Please turn with me and your Bibles to the book of 2 John, verses 10 and 11. 2 John, verse 10 and verse 11. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting. For whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. I'd like you to bow with me now and we pray as asking God to bless this reading of his word and the preaching of it. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, your word is truly the bread of life. Lord, these are your people, the sheep of your pasture. And I pray, O God, that you would now feed your sheep. that You would open their mouths, that You would pour in the bread of life. We pray that we would be changed people, that we would feast on our Savior Jesus Christ today, as He's presented in Your Word. And we ask this now in Christ's name. Amen. One of the oldest extant Christian writings that we have today is something called the Didache. It means the teaching or the teaching of the twelve. It is reputed to be the actual teaching of the apostles. Now, I don't believe that it is the actual teaching of the apostles, but it is a helpful document in getting a glimpse into what the early church was all about, what they viewed as priorities. how church life operated and things like that. The document dates all the way back to roughly around 100 AD, so it's one of the first documents that we have after the close of the New Testament canon. Well, the Didache has a section in it that is almost word for word this section of 2 John. In section 11 and 12, we have instruction to the church on what they're to do about teachers that come to them. Let me read you just the introduction of section 11 of the Dineshe and note the similarity between verses 10 and 11 here of 2 John. It begins like this. Whoever comes to teach you in accordance with all these things we've written here, receive him. But if the teacher himself goes astray, teaching another doctrine which would undermine this doctrine, do not hear him." I think the similarities are pretty obvious between the Didache and this little section here of 2 John and the instructions that John is giving to the church. Yet, I have to say that there is not much similarity between the posture of the church today And it's concern about truth and error and the posture of the church then, and their concern about truth and error. We simply do not have the same alarm. We do not have the same concern in the church today about the seriousness of false teaching and what it can do to a church. I mean, we would be run out of town if someone were to write something today and said, if someone comes to you, don't even greet them. This is harsh stuff. that we need to realize that what we revel in today and what we consider to be some sort of enlightened tolerance is nothing more than an ambivalence and an indifference to the truth. It's simply the fact that we do not believe it any longer. That's why we don't care. We do not believe that truth is that important. We do not believe that the eternal life or the eternal death of people that we come in contact with, with people within our own flock, depend upon the truth of the gospel. We don't believe that any longer, and so we don't care anymore about false teaching. And we are ready to accept and countenance and tolerate any view, any idea, any perspective. Well, this passage before us is very important and has a very important message for the church today. But there is a danger with a passage like this, and that danger really goes two ways, and it is that we can either over-apply it or we can under-apply it. In other words, we can take this and we can so work it into our individual situations that we begin, you know, refusing to say hello to our Jehovah's Witness aunt who calls us on the phone or something like that because we're afraid that we're going to violate the principle here. Or we under-apply it because we so historically condition it that we treat it like it's just a picture on the wall in a museum, and we walk by it and we go, wow, that's really neat. Look at how the church dealt with things back then. And so we have this danger before us that we might over- or under-apply it. to first consider the historical setting that this is written in. Why was John writing this? What were the circumstances that caused him to write instructions like this to the church? Then I want to look at a few of the details of the text, and then we will seek to apply it in our modern context. Let's consider first the historical setting. The early church really is a definable and recognizable system. You could tell there were Christian churches and they operated according to certain principles. They weren't just doing their own thing, every which one of them. They basically all had two primary principles upon which they operated and two marks that you could always tell the Christian church by. This was characteristic of every congregation. One of them was deep, authentic, local spiritual fellowship. These people loved one another and it was evident they would do anything for one another. And that was evident at every local level. The church was deeply entwined with one another's lives. They loved each other. They were ready to do whatever anybody needed. The second major principle or major mark of the early church was a world-changing, worldwide vision for evangelism. These were the two marks of the church. These people had heard the commission by Christ to go into all the world and make disciples, and guess what? They went. They loved to go. There was movement in the early church, and there was lots of travel going on between congregations. I want to note