In the Word

Pastor Mike Warren: Second John. Making our way through first, second, and third John, and then we will be in Jude and finally in Revelation. How many have been through Revelation with us since just a couple of you? How many haven't? Quite a few. Okay. Looking forward to that. Let's pray and we will just dive right in.

Father, we thank you this morning for your word. Again, as John just reminds us as the close of the first century, a couple of things happening at that time in the churches: false teaching coming in, Gnosticism taking root, and then the churches cooling in their relationship with you, Lord. Always the two dangers in the church: false teaching, and then we're losing our passion, losing that desire to serve you with our whole heart. Those are the two things we always have to struggle against. The church is always at war with them. So Lord, this morning, as we look at these things, just remind us, Lord Jesus, that we have to run this race to the end.

We have to be like Paul. We have to be able to say at the end of our life that we fought a good fight. We agonized a good *agonizomai*. We finished the course, we never gave up, and we defended and guarded the faith not only in our own life but in those around us because we know that there's a crown waiting for us on the other side. So Father, just encourage us again this morning. Short little epistle, but pithy and powerful. Holy Spirit, take these words this morning and don't allow them just to go into our head. We're not here for head knowledge. May they go deeper than that. May they go into our hearts, and may they produce something, we pray, in the mighty name of Jesus. And all God's kids would say, amen.

We come to this short little epistle. It's one chapter. I should be able to get through it today. It's 13 verses. If you have a King James Bible, it's 245 words. The time of this writing, many scholars believe that they were written backwards, that the last book that John wrote was probably the Gospel. He's already come off the island of Patmos. He's already fulfilled his exile. He's probably with Polycarp in Ephesus, and this will come into play, some of this background.

I think he's writing from the church of Ephesus to the church at Smyrna. You can have different views on this. I don't think he's writing to a person. I don't think he's writing to the elect lady. I think that's code because at the end of the first century, the Roman Empire were persecuting and hunting down Christians. Some of the places I got to visit when I was up at Cappadocia and Pontus in Turkey there, some of the churches that Paul had planted at that time were actually underground, literally four stories underground because of the persecution. They were living in the fear of the Roman Empire coming and finding them and then putting them in the arenas and using them for fodder for entertainment.

So I think there's a code here. We're going to see it in a few moments. But he's writing probably at the time when he's come off his exile. He's with Polycarp in Ephesus. I think he wrote third John first, second John second, and first John last. He's going to make a mention of it here that I wanted to come to you, but I'll write further about these things because these are two short little epistles, third John and second John, and then we get the longer version of the same subject in first John.

But the theme of the book is truth. John mentions truth in all of his writings 39 times, 20 times in the Gospel. He mentioned it in first John eight times. He'll mention it five times in these 245 words in these 13 verses, and all of the word for truth is mentioned in the first five verses—five times in the first five verses. This word for truth, *Alētheia*, means foundation. It means something that's not progressive, something that doesn't change, something that is solid. The Bible says in Matthew 24 that heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away, not one jot nor tittle of it till all things be fulfilled.

So we're going to see this morning two things that John's going to mention to us about truth. Truth is the foundation that we stand on this morning. There is no other foundation. Paul said, "I laid a foundation, and the foundation of truth that no one else can lay. Be careful how you build on that foundation." But the reason why we're here this morning is because of truth. We're not here because of the aesthetics of the building. We're not here because we have a slick worship team. I think we do because my wife is on it, but we don't have one. It's not because we have the best program. It's not because of a denomination. We're here this morning, as we're going to see, because we desire to lay our lives down on a foundation of truth.

The Bible says if you know the truth, the truth will set you free. In fact, one of the things I'm seeing going on today that concerns me deeply as a pastor—and I've been a pastor long enough and I have the privilege of hindsight to see what's coming up—is that there's a lot of churches that have abandoned the truth, they have abandoned Bible doctrine. My concern is not that they're not saved, but they could be deceived. In fact, that's what John says when he writes to the Thessalonians. He said they were deceived because they didn't know the truth and they didn't love the truth.

