Let's go to the Lord one more time in prayer. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you make us aware of our uselessness apart from you, our barrenness without you, our helplessness. So Lord, we come to you as a congregation. eager to hear your voice, eager to bear fruit for your namesake, eager to be holy, eager to obey what you've laid out for us in your Word. We can't do this on our own, and we ask that you would cause us, by virtue of our abiding in you and you in us, Lord Jesus, to listen to the word proclaimed, to apply it by the power of the Holy Spirit, and to bear fruit that will remain, that will last. Lord, we ask for the help, the presence, the power of the Holy Spirit in our midst. We ask that He would be with us. He would be poured out upon us. He would fill us again. We ask that you would manifest Christ to us. Thank you for the wonderful promises of you making your home with us if we obey you and walk with you and that you will manifest yourself to us. Lord Jesus, we pray that you would manifest yourself to us as a congregated body. We thank you for your special presence with us even now. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. We have a self-centeredness problem. It shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you. Our world is screaming it out to us. Take your pick amongst any of these kinds of categories. Indulgences. Look at the vanity of the health and wellness influencers promising you increased attractiveness, more heights of beauty and wholeness that you'd never experienced before. The most wicked immorality imaginable available at the click of a button on your phone. How about isolation? There's an article in the Atlantic that just came out detailing how we're the most isolated society in recent memory because of the automobile and the television. Restaurant apps like Open Table have done surveys to find out why is there this increase of people not going to restaurants in groups, but ordering takeout and sitting there on their own. And the number one answer brought forth is me time. I want time to myself. I want time for my own pleasures. We run from others. We care for ourselves. We're caving in on ourselves in terms of interrelations. How about political power? I mean, seriously, I mean, look at all of history. Even those with the best of intentions almost never escape unscathed in the reputation. Think about it. To some, the word itself, politician, has become a byword for self-centeredness. And you know, self-centeredness isn't a 21st century problem. It's as old as the fall, as old as Adam and Eve. So you might be wondering if self-centeredness and selfishness is just getting worse and worse as time is progressing. Friends, what you need to know is about your condition as a fallen human being is that self-centeredness is woven into your humanity, who you are. Nothing is more beautiful to this passing world than selflessness. Nothing more prevalent than selfishness. Brothers and sisters, we've got a self-centeredness problem. We're self-centered. We need help. And the Lord is here to help us through his word in 3 John. If you'll turn with me there to 3 John. The book is right before Jude. So it's one of the last books in the Bible. Let's read the whole letter together, the Lord has to say to us. The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul. For I rejoiced greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore, we ought to support people like these that we may be fellow workers for the truth. I've written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to, and puts them out of the church. Beloved, do not imitate evil, but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God. Whoever does evil has not seen God. Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself. We also add our testimony and you know that our testimony is true. I had much to write to you but I would rather not write with pen and ink. I hope to see you soon and we will talk face to face. Peace be to you. The friends greet you. Greet the friends, each by name. Here's the point of the text as I see it in 3 John. Brothers and sisters, walk in the truth by receiving God's missionary workers, God's gospel workers, and resisting self-exalting pride. Brothers and sisters, walk in the truth by receiving God's gospel workers and resisting self-exalting pride. We're going to see a peculiar situation in this letter. Some traveling missionaries were being received in a godly manner and a prideful man, Diotrephes, seeking to bar them from coming. Now as we look closer at this letter, let's see as a congregation the thrill of co-laboring with missionaries, God's servants abroad. Let's see in the prideful, self-seeking figure of Diotrephes a warning, a figure to resist. And let's seek ultimately to imitate Gaius, who walked in the truth and to bear objective, visible fruit for the sake of the name. So we're going to look at the text in three points, from verses 1 to 4, rejoice in spiritual fruit. Verses 5 to 8, receive gospel workers. And then from verses 9 to 15, resist spiritual exaltation. We'll begin with the first point, rejoice in spiritual fruit from verses 1 to 5. We begin with an address in verse 1 from someone named the Elder. This is