for a moment the missionary movement of the church. And talk about that for a second. The early church was just radically and dramatically missionary-minded. Again, they had heard Christ's commission, and so, in obedience to that, they went. And so, in the early church, there were many traveling apostles and prophets and teachers and preachers, and they would go about from town to town declaring the good news of Jesus Christ. And they would go about from town to town looking for venues in which to speak. They wanted to speak in the churches that were in those different towns. Part of their trip was to visit them and just have take part of that deep, authentic, local fellowship that was going on. But also they wanted a platform from which to speak and to preach the good news of Jesus Christ. Other factors went into this. At that time, the church was operating under what was called the Pax Romana. We have talked about this a little bit in church history that means the peace of Rome. Rome had erected this travel system around the Mediterranean at that time that really hadn't been rivaled up until modern travel. Never in the time of the history of the human race had travel been so easy and so safe for people. The Pax Romana was every common citizen could travel along these roads really in relative safety, not worrying about getting mugged and things like this. And so this caused or motivated or made a situation that really was even easier for Christians to go out and travel. Another factor that came involved with this is that Christians came to really have this narrow view of home blown to bits. And they wanted to travel. They wanted to move. They wanted to learn and fellowship with people on the other side of the world that actually had a like faith as they did. And so they wanted to go. And there was tons of movement in the early church and amongst early Christians and therefore And you can back this up from a cursory read of the book of Acts. You can back this up from a cursory read of the ends of most of the epistles. There are a lot of people traveling around visiting different churches at this time. And so John's writing in this historical context where there are a lot of teachers and people claiming to be Christians traveling from city to city and visiting different churches and wanting to have a platform and an avenue and a place to speak and preach, some of them good, some of them bad. And this is what John is actually dealing with here. The second issue we need to look at is hospitality in the early church, because coupled with that missionary movement and coupled with these building of roads all around the Roman Empire, guess what? The hotel industry did not keep up with the road building industry. There simply was not an inn in every town. Often travelers were at the mercy of a local family taking them in and housing them. If there was an end in the town and most of the New Testament churches that we read of, there would have been ends in those towns. But these ends were some of the wickedest places that anybody could find themselves. They were notorious. Innkeepers were some of the most notorious characters of this time in this civilization. And so the church had an even greater motivation to not let any of their brothers or sisters ever find themselves staying in a local inn. The immorality that went on in these ends was unspeakable, and so this was a greater motive even for Christians to extend fellowship with each other. fellowship and hospitality in the early church was not this sort of secondary grace or luxury that we have kind of as a cream on the top of our Christian fellowship where we decide to have someone over to eat on the Lord's Day afternoon to get to know them a little bit better. At this time it was absolutely an imperative and something that was absolutely necessary for traveling Christians was that they had somewhere to stay. Well, this is the historical context that John writes in. We have traveling preachers and teachers going around and the very real need to be supported and helped in their travel from town to town and to also have a place to speak and to teach what they were peddling, whether good or bad. I want to now consider some of the details of the text before us, verses 10 and 11 here. One of the first things we need to note, and this takes us back really to the first verse, is that this is a passage of instruction that is written to a church. It's written to a church, not to an individual, but rather a church. The elect lady and her children, I think all the best guesses at that is that it truly is a church, a local church that John is writing to and not to individuals. The problem with this is that we sometimes get overly focused on trying to figure out how a particular passage can be boiled down and applied to my individual life. We read the Bible often very narrowly and we think really that this message sort of revolves around me and I need to figure out how this big grand message of who God is and what he has done for us. How does, how do I squeeze every single verse down and find a particular application to my life? How do I walk out of here tomorrow and live my life and my job based on this verse? The problem is, is the message of scripture is far too grand and far too great to boil every little passage down and to put it into your relatively small and insignificant life. That is not the way we are to read the Scriptures. We need to turn this around. The Word of God is given to us as a revelation, first and foremost, of Him. That's what it tells us about, who He is. Secondly, and very important to