So truth is so important. We're finding out from Barna's research that Bible-teaching churches in America are shrinking. The seeker-sensitive, the placating of emotions, and stimulating of feelings—they're increasing. But we're living in a time where truth will be extremely important because we're told in the last days, seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. Paul tells us there will be a falling away from the biblical faith, not a falling away from church attendance, but a falling away from the biblical faith. The very first deception that Satan brought into the world was challenging what when he said to Eve, "Hath God said?" Well, as a matter of fact, he has. And not only did he say it, he wrote it down.

So the idea, the theme, is truth. He's going to mention two things about truth. Truth is the foundation for the church. There's no other reason for us to meet unless we're here to worship, let the Holy Spirit work in our hearts, study the Bible, the inspired, inerrant, authoritative word of God, and let the Holy Spirit speak through the word of God and change our hearts. He tells us about the foundation in first Timothy chapter three, verses 14 and 15. "These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if I tarry long, if I can't get there as soon as I would desire," he said, "that thou mayest know how thou ought to behave yourselves in the house of God," which is the church. It's the bride of Christ. It is the church of the living God. It is the pillar and the ground.

The word for "ground" there can also be foundation. It is the pillar. It's the place where you mark something to keep it square, to keep it right. When I was in Istanbul, there was a pillar there where all the roads met. From what I understand, there's another in Rome where all roads meet. It's the center that keeps the city square. The church is the pillar and it is the foundation of—now notice very carefully because it's emphatic in the Greek—*the* truth. Not *a* truth. We're hearing a lot about this today, that I have my truth, you have your truth, there's a truth, there's progressive truth. No, there's not. There is *the* truth. You can have your opinions about the truth, but the truth is the truth. You do well and you are wise if you study to show yourself approved, a workman who need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

In Ephesians chapter two, we are built, we're established upon the foundation of, first of all, the apostles, the New Testament. I think we're coming into Revelation and we'll keep track of when the last time we were in Revelation. I think it was about four years ago. So we made our journey through the New Testament in about four years, this last time, four and a half years. But we study through the New Testament and then the prophets. We study through the Old Testament; we're in Jeremiah. Because those things are important. That's our foundation: Old Testament and New Testament, not just the New Testament.

You can't understand the New Testament without having a working knowledge of the Old Testament. There are so many references in the Old Testament that give us understanding of what the New Testament is talking about. I read one author that said there's between 800 and 1,200 references in the book of Revelation from the Old Testament. In fact, you can't even understand who the 24 elders are seated around the throne there unless you have a working knowledge of the Old Testament. And the simple question is, how many divisions were the priesthood in the Old Testament? 24. Who's a royal priesthood and a holy nation? The church. Who's seated around the throne as Jesus promised, in white robes, crowns? The church. The church is in heaven in chapter four. It really goes to theology; you have to have a working knowledge.

So the prophets, and then Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, the Gospels, his teaching, and Revelation. The whole thing fits together. So the first thing that John wants to remind us of here when he speaks of truth is that it is foundational. I've heard some pastors say, "Well, let's just agree on the things we can agree on and on the non-essentials, let's just agree to agree agreeably." Well, let me ask you, what is a non-essential? Do we believe here at Gold Country Calvary Chapel that God's word is inspired? Do we believe that holy men wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? And by the way, it says all *graphē*, the writing is what is ordained, not the men necessarily that wrote it, but God made sure what was written was inspired, God-breathed. All scripture, God-breathed. Do you believe that it is inerrant in its original autographs? I do. Do you believe that it's authoritative, that it says what it means and means what it says? I do. Do you understand that God so loved you that he wanted to give you a roadmap? And it's written at a sixth-grade level; it's not hard to understand because he wants us to study it because his word, as it washes over our minds and hearts, reveals the nature and character of our God.

So the foundation. And here's the second thing that he's going to remind us of this morning. You'll see it as we walk through these 13 verses. He's going to remind us this morning that you can't have fellowship with somebody else outside of agreeing that the word of God is inerrant, inspired, authoritative, and that it's true. Unless two agree, they can't walk together. The church is moving toward this thing of unanimity. The Lord never said that we should walk in unanimity; he said we should walk in unity. And unity in what? *The* faith. *The* faith that was once delivered to the saints.