the same author as that letter, 2 John, which we'll be hearing from next week. The author is John. And a number of characters, it might be useful to kind of mention, arise in the letter. There's the sent out brothers, the missionaries, we'll be seeing as traveling missionary preachers. There's Demetrius, we'll see at the end of the letter. Diotrephes, the one who loves to put himself first. And in this verse, Gaius. So who is Gaius? We really don't know who Gaius is. There's a Gaius mentioned as a companion of Paul but he's probably not that Gaius. He's probably not the elder of the church in question either. If he was he probably put away this prideful figure Diotrephes. He's a Christian man, maybe a convert of John, John calls him a child, and a godly man at that, as we'll see. And in this pleasant opening, John wishes, as you see in verse two, John wishes Gaius good health. But John is a good Christian. He wishes that his health would prosper as his spiritual life was evidently prospering. He only wanted the physical life to prosper as his inward spiritual life was flourishing. We know this because this wish is linked with the following verse. He greatly rejoiced when some traveling missionaries that John had sent and that we'll be hearing about later came and testified to Gaius' walking in the truth. So here's John, from afar, greatly rejoicing, exceedingly rejoicing, not necessarily in the physical prospering of Gaius, but in evident spiritual progress and fruit. And that's an elder, don't you think? John gives it away in verse 4. He has no greater joy than hearing reports of other Christians, maybe even his own converts, walking in the truth. Another question to ask would be what is meant by walking in the truth here? You just have to travel on to verses 5 to 8 to see it's the reception of those sent out traveling missionaries. In other words it's the hospitality Gaius practices towards these traveling gospel ministers from afar as strangers. Just looking at these four verses, brothers and sisters, there's so much here at the outset for us to glean from. Again, notice John's brief customary mention of the wish of Gaius' good health, something that letters of this time would often include. The prosperity preachers will have seized this. They will and have seized this. The health and wellness types here will rejoice, but I want you to notice John's emphasis. prosperous health that would keep up with prosperous spiritual vitality. Not the reverse. And the rest of the section is just the detailing of John's greatly rejoicing at Gaius's visible spiritual fruit in hospitality. But brother, sister, take note of this emphasis. Why do we pray the way we do in our prayer meetings or in our prayers of confession, praise, and the pastoral prayer? The way we pray and the requests we bring to God will be the overflow of the disposition of our hearts. What is that? Does the disposition or do the dispositions of our hearts trend towards the spiritual? Does it trend towards the physical? Again, there's nothing wrong with caring about physical health and physical flourishing, but notice John's exuberant joy over spiritual fruit and progress. We want to guard ourselves from devolving into a denuded, decaying prayer meeting. Maybe you've been to one of these kinds of prayer meetings. There's a few mutterings and murmurings about some upcoming surgeries, some more about some physical ailments, maybe a job interview coming up in the future. These exist and abound. I mean, these are so prevalent in terms of prayer meetings. But are we trending spiritual as John? Or even as Jesus in prayer. Remember Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17. He's about to bear the wrath of God, take on the sins of his people. He's about to leave his disciples to hostility. And you don't really find prayers about the security and the safety of the disciples in that prayer. It's a spiritual prayer, asking God to keep the disciples in Him and for them to have joy in their hearts through the Word of God. It's all these spiritual desires that Jesus is bringing before the Father for the disciples. Look at Paul's desire all over his letters. Take Colossians, for example. His pressing desire is that the saints that God has entrusted to Him would be presented as mature before God. So we aren't Gnostics, meaning we don't think that the body doesn't mean anything and the spirit is all that matters, but we don't want to be as those who, as George Whitefield said, are more afraid of a pimple in your faces than of the rottenness of your hearts. So brothers and sisters, pray if your heart is not trending this way. If you come to prayer meeting, you pray what's asked for you, but it's not in alignment with your heart. Your fellowship shows everyone or shows yourself that you're trending towards the physical. Pray that the Lord would direct your heart into the love of God and to cause you to trend spiritual in your disposition. Maybe you're here this morning and you see all of this talk about the importance of the spiritual as irrelevant, boring, strange, useless. Attacks on health and wellness, tasteless. Maybe attacks on prosperity preachers as weird and odd. You'd be right to note that the message of Christianity does not gel