“What Are We Reflecting? Part II”

This week our nation paused to mourn the death and remember the life of the thirty-ninth president, Jimmy Carter. His presidency ended before I was born, so I know nothing about his leadership by personal experience. I only know about how he served by what is recorded in writing.

Something that has been consistently written about him in the time since his death is, that by all accounts, President Carter knew the Lord. In numerous articles I’ve read since his death, all spoke to how his faith as a Baptist Christian influenced his life. He occupied the most powerful political seat in all the world for four years, and he still faithfully taught a Sunday school class while he served as President of the United States. Serving a congregation as a Sunday school teacher is something Carter did before, during, and after his presidency. Maybe some here today disagreed with his politics, but we cannot overlook the Christlike compassion Carter’s life demonstrated as he labored to address economic, food, and housing insecurities around the nation.

Now, again, perhaps Jimmy Carter’s politics didn’t align with yours, but I find it telling that those who have written about him in the last week, when looking at the 100-year life of Jimmy Carter, all sum up his life in this way: he was a follower of Jesus Christ. When it comes to looking back on a life, can I suggest to you that the legacy of faithfully following Jesus Christ is superior to anything else?

Now, last week I started the first part of this message by talking about movies and with calling this message part two, I know the danger of any part two is that the sequel often isn’t as good as the original. But as we’re rounding out the rest of what John is writing in 3 John, we are still concerned with whether our thoughts and our words and our actions reflect Christ in our fellowship here. Last week we saw some of the ways that Gaius had specifically reflected Christ through hospitality and partnering in the gospel. We said last week that when we looked in the mirror as a church, it was our hope that we would see that we’re living hospitality, partnering in the gospel, and that we were following faithful footsteps. We wanted to see those things staring back at us.

And this morning we’re going to see the testimonies of two people’s decisions in John’s church. What we’re going to see is the legacies of two different people who went to church in the first century. For the most part, with what we’ll cover this morning, these are things we do not want to have staring back at us in the mirror and in the event that they are, we need to put them to bed if we’re to be a fellowship of people who are actually following Jesus. As far as these two people go, we will see that their legacies are eternally recorded. At the risk of oversimplification, one guy will be forever remembered as good. Another one will be forever remembered as not.

And so this message is going to invite us to consider, as we look in the mirror to see what we’re reflecting,

How will we be remembered?

Reflections and legacies are very much related. They both have to do with the lasting impact of our words, actions, and decisions that take place in our lives. There are many things that people are remembered for. What we’re going to see first from our text is someone who was remembered for walking down the

Path of Pride

Here at the end of the letter from John to his church, we’re introduced to a man named Diotrophes. And as it turns out, Diotrophes operated much differently than the Gaius that John is writing this letter to. We should remember that John is writing this letter to a man named Gaius because he showed hospitality to Christian missionaries who were going to be traveling through the area that this church of John’s was located in. For showing hospitality to the missionaries, Gaius is a partner in advancing the gospel.

Now, from 3 John 9 where John writes, “I have written something to the church,” it’s apparent that John wrote to this church that Gaius and Diotrephes belong to communicate the impending arrival of the missionaries and to ensure hospitality would be shown. If you remember back to our time together last week, we discussed how important hospitality was for every culture in bible times. And the hospitality that the members of John’s church would show would ultimately reflect back on him, so he was motivated to line up as quality an experience as could be.

This past summer, my biological mother visited me and my family. Some of y’all may have met her when she attended church on a Sunday morning, but what John was doing wasn’t much different than what I had done in communicating my suggestions of what hotel she should stay at, where she should rent a car from, restaurants we would try, and so on. I wanted what I thought would lead to the best experience she could have during her stay here. It wouldn’t have been very hospitable of me, being the Devine local with knowledge of where to go and where to stay, to have left it for my mother to figure out as someone who’s never visited Texas before. This is the idea of why John even wrote something to the church.

And naturally, there’s two possible reactions. Do what’s been told to you or not. And we see in this brief letter that one church member did what John had instructed and showed these faithful missionaries the hospitality of Jesus. In contrast, another church member named Diotrephes did not.