We'll look at that this morning. But as we were back in first John in chapter one, it's been a while, but in verse six and seven it says this: "If we say that we have fellowship with him," that is with the Lord, "and we walk in darkness, we live in a lie, we're not being obedient to the truth," then he says you're a liar. You lie because truth, by its very nature, because the Spirit of truth has come to reveal God's truth to our hearts, it demands something of us. It so cooks and works in our hearts, the truth of God, that it deals with issues of a heart. It circumcises our heart. It washes us with the blood of Jesus Christ with hyssop, and then it pours the word of God upon us.

And so if we're here this morning and we're saying we have fellowship, we have oneness, we have this intimate relationship with the Father, but we're not walking in truth, we're walking in darkness—and by the way, he's going to use terminology like dark being false, light being true—if you're walking in darkness, then you're a liar. You don't know the truth, you've never come to the truth, you've never been born of the truth. But then he goes on to say—and again, I love how John puts this, it's in the emphatic—*the* truth. Not walk in truth or *a* truth or your truth or my truth, but *the* truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then guess what? We not only have fellowship with him, we have fellowship with one another.

Some of you guys get here at 5:00 on Wednesday nights just to hang out in the fellowship hall. Man, most of our conversations are around the things of the Lord. It's just iron sharpening iron. The five things in the early church—and that's the reason why they were so successful in reaching the world, that's why it was said of the early church, "those who have come here have turned the world upside down"—when you read in Acts chapter two, there were five things: they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine. I've heard pastors tell me, "We don't study doctrine." And my question is, why? "Well, it's divisive." Well, it is divisive. It separates sheep from goats. It separates wheat from tares. It separates heaven from hell. You can't even know that you're saved without Bible doctrine, a systematic theology, a systematic teaching from the word of God. That's why when Paul was getting ready to leave, he challenged Timothy. He said, "I charge you before God, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom, you preach the word. You do it when people want to hear it; you do it when they don't want to hear it." We're in a time when I don't think they want to hear it so much. You correct, you reprove, you instruct with all longsuffering and—what's that word?—doctrine, truth.

So he says if we are walking in the truth, if our lives are built upon the foundation of God's word, the truth, then we have fellowship with the Father and we have fellowship with one another. We have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, because we put our faith in what Christ has done for us, it cleanses us. And I like the old King James, I do, because the "eth" means it's in the aorist tense in the Greek, that he's constantly cleansing us of our sin.

And so the two things that John's going to bring out that are so important about truth are that it is the foundation for the church. You don't have a church if the church is not built on the truth of God's word. You have a social group, you can have a lot of other things, you can have a religious system, but you don't have a church. Because the church of the living God, the church of Jesus Christ, the bride of Christ, is built upon a foundation of truth: the apostles, the prophets, Jesus Christ teaching him himself. That's our foundation. And then, if you read the verse on the way out, "but we are built together, framed together for a habitation of God by his Holy Spirit," so the Spirit takes that truth and it cooks in our hearts. How many felt the Holy Spirit working in your heart this morning during the worship? Well, yeah. We get here early to pray for that. I'm going to rat Wayne out. Wayne came to me last Sunday and said, they're kind of new to the church, maybe six, seven months, five months, something like that. And Wayne told me he's never been here that the Holy Spirit hasn't spoke to him. And it's a good thing that the Holy Spirit's speaking to you instead of me. That's a good thing, Wayne. But we expect him through the word to do that. Amen.

So let me give you the outline. It's a simple outline because the first six verses John is going to remind us that we should love the truth. We should love the truth. We've had a lot of people come here because I'll teach for an hour, hour and 15 minutes, and they'll say things to me like, "If you could just shorten it up, we'd stay. We love the teaching, but it's too long." Well, then you don't love the truth. I promised you guys to get you out of here on Christmas Eve service and I lied. I think it was Tracy's fault; I think she went over. But we love the truth here. Amen.

So the first six verses he's going to talk about loving the truth. Verse seven he's going to warn us about false teachers. Verse eight and nine he's going to warn us to guard ourselves from false teachers. Verse 10 and 11 he's going to warn us not to be involved with false teachers. And then he gives salutation in verse 12 through 13. So let's dive right in.

