Perseverance & Pride 2 - Pride, Diotrephes

If you have not already, please turn in your Bible to the book of third John, the third Epistle of John, toward the end of your Bible, just a book or two before the last book of your Bible. I had mentioned many times that part of the reason a book ends up in the order it ends up in, in the Bible has to do with when it was accepted as canonical. But the letters of John don't fall into that category for the most part. They were pretty widely accepted. They were just later they were, you know, further along in the ministry of the church in the first century.

There's a weird thing we say, and when I. So I wrote it in my notes, I'm about to say it to you.

We say a lot of things that we don't think about when we say it, that I happen to care about this phenomenon. There's. There's linguistics and there's philology. Then there's etymology. There's things related to words and phrases and idioms.

I love learning idioms of other countries. It's interesting to me that sayings in other countries that would mean nothing to us, that everybody in that country would understand happens all the time. Where I really notice it is in sports particularly because, you know, I like martial art, mixed martial arts is when, let's say someone from Brazil is communicating to someone in English for the first time or they're new to English, to hear the English speaking person say something to them in English. That is one of our idioms that we just say, like, you know, get more bees with honey. Now, I know you don't say that, I say that, but if you say that to somebody who lives in a country where there's no bees, they're not going to understand that at all.

Well, here's one that we say a lot, but if you just think about it, it is a crazy thing to say, which is we will say warts and all that. The Bible gives us the whole story, warts and all. Have you ever had warts? It is a crazy thing to say that there are warts in the Bible because warts are disgusting, by the way. I struggle with them on the bottom of my feet.

You ever had a plantar wart? Oh, man, hurts. It's like always stepping on Legos. You parents know what I'm talking about when I say that the Bible gives us warts. It tells us the stories that you would think if you were trying to start a religion you would leave those stories out.

The Bible tells us of our hero, David, cheating on his wife and killing the father of that baby or the potential father of that baby. The Bible tells us of abandonment and betrayal and crazy things like nailing someone's head to the ground with a tent spike. Right? The. The.

Wow.

Is that. Is that. Maybe there's somebody. Oh, you know what? That's third John.

I heard it. I heard it. I heard that was Third John. She's putting back there on the Bible. I heard it.

She's in the right book. So the Bible gives us all those icky stories. Why would it do that? Why would the Bible leave warts in, like this person we're going to look at this morning named Diotrephes. The answer is because the Bible is true.

That's why it leaves the warts in. When you're trying to tell a fictional story, you leave those out. Superheroes with capes don't have bad days or are like diotrophies. You have your villains, you have your bad guys. You know this all the time.

Bad guys. What color of a cowboy hat does a bad guy wear? Always black. Wolves never, ever want to look like wolves. So they're not going to wear a black hat.

They're going to wear a white hat. They're going to try to pretend to be something they're not. There's a reason Paul will warn in his letters to beware of those who come to you as an angel of light. Diotrephes. Somehow this man we're going to look at rose to power in the church.

And the question would come, if he was a wolf, if he was everything John is going to say, he is this bad man, this evil man. He's going to be called evil. Then the question would be how? How can a man like this gain influence in the church? And I'm going to tell you, this is hard for me to say out loud.

It's one of the hardest things to say out loud as a pastor. How can a man like Diotrephes gain influence in the church? My answer is very easily, very easily. The real question, the real surprise is how can real shepherds not get more respect? Well, probably because they're not telling people to give it to them like Diotrephes would.

We don't know who this guy is. We don't know if he was a pastor, officially called a pastor by that church, given the title elder or pastor. He's a leader of some sort because he has influence. He's somehow prominent. He seeks prominence.

But whatever it is, he's not one of the real ones. And I'M going to have a difficult time this morning as I try really hard to keep. In our context of this third letter, after the context of our second letter, after the context of the first letter of John. The first letter of John, you'll recall, is about genuine Christianity, the real thing, what it means to be a real Christian. You could actually use the Book of First John as a diagnostic tool on you and your life as to whether you're a real believer or not.

You could sit down and read the Book of First John like you're going to the doctor and they put you in the MRI machine or the scanner or the X ray machine. Just use the Book of First John to examine yourself and say, am I the real thing? And it will tell you whether you are or aren't. And then the Book of Second John is written to that lady. Maybe a church, likely a church whose children, some of which are walking in the truth, need to be encouraged because deceivers are coming in and you need to watch out for the deceivers.

They're going to deceive you. They're going to come in and they're not going to say that Jesus is who Jesus says he is. They're going to come in with false doctrine. They might say things you want to hear, but they're not going to say what you're supposed to hear about Christ. And then now we have this letter that would have been to a church.