Last week, I pointed out that we are invited to follow faithful footsteps and I challenged you all to identify someone that you respect and someone you admire for their goodness and to initiate what we would otherwise call a mentoring relationship. In your pursuit of doing that, I want to emphasize that you really need to discern the goodness of others. Because the sad truth, as is the case of Diotrephes, is that not everyone in a church is living in a godly way. There will be people who behave like this Diotrephes and ultimately have a spiritual condition like him, that will at the very least call into question what it is they say they believe because their actions don’t line up with their words. And this is absolutely vital for each of us to recognize because Christianity is about truth. And Christianity is about truth worked out in the integrity of loving relationships. And Diotrephes is not a role model anyone should imitate.

Now, John doesn’t tell us what role Diotrephes played in this church and for as much as we know that this church that John is writing to had been dealing with theological conflicts, John isn’t talking about an error in what Diotrephes claimed to believe. He’s talking about an error in Diotrephes’ behavior. Diotrephes has failed miserably at living out what Paul writes in Romans 12:3 “not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think…”

Not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought is very countercultural these days. I spent time over the holidays watching a few football games and during the commercial breaks, I was reminded of how our society wants us to believe we’re little kings and queens, feeding our egos along the way. You needn’t look further than the commercials for a burger chain that all end with “You Rule!” to see my point. We’re being trained to think of ourselves as highly as we possibly can. And we’ll find ourselves with a full head of steam like a bug flying right into a zapper in heading in the direction of pride if we refuse to view ourselves in light of God.

And Diotrephes got a full head. What is it that he did? Well, John tells us first in 3 John 9 that Diotrephes “likes to put himself first.” That can be true of any one of us, can’t it? Anyone of us can find ourselves in the position of putting ourselves first. That’s what makes all of this so challenging. We can convince ourselves that we ought to be first because of what we’ve sacrificed for the church or because of what we’ve given to the church or whatever and we can miss completely out on the fact that our egos can blind our perception of the whole picture.

And if pride is present among us, it’s going to divide us. Our days as a church can be marked by one of two songs. We can all be singing, “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God,” as the Gaithers taught us to sing and we’ll have a chance at unity, or if even one of us is found singing “I’ll have it my way,” as Frank Sinatra crooned, we most certainly will be divided. And if “My Way” is our tune, it’s going to turn away others from this church and it will leave us operating outside of the Spirit of God. God’s word says that Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction…” and if we’re looking in the mirror and we see any one of us walking down the path of pride, then it’s going to tank the whole of us.

I don’t think anyone ever sets out with the intention of destroying a church, but when we’re walking down the path of pride, that’s where the GPS is going to take us. Let me offer this to just chew on… If you find yourself in disagreement with other church members, spend time reflecting on how your ego may be influencing your perspective. Before you meet with any brother or sister, set aside fifteen minutes to pray for humility and guidance. Ask God to help you see the bigger picture of unity in Christ. That may be one way to help lower defenses and foster a spirit of cooperation, and make it easier to resolve differences. It could keep us from heading down the ill-fated path of pride.

Here is a second thing we should hope that we’re not remembered for, and that is demonstrating

Patterns of Division

Diotrephes has walked down the path of pride and because he has, what we see following are the consequences of a prideful heart. There are a few different consequences of pride if any one of us demonstrates it and what we have in our text are some of the symptoms we see that Diotrephes demonstrated.

We see one symptom mentioned in the remainder of 3 John 9, when Diotrephes puts himself first. Do you see it in your Bible? He shows himself to disregard the authority of John. And it must be said, in disregarding the authority of John, Diotrephes is insubordinate to the leader of the congregation that God has provided. The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the head of the church and at the same time, the Spirit of Jesus also calls people to the church to lead. You can imagine the disorder that would come if there was not clear leadership. You can also imagine the disorder that comes when the authority of God’s provided leaders is not acknowledged.

For any of you who have been in positions of leadership, you know well that leadership always brings challenges. There will always be those who are unwilling to follow. And for whatever role Diotrephes played in this particular church, he was not in charge and showed himself to be an aggressive member of the congregation, who just by his personality, was able to sway others to call into question John’s authority and whether they should actually host these missionaries. He was able to establish an opinion, gather people around him, and then turn it into a movement.

And how did he do that? There’s a second symptom here that’s found in 3 John 10. The ESV says, Diotrephes was “talking wicked nonsense against” John. We might say today that Diotrephes was talking trash. His words aren’t only wicked; they’re senseless. They are malicious in their intent, and they’re bogus in their content. Do you get that? The intention is malicious; the content is untrue. It’s a bad combination: malicious intention, untrue content. It’s trash.

