Please turn in your Bibles now to the book of third John. We continue our study almost getting to the end of the what they call the Johannine epistles. It's just a fancy way of saying the epistles of John. This book is a call really to imitate the good we see in others. I think we have a natural impulse often to think that it's more pious to simply look at Christ and want to have our lives conformed to his image. Well, that is true. But we are commended in scripture to look at the lives of godly men and women and also model our lives after them as well. In fact, those two things should not be set as loggerheads or at loggerheads with each other for Paul brings them nicely together. He says, imitate me as I imitate Christ. But often the Lord helps us. And I think really in our weakness, he gives us living examples of men and women living the Christian life. And sometimes that is a help for us to say, hey, I can see it can be done. And so we need to take these examples seriously. Please give your attention now to the reading of God's Word. I'll be reading verses 9 through 11 together, and we'll be looking at those three verses. I have 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. Please bow with me briefly in prayer. Oh, Lord, our God, we call upon you now to please open our eyes and give us ears to hear so that we might be able to receive the message that your spirit has for the church today. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, we do come again to this little letter which is addressed to a man named Gaius, who is set before us as an example of an exemplary Christian man who has shown true service to Jesus Christ And truly is an example of what John calls walking in the truth. Last week we looked at the life of this man, Gaius, whom the Holy Spirit has memorialized by having an entire book of the Bible written to him. I think that's a quite astounding thing. There's not too many people who have lived in the history of humanity that God has had a letter written to them as part of Holy Scripture. And so this man, Gaius, has truly been memorialized in some sense by John, obviously through the work of the Holy Spirit, for his faithful and quiet service of showing hospitality to traveling missionaries and preachers about 2,000 years ago. We don't know a lot about him. We just know that he was a faithful servant of Jesus Christ. We looked at three major characteristics that come out in the text to us about this man, and that was that he is a man of truth. We knew that he was a man of love, and we knew that he is a man that can be described as faithful, or has the characteristic of faithfulness. Well, typical to John and his writings, and if you've read The Gospel of John, or if you noticed in our time in 1st and 2nd John, John loves contrasts. John talks about light and darkness. He talks about children of the devil versus children of God. He talks about black and white. There's no gray in John's vocabulary, really. Everything is stark contrast. In like manner to the previous contrasts, we have another contrast before us in the two lives of Gaius and Diotrephes. Diotrephes is the antithesis of Gaius. Whereas Gaius walked in the truth, we read here that Gaius rejected that authority and he spoke lies and slandered. Whereas Gaius loved the church, the atrophies we read wanted to lord it over them. And whereas we read that Gaius showed hospitality and service to the saints, we read that the atrophies rejected sound teachers and would not even let people help them. And thus, we have a clear contrast here between Diotrephes and Gaius. Now, as we did last week with Gaius, we looked at his name. It's got a little bit of interest in it. And let's look at Diotrephes' name and his position. Scholars have noted that this name, Diotrephes, which means nursling of Zeus, raised by Zeus. They have noted that this name is about as rare as the name Gaius was common. There are hardly any people during this time that we can find that were named Deiotrophes. In fact, the only people that were named Deiotrophes were people of noble birth or born to aristocratic families, and it seems that only these rich people or people who thought that they were high and mighty would have the gall to name their son Theotrophes, nursling of Zeus, a son of the gods. And so it's also conjectured along these lines that maybe this desire to put himself first that we see so prominently in deatrophies comes from the fact that he was raised in a family of nobility, that he was used to having a silver spoon in his mouth. And so when it came to his relationship to the church, he wanted to be put first there as well. Well, we don't know if any of this is really the case. And although it's interesting to think along those kinds of lines, as we will see as we go along here, The real issue with theatrophies was not his upbringing. That could have contributed to it, but the issue with theatrophies comes down to an issue of sin in his life, and that's what we will be seeing in a moment. Secondly, his position, although we don't know for sure what position he held and what his rank was or something like that in the church, By what John has written in this letter, it seems very probable that he