The third letter of John would have been a church letter, the epistle to the church at whatever, except for this man Diotrephes instead Paul, I mean John had to write it to Gaius. The individual Gaius is the recipient of the letter, probably a faithful man in the church. Don't know if he's the pastor of the church. I don't think he is. But whatever it is, Gaius is a person that John somehow knew at this work, this church plant where Gaius was a faithful man.

We'll get to Demetrius at the end. He's a faithful man as well. But in between there, sandwiched in there is this man, Diotrephes, who somehow gained influence in the church. And like I say, somehow probably means wasn't that hard. He was loud, he was charismatic.

Maybe he made people laugh, maybe he was very forthright. Maybe people loved his style. Maybe they thought he was a no nonsense kind of preacher. Whatever it was, he had influence in the church to where this one man had such a say so that he has to be addressed in scripture. So the letter, this third letter would have been to the church.

But instead John had to write it to Gaius to warn the church and to teach the church. But the emphasis I'm going to struggle with this morning is, is John is talking about walking in truth and love. That's what he's talking about. The subject of all three letters is truth and love. And I'm emphasizing zeroing in here on perseverance and pride in this letter, the third letter.

But ultimately he said. He's already said that truth is the thing. And when Diotrephes is hurting the church, I'm suggesting to you that it isn't just him being a dictator and a bad guy and, and not easy to deal with. It's that he's hindering the work of truth sharing and walking in love. He's slowing down the gospel.

He's hurting the spread of the word of Christ. So John isn't just mad at him personally for being what he's like. He's mad because of the result of a man like this is to thwart the gospel and to hurt the proclamation of truth. And I will warn at the end of this sermon this morning. I have it in my notes to warn us.

And I'm going to say it now just by preparation, please put this in your pocket. Anyone can have a little diotrophies in them. Anyone. Everyone's capable of a little diotrophies. And I'm challenging us to make sure when we learn about this man.

I had it in the notes, I messed up in the notes that there are six charges against him. I actually kind of think there's a seventh, but I'm not going to get that down right. My outline is not going to be pretty, so that's not the point. But I am going to tell you we can at least try and generally vaguely look at the things that John will say about the man so that we are not like that man. We can all be him.

This lesson is not for us thinking we're Gaius and there might be a Diotrephes among us. It's that. But it's also that we might be Diotrephes. We might. I might, you might be the diotrephy's in the story.

So don't only hear the villains of the story with the black cowboy hats and think I'm thankful I'm not the villain. You know who else said something like that? Oh Lord, I'm thankful I'm not like this tax collector or what have you. Right? We don't want to be that person who thinks we're not the bad guy.

We want to be humble enough to say, if there's any other bad guy in me, I want to purge it. I want to deal with it. Let's pray. Father, we're going to look at one of the warts in Scripture. There are no warts.

It's. Every word is beautiful. But these are hard things to learn. When we hear about sin and wickedness and people who are not your kind of people, people who defy you, people who in this case even hurt the body of Christ, we just ask Father, that not only would we learn to be discerning and be aware and not be led by false shepherds, but also that we wouldn't have any of the inclinations in ourselves. These are character qualities or flaws that we can learn from and develop the right kind of character so that we would never be like Diotrephes.

Would you help us all with that in Jesus? Amen. We'll look at verse nine, please. In third, John. And John says, I wrote to the church.

Do you see? When I said earlier this was supposed to be an epistle to a church, I say, supposed to be. It's supposed to be what it is because it's inspired by the Lord. And we got exactly what we were supposed to get. So there wasn't a mistake here.

But I do want you to see that John had intentions of writing to a church of people, a group of people. But somehow this letter, what probably happened, got commandeered by Diotrephes. Maybe he checked a mailbox and saw the letter or however it worked in his day. I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have preeminence among them, does not receive us. And I'll stop there.

I wrote in order to instruct the church on some things. I wanted to talk to the church, and my guess to you, and I think because of what was already said to Gaius, my guess to you is that John wanted to write to this church to say, you're in the truth, continue in the truth, avoid deception, stay faithful, follow Christ in genuine faith and with the real Christianity, and continue on and bring honor and glory to the Lord and spread his word. So that's what I wanted to write to you about. But every time I write to you to encourage you or to strengthen you or to teach you or exhort you, somebody Diotrephes, who loves to have preeminence, does not receive us. So what do we know about the guy?

Not much, except that he's not Great. And we also know this is. The word is very literally. He. He loves firstness.