well with this era, this generation, this prevailing world's notion of social media influencers pushing gummies that strengthen your nails and hair and make you look more attractive and cause longevity in life and the physical. This kind of emphasis is totally at odds with apps that kind of emphasize sleek bodies and more and more improvement and more and more self-exaltation and manifesting bodily perfection. I want you to think of this. Everyone here, everyone around you in 120, 130, 140, 150 years will be a skeleton. This body will rot, will be buried in the grave. And all that will matter, this is why Christians put a premium on this, is the spiritual riches they've invested in through holiness, through evangelism, through communing with Christ. We're looking forward to glorified bodies, and yes, we want to be stewards of this body. We want to invest in spiritual riches that will last for eternity and give us spiritual joys that will not fade away. more pertinently tethered to the text, I want you to notice John's exuberant joy over the report of Gaius' obedience. Let's ask ourselves, do we encourage others by recognizing their evident fruit bearing? And is this lip service or are we genuinely inwardly rejoicing at the spiritual progress of our brothers and sisters? Pray even now that the Lord would give you that direction into his love, not only for spiritual things, but for your brothers and sisters. John rejoices over the visible fruit in Gaius's walking in the truth. Let's examine together, more importantly, the context of this rejoicing and seek to imitate him. We come to verses 5 to 8, receiving God's gospel workers. And I'm just going to read verses 5 to 8 to you just as a refresher. Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testify to your love before the church. you will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth." Notice in these verses John notes Gaius' faithful receiving of traveling missionaries who have gone back and reported of Gaius' hospitality at John's church. We have to think about this linked with the previous letter, 2 John, which you'll hear preached next week. In that letter, John is warning the church of many deceivers, traveling preachers, missionaries that would bring a false doctrine to the church and warning them to not receive such. But here, these are traveling preachers sent out, bringing light in the midst of darkness. These are faithful Orthodox missionaries, spreading the light as they travel. Look at verse 7. What name? They're sent out, they've gone out for the sake of the name. They've been sent out. What name is that? Well, that would be the name of Jesus. We only know this just from various scripture references, but Acts 5.41, at persecution, then they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name." These men have gone out for Jesus' sake, passionate for the reverence and spread of His name. And these men, these missionaries, as we see in 3 John 7 and then verse 8, are deserving of support. They've accepted nothing of the Gentiles, what John would use as a phrase to reference non-believers. And why would they? Why would non-believers support missionaries today? Their goals, their emphases are at cross purposes. They're totally distinct and so utterly worthy of support from faithful Christians. So John urges Gaius, you see in verse 8, such missionaries are worthy of support and so support them, Gaius. All that support these missionaries become, John says, fellow workers with them. You'll see that at the end of verse 8. Fellow workers with them for the truth. So brother and sister, consider this. There is no exemption from any concerning this missionary work. If you're a Christian, you are called to join in the gospel work either by receiving, supporting, and praying for missionaries or joining them in going out for the name. In other words, there's no category for an indifferent, apathetic spectator in the kingdom of God with regards to missions. And that's the temptation, isn't it? Out of sight, out of mind. Praying for missions seems less immediate than praying for brothers and sisters in your immediate circle, people in your family. So here's the call. Seeing that there's no apathetic option, there's no middle ground. You're either called to support by receiving, supporting, praying missionaries, or joining them. We look at Gaius' model reception and John's call for missionary support. Here's the call to us. Let us kill inattentiveness to missions by doing a few things. Look at what this church is doing for missions and your part in it. Consider the spiritual depth. Consider your own working together with missions and ministries abroad and the thrill of partnership. Maybe you've desired to be a missionary here, you've desired to go out and preach the gospel but couldn't. Realize that you yourself, by supporting in these ways, are a fellow worker, a co-laborer with them in the mission field. So for instance, when we give from our budget to supporting missionaries and ministries abroad, we're doing what Gaius did here. We're being a means of sustaining the dissemination of godly light to little reached and unreached people groups. when we hospitably receive visiting missionaries and ministers from abroad, either by