was the local pastor or he was in the leadership of this church here. You see, geography seems to have some clout in the church. He's able to control somewhat of what the teaching is in the church. He's able to refuse certain teachers from being there. And he seems to also have the power to excommunicate. And so it seems reasonable to assume that this guy was an early church leader, possibly the pastor, possibly in the leadership of the church. And so as we look at deatrophies, not only is he a contrast to Gaius and an example of bad Christian character, he serves sort of as a double example. He's an example of bad church leadership as well. Well, let's consider the characteristics that come out clearly in this little letter about this man named Diotrephes. The first is that he was self-aggrandizing. Now, we mentioned a moment ago that whereas Gaius had loved the flock, and we read that right back in verse 6, notice there that it is said of Gaius that they testified to your love before the church. Whereas Gaius clearly loved the church, deatrophies is being underscored here as one who wanted to lord it over the flock. Now John says that he wrote this church, which Gaius seems to be a member of, a letter commending the practice of receiving traveling Christian missionaries and traveling teachers by showing them hospitality. Now, there's a lot of conjecture on whether the letter that he's talking about here, that he had written the church, but geographies wouldn't allow the letter really to have circulation in the church. People have thought maybe this is 1st or 2nd John. I don't think that it's either one of those letters. It seems to have been another letter because Neither 1st or 2nd John really deals with the subject of showing hospitality to sound teachers. Neither of those letters really, in a particular way, deals straight on with commending the church to show sound teachers hospitality and love when they come about. Well, let's continue on here and look at this issue of self-aggrandizing. Gaius seems to have been a saint that exemplified a Christian life. He walked in the truth. He served others as Christ had given him example, and in doing so, Gaius was showing himself to be a true son of God. Now notice the contrast. Deotrophies, on the other hand, seems to exemplify everything that Jesus said we should not be like. He seems to exemplify everything that we are told not to do, what Christ warned about, and in doing so, Deotrephes is showing himself to be a son of the devil. And that might seem harsh, but I want to open this up a little bit more, and I want you to see these contrasts flowing from either Christ or the devil very clearly. The sin of deatrophies, and we need to recognize it as sin. You notice that John, in what he writes here, doesn't mention anything about false doctrine. Now, we've seen in 1 and 2 John that John is not afraid to take on false doctrine, to hit it straight on and rebuke it. Call those who subscribe to it antichrists. There's nothing like that in this letter. The issue that we have here is an issue of sin. Notice here that John says, Deuteronomy is exalting himself. He wants to put himself first. The reason why this is so serious is because the sin of exalting yourself, the sin of exalting self is as James Montgomery Boyce said, the original and greatest of all sins. If you would like, turn in your Bibles to the book of Isaiah for a moment, Isaiah chapter 14. In Isaiah chapter 14, we have what has been traditionally recognized as a description of Satan. It's a description of his desire to put himself first And then it goes on, though, and shows his ultimate fall. Isaiah chapter 14, verses 12 through 14. We read here, how you are fallen from heaven, O day star, O sun of the dawn. How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven. Above the stars of God, I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High." You see, deostrophes is being described in similar terms. Here is a guy who the very first thing we learn about him is deatrophies, who likes to put himself first. He resembles Satan. That's his characteristic. Again, John's not pointing out a doctrinal deviation here. He's addressing an issue, and that issue is sin. Well, so opposite to Satan, why don't you keep your finger there in Isaiah 14 and turn to the book of Philippians with me. Philippians chapter 2. I want you to see the great contrast between Satan and what is described about him and his desire to put himself first. And look at the beautiful contrast between Satan and our Savior, Jesus Christ. In Paul's instructions to the Philippians in chapter 2, he writes this. Look at verses 3-8 with me. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. What a beautiful contrast to what we read about Satan and his self-exaltation. What a stark contrast. There's just nothing to compare these two with one another. I want you to see that just as the desire on Satan's part to exalt himself, and the self-humbling of Jesus Christ on his part, are just radical contrasts with one another. I want you to see that the subsequent fall of Satan and the subsequent exaltation of these two are just as stark of contrasts. If you will look back at Isaiah 14, which I hope your finger is still there, look at the very next verse after we read verse 14. But you are brought down to Sheol. to the far reaches of the pit." In other words, right after Satan says, I will make myself like the Most High, the response to that is, but you are brought down to hell, to the far reaches of the pit. And flip back to Philippians for a moment and notice there as well, in contrast to Jesus humbling himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death on a cross, The very next thing we read then is, Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Jesus said if you want to be first, you need to be last. You want to become the greatest in the kingdom? Become the servant of all. He didn't just teach it. He did it. He exemplified it. The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Well, what is being put before us in these two men that we don't know very much about, Gaius and Diotrephes, is precisely this contrast. precisely the contrast of a Christ-like character versus a satanic character. Gaius is a faithful follower of Jesus Christ who heard the words of his master when he said, a servant is not greater than his master. And he sought to wash the feet of the saints. And he was then ultimately exalted. I mean, he has a book of the Bible written to him for crying out loud what a wonderful memorial to a godly Christian life but on the other hand the atrophies is being shown to us here as a faithful man he's a faithful follower of Satan and he is imitating his master who sought to exalt himself and yet he is brought low and he is humbled For all the world to see and for throughout all the ages, we will read of this man, Diotrephes, who tried to put himself first and is given as a lasting example of a man with satanic character. Well, let's consider next that we see that Diotrephes' second characteristic is that he rejected authority. John says here that he, quote, does not acknowledge our authority. Well, again, we need to see that this is a sinful action. It's not necessarily a doctrinal deviation. This is a sinful action. John is an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has been vested with authority to function and to rule and to teach the Church of Jesus Christ. And therefore, a rejection of apostolic authority, a rejection of John's authority, is a rejection of Jesus Christ, the King and Head of the Church Himself. The other thing that we see here is this is a flagrant violation of the fifth commandment. The fifth commandment is honor your father and your mother. From that commandment we get the call that we are to respect and to submit to all lawful authorities in life. Well, John is a lawful authority over this church. In fact, as an apostle, he had a special kind of authority that he had to say so in every church on the planet. He had a universal pastorate in that sense. And John had an authority. And so, Geography's refusal to acknowledge his authority was a rejection of Jesus Christ himself and a violation of the fifth commandment. Now, we might say that this is interesting, but it's irrelevant. I mean, John was an apostle. The issue here is that theosophies rejected apostolic authority. We don't have apostles around today. We can't commit this sin, and so it's a bit irrelevant to us, right? Wrong. We have the apostolic authority with us today. The New Testament is the authority and the teaching of the apostles. It's the witness of the apostles to the resurrected Christ. It's an infallible interpretation of the teaching of Jesus and the teaching of the Old Testament. And it is to be the rule and order of Christian churches as the apostles laid it down. And so we very much have the apostolic authority with us today. And guess what? There are still churches, there are still church leaders, there are still pastors who are departing from and not acknowledging and not recognizing the authority of John to this day. Many churches give lip service to the fact that they believe in sola scriptura. In other words, scripture alone is their authority in faith and in life. yet when it comes down to it really there is quite a distinction between what they confess with their mouth and what they do in their actions. There's usually a real disjunction between on paper saying the scriptures are the authority in our life and the actual practice of that church. Now some churches are not as bold as others in their rejection. There are some churches or places out there I think that they're actually synagogues of Satan That's biblical. Actually, it's not just me being mean There are churches that have simply rejected the authority of the Word of God They do not believe that it is the Word of God But there are other churches within the evangelical camp That are very selective in their application of the doctrine let's say of Sola Scriptura Take for a moment the area of worship The Reformed doctrine of the regulative principle of worship is nothing more than the doctrine of sola scriptura worked out and applied to the area of worship. And yet we have churches that claim to hold sola scriptura, but when it comes to how they will worship the Lord, they do not feel compelled at all to confine themselves to apostolic authority and do what