He loves firstness. We don't use the word firstness, but preeminence is a good word. I just want to make sure you understand that. What preeminence means is he wants to be first, he wants to be primary, he wants to be premier first. Who wants to be primary?

Who wants to be first? Who. Who wants to be the first in the kingdom rather than the last in the kingdom? Somebody who's proud, egotistical, arrogant. The word is a unique word here.

It's a Hepax Legomena. That's one of those things you're supposed to write down. If you've never written down Hepax Legomena, you're supposed to write that down so that you can impress all your friends with it through the week that you know a fancy word. All that word means is this is the only occurrence of the word. It's the only time that word preeminence is used, is in this letter right here.

So a unique use of that word. Diotrephes doesn't want to serve, he wants to be served. Diotrephes thinks that the church is about him. Diotrephes thinks that he knows what's best for the church. And when Diotrephes thinks about what's best for the church, Diotrephes thinks it's Diotrephes.

I wanted to write, I wanted to talk to the whole church. But this one individual, whatever position he was in, whether he was a self appointed pastor, maybe a deacon, maybe in charge of something, whatever it was, he, he wanted to be first. And he kept that letter, I believe, from getting to the whole church. Which is why John had to write to Gaius. Well, I tried to write to the church.

I sent it, sent my note by way of courier to the congregation. And when the person showed up to talk, hey, I have a word from John. I have a letter from John. I wanted to write. John wanted to write to us, the whole church.

Diotrephy stepped in and says, I'll take that. You all don't need to hear that. I'll take care of you. And then it says something strange and I'm going to make a strong application here, but I don't want you to think my application is devoid of interpretation. So, you know, good.

Hermeneutics, Bible interpretation. You ask the three questions and this is what we'll discuss in the teacher class as what does the Bible say? What does the Bible mean and then how do we apply? Or what do I do with what the Bible says? And a lot of people like to skip that part to the what do I do?

They don't actually do the interpreting. They just think they can automatically use the Bible without proper interpretation. I do not want to make that mistake right now. So I'm going to interpret, but then I'm going to apply. So my application that I'm going to give you in a moment for you is not the text teaching, okay?

So I just want you to know I'm aware of it. I'm letting you in nuts and bolts. You get the behind the scenes here. Remember the old days? DVDs had special features.

Man, that's how old we are. That DVDs are old. He does not receive us. John says of Diotrephes. What that means is he is unsubmissive to us.

Reception here has the idea of more than just an open door. By the way, this word is not a Hepax Legomena. It's whatever the two version of that is. It's only used twice and it's only used in verse 9 and verse 10. This word for doesn't receive.

It has the idea that in Eastern culture, you know this already, you've heard it a million times from me and pastor and other teachers that hospitality is a given. We'll talk more about it in a bit when it talks about the brethren. But for now, I want you to see that being unreceptive in general is already seen as a problem. Like there should be a willingness to be ready to receive true teachers, right? When the Bereans were commended, they weren't commended for finding the false teachers.

They were commended for seeing if the thing was true, not if it was false. I always emphasize that. So the idea of receptiveness to good teaching, of to the apostolic authority would have been just an incredibly strange thing to not receive John. So I want to make sure we're clear that when John is writing, this is John the apostle. And the crime of diotrephy is now here comes the application.

You're about to hear it. So the interpretation is they were not receptive, not hospitable, not open to the apostles and their teaching. Remember I wrote to you, meaning I was giving you apostolic teaching. Now, that may not have been inspired scripture. It may have been just instruction, but it would have been an authoritative apostle bringing instruction to the people of Christ.

And Diotrephy says no to that. No, not you will not hear from the apostle John, you will not be instructed by him because I'm here and here's my application. If you or me or anyone else does not want to hear from the Apostle John, ignore that person. And you say, well, what are you even talking about? In this very room, from this very letter.

The irony that I'm saying what I'm saying from the letter of third John, someone was asking me, I always tell the stories the same. This has happened to me two times where I've done well, it's happened to me multiple times, but not to this literally or explicitly where I directly quoted Scripture, opened the Bible and showed the person what the Bible said. They were talking about fundraising and why we don't fundraise from the outside world. I've told you this story a hundred times. And I said, because I have trouble with 3rd John 7 because it seems to suggest that Christians were funded by Christians, not the Gentiles, not the outside people.

And my conviction is, is that people do want to buy their way to heaven. And so people want to earn heaven or buy their way to heaven. I don't want to contribute to them thinking they're buying their way to heaven by receiving the funds from the Gentiles. I believe we're supposed to be self sufficient. Now you don't have to hold to that, but listen, you have to have an argument for what third John 7 means.