"The elder." I like how he starts out. Because you've got to understand, this is the close of the first century. John now is the last living witness or the last living apostle of Jesus Christ. He's going to die the martyrdom of an old age. And so when he addresses himself as the elder, he is the final apostle. Listen, there were only 12 of them and they had a very unique position in the church. These 12 apostles were so gifted that what they wrote became the word, the inspired word of God. And there were only 12. You see a lot of this stuff going on today where they're saying they're apostles; they're not. The reason why we know there were only 12 is because when the New Jerusalem comes down, there are 12 foundations and each one of those apostles are written in the foundations. There were 12. John is the last of them. He's the final elder.

And he says, "The elder unto the elect lady and her children." And again, you can hold a different view and it doesn't matter to me. Some hold that he's writing to a person and to her children, but I think in verse 13 it's explained when he says, "the children of thy elect sister greet thee." I think this is code because in those days you didn't want to give up the address of a church, you didn't want to give up the name of a church, because the Roman Empire would hunt it down. I think this is John personally writing to the church at Smyrna because we know that Polycarp was the pastor of Ephesus and also he was the bishop of Smyrna. And I think he's warning people about the time we're living in.

And again, don't forget two things are going on, they're woven into the DNA of this simple epistle. He's going to correct false teaching; he's going to correct Gnosticism that was just taking root—started in Colossae, has now taken root in this area. And also, he's going to warn us about not cooling in our faith, that we should continue as God has commanded us to love the Lord our God with our whole heart. And listen, that's a struggle. Isn't it a struggle just to stay there?

Anyway, he says, "The elder unto the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth, and not only I but also all them that have known the truth." It's in the emphatic—*the* truth. "For truth's sake which dwelleth in us." It's not an ethereal thing; it's not an intellectual thing. It's amazing to me how many Christians want to make the word of God intellectual, and they teach in a way to give information. Listen, a long time ago I got to meet this wonderful man that Chuck Smith used to invite to the pastors' conference, Stanley Voke. And I got to be one of the speakers at that time, and afterwards Stanley came up to me and said, "Listen, young man, when you pick a text, you find Jesus in the text. And don't aim at the head because people aren't converted with the head; you aim at the heart because with the heart men are converted unto salvation."

And so he's going to tell us that the greatest commandment is to what? To love the Lord your God with all of your heart. For the truth's sake, which dwelleth in us and shall be with us forever. Again, Jesus said heaven and earth will pass away, but not one jot nor tittle of my word will fail. In fact, in Psalm 138:2, he says that he honors his word above his name. So that's why there's such importance; it should be, that's why it's the foundation. That's why it is the source of fellowship: truth.

And so he's reminding us that it dwells in us, it will be with us forever. And then in verse three we have the greeting. "Grace be with you, mercy," the Siamese twins of the New Testament, but here John adds another: "grace be with you, mercy, and peace." You will never experience peace without grace. If you're here this morning, you're religious, and you're trying to earn a relationship with the Lord through your efforts, there's no peace in that. God has given you what you don't deserve—that's grace—and he didn't give you what you did deserve—that's mercy. And because of that, we have peace. Amen. We have peace. The peace *from* God; it doesn't come from us, it doesn't come from this world, it doesn't come from other people, it comes from the Lord, our God and our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

And notice carefully what he says here. This is where he puts out that dig. He said, "God our Father," according to the Gnostics, "God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father." Because Gnosticism was teaching that Jesus didn't come in a human form, he came in a spirit. In fact, they even go so far to say that Jesus was completely human, no deity until the cross, and the Spirit of *the* Christ came upon him when he was redeeming the world. And so the perversion of that theology went even further, where it says so you can live as carnally as you want. In fact, they would go out of their way to do carnal things—sexual orgies, drunkenness, parties—to prove that the flesh didn't mean anything, it just meant if you worshiped the Lord in your spirit.

James, the whole reason why James writes his epistle is because of antinomianism; they were saying that there are no laws. Hyper-grace: as long as you're saved by grace, you can live any way you want. Does that sound familiar today? It's not true, is it? Because he's going to tell us that. He's going to tell us in a few moments that if you love him, you keep his commandments. But John begins his Gospel by saying, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning. All things were created by him; nothing was created without him." And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He was the light. He was the light-bearer. He was the express image of God. Hebrews chapter one tells us that he by himself purged our sins and then sat down at the right hand of the Father.