us, is it tells us what He has done to reconcile us back to Himself. What we need to ask is, how do I fit into that message? Not first and foremost, how do I squeeze this into my puny little life? And so we often get to passages that deal corporately or that are instructions to a church, and we think, what in the world do we do with this? I need to figure out some way to kind of twist it and make it fit. But that's not what it's asking. We need to realize, how do we find ourselves in the message of Scripture? Where do I fit in with the life of God? That's the big question before us. So this is instructions to a church. This is a church being called to some kind of an action or some kind of a measure. It's a call corporately. In fact, it might even be particularly to the leadership of that church on how they are to guard the teaching ministry of their local fellowship. We will deal a little bit with application when I get to the third point. are certain things that focus into our life, but we need to recognize, first and foremost, these are instructions to a church. Now let's look at houses and greetings. Next we need to understand what is being called for here in this text. The instructions that are being called for here, to some degree, should shock us. When we read verses 10 and 11, that we are not to give hospitality or even greet somebody who doesn't bring Orthodox doctrine, that should shock us to some degree, because this is totally antithetical to the normal posture that the Church is called to throughout the New Testament. Let me read you just a couple of passages. Hebrews 13, verses 1 and 2. Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Romans 12, 13. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. 1 Peter 4, 9. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. In fact, turn with me one page over to the book of 3 John. You want to see how odd this Look at John's instructions in the very next letter. Verses five through eight. Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in the manner worthy of God, for they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore, we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth." Well, here John in 2 John is saying, look, if someone comes to you and doesn't break the teaching, do not receive them into your house, nor even give them a greeting. We need to recognize up front that this is very different kind of New Testament teaching. This is very interesting and not the norm when what a church is to do. And so what John is calling for here is for a church to not receive false teachers into their house, nor give them a greeting. And this is very serious, serious stuff. Now, two key terms that need to be understood here are the word house and the word greeting. The word house, or we could literally translate this, do not let them into the house. And so the question then would come up, well, what's the house? What's he referring to when he says the house? And I think that this is best understood not as an individual's home or house, Although it could be a home or a house, but it's not first and foremost telling everyone what they're to do with their own personal home and house, but rather the meeting house or place that the church meets. That was what the house was at this time. Often where the church met, it was referred to as the house. In fact, often it met in someone's house. If they had a fairly large house, that's where the church met. Let me read you a couple of places in the New Testament where this idea is really clear. Again, from Romans, Romans 16, 5, also the church in their house. First Corinthians sixteen nineteen, the churches of Asia send you send you greetings, Aquila and Priscilla, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. Colossians four fifteen. Give me, I'm sorry, give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. And so the instructions to not let a false teacher into your house are specifically instructions to a church about who they let into the midst of their fellowship to preach and teach. It's a wake up call. It's a warning to the church that they simply cannot let anybody and everybody who claims to be a Christian teacher that happens to be traveling through come and have a platform and come and get the pulpit and be able to preach and teach to them. This is specifically telling them officially, no, do not allow them into the house. You don't extend an invitation to just anybody who happens to be passing through. Greeting. The greeting here is very closely connected with this idea of the house. Now, I don't know if you picked it up, but when I just read those three passages concerning a house, did you also hear what was involved in every one of them? Listen, let me read those three passages again. Greet also the church in their house. First Corinthians 16, 19. The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. Colossians 4, 15 again. