of truth? What does truth do? Is truth just something that hits us and bounces off, and we deflect it, or we absorb certain little pieces of it, and it might change one little thing about us, but not everything? No, for John, the truth changes who the person is. This truth is transformative. It alters, it reconstitutes, it regenerates, it restructures the person. Indeed, Paul would say that the truth is of such power that it takes us out of the realm of darkness and moves us into the realm of light. that the truth is so powerful that it takes those who are alienated and hostile in mind and it creates in them a new person, it makes them a new person in Christ Jesus, who then does things differently because of the truth. So what we know then is that the truth shapes and forms our spirituality. I want you to think about that for a moment. What we find in Gaius is a demonstrated spirituality. I don't think we appreciate that. You and I are spiritual beings. We are spiritual people. And in the transformation that occurs in our regeneration, that spirituality is taken from one of death and darkness, one to light, love, and wisdom based upon who Jesus Christ is. We have a knowledge that we did not have before. The natural man, still being a spiritual man, is in darkness. Yet the man who is in Christ is in the light. John chapter three. Those who are in the world reject the light because the light reveals their sin. They like their darkness because their deeds are evil. But those who are in Jesus Christ love the light and the light shines forth from them in this darkened world. So friends, we have a spirituality then that is demonstrated. It's a spirituality that has with it instincts. I want you to think about this for a minute. In the context of what God does for us, he changes us. He makes this new creation in Jesus Christ. And as a consequence of that, we now have new spiritual instincts. We understand what an instinct is. It's something that someone does naturally because of how they're created. You see this in animals. Animals act instinctively. They're predictable because we understand the instincts that they are given. Christians are given instincts as well. demonstrated spirituality. Sometimes in the Christian community and in evangelicalism we have referred to these as disciplines. I don't like that word. I don't like the idea of spiritual disciplines because the performance of them leads, I believe, to pietism and pietism leads to pride and pride takes our eyes off of Jesus Christ. Rather, I want to see these things that I do as the natural outflowing of a transformed heart. These are the instincts. What are they? They're prayer. Prayer is not a discipline, it is an instinct. It is something that is given to me as a consequence of my union with Jesus Christ. Meditation upon God's word, resting in Jesus Christ, reading of his word. These are the things that God now has naturally instilled in me to act instinctively with in my spirituality. That's what's going on. We have missed the point of what it means to be new creation in Jesus Christ. And as new creation in Jesus Christ, we are necessarily then children of the truth. It was said of Spurgeon, if you were to cut him, he would bleed Bible. And in some ways, that is what the Christian life ought to be like. that by instinct our response is to respond according to the Word of God. The United Methodist Church ought to have gathered together and said, thus saith the Lord, and we are his people. We will do what he says to do, no matter what the culture says, we will stand with Christ. We must. We must. And so for John, the truth, as we understand it, he commends Gaius for us. Think of the words he uses here in understanding too that his love, and I don't want to lose sight of this, but his love for Gaius is in the truth. It's not because he thinks Gaius is a nice guy. because he's a wealthy man, because he has means and power and ability. It's because Gaius is the redeemed of Christ and he is living out the reality of it, the fact that Christ is shaping and forming him by the manner in which he is responding to the deliverance of God's word to the churches in Ephesus. The contrast, of course, is what? Diotrephes, the son of Zeus, banning, reacting, pushing back, rejecting the truth. John says in verse 4, I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. The fact that the truth is shaping and forming their spirituality. As we looked last week, our spirituality is derivative. It flows out of a heart that has been transformed by our Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the risen and ascended Son of God. Even Daniel tells me that. Daniel chapter 7 tells me of the Ancient of Days receiving of the Son of Man and giving Him glory and a kingdom and dominion forever and ever. That's ultimately James's point, the idea that our spirituality is derivative of who we are in Jesus Christ, the truth shaping and forming us. James's point is very clear. The fact of the matter is that Christians now live in light of a risen and ascended Savior. That is a derivative spirituality of which he is speaking. What is that? Well, we joyfully suffer. We