Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I invite you now to open your Bibles to the book of 3rd John. We've finished 1st John and 2nd John. We will be looking briefly at 3rd John, maybe two messages in 3rd John before we get to 1st Peter. Third John, please give your attention to the reading of God's word. I'll be reading the entire letter. This is a short personal letter. John writes to a single individual here, a man named Gaius. Third John, the elder to the beloved Goliath. I'm sorry. Let me start again. 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 have written something to the church but deatrophies 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, every one of them. Please bow with me now as we ask for God's blessing on his word and the preaching of it. Our Father in heaven, we are thankful that you have given us your word We pray, O God, that you would prepare us now to hear it proclaimed to us. Make our hearts fertile soil for your spirit and his planting of the seed of your word in our lives. We pray, O Lord, that we would receive it well, that we would receive it in faith, believing that it is good for us and that it is what we need to grow in Christ. O Lord, show us Christ this morning. draw us to Him, root us and ground us in Him. We pray that you would be pleased to do this, for we ask it in His name. Amen. The book of Proverbs has a couple of verses that are very interesting. It's Proverbs 26, verses 4 and 5, and at first glance, these two verses, which I have in your bulletin on the bulletin outline, These two verses seem to be contradictory to one another. Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. And the very next verse, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. Now, these verses are not in contradiction with one another, but they are a good place to show and to illustrate what we would call the fallacy of the first glance. Now, the fallacy of the first glance is when we draw conclusions based upon a very superficial look at either a text or some issue, and it's usually no more than a glance at that text or that issue upon which we then draw this conclusion, and we then have committed what is called the fallacy of the first glance. In other words, some folks would conclude, because we have these two verses in the Bible that are right next to one another, one of them says to not answer a fool according to his folly, the next one says, answer a fool according to his folly, that we then have evidence of a contradiction in the Bible. You see, no thought has been given to the fact, really, that these two verses actually come right next to one another. And shouldn't we go in thinking that maybe the author has a reason for putting these two verses right next to one another? Maybe he's trying to get across something that's very important and he's done it in such an arresting way that makes us really think about it and look at it. We can't just ignore the fact that there's these two verses that seem to contradict one another. Well, similar to these two verses in the book of Proverbs, we have the books of 2nd and 3rd John. And at first glance, you might think that what John writes in 3rd John is completely undermining to and contradictory to what he just wrote in 2nd John. You remember in 2 John, he said that we are to withhold hospitality in certain circumstances. And now he's writing in 3 John, and he's commending this man named Gaius for showing hospitality to strangers. And he's also condemning a man named Diotrephes who is withholding hospitality. Now, based on the differences between these two little letters from John that we have in the New Testament, some scholars who do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God, some scholars have concluded that these two books must have been written by two different men claiming to be the Apostle John. They could not possibly have come from the same man's hand because their messages just ram up against one another, like loggerheads. Some have thought that these are two pastors, two bishops, and they're both vying for control over the churches in this area, and so they're writing these two sort of different messages and playing their hand, if you will, to these churches. Again, this kind of conclusion is another great display of the fallacy of the first glance. These two books are in no more contradiction with each other than Proverbs 26, 4, and 5 are in contradiction with each other. What we are given here in 3 John is an important and beautiful balance to the single-minded message that we received in 2 John. Remember, John was single-minded in his call for the church to guard itself and to contend for the truth. But we also learned at the very end of that book that John says he had more to say. Well, what we are getting in 3 John is a little bit more of what John would want to say. Now, as I mentioned a second ago, this letter is unique in that it is addressed to an individual. there are not very many New Testament letters that are addressed simply to individuals. We have the Gospel of Luke, we have the pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, but the book of Philemon, which Paul wrote, is probably the closest parallel to this kind of letter that we have in the New Testament, especially its