the Apostles said. They reject the authority. That is a very subtle form of not accepting our authority. We need to beware of lip service to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. We very often, very selectively do that, and let me get it down to home. It's not just out there, it's in here. We say in our own lives that we believe that Scripture is the authoritative Word of God, that it should govern our lives, every part of it. And how many times do we ignore that? How many times do we put it aside and we do what we want to do? We need to be convicted that any time we set aside the Word of God for our own interests, we are acting like deatrophies. We need to be careful of selective obedience to the word of God. Now, one thing that needs to be said here is that there is no distinction and there should be or not a distinction. There should not be a an antithesis between respecting God ordained authorities and respecting the very word of God. Often people try to put those at loggerheads with one another. What John is showing here is that there is There is a legitimate place for God-ordained authority. John himself was one. And so, to hold to Sola Scriptura and to submit yourself in the Lord to God-ordained authorities should not be a conflict to one another. And when it is, you follow the Scriptures. We are to always submit in the Lord. Now, one last thing I want to note before we leave this issue of rejecting authority is that we need to recognize that a rejection of apostolic authority is considered to be the opposite of walking in the truth. Notice in verse 12 what John says about his own authority and his own testimony. Right at the end he says, We also add our testimony, and you know that our testimony is true. And so when Deuteronomy does not acknowledge the authority of John the Apostle, who has just claimed that his teaching and his authority is the truth. What we have here is a rejection of the truth. Diotrephes is rejecting the truth. And in fact, what we read here is that John reports that he does not simply reject the truth. He adopts errors and he starts speaking malicious slander and lies against John the Baptist. What we learn by this is that there is no such thing as neutrality. In other words, you don't simply reject authority on one hand. You become rebellious, insubordinate, and independent on the other. You don't just reject truth. You embrace a lie. There's no middle ground. Jesus said, if you're not for me, you're against me. So often, and this happens, and listen up, you younger people, so often it happens that you think you're sort of in this little bubble. I'm not really serving Satan, but I haven't really embraced Christ. Guess what? There is no middle ground there. There is no neutrality. To reject Jesus Christ is to embrace the devil. There's no third option. You can try to fool yourself and say, well, I'm not an enemy of Christ. If Jesus is not your Lord, you are an enemy of Christ. You cannot simply say, I'm just not ready to embrace Jesus. I'm too young. I'm too old. I'm disinterested. But that doesn't make me a worshipper of Satan or anything like that. Guess what? Yes, it does. You are either a child of God or you are a child of the devil. Over and over again, we have this issue hammered in Scripture. There is no such thing as neutrality. You are either embracing truth or you are embracing error. You are either submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ or you are submitted to the lordship of the devil. Please do not be fooled. Finally, let's consider this issue of inhospitality that John tells us is a mark or a characteristic of this person, Deatrophes. We see that Deatrophes, as opposed to Gaius, was inhospitable. Everything that John commended in Gaius is violated in deatrophies. He was showing himself here with this inhospitality. One really stark issue concerning his position, and that is he was unfit. He was disqualified to be a pastor. One of the qualifications of church leadership is that of hospitality. And here is a man who is very clearly disqualified on that issue. He refuses to show hospitality to sound preachers and teachers. Now, one thing we need to note here and what we noted when we looked at this in Second John, In 2 John, there was a call to the church to refuse hospitality and a greeting on an official level. In other words, the church was not to show hospitality to false teachers. The church was not to issue an official greeting to false teachers. And in some sense, that's what we have here as well. This seems to be an official form of hospitality or an official greeting that Diotrephes is withholding from preachers and teachers that are traveling around. This is a scary issue going on in this church. In other words, it seems the situation is that deatrophy sort of has a stranglehold on his congregation, and he refuses to let them be exposed to any other teachers. He wants to be their sole teacher. And so when other Christian ministers travel through town, he keeps it quiet. He doesn't want them to go hear from anybody else. He thinks he has the corner on the truth. This is again showing his independency and his rejection of authority. What a picture of inhospitality. In other