So God the Father and Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and in love. Because if you're walking in the truth and you know who he is, man, you love him. And because you love him, you love one another. And then John says this: "I greatly rejoice." He says, "I rejoice greatly that I have found, that I have discovered of thy children," writing to this church, "that you are walking in truth." Your manner of living is in truth. The way you act, the truth has had an impact upon your life. It's not just something that's gone in your head, it's not something that's just a belief system, but it's gone much deeper than that. It's gone into your heart, it changes the way you think, it changes the way you live. Listen, you're a new creature in Christ Jesus. It changes everything about you. That's why when Paul writes to the church at Colossae—and again, that's where Gnosticism had its root, it came out of the church at Colossae—he writes them and says, "If then you be risen with Christ, if you are born of the Spirit, if you're a child of God, then you should be seeking those things that are above, that are at the right hand of the Father, and set your affections on things above. Because your life is dead, it's hidden in Christ, who is your life, so that when Christ comes, you go with him."

It changes everything about us. We have a different worldview. We think differently, we act differently. We have different priorities. When the Bible says love not the world, we don't love this world. We're not so attached to this world. Love not the world nor the things that are in the world, because if the love of the world be in you, the love of the Father is not. They can't coexist. Because all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life—well, they're perishing. And those who are caught up in those things are perishing, but he that doth the will of the Father shall abide forever.

And so when he's reminding us here about who Jesus is, and Jesus said to Nicodemus, "You must be born again." And if you're born again, it changes everything. And then you begin to crawl and then stumble and then walk and then skip and then run. You can do all of those things. He says, "I rejoice greatly that I found of my children walking in truth, as we have received a commandment of the Father." You know, Jesus said, "If you love me, you keep my commandments." And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which you had from the beginning, that we love one another. And again, it's the fruit of the Spirit. How do we know we're born of the Spirit? Because the fruit of the Spirit is that we love the Lord our God with our whole heart and the second commandment can't be separated: we love each other. I just had a guy tell me that he was willing to—he loves me so much he's willing to take my truck and detail it. Now, that's love. He has no idea what he's asking. I told him, I said, "I haven't detailed my old truck in a long time." "Oh, I love doing it." Well, I'll bring it over. You can keep it as long as you want.

But it says this in verse six: "And this is love, that we walk after his commandments." In other places he said they're not grievous. It's the foundation. "This is the commandment that we have heard from him in the beginning, that we should walk in it." That we should love the Lord and love one another.

Now he's going to warn us as we come to verse seven about these false teachers. He says, "For many deceivers have entered into the world." And the way we know they're a deceiver is because they confess not that Jesus is come in the flesh. They don't understand that Jesus—and the best description we can give of him is the God-man—that he was completely human with undiminished deity. That he was the eternal Word, the third person of the Godhead, of the Trinity. As we read there last week in second chapter of Philippians, that he humbled himself and took on human form to the obedience of the cross. That he was completely God in human form. He'd have to be to remove our sins. But anyone who doesn't confess that Jesus Christ was the eternal Word, that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary death on Calvary's cross for our sins, rose again the third day, ascended to the Father, offered his blood in the tabernacle in heaven for our sins, seated at the right hand of the throne because his work is done, and you're saved by grace through faith, that not of yourself, it's a gift, not of works lest you could boast, but you become his workmanship, his *poiēma* in Christ Jesus—people who don't confess that, they're deceivers. Beware of that.

Because he goes on to say that these deceivers, this is the Antichrist. I was having a conversation with my son last night and early this morning because the word Antichrist doesn't mean against Christ; it means instead of Christ. The Devil is always trying to put a substitute that you can hang your hat on. And if he can't catch you in evolution, then he'll catch you in a religious system where you think you're okay when you're not. Jesus didn't say you must be religious; Jesus said you must be born again. You need that new birth. And so they always offer a substitute.

Or, if they offer the truth, it's with something else. You have to receive Christ and be water baptized. Or you have to receive Christ and join a church. Or you have to receive Christ *and*—if there's an "and" attached to it, it's not the Gospel. Because what Jesus Christ did is sufficient. His grace is sufficient.