You have to, it's in scripture. So here I was in this room from this letter two verses ago. This is years ago, by the way. Years ago this happened where somebody was asking about fundraising for missions. And I showed them the verse, I held it up and I said, this is what I take that to mean.

I take this text to mean that we're supposed to be self funded as Christians. And that's why I don't do that, that's why I don't promote, that's why we don't have a link to give on our church website and things like that. And the person looked me right in the eye in this room, right behind where Steve Rogers is sitting back there, that's where I was standing. And they said, I don't agree with that. And I said, I just shared scripture with you.

That's what I shared. And I told you what I think it means. The pastor of the church who feeds the people the Word told you that. You said you don't agree with it. Tell me how you understand it.

Well, I don't know. I don't know. Now I'm asking you in this room. I gave that Person John. Now, I wasn't Diotrephes keeping John from them.

I was giving them John. And they said, I don't agree with that. The other time was a divorce one. It wasn't at the church. It was a family member of someone at our church who was going to file for divorce from her husband.

And I showed the passage where the Bible says, God hates divorce. There's no way you're going to be okay doing that. God is never, ever going to commend you to get a divorce ever. He hates it. And I showed them that verse and they did the same thing.

I don't agree with that. I said, you're saying you don't agree with God and you call yourself a Christian. But in this case, what I'm trying to tell you here is if there is any hint in any of us or when the apostle John or the apostle Paul or Mark or Luke or Isaiah or David or whoever else is being quoted, holy Scripture inspired scripture is being quoted and we have it in us to say, nah, I don't need to listen to that. Oh, we're in trouble. Or we might say, I don't have to hear you because I already know everything.

That's what Diotrephes did, no doubt. I'm sure Diotrephes probably had psalms and proverbs memorized. He thought he was so great. So my interpretation is Diotrephes did not receive the apostle or his instruction or the apostolic leader leadership of a church that he probably planted. But I'm applying it to anyone that can take an instruction from Scripture anytime.

I say this to you all the time. You don't have to follow. This is PJ talking about group texts, especially arguments in group texts, especially using Scripture and arguments in group texts. Please be careful throwing the Bible around like that. Please be careful.

If you see the Bible like that and you ignore it, these are the words of God. And John is saying, I had words for you. I had words for the whole church, but instead I had to go around Diotrephes to you, Gaia, so that you would get my instruction to the church. And Diotrephes is on display here as somebody not to be like, who does not receive the apostles. And you say, well, okay, here's what you do to that.

If you have somebody in your midst, right? If you have somebody in your midst that won't receive the instruction of Scripture or the apostles or won't hear from John, what you do is you get online and you complain about it. Do a post on Facebook, do an open letter, get out there on the Internet and tell the whole world you don't like what this guy's doing. In fact you can start a whole ministry about how everybody's doing things you don't think they should be doing. Just be busy, get out there on the Internet, get out there, get five YouTube channels, get out there and get your Patreon going.

Get out there and get your TikToks rolling and get all the support you can so you can tell everybody what's wrong with the church, what's wrong with all Christians. That's how you fix it, right? Let's see how John tries to fix it. In verse 10 there's a man at a church who's clearly a false leader, a false shepherd, who's clearly exerting his influence over the church, who's clearly keeping the apostles influence out of the church. And what does John say he's going to do about that verse 10?

Therefore if I come, I will call to mind his deeds, which he does, prating against us with malicious words. If I come, we're doing something about it with the person, I'm going to talk to him, with all of you there with witnesses. He's not going to continue to get away with this. This is not John being a tough guy with a discernment ministry who can say how everybody is a false teacher. If you think, if you don't think that's prevalent, I'm not encouraging you to do this, but if you're doubting me, what I'm saying, that this is prevalent out there, that people think that the Internet is the place to discuss all the false teaching and false teachers instead of with the teacher themselves.

Just go search the word false teacher on YouTube and you'll see just massive amounts of people telling everybody what false teachers are. And I ask you, did they talk to the false teacher? I was humbled in that regard years ago myself where I had, I told this story where I visited a local church because my friend was there and I actually told you the story because it was my definition of sustaining grace. Remember what I said? The guy said sustaining grace is when we do something.

And I said that can't be grace. By definition grace is God doing something, right? Well that same service, when that was done, I told that story. I just told you that somebody I just heard last night at a church, a pastor, misrepresent what grace is and make it something we do instead of something God does. And someone in my Sunday school class at that Time they're not hearing anymore.