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house. You see, the greeting that is being spoken of here is more than just saying hi. John is not here giving instruction to not say hi to a false teacher. What John is giving instructions here is to withhold an official greeting and recognition from the church endorsing this person as a Christian brother or sister. You see, part of the greeting, part of what was part of the greetings of the early church was the early church always greeted each other as brother and sister. They would say, we greet you, brother and sister. And by doing that, they were officially acknowledging that these people were also the children of God. It was a very substantial statement. It was not like we use, hey, how are you doing? And we don't care how the person is doing. It's just a convention of speech. When the early church greeted one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, they were saying something. We are acknowledging and affirming you as the children of God. And so what John is saying here is the church is not to even give this kind of official greeting to this traveling false teacher. You are not to even acknowledge him as a brother or sister in Christ. Why would he be so harsh about something like that? Well, guess what happens? Hey, brother or sister, come on in. Hey, you know, this is brother so-and-so from the church out there in Ephesus. He's a teacher over there. Well, why can't he teach here? As soon as this guy is acknowledged, or his credentials are given, or he's recognized as a teacher, and a Christian teacher at that, the next move is, well, then what's the big deal? If this is his gift, why isn't he allowed to preach to us? Why isn't he allowed to teach to us? John's saying, don't even acknowledge the person as a brother or sister in Christ, because you're opening the door for them to be infecting your entire congregation. You're simply going to be giving them You're going to make it almost impossible to be able to stop them from being able to teach and preach in your church. And therefore, what we have before us in 2 John are instructions for a church in how they are to deal with traveling and occasional teachers and preachers who are not Orthodox. As they come bringing various teachings to the church, these are the instructions to the church on what to do about that. If they don't bring the tried and true teaching of Christ, they're not to be even greeted and acknowledged as brothers and sisters in Christ. Serious, serious teaching. But let's consider some modern application of this passage then as our last point this morning. As I mentioned a little bit ago, we do have a challenge before us. We can look at the historical setting and we can say, well, that's a day past. We don't have anything like that any longer, and so that's interesting. We can look at that and let's move on to something else, or we can start, you know, being really suspect about a brother or sister in Christ who might be reading a book that we think they shouldn't be reading. They're your aunt or uncle who might be a Mormon or a Catholic friend at work or something like this, where you just decide to not even be friendly to the person any longer. That's not what this is talking about. We need to look at this and try to make some sense of how would we apply this in our modern church setting. I want to give you a summary of principles. These are not original with me. These come from a guy named John Stott, who's a really good commentator. And his commentary on 2 John has been very helpful to me. But he gives a summary of three principles to keep in mind here, and I think you have them there in your bulletin. The first is we need to remember these are false teachers. These are false teachers. It's not that it's just an erring brother. It's Aunt May who's a Mormon or something like this. These are teachers. This raises the level of concern up a notch. It's not just people in the congregation who might be sort of interested in this aberrant theology or something like that. These are actually people who are up a notch and they're actually the architects and promoters of these false teachings. That's what he's talking about. If someone comes to you and brings, doesn't bring this teaching, this is a teacher that he's talking about here. And that's those who are, that we are told to stay away from. Those who we are told to bar the door at are teachers of these things. We're not to give any quarter to the teachers and architects of false doctrine, not simply a friend who might have some problems in his theology. Secondly, since they are teachers that John is talking about, then the hospitality and greeting that he is calling the church to withhold from them would be some kind of an official greeting, an official form of hospitality. It's not saying that you don't have a brother over for dinner because the guy is a Mormon, or you don't let a Mormon step into your house or something like that. That's not what this passage is talking about. It's talking about giving an opportunity for a teacher to teach in your church who is not Orthodox. That's what it's calling for here. This is an official hospitality, an official greeting that's being called to withhold. Finally, since we are talking about teachers and the church, and since these are, these instructions are so serious and so contrary to the normal tenor of New Testament theology and the normal tenor of the call to the New Testament church to greet one another, to love one another, to show hospitality to one another, we have to appreciate the fact that John is talking about very serious error here. He's not just talking about whether we have disagreements, say, on church government or something like that. Are you a congregationalist or Presbyterian? You're not coming in here. I'm not even going to say hi, you know, greet you or something like that. No, this is not talking about every single error that might be out there. It's talking about the most serious kind. And John is really already defined those for us up in verses seven and eight. That's where he says the issue is the person and work. of Jesus Christ. If a person airs concerning the person or the work of Christ. In other words, if you start messing with the gospel, well, then this does have precedent. Paul