So then he says in verse eight, now he's warned us about the false teachers, now he's going to warn us what we do in response to these false teachers. He said, "Now listen, you need to be careful, look to yourselves." I mean, don't—even if I say it from here, don't just take—be good Bereans. Go home and read it for yourself, study it out to see whether it be so. Because he said, "Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward." We run this thing to the end.

This is what Jude is saying—and we're going to get—I don't want to jump too far ahead, but I'm going to read it anyway. Jude chapter one, verse three and four. He said, "Beloved..." now this is Jude, he's a uterine brother of Jesus, he's a younger of the four brothers that Mary had after Jesus. Same mom, different dad, but he grew up in the home of Jesus. Can you imagine having God as your older brother? And Goody Two-Sandals. But so Jude writes to us and he says this: "Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you about the common salvation..." he just wanted to write about salvation. How wonderful it is, what God has done for us, the grace through the work of his older brother, which is the Lord. Can you imagine? Just want—there's times I just want to talk about that. I don't want to argue doctrine; I just want to say, "Man, it's what Jesus did for me, what Jesus did for us." And you wish that we could just do that sometimes.

But Jude says, "Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you about this common salvation, it was necessary, it was needful for me to write unto you and to exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith." *Epa-agonizomai*. You should earnestly contend. *Epa* means you give your whole self to it. *Epi* is when the baptism of the Holy Spirit—that's one of the words, *epi*, when it comes on you. *Epa-agonizomai*: that you give your whole self to pursuing truth, guarding truth, speaking truth, living truth, making sure the truth doesn't escape you. That I should write unto you to earnestly contend for the faith that was once delivered unto the saints. Why? For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before ordained of old to this condemnation. They're ungodly men, turning the grace of our God—that's antinomianism, that's Gnosticism—turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness (loose living, immoral living) and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so we're always against this. It's a constant battle, guys. Listen to me, it's a constant battle. We have to earnestly defend, we have to look to ourselves, we have to guard it. We have to do again what Paul said at the end of his life: "I agonized a good *agonizomai*, I fought a good fight," because it is a fight. And I never gave up, I never quit, I never sat down. I finished the course and I defended the faith.

And so he warns us there in verse eight and then again in verse nine: "Whosoever transgresseth," and this word means to step outside of or go beyond the scripture. See, again, it's not that Satan comes exactly against scripture, he adds to it. Again, you can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Ancient rabbis say that when she said—because she added to the word, you remember? The Lord said we should not eat it nor touch it. He never said to touch it, not to touch it. In some of the ancient rabbi writings that I've read said at that moment when she added "to touch it," Satan pushed her into the tree, and when she touched the tree, she didn't die. And that's when he said, "See, you shall not surely die." We're warned at the end of this thing not to add to it or take from it. Very important we stay centered in it. "Whosoever transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God." They just simply don't. "He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and he has the Son." You have both.

So we have a lot of people trying to wake us up, give us Watchtower magazines. We have a lot of people riding around on ten-speed bicycles. No, I'm telling you, there are a lot of religious systems that deny the authority, position, and deity of Christ. He's either Michael the Archangel or he's the brother of Lucifer—all created beings. But we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We believe that he was completely divine and he came in human form to die in our place so that we might have forgiveness of sins.

And it says, "If there come..." now he's going to tell us how we respond to these people. Now be careful. He says, "If there come any unto you and they bring not this doctrine, receive them not into your home, neither bid them 'God speed.'" You don't want to be a partaker of another man's sin. They're bringing deception. I can't tell you, I must have a big "X" for the Jehovah's; they don't come to my house anymore. And I told them, "Stay away from my neighbors, because if I see your car over my neighbors' house, I'm going over there. Because I love my neighbors." Because they're bringing deception. I've talked to them for hours, but the moment they blaspheme who Jesus Christ is, I'm done. Time to get in your car and leave. Because you are the spirit of Antichrist. You're promoting that. And so you don't bid them "God speed," for he that biddeth them "God speed" is a partaker of their evil deeds.