But to their credit, they said, did you talk to them about it? Oh, that hurt. Because no, I didn't. I did what everybody else did and just complained about the teaching out loud to everybody else, but not to the teacher. So I went on that Sunday after morning service and I emailed that teacher and I said, I was confronted today.

And I first of all apologized because they were right, I should have talked to you. And we started a dialogue, which was very friendly, by the way. And he even said, I went to your church website and I don't see anything I disagree with. And I said, I. I know, but it was the language that you used. It was how you presented it.

And so we had a friendly dialogue. But what I'm trying to tell you is I did have to talk to him. I did talk to him. He's not the only one I've talked to. I've talked to other pastors of other churches when I've been confronted by such things.

But I do want you to know, like, if I name, for example, Joel Osteen, you can probably assume that I tried to contact Joel Osteen's people. You could probably assume that because now I'm scared to say it out loud. If I name a teacher out loud, is that okay for me to do that? Am I just another commenter, another tiktoker? Well, John says if I come, I'm going to call to mind his deeds.

He calls, he says he has prating words. Those are belittling words, babbling. What is a tattletale? You ever think of tattle? When you tattle on someone, what does that mean?

You all know what that means. It means to go tell and try to get him in trouble. But the idea of tattling here, the idea of berating, the idea of belittling. You guys don't want to listen to John. John's not that smart anyway.

Similar to what the Judaizers would have done about Paul. Oh, you guys think Paul. Have you seen him? He's old, he can barely talk. Why are you listening to Paul?

Oh, man, you're right. We need a younger guy, a guy that's more dynamic. That's what we need, diotrophies. Yeah, you don't want to listen to John. John's not the best teacher anyway.

And then I do want you to see, it says, when I, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds, which, where he's prating against. Do you see that? It says us. So that's either the apostles. The us, because it's plural, is either the apostles or it's the church planting missionary team.

I don't know exactly, but I do want you to see that it does say us. He goes, you are praying against not just me, the apostle, but us. So, and then look at the second half of verse 10. The phrasing is interesting here because if you paraphrase that, you and all we have a. We have idioms just like this, where you see it says, and not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren and forbids those who wish to not content with that.

You know another way of saying that, like that's not enough. That's the idea is like, as though that weren't enough, as though he hadn't already been a big enough jerk, as though he hadn't already done enough, enough ridiculous things, enough disrespectful things. It's not like he's already done enough by insulting us and not receiving us and not taking apostolic instruction and influence over the church. That's not enough for him. He also doesn't receive the brethren and forbids those who wish to.

I just said earlier, I'm going to talk a little bit about hospitality. I want to stay in our context here because again, there's lots of applications, but here it's very specifically in the first century context of itinerant ministry with the planting of the first century church. The way it would work, you all know this, that they would start in homes, they would start in small groups and they would start churches. And then there would be men who were usually probably mature men, maybe men who knew the Old Testament really well, men who had a background and they were wise and probably not young, right? They were probably older.

It was sort of historically and culturally acceptable that if you were. You had to be over the age of 30 to be considered a teacher kind of around those years, right? And so what would happen is you would have a guy, let's say, I don't know, you have a guy who has copies with him, let's say a couple of letters of Paul and a couple letters of John. And now he's going around to encourage and exhort the Christians. And so that guy would come to your house or to your home church and he would say, let me show you what Paul says.

And while I'm here, you guys make a copy real quick. Make a copy of the Colossian letter for yourselves, right? And so that's how that, the original, when it first got rolling before, like official scriptoriums and the other copy things, but they were just sharing the word of Christ. And it was a communal thing where people would come in and the itinerant preachers would come in and come in the name of the Lord. And they say, wait till you hear the stories of what the Lord is doing over in the neighboring town.

And so there was this community, this strength of people encouraging each other. So when he says he does not receive the brethren, he means like that. He means brethren who are in the mission that Diotrephes is interrupting, who are in the mission of doing what John already said in the last two letters. The brethren in this case are gospel sharing, truth oriented, discipleship related brethren. These are not just he's not nice to Christians.

That's also true, he's not being nice to Christians. But the emphasis here is the mission of the church is being thwarted and hindered by this man because he won't even receive the Christians who are actually out there doing the work of the ministry, sharing the gospel, doing missions, doing evangelism. He's stopping them from doing it. So he doesn't receive the brethren. So now you have a church where John has to write to Gaius to go around Diotrephes.

Because at that church Diotrephes is saying we don't need to listen to John. In fact, we don't need to listen to the brethren who might follow John and the apostles. And then he says he forbids those who wish to. So let's say you have two churches. Let's use our association.

Let's say you have two California association of Regular Baptist churches, right? And in theory that's supposed to mean we're associating together. It's right in the word association of churches. It's right there, right. So we associate with another church, say a church in, I don't know, Stockton or whatever.

So we're associating with that church. We are like minded. And then somebody rises to power within the church, an influencer, somebody who has all the answers, of course, somebody who's read all the right books, Somebody who probably has a seminary degree even, right? And he's going to say, I don't think we should be associating with these kind of people. I don't think so.

I, I think we have everything we need here to do everything we are supposed to do. In fact, I have everything here that we need. I don't need to listen to anybody else. I don't need any input. So now you find out like, hey, we, we're haven't like we did.

Tracy. Right. They're about to celebrate their anniversary. Imagine saying, you know, we would like to support them. And then somebody over there says, we don't want their support.

We don't want their affirmation at sovereign grace. We're done with them. That's the idea, is that it's the work of the ministry we're supposed to be celebrating, not just our fellowship. And then somebody comes along and says, I'm not going to receive them. And if you receive them, I'm not receiving you either.

If you're good to the people that I'm saying my people shouldn't follow, then I don't only have a problem with you, I have a problem with them too. The people who you associate with. So this guy's really setting himself up. This is why I call guys like this many popes, these guys that set themselves up as the final authority and take no input or influence and definitely aren't listening to John. Let's make sure we're not just talking about personality traits here, where somebody might have a strong personality or something.

That is not. We're talking about. John isn't saying, I don't like diotrophes personality. He's saying he loves preeminence. He prates with malicious words against the apostles, and he doesn't receive or love or show hospitality to God's people.

Those are clear charges. I'm calling indictments against diotrephes. It isn't because he's not like my pastor. It isn't because he has a bigger following than me. It isn't because I don't like the way he talks.

No, those are all preference things. This is truth related. This man is willing to shut down the work of the apostle for his own gain. And we need to watch out for that. We can all be that way.

We can all think that we know better than John or Paul or Luke. Not content with that, he also doesn't receive the brethren. And he forbids anybody that does receive the brethren. Watch out for that attitude. Years ago, somebody visited our church and they were.

They'd had a rough life. They had clearly been through some things. And later someone told me privately, that person's not part of our church anymore. But they told me privately, do we want that kind of person at our church? And I said, what do you mean that kind of person?

What does that mean? And they were talking about their class. They were talking about their appearance. They were talking about the fact that they were not that well kept. That maybe they didn't.

Maybe we that kind of person at our church. And yes, I rebuke that person carefully, but rebuke them. Hey, you have the wrong attitude. In fact, maybe you wouldn't be received at a church. What if you were that kind of person to another church?

We don't want that. We want to be careful not to be close minded to God's people. So Diotrephes, he's proud, he's inhospitable, he's self centered. He seems to be missing the whole purpose of the church, which is the spread of truth to the point where he won't listen to an apostle and he doesn't want anybody else listening to the apostles and the brethren. He's opposing truth.

And this is why John has such strong words for him and already said, as though that's not enough. Look at the last part of verse 10, putting them out of the church. So there might be people in the church with Gaius who would have received the brethren, would have received the itinerant preachers or the missionaries or the fellow Christians who were suffering or going through things. And Diotrepheus says, you're going to listen to those John lovers. You're going to listen to those people that listen to John.

Well, I am going to excommunicate you out of the church. Anybody see where Diotrephy's name is mentioned in Matthew 18 in the church discipline passage where it says if somebody causes offense, take them to Diotrephes and he decides whether they stay or go. Do you understand that? What Diotrephes does here, he absolutely usurps the clear biblical instruction on how you handle whether somebody gets excommunicated from the church or not. And you say, well, okay, yes, he does it wrong.

I understand that. But you got to get sin out of the church. Wait, what was their sin? Wanting to listen to the apostle John. So he's not only doing excommunication wrong, he's not doing it according to scripture the way God says to do it.

But he's not even doing it to people who deserve to be excommunicated or put out of the church. It would be one thing if he was a selfish, arrogant guy and he kicked some wolves out of the church. That would be nice, accidental, right? Byproduct that he kicked bad teachers out of the church. But no, he's kicking God's people, the sheep out of the church.

Not people who prove themselves not sheep by sin, people doing what God wants. And he has the gall to overrule God's authority and the two or three witnesses in the vote of a church to send people out of the church telling, oh, you got to go. I don't like what you're saying. I don't like that you're against me. You got to go.

Their crime, receiving gospel preaching, missionaries. That's their crime. Now I'm combining. I'm not. I'm going to preach verse 11 on its own.