So Diotrephes the trash-talker didn’t like that John was in charge and he started to talk trash and even sadder than that, there were people who listened to his trash. There were people who ate his trash up. And of course, we see this all the time, don’t we? Anyone who exercises leadership will face the possibility with being charged, whether those charges are legitimate or illegitimate. Our teachers in the room… Our business leaders… Our ranch or construction site leaders… You each have dealt with the question, “Why are we doing it that way?” And that question comes from someone who thinks that if they were in your position, they would know how to get the job done far better than you. And frankly, they’re resentful of your leadership.

We’ve seen scenarios like these time and time again. For example, in the Bible, when Nehemiah went up and did in Jerusalem what no one else had been able to do, some of his friends who were his opponents sent him a letter. It was an unsealed letter which was very clever. Why leave a letter unsealed? So everyone along the way could read it and so they could get the word out as widely as possible. And the accusation was that the only reason Nehemiah was doing what he was doing was because he was actually planning on making himself the king of Judah, and he was about to go around Judah and say, “Nehemiah is the king of Judah.”

What was Nehemiah actually doing? He was obedient to God. He was leading the people. He didn’t take any nonsense from them. He told them to get off the pew, because they hadn’t been doing anything for, like, a hundred years, and he assigned their responsibilities, and he led. And as a result of leading, he was on the receiving end of all kinds of accusations. That’s part of leadership. And he sent them this reply: “Nothing like what you say is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.” Nehemiah had a clear conscience.

I bring up Nehemiah to say that it’s not a question of if, but when, such an attitude will emerge in a local church. It unfortunately will. And hear me on this, when that sort of thing crops up, the response of the leadership of the church cannot be described as diffident. In other words, the response cannot lack confidence, it cannot be less than forceful, it cannot be less than it ought to be. When such an attitude emerges and the local church leadership is diffident—when reproof and rebuke is called for, it isn’t Christian to refrain. Do you know what it is for leadership to sit idly by, hoping it will all stop? It’s cowardice. It’s cowardice. John is no coward, that’s why he’s writing about it and why he says he’s going to address it when he gets there.

And yet, many a congregation has been absolutely stymied by this sort of stuff. And it’s not because the individuals there don’t recognize the absolute wrongness of the trash talking, but because the leaders themselves are either in cahoots with the trash talker or married into the family of the trash talker or are tied up with the trash talker in some way that they’ve lost any position of being able to be objective and to do what needs to be done. And failure to act when action is called for is not an expression of Christian love. It’s an expression of cowardice.

Now, if the situation arises that such a matter should be confronted, the leadership must approach the offending party with love, and that will require the leadership to have both strength and gentleness. There has to be leading, and there has to be loving. I recently heard Pastor Ray Still of Oakwood Baptist Church in New Braunfels describe the pastor of a church as someone who needed to have an iron rod for a backbone and also needed to be wrapped in cotton balls. I think that’s true for any church leader.

Now, someone here has got to be longing for just a little bit of relief, because I know this has been tough. Thankfully we have some relief to turn to and it will be found and hopefully we will be remembered as a congregation who is

Pursuing Goodness

In contrast to Diotrephes, John tells us about another man in the congregation named Demetrius. And John tells us that 3 John 12 “Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone.” Demetrius is the kind of guy that is in a church and if someone asked, “Do you know Demetrius?” everyone would say, “Of course. He’s one of the best guys around.” Not everyone would respond the same if asked about Diotrephes.

Now, I know that in Luke 6:26, when Jesus was speaking to a group of religious hardliners, Jesus said to them“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you…” And here John is saying that everyone speaks well of Demetrius. Is that I contradiction? I don’t think so. I don’t think it is because Jesus is speaking to religious hardliners who had compromised with people outside of the church. They had compromised on convictions to make sure that pagans spoke well of them, too. John’s not saying that about Demetrius here. He’s talking about what others in the church family have to say about him.

Maybe someone is wondering, “does it matter what people say about us?” To some degree, the answer is yes. Because it does, we all need to do the work of lowering our arrogance, setting aside our own agendas that would see us eliminate every rival and reject guidance from others. See, we all need to remember that in his perfect design of the human being, God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would hear more and say less. When we pursue humility, do you know what people will remember? They won’t remember how eloquent you were. They won’t remember how intelligent you were. They’ll remember other things. And I guarantee you they will remember goodness. Goodness.

