“Rooted in Relationship”

In just two days, we will be ushering in the year of our Lord, 2025. First Baptist Church will turn 143 years young. Much has changed in the time between when this church started meeting in 1882 and today, hasn’t it? Speaking of changes, I don’t know about y’all, but I was raised to never get in a stranger’s car and to never meet a stranger from the internet, and I find it humorous that nowadays we pay for the privilege to summon strangers from the internet and get in their cars. Much has changed.

Developing relationships with other people is more challenging today, wouldn’t you say? Is it just me, or are we becoming less trusting of other people today than in previous times? Whether that’s right or wrong is not or focus, but I think we are less trusting for two reasons. The first is that all our streams of information from television and radio and internet sources typically only report on bad things, which leads us to fear. And also, it’s due to the rise of online connections and social media, which have blurred the line between what’s real and what’s not, making it difficult to discern genuine intentions.

How does that leave many of us? It leaves most of us hesitant to open up and reveal our true selves. Rather, we almost expect betrayal and judgement and exploitation, especially in an era where personal information can be easily shared or misused. So you and I likely approach new people with a guarded nature, which only creates a barrier to our ability to form a meaningful relationship. We’ve been hurt. Right? And because we have been hurt, part of how God has wired us is to respond to hurt and pain by protecting ourselves, so when it comes to relationships with new people, we kinda live with an outlook like, “we’re not going to allow that to happen again.” So our self-protective caution will hinder the spontaneous and honest exchanges that foster trust and true friendship.

And the sad reality is that what I am speaking about concerning the challenges of making friends today is not limited to when we go to our places of work or to school. The same challenges exist here, don’t they? The same expectation of betrayal and judgement and being exploited floats in your mind when you’re mixing with people at church, right? Don’t worry, I’m not looking for a show of hands or head nods.

And the sad tension is that our hurt drives us to isolation yet, based on my conversations with many people who visit a church, their motivation for visiting that church is to find community. To find a place of acceptance and belonging. But it is a terrible thing if the church is nothing more than a gathering of individuals who are so closed off that everyone is effectively unable to do life together.

How do we deal with the desire for community and isolation? Our relationships need more than just superficial roots. Our relationships must be rooted in Christ, who calls us out of fear into community. So the question for us to explore this morning is

What are marks of genuine Christian relationships?

Our aim this morning will be to address this question and while that’s our goal for today, we’re going to spend today and the next few weeks exploring the subject of what Christian fellowship actually involves. For clarity, fellowship will encompass how we participate in the gospel together, how we share in the gospel together, and how we embrace the gospel together as the people of God. We’re going to see aspects of Christian fellowship put into action as we study this very small letter known as 3 John.

And for our benefit, we are reading a letter that is written by the same John who walked with Jesus in his incarnation and wrote the forth gospel. When we encounter the three letters of John and the Revelation, this John is writing later in his life to communities of Christ followers who have faced challenges in their churches. Challenges like people who were raised in the church, attended church, but have shown that they were never truly of the faith. Challenges like so-called missionaries coming to preach a message that is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. And challenges like Christ followers who have failed to live the standard of Christ.

And what our text this morning has for us are three marks of genuine Christian relationship, or if you will, three things you should be looking for in getting to know others here that will allow for fruitful, Christ-honoring relationships to exist in our church. They are care, faithfulness, and truth. Let’s start with looking at

Caring for One Another

Let me start to address this matter in this way… And I’m going to ask you to really stick with me for a second so I don’t lose anyone with what I feel led to teach right now.

We talk a lot in a church setting about doctrine. I know that’s a word that sounds really stuffy, but doctrine is important because doctrine is effectively what we believe on matters of the Christian faith. For example, though I may not title my messages or have headings that explicitly state something like, “The Doctrine of Scripture”, I’ve taught this church doctrine concerning the Bible based on what the Bible says about itself, namely that all sixty six books are the very words of God. I may have never titled my messages “The Doctrine of the Second Person of the Trinity,” but I’ve taught what the Bible says about Jesus like that Jesus is God, is eternally God - meaning Jesus has always been and is not created… and that Jesus did not stop being God when he came to earth. And we harp on doctrine because it is my commitment to the Lord who called me to preach to teach you what is right belief. Another stuffy sounding word for right belief is orthodox. When a doctrine of the Christian faith is not being taught correctly, we call that heresy. For example, on the doctrine of Scripture, it is not orthodox, it is heresy, to teach that the Bible is anything but God’s word given by God himself to reveal himself to his creation. It is not orthodox, it is heresy, to say that Jesus is not God.

