David Green's sermon, based on the book of 3 John, discusses the importance of Christian hospitality, contrasting the behaviors of Deutrophes, who rejected church authority and hospitality, with Demetrius, who is commended for his faithfulness and truthfulness. The sermon emphasizes the significance of worshiping in 'spirit and truth,' highlighting that truth is essential in worship. Green reflects on how the early church and its challenges, such as those faced by Gaius, serve as lessons for modern believers. The sermon also touches on the preservation of the Word of God and how it has been maintained without modern technology, underscoring God's omnipotence. The themes of hospitality, love, and truth are framed as fundamental aspects of Christianity that should be evident in the lives of believers.

Third John, we'll go ahead and read the entire chapter just as a review. We'll be finishing it up today. Right, Third John, beginning of verse 1. The elder to the beloved gayess whom I love in truth. Beloved I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health just as your soul prospers.

For I rejoiced greatly when brothers came and bore witness to your truth. That is how you are walking in truth. I have no greater joy than this to hear that my children are walking in the Truth. Beloved, you are acting faithfully in whatever work you do for the brothers, and are doing this though they are strangers. And they bore witness to your love before the church.

You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. For they went out for the sake of the name, receiving nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore, we ought to support such men so that we may be fellow workers with the truth. I wrote something to the church, but Deutrophes, who loves to be first among them, does not welcome what we say. For this reason, If I come, I will bring to remembrance His deeds, which He does, unjustly disparaging us with wicked words.

And not satisfied with this, He Himself does not welcome the brothers either, and He forbids those who want to do so, puts them out of the church. Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God. The one who does evil has not seen God. Demetrius has received a good witness from everyone, from the truth itself.

We had our witness and you know that our witness is true. I had many things to write to you, but I am not willing to write them to you with pen and ink. But I hope to see you shortly and we'll speak face to face. Peace be to you. The friends greet you, greet the friends by name.

This is the infallible, the inerrant, the all-sufficient Word of the Living God. Our text today will be found in verses 11 through 15. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Father in Heaven, we are thankful for your blessings to us. We're thankful for the freedom that we have, that we can come together to be able to worship you, Lord.

We are thankful for this church and for your word that's been read this morning for this text before us. Lord, we're thankful for all who have come out. We pray our Father that You'll just do a work in our midst that only you can do. Lord, that you'll work in our hearts and our minds, and that you'll edify and strengthen each one who is here. Each one of your saints, Lord, I pray that you'll just use us for your names, honor, glory.

And I pray, our Father, that if there's any among us who are lost, I pray that today may be the day that you would save them and Lord, I pray that you would be pleased to add to To your church in a way that would bring honor glory to your name Lord I pray that you'll be with us through the remainder of this service. I pray that you'll be with us through the remainder of this service. I pray that you'll be with those who cannot be with us. Lord, I pray that you'll forgive us of our sins and our shortcomings. For it's in Jesus, and then we pray, amen.

Last time, as we were in this text, we looked at deotrophies, and considered the condemnation regarding violating Christian hospitality. Today we're going to look at the conclusion regarding Christian hospitality. But as I mentioned last time, the spirit of deotrophies often exists in churches in some capacity. As I said in that sermon, the spirit of deatrophies can exist. Sometimes it may be in some tyrannical pastor, an out of place deacon, or even some power hungry church member.

As I thought about these things and considered, I'm reminded that these things would not be if everyone who's in the church would remember that church is not about us. A lot of problems would be solved if we would remember that it's not about me, myself, and I. The flesh rises up and we often think about, well, if it's not about me, then who is it about? Because oftentimes it's my rights, my preferences, my legacy. You remember the things that we've written and Even it's up on our website and things like that.

It says that we exist for the support and maintenance of the worship of God and the propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this church acknowledges the Lord Jesus Christ as its head, receives the Bible as our only infallible guide in matters of faith, church order, practice, and discipline. John, of course, was writing to the beloved Gaius, and he addressed some of these things. He wasn't being a gossip about deotrophies, but he was addressing an issue within a church that needed to be addressed. A real problem.

Over in John's Gospel, John chapter 4 and verse 24. Jesus said this in John chapter 4 and verse 24. He's speaking to the Samaritan woman, but it's definitely applicable to us as a church and applicable to the things that are contained in this letter. He says, God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. Truth is important in worship.