says, let them be accursed, anathema to them. If they bring any other gospel to you, let them be damned to hell forever is what he says. That's how serious the truth is taken. And so we need to appreciate that when we talk about barring people, not showing them official hospitality or giving them a greeting as a congregation even. We are talking about the most serious kinds of error. We're talking about error that has to do with the gospel. Well, let's consider then with those three principles in mind, some application. Really, I think we can boil down the entire application here is that this is a call to all of us, it's a call to the church at every level to be on your guard. This is not a day gone by. The church deals with this kind of problem every day. I get, not that they're formidable in each form, but I get mail every week telling me about some traveling dog and pony show under the guise of Christianity that's coming through town and they'll come and minister to my church. You know, this kind of a thing. And it's, you know, they have pictures of the wife and the husband up there dancing on the stage. You know, these kinds of things come through and there's opportunity galore. We could have someone in this pulpit every week, every evening, midweek. There's that many traveling ministries out there, people who have decided that they need to be sent out. And maybe some of them are, maybe some of them have been sent out. So that kind of thing happens all the time. Also, they rise up from within. We recognize gifted teachers. People in our congregations can be gifted. That doesn't mean that everybody gets an invitation to preach. Doesn't mean everyone gets an invitation to teach. And so the church has to be on its guard. I want to look at three different levels of application before we close. The first is a denominational or presbytery level. How do we apply this text at a denominational or presbytery level? At a denominational or presbytery level, the church is to be guarding the gate of who is allowed to teach and preach in its pulpits. That's the work of one of the greatest works of Presbytery, one of the greatest works of the denomination at a synod level when they come together. This is where the lines are drawn and decisions are made about who is ordained and commissioned and allowed to stand in the pulpit and actually open the Word of God, to interpret it to the people, to proclaim it. And thus we have theological examinations of We have examinations of theological students, I should say, and they range from personal godliness. Can the guy understand his history? How does he do with exegesis? What's his theology? What does he believe? All of these things have to be understood before there's an endorsement of the person to actually stand and preach the people. Why? Because guess what can happen here? Guess how much infection can happen here while I stand? But if the church doesn't know what the person's going to say because they don't know what he believes, well, all havoc can be let loose on a church. And so one of the greatest works of the presbytery and one of the most important works is guarding the gate of who is ordained, who is commissioned, who is allowed and endorsed to stand in the pulpits and preach and teach. Now, these are not foolproof systems. An examination is only as good as those who give the examination and as good as the integrity of the one taking it. Many men lie in their exams. It happens. You can read the memoirs of liberals from the Presbyterian church that have defected, and many of them reflect back on their theological exams and said, I remember being asked by the Presbytery, have you read our standards? And I had never read them. And I said, Oh, yes, I have. Do you have any scruples with them? Nope. These are guys in their memoirs admitting to rank lies in the courts of Christ Church. Well, what do you do with that? How do you stop that? You have to take a man at his word. And so these are not foolproof things, but this is at a Presbyterian denominational level. This is extremely important testing. Let's look at the leadership level of a local church. Same concern holds true for the session of a local church of who they're going to allow preach and teach in their pulpits. They have to be able to discern, ask questions and be able to say no on occasion when people want to come. Like I said, I get I get mail about things coming through. People will come and say, I have a relative who's coming into town and he's this or that. Can he preach here? My brother-in-law is a pastor and he's going to be visiting for Christmas. Can he preach? This kind of a thing. A session has to be able to think through these things, be able to say yes or no based on an objective standard. They have to guard this pulpit. Not every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes through town is going to be allowed to preach in every pulpit. John is saying, you've got to be on guard. If they don't bring this teaching, do not allow them into your house. Don't even give them a greeting. Well, if that's the case, if it was super serious error, surely the church has a place to make decisions on who's going to fill its pulpits. And so the local session must be discerning and it must be orderly and guarding the teaching ministry of the church. And the congregation has a place. The congregation must encourage the session to hold this line. Let's consider, finally, the congregational level. Finally, you all have a corporate responsibility to be on guard against truth, against error and discerning what is the truth and what is error. You