attending their Sunday night interview or hosting a meal with them ourselves, or intentionally engaging in refreshing spiritual conversation and encouragement with them. We're intentionally seeking to be used as instruments of refreshment and renewal to potentially weary gospel ministers. Lastly, consider the thrilling prospect of praying for these missionaries, even our supported ones at the back of your church directory. When you pray for them to know something of the power of the Holy Spirit and spiritual success and longevity on the mission field, think about it. You're co-working with them in spreading the blazing light of the gospel in the midst of pitch black darkness. the polytheism of Hinduism, the rot of the prosperity gospel. Like the sent missionaries in 3 John, they're blazing lights in the midst of the darkness of falsehood, and you are co-laboring with them for success by enjoining yourself to pray for them. In short, kill missionary inattentiveness and apathy by considering the end of your praying, giving, and hospitable receiving. Ask the Lord to make you abound all the more in hospitality, prayer, and giving for the sake of his gospel abroad and his missionary servants. One last thing you could do to kind of make the mission cause draw near is to yourself. Maybe count the costs of the Lord is calling you to either support missions abroad, support ministries abroad by moving closer to them, or to be a missionary yourself. Wonder if you make this at all a part of your prayer life, bringing before the Lord the possibility that it might be commissioning you elsewhere. Do you yourself have a proclivity or an inclination towards peoples that have no kind of reference to what a born-again Christian would be? We have aunts and grandmothers and mothers, all my cousins are Christian. There's people across the globe that have no reference to either the gospel or what even a Christian looks like. Does that thrill your soul or burden you, make you desire to go out and do the missionary cause yourself? Think about that. Count the cost. I encourage you to bring it as a regular matter of prayer before the Lord in seeking and evaluating your own usefulness. That's it for the second point, our call to receive missionary workers, hospitably support them, and support them from abroad. We come to our last point, our third point, resist self-exaltation from verses 9 to 15. Again, I'll read this for us just as a refresher. I've written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church. Beloved, do not imitate evil, but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God. Whoever does evil has not seen God. Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself. We also add our testimony and you know that our testimony is true. And then the final greeting, I have had much to write to you but I would rather not write with pen and ink. Hope to see you soon and we will talk face to face. Peace be to you, the friends greet you, greet the friends, each by name. So friends, we've been treated to the extended godly example of Gaius, his walking in the truth, his receiving gospel missionaries. In short, we've been treated to examples of godly selflessness. But now we're going to be treated to an example of godless self-centeredness in the person of Diotrephes. And like Gaius, we don't have a lot of information about this character. He's most likely in a position of authority. He's spreading influence by barring people from accepting missionaries, etc., etc. What we do know is that he is so enamored with his own status and his own glory that he vehemently opposes the godly in vicious ways. Notice how John describes diatrophies in verse 9. John has a letter to send to the church. But Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first. In the Greek, it's striking. It's the putting himself first Diotrephes. He's characterized by the self-exaltation, the self-glory, the selfishness. Diotrephes is busy opposing the Apostle John. And he's putting himself first in four ways. He's guilty of four wicked actions. First, he does not acknowledge apostolic authority. He's busying himself with slandering, maliciously gossiping about the apostle. You experienced leadership like this, or maybe brothers and sisters like this, or professing Christians like this, so keen on self-exaltation and self-glory that coexisting with a competitor is an impossibility. So he's resorted to slandering. These are baseless, wicked attacks seeking to bring John down several pegs, all in the attempt to bring diatrophies to prominence. But second, Diotrephes refuses to welcome these traveling missionary preachers we've been talking about. He won't compete with apostolic authority, nor will he be bothered to selflessly host those who have left everything for the sake of the name. He won't welcome them. But it doesn't stop there. Not only will he not be bothered by hosting them, Thirdly, he stops others in the church from hosting them and entertaining them. He doesn't want these faithful brothers anywhere near him. And he won't have anyone questioning his authority for those who seek to receive these gospel workers. Fourth, he casts them out of the church. It's almost like he excommunicates them from the church. Just totally