We must not miss that and too many, too many in our day do miss it. Even today being the Lord's Day and Sunday, there are many who are gathered and they've totally missed the truth. They draw their crowds with bouncy houses and good coffee and short sermons and a nice nice band. I'm all for good coffee and I enjoy me a good bouncy house sometimes. And certainly music is is nice And nobody ever got angry at a short sermon, not to my knowledge.

But understand something, worship must be done in truth. In truth. And that involves opening the Bible and preaching the Word. That involves a song service that reflects the deep theological truths of God's Word. It involves order in worship like we've looked at in 1 Corinthians.

And so we must not miss truth when it comes to worship. But Jesus didn't say, those who worship Me must worship Me in truth only. He said, in spirit and truth. What does that mean? Well, there's a lot of opinions about that, isn't there?

You can pop open a lot of different commentaries and ask a lot of preachers about what He means here. What does it mean to worship in spirit and in truth? I believe He means when He speaks of in spirit and in truth, he means with the proper attitude, the proper attitude of heart. You can have everything checked off as far as the truth goes. Check, check, check.

I've got it all down the line. But what is it to be worshiping the Lord without the right spirit? To be in the church service. And you've seen it. Maybe, and I dare say, if you've been a Christian long enough you've experienced it.

Not everybody always comes to worship in the right spirit. We all battle the flesh. Poor attitude towards the church. Your brothers and sisters in Christ, even your God. Why?

Angry about the location, the songs, the way somebody looked at you, the color of the carpet? Something that happened at work? Something that happened at home? Maybe just for whatever reason, you'd rather be anywhere, somewhere, other than where you're at right now pray for repentance beloved if that's you pray for repentance worship him in spirit and in truth that's what he's calling on and I believe third John and other texts how do we even know about the art why do we even know about the geographies? Why do we even know about the church at Corinth?

And all of their terribleness, and all of these examples that we have in the Scriptures. Why? Well, here the Word of God in our text there in 3 John and verse 11, as He originally wrote to Gaius, so the Holy Spirit says to us, beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God. The one who does evil has not seen God.

We're given these examples for our own good and for God's glory. So that we may know. So that we may know and that we may build patterns in our own lives so that we can say, okay, this is what we ought to be and this is what we ought not to be. Two thousand years after Christ started His church, you'd think we'd have it all right, wouldn't you? As we see all these examples that have been done and redone, and All these studies that have been made and commentaries and books that have been written, they could fill rooms and rooms and rooms.

All written about 66 books. The Bible. But we still haven't gotten it right. Because we haven't made it into our glorified bodies. Nobody has gotten it right yet, not even the one who looks in the mirror at you every morning.

I know I haven't gotten it right. I still struggle with these things. But this is why these things are written here for us. So we can Learn from them and grow as God's people. By the time we get to the back of the book, there's judgment time and it talks about it.

And the Bible tells us that the books were opened. And another book was opened. Somebody said one time, what are the books that are open? Well, we know one of the books is the book of life. We know some of those things that are open, but I believe one of the books that's opened at that time will be the Scriptures.

There's no excuse. We have these things. They're written for us. These things aren't for us just to read about. And so, well, that's interesting.

Close our books and go on. Close our Bibles and go on and just live our lives. We must heed the Word of God to be not only hearers, but doers of the Word and understand that this is serious stuff. This is very serious stuff. That judgment day is coming.

How we handle the Word of God, how we live our lives, how we treat the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, how we treat each other, how we treat God's people, how we treat the lost, how we handle the Gospel of Jesus Christ, all of those things. We need to be sure that we are handling this all properly to be what we ought to be. Understanding, beloved, that we have been given a great blessing in His word. Well, as he goes on from Deutrophes, he says in verse 12, Demetrius has received a good witness from everyone and from the truth itself, and we had our witness and you know that our witness is true. So now he introduces another name.

We talked about Gaius. Of course, first we talked about John the elder. Then we talked about Gaius. Then we talked about Deotrophes. Now he introduces another name, Demetrius.

Now Demetrius he introduces, and he seems to introduce him to Gaius. Demetrius has received a good witness from everyone and from the truth itself, and we add our witness. And you know that our witness is true. Gaius knew John very well. He says, here, let me introduce you to Demetrius.