have a faith that isn't dead, but works out of gratitude for what Christ has done. James is working out of the guilt-grace-gratitude paradigm. He understands that we are guilty and condemned. We've been saved by grace and out of gratitude for what God has done in Jesus Christ, we then now serve him as demonstrated by these characteristics that are part and parcel of the new nature of the redeemed. What do we do? We control our tongues. We are careful what we say. We don't run after the world. We pray for each other. I'm not going to go back through the whole list, but you understand that the spirituality that we have is derived out of the truth, out of God's Word, out of who Jesus Christ is. Dear friends, we cannot forget that. And when we're confronted with cultural things that are going on, and there are a variety of them, and the church is imploding on itself, into itself, as it abandons the truth. You can go to many churches today, and you're not gonna have a Bible opened. You're not gonna have a Bible read. The word of God will not be explained, but you'll be entertained out of your mind. You'll be amused. Your mind will be turned off and you'll be entertained. That's not a church. It's not a church. Churches, a true church of Christ, stands firmly in the truth of God's word. And yes, we can do that lovingly. I would submit to you to not do that is not to love. If a man is in a burning house or if a man is running into a burning house, what do you do? You leave him there? No, you get out. Get out, man. You may help him. Go to them. But that's not the case. So in light of this truth that we found last week from James and what we find here in John, we do as Paul directs in Philippians 127 and conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel. Paul would commend us in Colossians 3.14 to love each other, which is the bond of unity, and in turn prevents the disharmony prompted by a focus on things other than Christ, whether they be relationships or other issues in the culture or whatever it might be. Paul and John and all of them want us to focus on Jesus Christ and make that the primary focus which is, of course, the truth. When we abandon that, what happens? Well, we find that there's disharmony. We find that in Philippians. We find that in the church in Philippi. Iodia and Syntyche are fighting, and they're at odds with each other, so overflowing to the church, so much so that the apostle Paul has to write about them. and has to tell others to go to them and say to them, basically, behave yourselves. Stop this, you're not acting like Christians. You've made yourselves the primary focus when Jesus Christ is ought to be the primary focus. Stop doing that. So you see, truth trumps everything because as Paul says in Colossians 3.11, Christ is all and in all. I mean, that's a powerful passage, if you want to go back for a moment and just consider the implications of what Paul is saying in Colossians 3.11, noting as well, again, that it's not the personal relationships that matter, it's the truth that matters, it's who we are in Jesus Christ. Paul, in Colossians 3.11, speaking of the fact that we are a new creation in Jesus Christ, says this, this is so much so, so complete, this renewal in the truth of God's Word and who we are in Jesus Christ is so significant that there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, sissy, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all. If your focus is anything else but Christ, the outcome will be disharmony, as in the church in Philippi. and as in the church or churches over which deatrophies had sway and control as noted in 3 John. The truth was no longer the point. Simply put, take your eyes off of Christ, make something other than Christ your focus, especially when it comes to church, and turmoil will come, and you will be sorely disappointed, because people will always fail, but Christ never will. That's why Paul and John, too, call us to stand firm in the Lord, in the truth, walk in the truth. And as we stand firm in the Lord, We are doing what John and James, as we saw, are calling us to do. That is, we are walking in the truth. What we find then, of course, is ultimately what James had written about in chapter one and chapter two. Don't merely be hearers of the word, but be doers of the word. Demonstrate the reality of your conversion, the transformation, the renewal, the regeneration by how you act and live and think. Ultimately, what we find from Paul, John, and James is that faith is knowledge in motion. It's the reality of understanding who Jesus Christ is and what He has done for us. And so we're just simply not people who hear things, but we hear it and then we do it, and we do it instinctively. That's the thing. That's interesting to me. God has prescribed preaching as the manner by which the saints are built up in the faith. Ephesians chapter four tells us that God gave to the church pastors and prophets and evangelists. Why? So you could be entertained. So you could have the best life now. No, let's go back and find out why, because it's tied to this issue of the truth. What Paul says there is important, Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11, Ephesians 4.11. And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers. Why? For the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ. Now, what are these prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers doing? Teaching their own thing? No, they're teaching the word of God. They are teaching the capital T truth. Now, keep in mind, too, that that capital T truth is the same truth yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus Christ is the alpha and the omega. He is the beginning and the end. This truth does not change. It's not relative truth, changing truth, manipulated truth. It is a constant truth. We don't have different levels of truth. There's not truth one and truth two, of which you then have to choose. There's the truth, and there's not the truth. That's it. And so this word that has been given to us is to be taught by these apostles and prophets. There are no longer any apostles, but there were apostles at this time, and we can talk more about that. This new apostolic movement is a joke. It's dangerous. Stay away from it. I am not an apostle, nor do I want to be one. But I am a pastor. And by God's grace, I'm the pastor at Community Bible Church. What's my purpose? My purpose is what's identified in verse 12, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ. That's what we're doing. That's why we're in 3 John, to build you up in the truth. Why? Until we all attain, that's all of you believers, until we all attain to the unity of the faith, That's significant. This idea of unity for Paul is important. It's not unity based on compromise. It's unity based upon the content of God's Word, the truth. and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ." Meaning that the teacher is teaching people to bring them to the place where they're measuring themselves against Jesus Christ and growing in the context of becoming more Christ-like in our attitudes, behaviors, relationships, statements, thinking, philosophy, all of it. The truth permeates. The truth is what? It shapes and forms. It is derivative as a consequence of us being in Jesus Christ. Now what happens? Verse 14. And I guess the United Methodist Church forgot to read this verse. And I have no qualms saying that about them. That's a false church. It's abysmal. They need to be openly condemned. What they are doing is an abomination. It's an utter abomination. Call it as it is. Verse 14, as a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men. by craftiness and deceitful scheming. How do you think the Methodist church got taken over? By deceitful men, by being tossed about by every wind of doctrine and wave of doctrine, by the treachery and trickery of men. That's evident. But speaking the truth in love, there's that word again, that phrase in love. The Greek phraseology there is one of truthing in love. Truthing in love. So that means that my love is metered by the truth. How do I love? I love in the truth. What does that mean? Well, that means that you say the truth. That's the loving thing to do. How do I say it? Well, you say what the Bible says. What does the Bible say? Well, the Bible says that doing that is a sin. Thinking that way is sinful. Walking in that manner is sinful. That's why Paul makes the contrast that he does in Galatians chapter five, walking in the flesh, walking in the spirit. It's very different. It's because the truth is at play or not. Verse 15, but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ. So there again, that truth is tied back into who Jesus Christ is. Verse 16, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, see there's harmony, according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth of the body for the building of itself in love. Love for who? Love for Jesus Christ. Love for what? The truth. The truth. And so for John, this issue of the truth is so important, as we've noted, we've talked about that. And so what John is doing here, and if you wanna turn back to 3 John, because we're gonna make a reference there briefly again. So what John does here, and what he's doing for us with Gaius and this issue that's going on in these churches with diatrophies. The challenge John puts before his readers goes beyond believing the truth, merely believing it. In our society, truth is a cognitive concept, something that one believes or that can be proven or falsified. John certainly emphasizes believing the truth, but truth for him goes beyond the cognitive to the way life is lived. Listen to this. I want you to think about this. Truth is something that should not merely have our intellectual assent, but it is something that believers in Christ do. We do the truth. What that looks like then is the manner in which we engage with others. What becomes the priority? What is the language that we use and speak? If truth is the reality that Jesus has revealed, then it demands that those who believe in Him live according to that truth. You are the redeemed of God. You are not your own. You have been purchased. Peter makes that point. You have been bought and paid for with something that is more precious than silver and