words, it's just my way or the highway, people like to say, that he can't have fellowship with other believers in Christ because he thinks he is it. He always wants to put himself first. Now, We need to recognize one last thing on this, and that is that this apostle who is rebuking deatrophies for his inhospitality and this sort of circle the wagons mentality is the same apostle that wrote in the very book right before this, 2 John, that you need to refuse certain teachers and preachers and not even grant them a greeting. And so we can't here say that any time A traveling preacher or teacher comes through town, the church is obligated to open the doors or else they're acting like theatrophies. Nor is this at all teaching that there is not a time and a place for the leadership of a church to tell people, don't go hear that person. I need to warn you against that person. He's a false teacher and he's going to mess you up bad. That's obviously legitimate. There's an entire book written about that. What we are being told here in 3 John is exactly what we saw commended in Gaius. Gaius gave his hospitality in the truth. In other words, he was discerning. He recognized these were true servants of Jesus Christ traveling around. They had gone out for the sake of the name. And he is being commended to show hospitality to them. Again, this is a call to discernment. It's neither a call to cold-heartedness, nor a call to indifference. Well, in conclusion, and after we have this contrast set up here between Gaius and Deotrephes, notice what John says in verse 11. John says, Beloved, do not imitate evil, but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God. Whoever does evil has not seen God. Now, this is a letter written to Gaius, and Gaius is being called here to imitate good and to not imitate evil, but it seems to me it's almost as we've read through these two men. When we hit this word, beloved, here in verse 11, it almost seems as though John is speaking directly to us. saying to us, now, you have had this contrast laid before you. You have seen the lives of these two men and the contrasts that they form. Now, beloved, imitate what is good. Do not imitate what is evil. Gaius and Deutrophes are a contrast of good and evil. One who is from God, one who has not seen God. Remember, Gaius loved the brethren. Deotrephes sought to lord it over them. Gaius walked in the truth. Deotrephes rejected the truth. Gaius showed hospitality. Deotrephes refused to give it. Remember, each one of these are an issue of sin. When Gaius sought to lord it over them, he was breaking the very first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. He wanted to exalt himself like Satan, as high as the most high. When Gaius, when Deutrophes rejected the truth, again, this is a breaking of the fifth commandment, he rejected lawful authorities over him. He was an independent and he was insubordinate. And when Gaius showed hospitality, but Deutrophes rejected and refused to show hospitality, This is a breaking of a whole gamut of that second table of the law to love your neighbor as yourself. Will each of these issues confront you right now? Do you really love your neighbor as yourself? Or do you seek out your own interests? Do you try to put yourself first? Do you really walk in the truth? Or do you reject God's call and his commands for you? Maybe you are here and you are struggling under the weight of the law. You realize this is impossible. I mean, I've lived my whole life serving my own interests. How am I to serve anyone else's? I need to look out for myself first. Well, what you're showing is that you're under the burden and bondage of the law. As Paul quoted this morning, Jesus said, apart from me, you can do nothing. If you have found yourself completely unable to love others, to put anybody else first in your life, it is probably because you do not have Jesus Christ. Without Him, you can do nothing. And so you are struggling under the law of God, and it is killing you because you have no ability to keep it. Christian, you might say, well, this law is just too high, too hard for me to keep. You need to remember that the same power that rose Jesus from the dead is working in you, and I dare say That resurrection is a whole lot harder than simple obedience to commands like love your neighbor. But that same power that rose Jesus from the dead is working in you. What God calls you to do, you can do. He gives you the power in Christ to do it. You are not to imitate evil. Theatrophies imitated evil. At a desire to be first, he lived like his father, the devil, walking in darkness and doing the works of darkness. Ultimately, this whole thing comes down to the same two commandments that Jesus said are the two supreme things. Do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? And do you love your neighbor as yourself? Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Gaius loved him. Diotrephes did not love him. Do you love him? Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we pray that you would search us and know us and see if there be any wicked way within us and lead us in the paths of righteousness for your namesake. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.