casts them out. And he has the authority, apparently, to do that. So friend, do you see, first of all, any of these strands of selfishness, self-glory, self-exaltation in yourself? Do you see them all together in you? Do you see a devotion or a proclivity towards slander? Maybe it's in the name of getting things off your chest and you've brought a brother or sister down and simultaneously sought self-glory and self-exaltation? Spirit that inclines towards rejecting authority, do you have that within yourself? Or one that couldn't be bothered with any form of hospitality or an open life? Friend, diatrophies is recorded in Scripture as an example of what you should kill even in your own fleshly self. Resist this. Kill this, the power of the Spirit. Remove every semblance, every hint of self-exaltation and bring any of these sins, even now, before the Lord and ask Him to give you the power to mortify it. I wonder if any are sitting here and thinking that this all kind of sounds excessive. Sure, Diotrephes is an extreme example. He's super selfish, really lording it over others. But to some degree, selfish ambition is what makes the world go round, you might say. It's what defines the great powers of history. And this might sound like weakness, this emphasis on spirituality, on humility, on selflessness. And if Christians would ever dream of being effective, maybe a little bit more domineering, self-promoting would be helpful. I think of the example of Islam, for instance, which has been charming young people, This religion by conquest and force that's growing all the more. In comparison to that, this seems like a weak and ineffective kingdom. I think it's worth noting that even Jesus' disciples were somewhat with you on this point. They believed that Jesus was this coming, glorious, political figure, the Messiah. They were looking for a self-exalting, self-glorifying Messiah. What did they find? They found this Messiah saying stuff like this. The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Must have startled them. A phrase like this from Jesus who said, I am among you as the one who serves. Jesus was diametrically opposed to the Diotrephes spirit. He didn't count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. He was the Philippians 2.4 man who didn't look to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Jesus Christ, Romans 15.3 tells us, Jesus Christ did not please himself. So how did this king go out to conquer. He spoke a lot about a kingdom in the Gospels. This is what the kingdom is. The kingdom of God is like this. How did this king go out to conquer? He conquers sinners. He conquers his subjects by the laying of himself low and being damned, cursed, judged in the place of hell worthy sinners like you and me. See Jesus on the cross bearing the sins of man, conquering sinners hearts by his death, burial, and resurrection. That's how he conquers. That's his kingdom. That's how he rules. So why do we as Christians kill self-exaltation? Why are we not as ambitious as other religions in that way? We want to exalt this risen, ascended, reigning Savior who is conquering hearts with His redeeming love today. So the call for you here, if that's strange to you, if that's odd to you, if that's something you've not responded to or have not thought about, is to recognize His authority by turning from your sins and trusting in Him as the one who in love bore your sins for you on the tree, died in your place, was buried, raised, is ascended and lives for you. That if you would trust in Him, you'd be saved. We talked briefly about qualities of diatrophies and whether those qualities are in us. Maybe you might be discouraged thinking that some of those things lie close to you or you're struggling with slander and rejecting authority and selfishness. I want us to think about an example that's somewhat close to home here, and that's John himself, who underwent something of a transformation in a similar way. You think of the John of the Gospels, one who lent on Jesus' bosom, one who was nearest to Christ. At a little bit of opposition from the Samaritans, he immediately calls Jesus to call down fire upon them. and to consume them in judgment. And even his own mother approaches Christ about John and his brother receiving places of preeminence in the kingdom of God. He was ambitious. He desired high places. He desired places of authority and to reject and punish all that opposed the truth. Notice the transformation of John here, noticing and rebuking the selfishness of Diotrephes and the selflessness of Gaius. Same can be true of you. You can experience that kind of transformation that John experienced. If you're not a Christian by trusting in Christ and if you are by having your hard heart or calloused heart or selfish heart bathed in the Spirit of God, that Spirit that testifies of Christ and brings Him near to us and causes us to be conformed to His image. Back to the text. Looking at it particularly, we know because the biblical model for a church is a congregational church, that this was a congregational church, a church that had the exercise of the keys of the kingdom had authority to bring in members, like we do at our members meetings, voting for members in, seeing members out. So