He's received a good witness from everyone. What it seems like is happening here is that Demetrius was probably the one who delivered this letter to Gaius from John. Remember in those days they didn't have the postal service, They didn't have the mailman to deliver the mail. Someone had to carry letters from one place to another, and it may be that Demetrius was the one who carried this letter. And so John wrote a good word in there about Demetrius.

As with Gaius, Demetrius was a fairly common name. You know, I like Bible names. When we were naming our kids, we'd like to pull names out of the Bible, and I think it would be pretty interesting to pull out names from 3rd John, but you'd have to know your Bible pretty well. You wouldn't want to name a child Deotrophes. I heard about someone whose name was Jezebel.

And the guy said, that's an interesting name. I don't hear that name very much and she said yes my mother wanted me to have a Bible name and the guy said well that's still pretty interesting and she said yeah she didn't know her Bible very well. And so there you have it. But you'd also have to know the culture pretty well as well, because you wouldn't want to name your child Gayus, because the kid would probably get made fun of quite a bit in our culture. But Demetrius, Demetrius would probably be a good good name I think, good solid name, but you go into the Bible though and you look him up and there is a Demetrius in Acts chapter 19.

Whether he's the same fellow or not, kind of interesting. So go with me to Acts chapter 19. When Paul was in Ephesus, there was an incident that happened, a riot as a matter of fact. And really, if you're preaching revival, you want either, I mean when you're preaching in a town, you want either a riot or a revival to break out. You don't want everybody to just be kind of a neutral.

I want something to happen. Apathy is not something you want to take place. And in Acts chapter 19, Paul was preaching there in Ephesus, and it says, this is what it says about that time, verse 21, now after these things were finished, Paul purposed in the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. After he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, saying, after I have been there, I must also see Rome. Having sent into Macedonia two of those who ministered to him, Timothy and Erastus, he himself stayed in Asia for a while.

Now about that time there occurred no small disturbance concerning the way. For a man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, was bringing no little business to the craftsman. These he gathered together with the workers of similar trades and said, men you know that our prosperity is from this business. And you see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, This Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable crowd, saying that things made with hands are not God's. Not only is there danger that this trait of ours fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis be considered as worthless and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship is even about to be brought down from her majesty.

When they heard this and were filled with rage, they began crying out, saying, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. The city was filled with confusion and they rushed with one accord into the theater, dragging along Gaius and Artichus, Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia. When Paul wanted to go into the assembly, the disciples would not let him. Also some of Asiarks who were friends of his sent to him and repeatedly urged him not to venture into the theater. So then some were shouting one thing and some another for the meeting was in confusion and the majority did not know for what reason they had come together.

And some of the crowd concluded it was Alexander since the Jews put him forward having motion with his hand. Alexander was intending to make a defense of the assembly when they recognized he was a Jew. A single cry arose from them all as they shouted for about two hours, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Now after calming the crowd the city clerk said, Men of Ephesus, what man is there after all who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is guardian of the temple to great Artemis and of the image which fell down from heaven. So since these are undeniable facts, you ought to keep calm and to do nothing rash, for you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of our goddess.

So then if Demetrius and craftsmen who are with him leave a complaint against anyone, the courts are in session and have pro councils are available, let them bring charges against one another. If you want anything beyond this, let it be settled in a lawful meeting. Indeed we are in danger of being accused of a riot in connection with today's events, since there is no cause for which we can give an account for this disorderly gathering. After saying this, he dismissed the meeting. And so, and so we see here that this fellow, Demetrius, maybe it was him, maybe it was a different one, but still interesting.

And saved him and been a big help to Paul later. And then, of course, then later also John. Of course, also in this text in Acts chapter 9 there is a Gaius. Probably would have been a different one since it seems like that in all this John is introducing this Gaius to Demetrius. But we see the commonality, and I read this just to point out that these were common, pretty common names.

May have been some connection to Demetrius or even Gaius, maybe one of the two, but probably not both. Certainly Ephesus had a lot of things going on there as well and big big big events there. But nonetheless John wrote and he says to Gaius Demetrius has received good witness from everyone. That's the type of Christian Demetrius was. Whatever he was before, if he was a silversmith and an idolater, Maybe, but whatever he was before, he's received good witness from everyone and from the truth itself and we had our witness, John says, and you know that our witness is true.