We're truth-bearers, we're light-bearers. We're the salt of the earth, we're the light of the world. Our job is to bear the truth of God's word to humanity that doesn't know truth. And we're to do it in such a way that we speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God. We want to make sure even if people are offended by the truth—and they will be—that they've heard the truth. That's why we have those packets in the back to leave for your loved ones so that after the Rapture, they can plug in that thumb drive and they're going to get the truth. And they're going to get a pattern and a way from the truth how to get to heaven even though they missed the Rapture. We're very concerned about being truth-bearers. We're spending a lot of money in this church every month on putting truth out in radios because we believe that when you hear the truth, the truth will set you free. Truth is important.

And then now he closes off and he says, "Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink, but I trust to come unto you and speak to you face to face, that our joy may be full." Well, apparently he didn't get to do that, so he has to write another letter. I think third John, second John, and then first John. You can have a different opinion, it's okay.

And then he says this: "The children of the elect sister," your sister church. And we know that there was a real connection because of the geographical location of Smyrna and Ephesus. And it would seem as you read the scriptures that Polycarp was also the bishop of Smyrna as the pastor of Ephesus. We know that that's where Paul went after he was released from his exile in Patmos; he went to Ephesus. In fact, we know from historians that at the end of every service because, you know, it was James and John—this is James and John, the sons of thunder. In fact, he still had the nickname—I can't remember the word they use in the Greek, but it's—he had a thunderous voice even as an old man.

And so at the end of every service, they would bring him up and set him on the stage, and they would say to John, "Do you have anything?" Because you're the last surviving elder. "Do you have anything to say to us?" Historians of today tell us that he would say this over and over: he would say, "My little children, love one another, because love is of God, and he that loveth knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God because God is love." And Polycarp or whoever it was would say, "Well, is that it?" He'd go, "That's it." And they'd take him down, and next Sunday they'd bring him back up again. But he had one of those thunderous voices, kind of like a Dave Hawking voice. Barry White. Kind of a thunderous voice. And he would say this over and over because he knew if you loved, you had the fruit of the Spirit. If you had the fruit of the Spirit, you had the Spirit. If you had the Spirit, you had Christ. If you had Christ, you had God. If you had all of them, then you were okay.

Amen. So this little epistle, like I said, one chapter, 13 verses. In different translations the word count's a little different, so but in the King James that we're studying, there's 245 words here. And the theme of it is truth: that we should love the truth, that we should beware of deceivers that want to pervert the truth, that we need to guard the truth in our own hearts, and we can't associate with people who don't walk in the truth because they'll have an effect upon you. And being light-bearers and truth-bearers is going to cost you something. Jesus said if they've hated me, they're going to hate you. And they don't hate you because they hate you; they hate you because you bear the truth. And it says they don't want to come to the light because the light exposes their deeds. But we're still responsible, guys, to speak the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. And I will tell you if you truly love somebody, you'll do that because you care about their soul.

Amen. Short little epistle, all about truth. So let's go ahead and stand, get the worship team up here, and we'll close our service this morning. How many need special prayer or you know that you're going to be hanging around family that are sick? Don't forget to use the hand sanitizer around here because in the flu and cold season—did my microphone stop working when I said let's go ahead and stand? It did stop working? All right. So who needs just going through stuff? Who needs prayer, special prayer this morning? Because I know you guys are going to get out and get with family. Okay, just a few of you guys.

Father, we thank you. Reason I say that is because we're going through a season right now where we're going to have people at our house that don't know the truth, that don't know you. And Lord, you are challenging us to speak the truth. And I know it's difficult because sometimes it might even incite an argument or cause division. And so, Lord, I pray for those who raised their hands because I know many have already come to me and Kyle and said, "Just pray for us. We're going to be with a bunch of family members that don't know the Lord and we need to share." So Father, I just pray that you would give boldness, that you would give strength, that you would do the work in their heart for so that when they come and speak the truth, it would find fertile ground and that it would bring salvation.

Lord, we believe here at Gold Country Calvary Chapel that time is running out. We are that last generation. So many things are going on around prophecy being fulfilled left and right—little things, Lord, not the big things, they've already been taken care of, but little things. And so, Lord, while there's yet time, stir in our hearts to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all of our family no matter what it costs us. And we pray it in Jesus' name. And all God's kids would say, amen.

Let's worship the Lord.