Demetrius is remembered for all time in God’s word because of his goodness. Someone says, “well, couldn’t that have been all just a show?” And sure, anyone of us can pretend goodness for a while, but the facts are what matter. For Demetrius, as it says in 3 John 12, the facts are confirmed “from the truth itself.” What you saw in that man is what you got. He lived a humble life of integrity that even if there weren’t a person at his funeral to speak to it, the genuineness of his goodness was self-evident.

Goodness ought to be our aim. It should be something we as a church hope to be remembered by. So let me offer this for you this morning… If you struggle with gossip and negativity towards others in the church, remember that pursuing goodness means building each other up. Now, when I say, “if you struggle with gossip and negativity…” Please remember, y’all, I’m from here. Grew up here. Gossip and negativity around these parts is as common place as Spanish rice and refried beans on your lunch plate. So don’t go thinking that the pastor must be talking to everyone else but me right now, because I bet we’re blind to how common the gossip and negativity is. You will need to do the work of training yourself out of the trash talking and negativity, but the thing is, you can train yourself out of it.

In the spirit of Jesus’ teaching that Luke 6:31 “…as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them,” make it a point this week to compliment at least one person here at church. Share positive words on what you see that God is doing in their lives. Then do it again with another new person the following week. Then do it again and again and again. In one way, yes, complimenting others boost their spirits, but also, if we get into the habit of doing it, it creates an environment where goodness thrives. Do you know what others will see when goodness thrives? They’ll see the love of Christ lived out in relationships. They’ll see unity. They’ll see something so opposite of how Devine has been that they’ll think heaven’s shown up on earth.

At the outset of our time together, we said that we will be considering how we will be remembered. And absolutely, you could have been thinking about how you yourself will be remembered, but let’s not forget that we’re concerned with how we as a church family are relating to one another and in the case of today’s message, how we will be remembered. We saw in this passage from 3 John that Demetrius will always be remembered as someone who pursued God’s goodness in his conduct and his relationships. Like Gaius, who we heard about over the last two weeks, he was welcoming, hospitable, loving…the very symbol of a person redeemed by Christ. And in contrast, Diotrephes will not have any favorable remembrance. His pride and trash-talking led him to ultimately try to undermine what Jesus would have his church do and it had him attempting to refuse these faithful missionaries.

The choice is ours. Last week, we saw that we can be a church that reflects the love and mercy of Jesus. Today, if we would seek God’s help to refuse pridefulness, if we would reject any divisive behavior, if we would pursue goodness, our legacy will be that

We can be remembered for reflecting Jesus’ servant heart

We can be the church who, like the positive examples set before us, would never refuse to welcome anyone. Who would never refuse to be the physical representatives of Jesus on earth.

The world is getting weirder by the day. There are lots of sinful lifestyles that people are living. We must refuse the idea of refusing them here. Jesus didn’t refuse sinners, he served them the gospel as he ate with them and told them about the Father and the coming kingdom. Jesus knows that, in their sin, each person is crying out for salvation.

Picture a church whose doors are always open, not just for worship, but for the weary and lost. A place where people from all walks of life feel welcomed to share their burdens. In this church, members actively seek out those who are struggling, offering prayer, meals, and friendship without expecting anything in return. It’s a gathering of hearts ready to serve, where every member wears their work jeans and an apron instead of a suit because serving others is more important than being served. Does that just have to be a hypothetical scenario? I don’t think it does. I think we can be a living embodiment of the heart of Jesus where the essence of Jesus' servant heart pulses through, challenging every follower to step beyond their comfort zones to share the love of Christ.

Speaking of the love of Christ… Did anyone enjoy the freeze we woke up to yesterday? In the morning I was looking out a window into my backyard, relishing in the beauty of the weeds I’ve worked so hard to grow back there. I noticed something about those weeds that’s stuck with me. In the places where there were shadows cast upon the yard from my fence, the yard had frost covering it. Where the sun was shining, everything looked warm and alive. And I thought, “What a difference the sun makes.”

The same is true when you have a relationship with the S-O-N, my friends. Maybe you’ve come here today and you face real problems. You’re angry at everyone. You’re putting poison in your body. You’re putting poison in your mind. You have refused all sorts of help and maybe now people are refusing you. Please hear me… Jesus Christ will never refuse you when you come to him. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” What a difference the S-O-N makes. He makes all the difference to all who would follow him because his heart of service saw him go to a cross to atone for your sin and mine. If you want to begin to follow him, the Bible says that Romans 10:9-10 “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.”

I’m going to pray and then it’ll be your opportunity to declare in the open that you want to follow Jesus Christ.