gold, but with the blood of Jesus Christ, you are a possession of God. You belong to the ancient of days. What will you do with that? How do you then live in the context of that? It means then that you are then going to communicate the content of God's word, so much so that it might divide your own family. Jesus Christ said, He came to divide households. He came to create ultimately division because He knew that the truth would do that. I always go back and reflect on the man who comes to Jesus who wants to follow him, and he says, I'll follow you, but I have to go back and bury dad first. Jesus Christ says, let the dead bury the dead, take up your cross and follow me. That's a big deal. Why is it a big deal? Well, of course we know that that man, that son, if he doesn't go, is going to lose the inheritance, because that would be an affront. that would result in basically him being treated as if he were dead. It also is interesting that back in that timeframe, the custom was to mourn the loss of a father for a year. So you had to do it for a year. He wanted to go back home for a year. Then I'll come. I'll come and take care of things then. I'll be back in a year, Jesus. Uh-uh, you come now. Oh boy, that's a problem. The rubber meets the road. The truth required, his love for the truth, his love for Jesus Christ demanded that those who believe in Christ would then live according to the truth, that is, come and follow me. This is what John is emphasizing here in verse 4, "...I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth." They are living according to the truth. A central aspect of the reality Jesus Christ has revealed is that all human beings are sinners, alienated from life-giving fellowship with God. Atonement for sin is at the heart of the truth Jesus reveals, and there can be no claim to truth that overlooks sin." Okay. There can be no claim to a truth that overlooks sin. Here's the important point, and this is what the United Methodist Church and a lot of Christians are doing wrong today, or they're not understanding, is this. To walk in the truth means to be cleansed from sin and to stop sinning. Why? What did Jesus say? He said that He came to destroy sin. So the consequence of this is what? That the truths of Christianity, the truths of who Jesus is, the truths of what he says are necessarily related to Christian ethics. What we do, why we do it, and how we respond. How does a Christian respond to homosexuality? How does a Christian respond to other social issues? The Bible doesn't tell me how to build a birdhouse. The Bible tells me there are birds, but it doesn't tell me how to build a birdhouse. But it does tell me how to respond to sin. And so I can use the Bible for that. And I ought to use the Bible for that. When you cut me, I ought to bleed Bible. When you ask me a question, my response ought to be a biblical one. That's what's being forgotten today. And what we do is this. It's interesting. If I'm not willing to tell somebody that that is a sin, then I'm not loving them. I'm coddling them. I'm enabling them. I'm facilitating them. The United Methodist Church and a lot of Christians today are afraid to say homosexuality is a sin. Transgenderism is a sin. It's a rejection of God's creative order. God said this, I believe that. That's what God did. But they don't want to say that because it's going to offend. If I love them, they say, I won't offend them. Oh, really? That's not how it works. Jesus, with the woman at the well, did what? Within minutes of engaging in the conversation, identified her sin. Right out of the gate. The woman caught in adultery, what? He immediately deals with her sin and says what? Go and sin no more. He doesn't affirm her in her sin. Oh, she's a Christian prostitute. Well, you laugh, but that's what's going on. It's exactly what people are saying. People are now identified by their sin rather than their relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Consequently, then, we find that the truth in John's writing refers not only to individual propositions to be believed, but to the entire revelation of God in Christ that Jesus brought into the world. That's what he's doing. And so, this truth, then, is a truth in action. It is a truth that acts in love. And the loving thing to do is identify what is wrong and to say what God says about it. Right? Our words are derivative from our spirituality. Our spirituality is connected to who we are in Jesus Christ. We have been made new creation in Jesus Christ. The consequences of that is that we tell people about sin. Why? Because they need to know. Because they need to know what sin is, and they need to know that there's an answer to it. The wages of sin is what? Happiness and a good life. Well, if that's what the world's saying, be who you are. Embrace yourselves. Love yourselves. Enjoy yourself. Just do you. Right? Now what? The Word of God comes along and says, no, you don't get to do you. If you do you, you're the guy in Romans 3 who is corrupted from head to toe. Now what? Well, you have to look to someone else besides yourself. You have to look to Jesus Christ. And what does Jesus Christ say? He says that what you're doing is sin. He says that you should not sin, and that you need a Savior, and that there is forgiveness for sin. and someone else beside yourself, in me, Jesus Christ. We have forgotten this. And the consequence has been is that somehow love trumps the truth. That somehow if I'm a loving person, that I won't speak to someone about their sin. This is what they do. They use Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Well, they say that Jesus was a friend of prostitutes and hung out with them. That's a lie. That's a flat-out lie. Was Mary Magdalene a prostitute? According to church history, she was, but God saved her and she wasn't anymore. He did not affirm her in her sin. He loved her enough to tell her that she was a sinner and needed a savior. And she followed him and abandoned the life that she led. as did others that he saved, as do others that he continues to save. He does not leave us in our sin and our sin does not become our identifying marker. I am not identified by my sin. I'm not a Christian thief. I'm not a Christian prostitute. I'm not a gay Christian. The problem with the church today is that we don't want to say those things for fear that we're going to offend people and upset them. We have to take what John is saying and put it into application, into action. As we know in 3 John 1-4, the noun truth is mentioned four times. It is therefore the central theme of a passage that functions to introduce a major theme of the letter and joining to what is said about truth in John's other writings, 1 and 2 John, the Gospel of John. but he also associates the word love with truth. So for John, there's not a disconnect. So what he tells me then in these opening verses is that the basis for our bond of love between believers is not our shared cultural mores and ethics, but rather the shared value of living one's life in accordance with the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who is himself the truth, which then overflows into our cultural mores and ethics. Christians, however, want it to be different. They want to be able to decide for themselves whether certain things are right or wrong when God's word clearly speaks to them. And then they say, well, if you're loving, you will be accepting. That's not what the word of God says. That's not how Christ dealt with the woman at the well, Mary Magdalene, the woman caught in adultery, Peter, anybody else for that matter. You never see Christ acquiescing to their sin, affirming them in their sin. Yet the church today is doing that. That's what happened with the United Methodist Church. Rather than confronting them with the truth of God's word, telling them what they were and who they are and why they need Jesus Christ, they embrace them, so much so that they allow people to stand up in their conference and identify themselves in the context of the very sin that the Bible condemns. Centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ, John's teachings define the nature of both truth and love and their relationship to one another. These are concepts that had to be redeemed in the first century and that are terribly abused and distorted in our times as well. One commentator notes as follows, love is a terribly debased term today, almost beyond rescue as a description of the good news of the kingdom come in Jesus Christ. We must work to recover an understanding and practice of love. Salvation is living in the way of love and it's necessarily confrontational. because you can't deal with sin without confronting it. You can't deal with sin without calling it what it is. And if you're not gonna talk about sin, and if you're not gonna deal with sin, then friends, there's no need for the gospel. There's simply no need for it. You're not going to love someone into the kingdom. You're not going to relationship someone into the kingdom. The idea that I somehow just don't ever do anything with anybody but be their buddy isn't going to get them into heaven. isn't going to give me what I need to do with them in the context of the gospel. I need to tell them who they are. I need to tell them who Jesus Christ is. I need to tell them why he is the savior of sinners and that they are a sinner and what they are doing is sin. It's a demonstration of the very fact that the Bible speaks to. Why am I talking that way? Why aren't we saying more of that? Well, we don't want to offend anybody because love, they say, doesn't offend. We understand from the Beatitudes that the result of engaging in the Beatitudes is what? Persecution. The concluding comments of the Beatitudes relate to the fact that you're going to be persecuted. Why? Because all the ones that go before relate to you talking about the fact that Jesus Christ has come to save sinners. It's connected to that. But we're afraid of that. Well, as in John's day, the concept of truth also fares poorly in a postmodern age that revels in relativism and pluralism. By referring to the gospel of Jesus Christ as the truth, capital T truth, the elder is making a bold claim in his time. And it is a bold claim, keeping in mind that Timothy had just been drugged to death at 