Now, I’ve spent time talking about doctrine and orthodoxy and heresy to make two brief and passing points. The first is, if you are a Christian or if you are exploring Christianity, you should only sit under a teacher of God’s word who is orthodox. Anything else will be to hear from a person who intends to point you down the path of eternal damnation. The second brief point is that if we’re only concerned with being right with our doctrine, then we’re missing the bigger picture of living our doctrine out.

Do you remember all those Bible scholars in the New Testament that go by the title of Pharisees who were persistent thorns in Jesus’ ministry? They were all about doctrine and they so badly wanted orthodoxy, but in the end, when they looked the Messiah in the eye that their doctrine told them was coming, they denied him. When they lived their faith out, their doctrine didn’t influence it. And Jesus taught that right relationships and right living is just as essential as right doctrine.

Matthew 22:35–40 ESV

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

See, if any one of us had every spiritual gift or if anyone of us held every theological degree or all the faith to remove mountains but did not have love, we would be nothing. And the importance of balancing our right beliefs with right living and right relationships is what is on display in the first two verses of 3 John. John is addressing a Christian brother named Gaius who John says in 3 John 1 that he “loves in truth” or “loves in the truth” depending on your english translation. Now, I will confess to you that I had to really think about what it means to love someone in truth.

I know that many times when we encounter a word like love, we think of the emotional or romantic use of the term. Like, when I’m at my most romantic, I might tell my wife, “I truly love you” and that speaks to the many facets of my commitment to Yvette as her husband. My love for my wife involves my commitment and my concern for her total well-being as well as my labor of loving her. She is my best friend, the mother of my children, the person who brought me to Christ, and my sister in the faith. I truly love her, but that love is unique to the fact that we are husband and wife. When it comes to the love that exists between two brothers in Christ like John and Gaius, what John is communicating is that he loves Gaius because Gaius continues to be faithful to the truth concerning Jesus Christ.

It’s this balance of right belief and right living that has made for a right relationship between John and Gaius. How did these guys know that they could trust this relationship? Both of these guys have been put to the test. John was an apostle, meaning that John was sent out by Jesus and he’s pastored a number of churches. Gaius is a member of one of these churches of John’s. Gaius heard the truth about Jesus and believed but what is going on in these first two verses is that in addition to their belief in Jesus Christ, these two guys are living the gospel out. Both of these guys have been dealing with conflict that has entered the churches with people who sought out to destroy the churches by either heretical teaching or heretical living, but these two guys have stuck to the truth.

Conflict arises in a church all the time. Some times it’s small conflict, some times it’s really big. I would even argue that God allows church conflict to bring healing and make a church whole. And observing how others respond to conflict will give you every sense of what sort of relationship is possible with them. Conflict will expose whether someone has this combination of right beliefs and right living that can allow for right relationships.

For John, he’s seen how Gaius handled himself as he continued to faithfully and lovingly serve his neighbor, just as the gospel compels the Christian to do all the time, not just when there’s agreement and peace. In living the truth of Christ, there is a care that is shared between the two that only a relationship centered upon Jesus Christ can provide. For John, the roots of love for Jesus makes him desire that Gaius be prosperous in all things and in good health.

I want to challenge you to reflect on this and seek the Spirit to bring to your mind someone in your life who is struggling. Maybe that person is a friend, a member here at church, or a neighbor of yours. This week, reach out to that person with a personal note or a phone call, and when you do, remind them of God’s love and your support. Then, pray for their situation and invite others in your Sunday school class to join you in prayer for this person while you look for practical ways to help them.

Here’s the second mark of genuine Christian relationships:

Celebrating Faithful Living

A couple of weeks ago I talked about a boomerang. Do y’all remember that? A boomerang is that Australian invention that you toss out and will come right back to you. I talked about the boomerang because encouragement is like a boomerang. If you want to be encouraged, you need to be an encourager. When you start encouraging others, it’ll come right back to you.