size and its form. Well, what we get here in this letter is a very interesting picture of various characters in the early church. Each of them is unique in both office and, in many ways, their characteristics from one another. But as the Holy Spirit would have it, We have this letter that was written to a guy named Gaius about 2,000 years ago, a private letter, and here we are 2,000 years later, and we have it before us for our edification and instruction. And so we have a private letter that the Holy Spirit has seen fit to preserve to this day, and now it's very public stuff, and we're to learn from it. And so over the next I think two sermons. We're going to look at the characters in 3 John here, and we're going to try to see what the Spirit is saying to the church through the lives of these different characters. This morning, we're going to focus on the main recipient of the letter, Gaius. Let's consider, first of all, his name. For those of you who know your New Testaments somewhat well, you might know that there are quite a few guys named Gaius mentioned throughout the New Testament. In fact, I think we can identify at least four different individuals named Gaius in the New Testament. There is the Gaius of Macedonia who was seized along with Aristarchus during the mob in Ephesus. That comes in Acts chapter 19. There was a guy named Gaius, and it specifically tells us he was a Macedonian. Well, then we have the Gaius of Corinth. Remember Paul saying, I'm glad I didn't baptize any of you except for, and he mentions that he baptized a man named Gaius in 1 Corinthians 1.14. And then finally, there's a guy named Gaius who was from a place called Derbe. And he is mentioned at the end of the book of Romans. And interestingly enough, he's mentioned as a man who showed hospitality to Paul. And because of that, there's a lot of conjecture as to thinking that maybe that Gaius, this Gaius of Derbe, is the same guy that John is writing to here. Now, although those theories, and there are a lot of them, There's fascinating theories about who these different Gaiuses are, and maybe some of them that we hear about are actually the same person and things like that, but none of the theories are without problems, both in date and location. In other words, some of the times we hear about these men named Gaius, it's not till 20 years later that we're reading another epistle And that's when we hear about another Gaius. And so we don't know if it's the same one. Plus, a lot of times these guys are written as living in quite distant locations from one another. They don't all live together. And so we really can't be sure. And I don't think we can conclude anything based on the fact that there are quite a few Gaiuses mentioned, other than the fact that this is a very common name. And in fact, if you go back at this time in history, this is one of the most common names around, kind of like John or like Mark. What we should conclude from the fact that we have so many mentions of a guy named Gaius or people named Gaius is that it was just a common name. And we should be no more surprised by the fact that we hear of various Gaiuses than we would that we hear of various McCrackens or Manns or Robbs in the RPC&A. It's just that he's a comma. It's a common name or Smith's in Methodist churches or something like that So this is just a common named man named Gaius Let's look at the characteristics of his life We don't know very much about this man named Gaius that John is writing to but it is safe to assume that he is a faithful layman who does not hold office in the church at this time. Now, just incidentally, history goes on and some folklore comes up in history in about the fifth century. And it's not until the fifth century that we get this story that actually this guy, Gaius, ends up becoming the Bishop of Ephesus. And in fact, The story goes that John ends up kicking out this guy named Diotrephes that we'll hear about next week. And he, in Diotrephes' place, he puts Gaius in as the head of the church. At this time, though, it doesn't seem that this man holds any kind of an official office in the church at all. In other words, he seems to be about as common as his name is. He seems to be simply a faithful member of this church, a faithful Christian man named Gaius on one hand. But on the other hand, he is an amazing man who the Holy Spirit has seen fit to preserve the account of his faithfulness for all the ages to read about. And so on the other hand, this is no common man. He is a very faithful Christian. who we're called to imitate. Well, let's look at the characteristics that we learn about of this man, Gaius, and from this little letter here, 3 John. The first characteristic about Gaius that we are told of here is that he is known for the truth. We learn from the first few verses of this letter that Gaius is known for, number one, his love of the truth. Or, I'm sorry, he's loved in the truth by the Apostle John. Others testify of his truth. He walks in the truth. And the evident walking in the truth that this guy Gaius does is a cause for great joy among the Apostle John. Let's look at these first three verses again. 