And he's serving the Lord from a good conscience, John is, to be able to write and say, I know this man, he's a solid fellow, he's a good Christian. And not only that, but he's got a good reputation around. And so, he practiced the truth of God's Word in his life. Back to our text there in 3 John. 3 John in verses 13 and 14 there, He says, I had many things to write to you, but I'm not willing to write them to you with pen and ink, but I hope to see you shortly.

We'll speak face to face. Now if this sounds familiar to you, it should, because that's almost the same way he ended second John when he wrote to the late lady remember back in second John and verse 12 he says though I have many things to write to you. I do not want to do so with paper and ink, but I hope to come to you and speak face to face so that your joy may be made complete." And so, so you know, he had many other things to write, but he didn't write them. He didn't spill a lot of ink writing letters. He wanted to, in his older life, he apparently had the time and the desire to go meet with these people face to face.

There's certainly time and place for letters, Nothing wrong with them. Paul wrote some very long ones. Obviously, I can very easily read 3 John at the beginning of this sermon and nobody even looks up and says what are you doing? But here in a little bit whenever I go back to 1st Corinthians if I say all right I'm going to go ahead and just read the entirety of 1st Corinthians everybody look up and say wait a minute that's going to take all of all of our time. Same thing with passages like Romans or Ephesians, Galatians, you know, some of them are longer than others, but they are longer letters than these.

Nothing wrong with long letters. There's a time and place for it. But there's also, there's also good, good thing for face-to-face. And even, even Paul was not, not only a letter writer. Paul had face-to-face meetings too.

And so, so with John, when he's, when he mentions paper and ink, he's not talking about paper like what we might think of paper. You know, he's not talking about taking a notepad like this. He's talking about papyrus, which would have been much different. He's talking about ink, Which wouldn't have been from a ballpoint pen. He's talking about charcoal and gum resin Much different than the way we write letters but but it got the job done and indeed indeed this is how the Bible was written.

The God-breathed Scripture was put down in such a way. We might think of it as being kind of crude, but that's that's the time period in which the Holy Spirit was working with these guys to give us the inspired Word of God. Could He have waited until we had the printing press, until the invention of nice paper, ballpoint pens, those sorts of things. Absolutely. Did he know that days were coming?

Yes, he did. Yes, he did. But, but he, he, he, the Bible, these 66 books, John, Paul, Matthew, Mark, those fellas, going on into the Old Testament, the writers of the Bible, they were at the right time. And what it tells us is that God does not need human technology to get the job done. And we can be thankful for it.

I'm thankful for photocopiers, I'm thankful for Microsoft Word and email and all of those things. And you know, I'm thankful for it. But I look back and I see how things were done and all that, and I see the preserved Word of God and how it was preserved, and it's been passed down without photocopiers and computers and all that. I'm just in awe of how God is. He doesn't need man the way that we might think.

It would have been easier if He would have waited to win. No, No, don't even think about that. God does things just like thinking about the preservation of His church. His church. No standing armies, no great big numbers, all those things.

But yet, he's preserved his church. Well, as he ends this, he says, he says, peace be to you, the friends greet you, greet the friends by name. And so, He leaves this with a citation of peace to Gaius telling him the friends greet you, greet the friends by name. This very personal letter just like just like second John was as he wrote to the late lady. The theme of these letters is hospitality, love, and truth.

There is a term for this if you sum it up and that is just pure old, plain old Christianity. The kind of Christianity we are defined in our lives, in our homes, and in our church. As Brother David Pittman once said it, truth without love leads no one, and love without truth leads nowhere. As John concluded this letter, and he brings out the peace and the Christian greetings and from friends to friends, we just kind of feel this warmth the kind of warmth we ought to feel when we're around brothers and sisters we didn't we didn't know John the Apostle we didn't we never shook his hand we never was around him but but we kind of feel that and understand what he's talking about. As we receive letters or maybe talking to someone that we haven't met before and we kind of get that feeling from them, that feeling of love and love for the truth and those sorts of things that hospitality is talking about.

Well, we rejoice over those things And certainly we're thankful. We're thankful for men like Gaius, men like Demetrius, Men like John. The truth of God's Word that brings all these things together. Hospitality, truth, and love. May God add the blessing to the preaching.

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