And at the end of a tough year for many of us, please hear your pastor… you’ve done well, my friends. We’ve faced quite a few challenges and many of you have clung to this right belief and right living type of outlook. Our nation elected a new president and even with all the heightened anxieties and political polarization, I’m not aware of that affecting our fellowship. Texas and A&M played football again and nothing changed…Texas won like they usually do…but it also didn’t affect our fellowship. Give me some credit… I’ve held that punch for a month.

And on a more serious note, I’ve witnessed parents bury children this year. I’ve witnessed spouses bury spouses this year. I’ve witnessed children bury parents this year. I’ve witnessed needs be communicated and needs be met time and time and time again. And it’s not like there haven’t been conflicts and challenges, but in every one of those scenarios, I’ve seen the love that God has for each one us demonstrated towards one another.

In 3 John 3, John speaks of his joy about a report that he has received about Gaius. We’ll get more into the substance of the report next week, but the summary of that report is that some gospel-preaching missionaries were traveling through the area that Gaius lived in and Gaius loved on them in a God-honoring way when they came through. Why’s that such a big deal? Because Gaius could’ve just slammed his door shut when these genuine missionaries came through after all the grief that the lying and deceiving and heretical missionaries did that had come through before.

Imagine in your Sunday school class someone constantly interrupts with fun facts about their cat. At first, maybe you try to be polite and in some manner just giggle and pretend the stories are cute, but by the third week of cat facts, everyone’s zoned out on the cat owner. Then there’s a newcomer to the same class and when they introduce themselves, they talk about their beloved cats and someone shouts, “I can’t take another cat owner in this class!” But Gaius’ heart wasn’t calloused by all the annoyances and challenges in his church and he received these missionaries and he served them and now that these missionaries have returned to John, they are talking all about how great Gaius was to them. And do you see John’s reaction? Joy. 3 John 3 “For I rejoiced greatly…” Why did John rejoice greatly? Because his friend Gaius is “walking in the truth.”

If I can say this, I think we…we meaning this church…could stand to do a better job of celebrating when our members bear fruit that is an evidence that they’ve been transformed by the Holy Spirit applying the gospel to them. And sometimes, that fruit bearing is the fruit of gathering with the church at worship on Sunday. It would benefit us each to realize that anyone that we interact with at church, at any point in time, may be struggling with feelings of loneliness or neglect. The world’s been doing its best to chew us up and spit us out and I don’t know if we each realize this, but some times, it’s just a single word of encouragement that keeps a brother or sister in church or keeps a brother or sister from giving in. It’s a single handshake. It’s a single hug. It’s a single midweek phone call to check in and offer a word of encouragement. It’s an invitation to a cup of coffee or to grab a meal. As we see our brothers and sisters arriving at a right understanding and seeking right living, we ought to rejoice in that and we ought to be motivated in love and truth to encourage each other in that. That’s when we mirror the heart of Christ.

When we live relationships and have a fellowship that is centered upon Jesus Christ, then we are motivated to

1 Thessalonians 5:11 (ESV)

‌Therefore encourage one another and build one another up…

As you apply this in your life, here are two things to consider:

Do you build up others or do you tear others down? Can I suggest that this starts with your thoughts about others and then follows with how you speak about others? Ask God to renew your thoughts about brothers and sisters because how you speak to and about others will be observed by the church family and certainly by God. Proverbs 16:24 “Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.”

Prioritize encouraging gospel things, not worldly things. Jesus encouraged the widow who gave everything she had for the cause of the kingdom and the rich young ruler ran away from Jesus because he clung to what he owned. Praise others when you see their actions demonstrating their faith in God.

Here’s a third mark of genuine Christian relationships:

Cultivating Truthful Walks

Perhaps there is no greater encouragement that we can offer one another than to pull someone aside when they have obviously chosen to be obedient to the commands of God and walk in the truth. In 3 John 4, we read of the elder John’s joy that he experiences when he learns of the faithfulness to Jesus Christ demonstrated by those within his churches. For Gaius to be walking in truth, it means that Gaius has true doctrine, he has beliefs that come directly from God’s word, not simply opinions. But more than true doctrine, Gaius has actions that consistently follow through with that true doctrine.