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. Now, the attention on the truth as associated with Gaius is no small matter and no small issue here. You see, we have just finished a series on the truth. We just came from a book, 2 John, which its main focus was guard the truth, esteem the truth, hold fast to the truth, Be careful. And here, in the very next book in the Bible, we have a living, breathing example of a man who exemplified the perfect application of those messages. Here is a man who is told to us, he was one who really did care about the truth. He's one who walked in the truth. And so, Gaius serves us as a perfect example of the kind of lives we should live and that we have been urged to based on the messages that we have just gone through in 2 John. Gaius obviously had a love for the truth. He obviously had heard the truth as it was in Jesus. He accepted that, he received it into his heart, and now he's showing evidence of that truth in his life. In other words, he's walking in the truth. He's the very thing that we were called to be in the messages from 2 John. Well, let's look secondly at the second characteristic that we're told about here concerning this man Gaius. As we go along here, secondly, we learn that Gaius' second major characteristic is that he has love. Look at verses 5 and 6. He's writing to Gaius here. It's a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testify to your love before the church. When we read here that Gaius is marked by love, this should come as no surprise to us because love is always the fruit of truth. In fact, we never are to find truth without love. Go back for a moment to 2 John. Remember what John had written to the church in 2 John, verses 4 and following. There he wrote, I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth. just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it. You see, Truth and love always go together. John knows of no circumstance when love and truth would be separated from one another. In fact, he has given us enough teaching on this that we should be very skeptical if we find one without the other. These are a pair that will always go together. Truth always will issue forth in love. When we looked at 1 John, love without the truth ends up deteriorating into immorality often, and truth without love is a false claim to that. There is no such thing as truth without love. This should always issue forth, and so it should come as no surprise when we hear of Gaius, who is marked first and foremost as a man of the truth, walking in the truth, and secondly, that those very actions are what would be described as love. Another thing we learn from this is that we learn here again the true nature of love. Notice that we are not told here in this description of Gaius' service that he showed compassion and he had great feelings for the brethren. Now, those are wonderful things to have. I think our acts of love should be accompanied by true feelings of earnest compassion for those who we are serving. But notice what we're told. We are told that he loved the church, and the way it's described is that he faithfully exerted effort in caring for the brethren. Notice what John says here in 3 John. Beloved, it's a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testify to your love before the church. We need to remember that love is doing for the other person what they need, regardless of the cost to yourself. That is what love is. It's not squishy feelings. It's not bad to have squishy feelings. Those are great. But love is doing. Love is an action. Love is doing for the other person what they need, regardless of the cost to yourself. And that's exactly what is being described here concerning Gaius's actions. Now, another thing we learn here is that his love is in the form of hospitality. And that hospitality is for strangers, even. And that's kind of striking in light of the message from 2 John. John told there that you need to withhold hospitality from some, and here this guy Gaius is being commended specifically because he has shown hospitality, and he's actually shown it to strangers. What we need to appreciate here is that the call to withhold hospitality from false teachers is in no way a call to withhold hospitality from true teachers. That's what's being told to us. When we are called to withhold hospitality from false teachers, we are in no way being shackled and told, don't show hospitality to the brethren. Don't show hospitality to those who truly are good teachers. The New Testament is full of commands to show hospitality. We read the pastoral epistles. Those who are qualified to serve in office or even to be on the role of widows have to have had this characteristic and mark in their life of being hospitable. Greg read this morning from Romans 12, where we are again commended to show hospitality. 