I'm going to say verse 11's thoughts on its own. But the last thing I want to say about Diotrophies is mentioned in verse 11 as a character thing. Well, it's mentioned as an imperative, but I want to use it as a character thing. And you see it in your notes. When John says in verse 11, do not imitate what is evil.

I want you to see that that means Diotres is evil. Okay? I want you to see that. I want to say it without any. Without any equivocation.

That diotrephes is not an option for the Church of Christ that you might like because he's different, because he's more forthright, because he's a stronger personality, because he's charismatic, because he has a following, because he's written books. He is not an option for the Church because he's evil. And we need to be really careful because in our day it is very politically incorrect to say anything or anyone is evil. You're not supposed to say that. You're not supposed to say they're evil.

That's not yours to say. Judge not. Well, John calls the man evil. He says, do not imitate evil. So I want to make sure we're clear that the indictment of John lands pretty heavily about this man.

He's not just a bad teacher, a troublesome personality. He's not just difficult to deal with. All those things are preference things. Again, well, not the bad teacher part. He needs to be a good teacher.

But I do want you to see that John calls him evil. Now back to the. To the outline where we get to verse 11. Don't indict yourself. So God through John is indicting Diotrephes as an evil man who's hurting the truth ministry because he's keeping the apostolic authority and influence out of the church.

And he's not loving the Brethren missionary work. He's not a part of the spread of truth. He's hindering the truth. And then John goes on to give the instruction to Gaius and to anyone else, the church that might hear this letter that he could have Written to beloved. Do not imitate what is evil?

This word for imitate, you know it already. It could absolutely be translated directly from the Greek. Mimic. Do not mimic what is evil. Do not follow this man diotrophies.

Isn't it weird when you see these, like anybody following this crazy stuff with like these crazy alpha male dudes out there that are just selling stuff and selling their social media ministries and these young men are following them. And isn't it interesting how much the young men start sounding like those guys and looking like those guys and acting like those guys and treating people the way those guys treat people, like they just have to turn into little clones of their Andrew Tate's or whoever they are out there. They just got to be like those guys. We all do that. We all sort of adapt to our environments and act like the people we're around.

I mean, before too long, all you guys in here are going to be wearing ties. Hang around the church long enough. But I am trying to make a point, even though that's a silly way of making it, that strong, dynamic, forceful leaders have an easier time duplicating themselves than humble, quiet, servant shepherds. It's way easier for a guy who says out loud, be like me to have people like him than somebody that says, I'm just a sinner, saved by grace. So watch out, do not imitate it.

John would not have to say that if it wasn't a temptation, if it wasn't a possibility. This is an instruction to Gaius. He's already said Gaius is a good guy. So why is he telling Gaius not to imitate evil? Because you're going to be pressured to imitate evil.

You're going to be pressured to follow these kind of people. Do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God. Just a quick word on that. It's very obvious what John means.

Good works are God's works, right? Good doesn't just mean good in general. Our idea of good. Good is whatever God defines as good in our context. It's the spread of truth, it's the promotion of the gospel, it's the building of the kingdom.

That's a good work. And whoever does that good. That's what John means here in context. Whoever does that good is of God. Whoever does God's things, God's way is of God.

Now the reason I'm trying to be emphatic about that, because think sometimes we hear that to mean whoever avoids evil and confronts darkness and exposes false teaching. Those are People who are of God. And you say, what? What are you talking about, Sloan? Listen, if you only have a ministry against evil, you only have half a ministry.

We're supposed to be doing good, promoting truth, promoting the gospel, promoting exposure to Jesus Christ. So if we have tons and tons of work in our lives and the things people love, people follow these things. You don't realize over the years how many email links I've gotten to, hey, you need to listen to this guy talk. And I go listen to that guy. And that guy's saying that John MacArthur is a false teacher and John Piper's a false teacher, and these people are false teachers, and watch out for those people.

And they send that to me because they think, well, you kind of sound like those guys. Well, yeah, because I am like those guys. That's why I sound like them. We think the same things. And so these ministries out there that just say, this guy's wrong, that guy's wrong, this guy's wrong.

And you almost wonder, do they even believe that there's a right? Do they even understand that we're supposed to be positively promoting the truth and the love of the gospel? Whoever does good is good and they're of God, right? And the good is truth promotion, not merely error exposure. Error exposure is important.

We have to expose wolves. We have to. But if all you do is look out for evil, and by the way, let's just practice for your life, for your sanctification. Is all of your whole Christian life just trying to fight sin? Is that all you're doing, trying to fight sin?