And I can say that for any Christian who has walked with the Lord for a fair amount of time, it is a joyful thing to witness other Christians walk in the truth, especially when you see those with less time with Christ living the faith out. It’s an absolutely joyful thing to see and here’s why: it’s really easy to talk about being a Christian but it’s an altogether different thing when someone is actually walking with Christ. Yes, people talk the talk but fewer walk the walk.

When I attended the first session of God’s Economy that Brother John Haliscak is doing a wonderful job of leading us through, when he was speaking on the subject of debt, I remember he mentioned three categories of people. The haves, the have-nots, and the have not paid for what they haves.

And we might be content to view a gathering like this at church in a similar way. What do I mean by that? I mean, we may tell ourselves that in any church, there are people who talk the talk and walk the walk of Christ. There are people who are exploring what Christianity is all about. And there are people who talk the talk but in no way walk the walk.

Yet, while there may be a semblance of truth in that, I want to give permission to blow that whole idea up. The gospel compels us to live in community with one another. The idea of community is more than a gathering of a bunch of individuals who lift voices and hands and holler an amen every now and again. Community is an interdependence. Community is holding each other accountable. Community is encouraging. Community is inspiring one another to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

And doing that involves a level of commitment from each of you. You must be committed to learning the truth if you’re going to walk in the truth. I am confident that there are times when you’ve encountered conflicting opinions and actions that do not align with the truth of Scripture. To walk in truth, I am challenging everyone to commit to attending a Sunday school class in the new year. It’s there that you can engage with the Bible and discuss conflicts openly. If we each purposefully invest our time in understanding God’s word together, it’s God’s word that will guide each of our actions and bring unity to us as a single body of Christ. By the way, did you know that walking in truth, more than simply knowing truth, is what love is? That’s what John says in his previous letter

2 John 6 ESV

And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.

We started our time with this question:

What are marks of genuine Christian relationships?

We said that the marks are care, faithfulness, and truth. Let me sum up the answer for us this way:

We must walk in truth

A few years ago, I met a man who was riddled with bitterness, though he considered himself a Christian. As I listened to him, I heard him tell me about relationships that were not healthy and had brought him great pain. The people who had hurt him were long dead, but the man hated the very memory of other people. After he told me all that was on his heart, he asked me, “Pastor Dan, what can I do?” I did nothing but point him to the truth. We read from Scripture that Jesus taught that to hate someone is to be guilty of murder. I then shared with him the teaching of Jesus about forgiveness - that we cannot expect forgiveness from God if we cannot forgive others. I explained that forgiveness is not a work that earns salvation, but rather, if we understand how great our sin is before Holy God and that we each can be forgiven by God for that sin by placing our faith in Jesus Christ, then we also realize that, in comparison, the things that we hold against each other are smaller than specks of dust. So I told the guy, “Forgive the people who hurt you by releasing those past hurts and resentments and anger.” He did. When I see him now, the guy has a smile on his face every day and he praises the name of Jesus.

I told you that story to help each of us understand that walking in truth isn’t a cake walk, but there’s freedom and love and joy that flows from heaven when we do. If we will each commit to walking in the truth of Christ, then we will know the beauty and joy of relationships that are rooted in and centered upon Jesus. Jesus is all about relationships. When anyone trusts in Jesus Christ for salvation, then that person has a relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ. All the love of Heaven is made known to us and is given to us through Jesus Christ. And that is a love that we are designed to share and live with one another. You see, as we commit to learning the truth from Christ, he roots you and I together as we live the truth of Christ out. And it’s our walking in truth that testifies to the fact that we are God’s children.

Are you walking in truth today, my friend? Let me leave you with these calls to action:

1. Surrender to Christ

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. None of us can begin to walk in truth unless we have surrendered from going our own way and are following Jesus Christ along the straight and narrow path.

2. Learn the truth

Commit yourself to being regular here at church, as many Sundays as you possibly can. And when you’re here, commit yourself to attending a Sunday school class. We can help you locate one if you don’t have one, but it’s up to you to initiate seeking one out. All I can do is tell you that you’re missing out on walking in truth if you are not committed to learning the truth.

3. Live the truth

We have got to grow in accountability to one another and encouragement to one another. That starts with each of us slowing down from the rat race and giving everyone grace upon grace by being quick to listen and slow to speak.

As we enter in 2025, I want to walk in the truth with you. Will you join me?