need to be on guard because, like I mentioned a second ago, these guards, these measures that the church goes through to make sure that the men who stand in the pulpit are sound, they are not foolproof. things leak through, and then it comes to you. You have the responsibility to not receive errant teaching. If it gets through, because we don't have a foolproof system, if a person stands in this pulpit and does not declare to you the truth as you have received it, you have the responsibility to not receive that. You're not to just say, well, our denomination endorsed the guy or the sessions allowing him here. I mean, obviously, the guy's preaching here. No, you need to be sitting there. Bible's open, testing all things, holding fast to what's good. What we have in this really is two principles that I think the church is to always operate by. They're both found in the book of Acts, and they're both found within two chapters of one another. The first one is what I call the Presbyterian principle found in Acts 15. It talks about elderly doctrinal decision. It's how the church is to make decisions. It comes together and they have councils and the men get together and they prayerfully consider these things and seek to be guided by the Holy Spirit on that. And then the churches are to respect those decisions. But two chapters later, you get what's called the Berean principle and the Bereans are there. And here come the apostles preaching and teaching to them, and they were more fair-minded, it says, than the rest, and they didn't just take anything anyone said, but they searched the Scriptures to see whether these things were so. I tell you, if we do not have both of those principles operative in a church, you will have chaos and destruction. If you have Presbyterianism without Bereanism, Presbyterianism can tend to become authoritarianism, because the people aren't testing for themselves. They're not reading the Scriptures on their own. There is a court of appeal. You can do the process if you feel like the proclamation of the church is wrong. That's the Berean principle. But you've got to have the Presbyterian principle as well, or you have radical egalitarianism, individualism and chaos. Everybody is doing what's right in their own eyes. Who cares what the doctrines of the church are? I'm going to do this. I think I see it like this in my Bible. Well, guess what? The scriptures aren't open to private interpretation. We're not going to just go by everybody coming up with whatever they want. And so you have the Presbyterian principle, Acts 15, and the Berean principle, Acts 17. These two things must be active and being invoked at a congregational level at all times. You have a responsibility to conscionably hear the word. You are never to take it in just because so-and-so said it or anything like that. You need to test all things hold fast to what is good." So these are serious words of warning and instruction for the Church of Jesus Christ. John says here, though, something fascinating. I want to close with this, verse 11. Whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. Turn over to 3 John for a moment. Look at what John says in verse 8, talking about sound orthodox good teachers. Therefore, we ought to support people like these that we may be fellow workers for the truth. In other words, if supporting and helping along sound orthodox teachers makes you a co-laborer with them, then the opposite is true as well. And that's what John's saying. If we encourage and support and help along false teachers, we become co-laborers with them as well. Whoever you support, whoever you help, you become identified with. And so if you help along and support these good men in 3 John, you become a co-laborer with them. You become a sharer in their labors. And that's a good and noble thing. But what he's saying in 2 John is there are false teachers out there, and if you align yourself and support them, you become a worker of wickedness with them. It's a perfectly balanced principle of reciprocity there. I have a couple other things I think I'm going to skip. Sorry for the anticlimactic conclusion. I simply want to say that this is a A passage that calls us to serious discernment and guard. We need to think about decisions in our lives, people we are aligned with, and wonder, are we doing what John is saying here to not do? How do we apply this? I think that it needs to have prayerful and wise consideration as we look at our individual lives as well as a corporate body of Christ. We need to know how we do this. And so let's prayerfully consider how we should apply this teaching today in our church and for years to come. Please join me now in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the clarity of your word. We thank you for the instructions that are so practical and come right down to the issues that we deal with in life, and we are thankful for that, O God. More than that, we are thankful for the truth that these words reveal to us. We thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank you that sinners can be saved and reconciled to Him because of the great sacrifice of your Son. O Lord, help us to love the truth. Help us to receive the truth with love Help us to test all things and hold fast to what is good. I pray for your people, O God, that they would be quick to be in the Word, that they would, by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern between good and evil. We pray, O Lord, that we would glorify you in this important area of our life. Please bless us to this end, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.