they had the exercise of the keys. They could see those who were in habitual sin out of the church. And therefore, they're responsible. John is coming himself to bring up what Diotrephes is doing. But you have to wonder, why aren't you guys, why isn't the church of Gaius removing this guy? That's your job. So to bring it home to us, brothers and sisters, when we look for elders, what do we look for? We have positive qualifications in 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, we look for certain kinds of things. How about what to avoid? What do we look to avoid for in a future elder? Now you might have sat under a ministry like Diotrephes, self-exalting, self-promoting, authoritarian. I encourage you to check out 1 Peter 5.3 where Peter lists what shepherds are to be doing and the necessary qualities of an under-shepherd. And he writes concerning those qualities that these are not domineering over those in their charge. It's important to note that there is no place for domineering, abusive authoritarianism in the life and the charge and the ministry of an elder. So what's the charge here for us? Well, if someone comes to this church A man of considerable gifting but is also a slanderer has this provable spirit of self-exaltation with its observable fruit. We can't just say, you know, there's this vibe about this guy and I don't think he should be an elder or I just feel like he's prideful or self-exalting. It has to be observable fruit. If someone with that kind of gifting comes with these observable fruits of wickedness, I don't care how gifted he may be. You don't vote to confirm him. We don't put him forth as a potential elder. There's a reason 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 give one place for giftedness in those verses, flanked by qualities of holiness. But secondly, with respect to the elders here who lead us in godliness and holiness, we praise God that this isn't the case. But if any elder over you ever makes a practice of doing what Diotrephes is doing here, rejecting faithful brothers from coming in, slandering habitually faithful men of God, dispensing of the truth, kicking out men for receiving the godly, if any provably abuse their authority without listening to reproof or turn from the way of truth or teach error, you name it, you're not just helplessly under their thumb. We praise God that he has given us exercise of the keys of the kingdom to remove faithless, provably ungodly, and false pastors and to install faithful ones. So, brothers and sisters, one of the great things about congregationalism is we're not just helplessly under the throes of authoritarianism with nowhere to go. We ourselves are given authority if there's a faithless, false teaching, ungodly under-shepherd. We're charged to remove him and to place a faithful one in his place. So this is one of the ways, excommunication, testing elders in these kinds of ways, one of the ways that we resist, as I mentioned before, self-exaltation. Back to the text briefly. We're given these two examples. And John makes clear that Gaius is of the favorable kind and Diotrephes not so much. Before the close of the letter, he claims that those who are born from God walk in holiness and those apart from him, wickedness. He brings Demetrius, probably the one who's delivering this letter to Gaius, as yet another laudable example of godliness to imitate before closing the letter out. Friends, we've been presented this morning with two examples. As long as sin remains, there will always be men like Diotrephes in the church. But praise God, there will always be men and women like Gaius. As we close, let's go to the Lord in prayer together now, asking him for power to walk in the truth as Gaius did. and to resist a diatrophes-like spirit, both within and without. Let's pray. But we thank you for the letter of 3 John. And Father, we are, as a people, convicted at our lack of zeal and interest in your people abroad, Lord. We just confess it openly before you. We ask that by your spirit you would give us power and selflessness and love, not only for brothers and sisters in this church and their spiritual progress, Lord, missionaries and ministries abroad, give us power, expand our hearts, enlarge our hearts that we might run in the way of your commandments by receiving missionaries hospitably, by praying for them regularly, by supporting them from afar. We thank you, Lord, that you have given us the privilege of being co-workers, co-laborers with them. God, we pray with reference to diatrophies as an example. Lord, we do pray that you would cause us to trend the way of Gaius and not the way of diatrophies. Strip us of all self-exaltation and self-glory. Strip us of everything that competes with you and gets in the way of the manifestation of your glory. Lord, we do pray that you would install and bring more and more elders to this church that are characterized by Gaius's piety and holiness. selflessness and love for the truth and love for the brothers and rid us completely Lord. Thank you Lord that's not prevalent but rid us completely of any hint of the spirit of diatrophies. We pray that you would cause us to be doers of the word we've heard and we commit all these things to you in Jesus name. Amen.