1 Peter 4 tells us that we are to show hospitality without grumbling. Hebrews says show hospitality because you might be entertaining angels even. And so the commands for hospitality are throughout the New Testament. The problem, though, that we run into is that we think often we are to show hospitality without discernment, and that's exactly what we are being called to not do. The call of 2 John, especially since it couches everything according to Gaius' character of truth, is that hospitality is always to be given in the truth. Hospitality is to be given with discernment. Now, many people think that the New Testament ethic and the New Testament posture is that you give without any question. You give just because anybody asks of you, showing no discernment at all. In fact, people will quote Jesus in this regard from the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, every guy who knocks on our door The church door office seems to know this verse and seems to have this idea of the way that the church is to approach giving. Hey, I'm here. I have asked. Give it to me. That's what Jesus said to do. The problem is, is this again is the fallacy of the first glance. People have also concluded we're not supposed to judge at all. Because Jesus says, judge not lest you be judged. The problem is, a couple verses later, he gives commands that their very obedience to depends upon some form of judgment and discernment. He says, don't cast your pearls before swine. Well, you've got to make a determination whether they're swine or not, so you don't cast your pearls before them. Jesus never called us to not be discerning. We were never called to give without any kind of discernment. And second and third John just simply emphasize that message. We are to withhold hospitality from false teachers and false brethren, but we are to give it to the true brethren of the church. There is no call here to be shackled. A concern for the truth, and Gaius demonstrates this to us perfectly, a concern for the truth is absolutely no hindrance for being a man who is marked for his great hospitality and giving to the body of Christ. That is exactly what Gaius exemplified in his life. Let's look at the third and final characteristic that I want to touch on this morning from Gaius' life, and that is that we need to see that Gaius' truth and love were evident to others. In other words, Gaius was known to be a faithful man. He seems to have been showing truth and love simply because he was a Christian man. He had received the truth. the truth issues forth in love and therefore his deeds, his good deeds became known and evident to the rest of the church until people were talking about this faithful man named Gaius and his faithfulness and they were testifying about it before the church. Well, this is nothing more, I think, than what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, let your light shine before others so that they might see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Well, this is what's going on in the life of Gaius. He's simply being a Christian. He's simply trying to walk in the truth and be obedient to what he thinks God has called him to do. And this has become a great testimony to his life. He's been letting his light shine. He's not keeping it under a bushel. He's letting it shine before men. And now men are praising God for it. And so we see this. beautiful picture of Gaius, a seemingly quiet, yet faithful servant of God. He's quiet in his service to the Lord. I don't think he at all went out trying to be noticed. He just simply did what needed to be done at the time. He met the needs of those who were around him. That is true love. And he did it regardless of the cost to himself. And so Gaius will go down in history as a testimony to the need of every member of the body and the need of quiet, faithful service of every Christian to give of what they have and give to the Lord. One has written this. Listen to this. Please give your attention now. A man's circumstances may be such that he cannot become a missionary or a preacher. Life may have put him in a position where he must get on with a secular job and where he must stay in the one place and carry out the routine duties of life and living. But where he cannot go, his money, his prayers, and his practical support can go. And if he gives that support, he has made himself an ally of the truth. It's not everyone who can be, so to speak, in the front line But every man by supporting those who are in the front line can make himself an ally for the truth. Well, I think this is exactly what we have seen and what we are seeing in the life of Gaius. He doesn't seem to have any official position. He simply has been faithful with what he has, and he has tried to use what he has and what's at his disposal in the service of God and his church. And he has been hospitable and he has housed these traveling speakers and missionaries. In fact, what John says here in verse eight, please look at verse eight here. Therefore, we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth. This is that exact opposite principle than what we learned in 2 John. Turn back there just for a moment, 2 John 11. For whoever greets him, that's the false teacher takes part in his wicked works. And look at what he says. And again, back in verse eight of third, John, we ought to support people like this, that we may be fellow workers for the truth. Those who you support, those who you show hospitality to, you become a sharer in their work of the gospel. Even if you are landlocked or something like that, even if your circumstances are that you can't get out and go, that's the importance of the support of missionaries. How are they going to go unless somebody sends them? I'd like you to turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew 26 for a moment. As we conclude this morning, in Matthew 26 we have the story of Jesus being anointed by an unnamed woman in a town called Bethany in the house of a man named Simon the leper. Let's look at verses 6 through 13 of Matthew 26. Now, when Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at the table. And when the disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum of money and given to the poor. But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. In pouring this ointment on my head, she has done it to prepare me for burial. Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in testimony to her." I've often wondered what that verse means, and what I'm supposed to do about it. In other words, do I preach the gospel, and then as soon as I'm done calling men to Christ, I say, and remember that woman at Bethany who anointed Jesus? Is that what we're supposed to do? I've always been a bit troubled by what do I do with this verse that says that this would be mentioned about this woman wherever the gospel is preached. I think that Gaius serves us in helping us to understand the implications of that verse. As Jesus said, it would be wherever the gospel has been proclaimed in the world. That story of that woman has been told in memorial to her. In other words, not in the very moment that the gospel was preached, but the fact that when the gospel comes to an area, the word of God comes there. And in the word of God is the story of this woman. And in a healthy ministry of the Word, you will always, and at some point, hear of that woman's great deed that day when she served the Lord and she poured out that expensive oil in service to Him. And that event is told wherever the Gospel is preached as a memorial to her. We don't know much about that woman. We don't know her name for sure. But what we do know is amazing. In fact, what we do know is really the most important thing that we could know of about that woman. She gave to Christ. She served Jesus with what she had. And that was well pleasing to the Lord. Here is this lady who has, we don't know what she has, but all we know is that she has an alabaster flask, and she decides to give that to the Lord. We don't know what kind of resources, but the thing that we do know that she has, she decides to give that in her quiet, faithful service to the Lord. And guess what? Here's this woman who's definitely no preacher, she's no missionary, but of all the people who have ever lived, God has determined to record that quiet service of this one-time event, this one day in Bethany at a guy's house named Simon the Leper, and that lady goes down with a memorial to her for all the world to know. She faithfully served Christ with what she had. In like manner, wherever the gospel has been preached, Guess who else we hear about? We hear about a common man named Gaius. We don't know much about him. We don't know what his family was like. We don't know really where he lived. We don't know what he did for a living. In fact, who cares? What we do know about this man is that He had a common name, but he had an uncommon love for Christ and his church. Here's a man who served the Lord with what he had. And here's a man who has gone down in history with a book of the Bible written to him as a memorial to his service to Christ and his church. Gaius was simply a faithful servant. I dare say that he never did one act of service thinking that maybe someday I will be recorded in Scripture. I think the man died probably never knowing that this letter that St. John had written him would go down in the record of God's revelation to mankind and that his story would be told from generation to generation wherever the gospel has been preached. But God knows how to reward those who are faithful to him. My hope is that Gaius will be a little bit more special to you now. I hope that as John calls him, and we will look at this next Lord's Day, John calls him to not imitate what is evil, but to imitate what is good. We will recognize that Gaius has been enshrined for us here, and his service has been given to us, the church, as a lasting memorial of something that God is well pleased with. God liked the service of Gaius. It was well-pleasing to the Lord to see this quiet, faithful service that this saint rendered thousands of years ago. And so Gaius is given to us in the very book that calls us to imitate what is good as an example of just that. What Gaius did was good. His service to the Lord is well-pleasing. you are called to imitate Gaius and his service. So my call to you is go and do likewise. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we are amazed at the earthy and organic way that your revelation comes to us. You have worked in history, in the lives of your people, And what You have given us, O God, is what we have as light in this world, and we thank You for this example of this saint. And we pray, O Lord, that our hearts would be stirred to walk in a like manner as this man. And so I pray, O God, grant us the grace of Your Spirit to be selfless, to have a servant's heart, to be concerned for the truth, and that that concern would issue forth in love for the brethren, and that we too could walk faithfully before you. So please bless us to this end, for we ask it now in Jesus' name. Amen.