Sermon Tone Analysis

For the Sake of the Truth

2 John

The most important reality is divine truth — Divine Truth.

It is the greatest essential.

Listen what the Bible says about Divine Truth.

In — God is the God of truth.

Christ is the Truth in and full of truth in .

Also in , the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Truth.

In , the Scripture is called the Scripture of Truth.

We are save by the Truth, sanctified by the truth.

We love the truth, are judged by the truth, set free by the truth, worship in truth, rejoice in the truth, speak the truth, think the truth, desire the truth, manifest the truth, hear the truth, obey the truth, walk in the truth — we serve God in the truth.

Divine Truth is the most important reality, the greatest essential.

This is absolutely relevant for today.

When Pilate cynically asked, “What is truth?” he reflected what many think of truth today.

Our postmodern view of truth is that truth is relative and not absolute.

Especially when it comes to religion — religion is merely a personal preference so no one can have an absolute view of truth in their religious beliefs.

But Truth — absolute, divine truth — does exist, and it’s the most important reality in the universe.

Five times in the first 4 verses, the word truth is used by John.

John writes in the realm of Truth.

He’s living it.

He’s controlled by it.

He’s motivated by the Truth.

And in this brief letter, John calls us to that same truth in a world of lies and liars.

So, this a letter written with clear exaltations to live in the truth.

In contrast to that is the world we exist in.

It’s a realm of lies presided over by the arch-liar, Satan, who is the father of lies.

He dominates his subjects so that they fail to understand and believe the truth of God.

He domineers men to not speak the truth.

The Bible tells us this.

And so, in this world, everybody lives in one of two realms.

You either live in the realm of truth — the realm of God’s Truth.

Or you live in the realm of lie — believing the lie of the devil.

It’s really quite that simple.

The role of the church is clearly designed in the Bible.

says the church “is the pillar and foundation of the truth.”

They would immediately understand the picture Paul painted because in Ephesus was a massive structure built to Diana, the goddess of the Ephesians.

The temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, with 127 pillars, solid marble, carved and overlaid with gold and studded with jewels.

Each pillar was donated by a king and bore the king’s name giving by each paying homage to the goddess, Diana.

The Pillars held up the massive roof made of stone.

Underneath the pillars was a massive stone foundation strong enough to support the 127 marble pillars that held the massive stone roof.

But think about this, the whole massive structure was built as a testimony of lies to a deception — to a false god — a Big Lie!

The church on the other hand is a monument to the truth.

We exist to represent the Truth, to live out the truth, to uphold the truth.

If anything the church should — it should be the centrality of the truth.

People treat the church so flippantly.

We are to negotiate divine revelation.

Nothing could ever substitute for it because there’s no power in the lie.

Think about this for a moment.

God has exalted His Word to the level of His name.

Psalm 138

Nothing is as important than the Truth — Divine Truth.

Do you see the weightiness of God’s Word?

Do you sense it?

We are the pillar and foundation of the truth.

It’s in this spirit that John writes to this “Elect Lady and her children.”

He’s already written his general epistle to everybody — that was 1 John.

Now he writes to this elect lady and then 3 John he writes to one man.

Why does he write to her?

He writes because at that time, preachers traveled and stayed in homes.

Those that preached the gospel along with other teachers were itinerant, moving all over in an area from place to place and they would depend upon hospitality of fellow believers.

If you remember when Jesus sent out His 12 Disciples, two by two in Galilee — you will remember He sent them with some criteria by which to determine what homes they were going to stay in and how to deal with that.

He did the same thing when He sent out the 72.

If they were received then remain there.

So they would travel around and preach and somebody showed them hospitality.

Well, this thing worked out well for the false teachers as well.

They would claim to be true preacher, true teachers of the true Gospel, true representatives of God.

They would come into town and look for lodging with people of the church.

They would stay there and once embedded there they would teach false doctrine and subvert the Gospel.

No doubt this is what happened in Corinth.

This is what was going here.

And so in verse 10 you have:

No doubt this is not an easy thing to deal with because Christians are called to hospitality.

The Greek word translated hospitality means “loving strangers” — Loving Strangers.

Listen.

This is something that has not changed since the beginning of the church.

You not only have to concern who preaches to you.

You also have to concern yourself with who comes into your homes.

The church has to be protected from deception.

The church has to continually concern herself with the Truth.

This “Elect Lady” had unwittingly opened her home to strangers who brought false teaching.

No doubt, she was living out :

We’re to open our lives in our homes to strangers.

We are to do this, right.

She was possibly thinking down this line.

“I’m going to open my home to them.

Who knows, I might be entertaining angels — Like Abraham and Sarah did!”

And then you have instruction from Peter.

In fact, in , a woman could not be put on the list of widows in the church when her husband died if she hadn’t shown hospitality to strangers.

So, Hospitality was raised to a significantly high level.

It was a matter of spiritual virtue.

And she may have though, “I’m absolutely doing the right thing.”

But there’s always something more important than hospitality — Always more important than Hospitality.

What is it?

The Truth.

The Truth is always most important.

So, this woman, perhaps well intentioned, even obedient to the Word in being hospitable — had actually been the door through which the false teaching was coming into the church.

And so, inspired by the Holy Spirit, John wrote her to instruct her how to be hospitable and maintain the Truth.

And So John is concerned about the Truth first and foremost and he writes a personal letter to make a public impact.

John’s point to her is “You have to be careful to maintain the truth.

We live in the truth.”