Trying to stop being bad? Trying to change your bad attitudes? Trying to overcome doubt? Trying to. Or do you have any positive good?

Work, growth, progress, overcoming positive. So do good, not just avoid bad. Do the things of God. Figure out what God is doing and get in on it. Figure out your part of what God is doing.

But he also goes on to say, but he who does evil has not seen God. That. But in this sentence is the strong one, Allah. There's two words for but in two contractions. One of them is de epsilon, and that one is less strong.

Allah is very strong. So it's like a completely not this, but it's that, like complete opposite, strong contrast. So there is whoever does good, don't imitate evil, don't copy evil. Imitate what is good, do what's good. Because whoever does good is of God.

And then he goes on to say, but opposite of that is whoever does evil has not seen God. Now the Calvinist in me wants to Say, do you see? They never knew Him. They weren't chosen before the foundation of the world. That's how we Calvinize these verses.

That is not the emphasis here. The emphasis here isn't that they haven't been granted the ability to see God. That's true. It supports the doctrine, but it is not teaching the doctrine. What it's saying is these people have not been influenced by God.

These people have not been moved by God, touched by God, used by God. These are people who do not know Him. Anybody that does evil has not seen him. They've not been in a relationship with him. So John has already called diotrephes evil.

And now he's essentially saying the man has never seen God. Don't be like that. Don't be like him. Don't be evil like that. Do good.

Be of God. Be certain that you're in the will of God. Be certain that you promote truth, that you promote love and walking in truth. Be certain that you are on the right side of things with Scripture. When God talks in His Word, listen to it.

That's how you can be certain you're in alignment with His Word. Just keep talking over and over again about biblical proficiency, the ability to handle the Word. And I don't mean handle it in a study at a scholarly type way. I mean to be able to open the Word and know what it means, then be able to use it practically in your life. Oh, I hear that passage.

Oh, Jesus is talking to him. Oh, yeah, I need to take that, what he's saying to him. Because that's a principle. And I can apply that to my life. All the proverbs that got me again, I have been hanging around fools too much.

I'm not supposed to be doing that. I need to hang around God's people. Right? I have been laughing at the wrong things. Psalm 1 and 2.

I shouldn't be laughing at those things. Right? Where you're reading the Bible and you're seeing what God has said to his people throughout the ages, and then you apply that to yourself so that truth is in your life. You're living the truth. You're living the Bible.

You're biblical by nature. You're walking after the truth. That's what somebody who has seen God acts like. Somebody who has seen God wants to hear from God. Somebody who's been touched by the Almighty, wants to know more about the Almighty.

So be careful. If you're the kind of person that says, yeah, I need to study more, I need to pray more, are you acting like it's a chore to get close to the living God. Like it's hard and difficult and holiness. And I don't get to go there, and I don't get to miss that, and I don't. I have to read every day.

So you're making it sound like a chore, like a slog to honor God. No, no, no, no. If you love him, if you've seen him, you want to know what he's doing. You want to be in on it. What's the Lord doing?

What's he teaching you? What are you going through that God's word is applied to. What things in your life have you seen? When you use God's word the way it's intended to be used, and you live it out in your life, it's furthering you and the kingdom and the gospel. It's giving you opportunities to serve others and share the gospel and the truth and spread the good news of the King.

We don't know how or why diotrephes got into the position, but he did. And I'm suggesting to you that it's still happening today. There's diotrephesis, whatever. The plural of diotrephes is all over the world. You can just go start scrolling YouTube if you want.

You'll get a. You'll get 900 diotrephes today. Men who think they should have preeminence, men who think they know things, men who you don't hear being accountable to the body of Christ or other pastors or teachers, men who tell you, listen to them. Don't listen to anybody else. Watch out.

Watch out for that. And then lastly, I just strongly ask you to consider, is there any diotrophies in us? Do we have any tendency in us to say, the church would be a way better place if everybody just listened to me? Why don't they listen to me? Even I don't think that.

I think you should listen to the word of God. Anyone can have a diotrophy streak in them. Maybe you need to go get tested. Maybe go get your blood drawn, see if any diotrophy shows up in your blood so you can start taking the medicine of scripture and not be like him or mimic what he was. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the warnings. And Father, I would much rather say to you or ask of you, please save us or keep us from diotrophies in our midst, but I'm more inclined to say keep us from being like him, keep us from emulating him and his attitude and not being receptive to your word, to your people. Would you help us not be like Diotrephes? We'll get better lessons from Gaius as we have and Demetrius.

But for now, would you help us take the warnings with us? In Jesus name, amen.