89 years old by the worshipers of the goddess Diana. They did not want to hear that what they were doing was sin. So they killed him. I mean, Timothy could have kept his mouth shut, right? John could have kept his mouth shut and not ended up on the Isle of Pat, most likely dipped in tar. But they kept talking about Jesus Christ, and in the context of talking about Jesus Christ, they were talking about people's sin, and people don't like to hear about that. So we love the punch out of truth. it gets diminished. It's interesting that the early church lived in a world that was possibly even more pluralistic than our own. With numerous religions and philosophies vying for the hearts and minds of people, consider Paul going into the book of Acts and into the square of the town and Mars Hill and what he was engaged in there. John here identifies the gospel of Jesus Christ as truth. not simply in the cognitive sense, but in the existential reality that demands to be lived out by those who call themselves the followers of Christ. I mean, it is something that is real. It's tangible. It ought to be. People ought to know that we are Christians. There should be no question. And the point that John is ultimately making is that Christians think a certain way. They think in accordance with God's word. And what the Bible calls sin, we call sin. And we offer the hope of Jesus Christ. We don't massage it out to the point that we can't even get to Christ. We don't massage it out to the point that we can't even identify ourselves as Christians. But I can say that I'm a queer, cisgendered, white male. That's what matters, at least according to the Methodist church. So for John, the truth indeed mattered. Some like to put this in the context of compassion or condemnation, which I think is wrong. I can be compassionately loving and still be condemning because God's word is. I can say to a person lovingly, what you're doing is sin, that is condemning, but then I can give them Jesus Christ. It's not an either or. And so, for John, truth bears itself out in what Christians say and do in the world. It necessarily must be that way. Ultimately, sin is the underlying issue. The Old Testament gives me that, demonstrates it. I need a savior. Is it Adam? No. Is it Noah? No. Is it Abraham? No. Is it Moses? No. Is it the judges? No. Is it David? No. Is it Solomon? No. Who is it? Is it John the Baptist? No. Who is it? It's Jesus Christ. who came to save his people from their what? Oh, come on. You can't say that, you're gonna upset people. You can't even tell the Christmas story. No, he came to save his people from their sins. And the angels declared that he would bring peace. How is that? Why? Why peace? Because man is at enmity with God, a state of fixed hostility. There must be peace. Peace comes through Jesus Christ. And the basis for the peace is the eradication of the guilt and condemnation of sin. Because you can't stand before a thrice holy God as a sinner. You must be clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. What are we going to do with the truth? What is the philosophy of ministry at Community Bible Church? What is our focus? Our focus must be on the truth, on Jesus Christ. As Paul would say in Colossians 1.28, we proclaim Him and we make every man complete in Jesus Christ, in the truth. That's what he means. Dear friends, we must see that. We must understand that. And more so than ever in the age in which we live, we must firmly stand in the truth. In the truth. I'm so grateful for the fact that salvation is not tricky. I'm so grateful for the fact that love doesn't trump the truth. I'm so grateful for the fact that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. I'm so grateful for the fact that he saved me, a sinner. I'm so grateful for the fact that my sins are forgiven and I'm clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I cannot imagine a life without that. And I'm grateful for the truth and I hope that you are too. And if you're here today and do not know the truth, if you do not know Jesus Christ, then I would say to you, the simple solution, the simple call to you is simply look to Jesus Christ. It's not about your repentance. You don't have to be prepared. You don't have to engage in any type of mental gymnastics. You simply look in faith to a person that you know, based upon the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart, that you desperately need. Because you're a sinner, and that's the truth. What will you do with the truth? Let's pray. Lord, we love you. Thank you for your word. Thank you for the content of it. Thank you for the fact that it points us to our need, our desperate need for a savior. Thank you, Lord, for providing to us the truth. Thank you for pointing us to the truth, even here in this short little epistle, 3 John, of all the books, here it is. Thank you, Lord, for this exhortation. Help us, Lord, to take heed to it, to understand it, and to rejoice that you have revealed to us the truth. May we now in turn love others in the truth and proclaim boldly the content of your word, calling people to Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen.