Truth: The Foundation of Love & Unity

0:55I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. 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. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not Confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourself, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

2:08Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete. The children of your elect sister greet you. This is the word of God. You may be saved. Foundations, as we know, are really important. If you don't have a solid foundation, then everything that you build on top of that foundation is going to crumble. If you've been paying attention to the news, you probably heard last week about the parking garage that collapsed in Irving, Texas. About 11:30 a.m. last Tuesday, a section of the second floor caved in, dropping multiple cars onto. Top of the cars below them, and then about five hours later, the garage collapsed again, dropping dozens more cars on top of the cars below. Thankfully, no one was injured in this accident, no one was killed, and so God has been very gracious in that. But as the firefighters began to examine the scene and see what might be the cause of this terrible accident, they've come to realize that the foundation underneath the building has shifted more than a foot over the last six months.

3:35You can't build on top of a poor foundation. And that's a principle that Jesus taught throughout his ministry, and he returned to it many times during his ministry and his teaching. And that applies, of course, not just to buildings, but to what we believe and how we live our lives. And so today in our society, you have a lot of people advocating for principles like love and unity. You hear those things talked about a lot on social media and on the news, and they will say, you know, we just need to love one another more. What we need is to unify.

4:11But there's no foundation for those lofty ideals. And so love and unity prove to be as evasive as ever. You see, love and unity are wonderful ideals. They are ideals that we should pursue, but they have to have a firm foundation on which to rest. And so, this morning, as we look at the book of 2 John together, we're going to be looking at these themes of truth and love and unity. And what we're going to learn together today is that the foundation of Christian love and unity is truth. And so, let's look now at the text together here in 2 John.

4:50You see, right here at the outset that the author of the letter is not specified. This man just simply refers to himself as the elder. Most likely, this is the Apostle John. Not only did the early Christian sources attribute this letter to John, but it was written about the same time as 1 John and 3 John. And it was written in a similar style. And it addresses the same primary theme as we'll see in just a little while here. And so, the question is: why didn't John just simply identify himself if he's the author?

5:27Well, there could be several reasons. Perhaps John was just so well known in the Christian community at this point that he needed no introduction. I mean, he's the last surviving apostle. He's an old man, elderly in age. And so, just by referring to himself as the elder, probably everyone in the Christian community, especially the church to whom he was writing, knew that it was the Apostle John. Another possibility is that John was simply concerned. He was concerned that in an age where persecution was extremely intense, That the letter might be intercepted and used as evidence against either him or the church, especially to whom that he was writing. And so he didn't want to cause any problems, and so he just used familiar names. But whatever the reason, there is sufficient internal and external evidence that the Apostle John was the author. And so we're going to assume this morning, for our purposes, that he was the author. The second question that arises immediately is: who is this elect lady and her children?

6:32And you've got two main views here. The first main view is that he could be writing to an actual woman and her actual children. That seems fairly straightforward, right? It's addressed to a lady and her children, and so maybe it really is an actual woman and her children. But the content of the letter, and especially the context given by verse 13, would suggest that he's not actually writing to a specific woman and her children. But rather, and this is the second main view, that John is writing to a church and to the members of that church. As we know in Scripture, the church is known as the bride of Christ, and so that kind of terminology, referring to the church as a lady or as a woman, is typical all throughout Scripture. We also know that the church, both the universal church as well as the local church, is referred to as God's elect. You see that language used all throughout the Bible. Particularly in places like 1 Peter and other letters that were written roughly around this same time period. But perhaps the strongest indication that this letter was written to a church and not to an individual is that in the Greek you can see that John switches from the second person singular, you, to the second person plural, which in Texas we call y'all.

7:54That doesn't come out in English because when you and I are reading, we just see you and you, and we use that word to mean singular and plural, which is why I think in our English translations we should just adopt Texan. And then it would just be you and y'all. And so you would see very clearly that a third of the way through the letter, he switches to y'all. He's talking to a group of people. And so it seems clear that he's writing not to an individual, but to a local church that probably did meet in a home that may have been hosted by a woman, as we see in the book of Acts and elsewhere. You notice that John has great affection for this body of believers. Look at what he writes. He says, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth.

8:41Right here at the outset, we have the first two of five total references to truth. And truth, like love, comes out as a major theme in this very short letter of 2 John. Now, why did they share this love for one another? Well, look at verse 2. John says, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. So now you have three big concepts in the first verse alone. You've got truth, love, and unity that get expounded on in verse 2. And as I mentioned in the introduction, you know, many people today want unity. You hear calls for unity in the government. Right? Both Republicans and Democrats are saying we need to unify. We need to come together around a set of ideals to get things done.

9:35You hear calls for unity in our country. Again and again on the news and on social media, we're hearing our country is deeply divided. We need to unify. We need to come together. And then, of course, you hear calls for unity in the church. But what we see here is that the essential ingredients for unity are love and truth. Love and truth are the essential ingredients for unity. And John says that he and the other believers loved this church that he's writing to in truth.

10:11And so, friends, the reality is you can't have unity apart from truth and love. Unity without truth is compromise. And unity without love is hypocrisy. Unity without truth is compromise, and unity without love is hypocrisy. So if you try to unify a group of people, but they don't agree on the same truth, then you're going to have to concede, someone is going to have to concede what they believe in order to have unity. And if you try to unify a group of people who won't make the hard decisions and the hard choices to love one another, then what you have is a group of people who are merely pretending to love one another so that they can accomplish whatever they want to accomplish based on the unity. And that's hypocrisy.

11:13So you see, the reason that these believers enjoyed unity is because they loved one another, and their love was based in the truth. Now please don't misunderstand. You can love people that you don't agree with. In fact, Scripture commands us to love people that we don't agree with. So I'm not saying we only love people that we agree with on the same principles of truth. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is you can't be unified with somebody that you don't agree with on what the truth is because you're divided at the most basic level. You have different world views. You have different ideas about what corresponds to reality, what is right and what is wrong. And so you can love that person, but that love is only going to go so far because you're divided at the deepest level on what really is the truth.

12:11And so John and these believers had this great unity, and they had this great unity because, as he says here, the truth is abiding in them. And he means, I think, two things by that. First, he means the truth of the gospel is abiding in them. So they're holding on to the truth about Jesus' life and death and resurrection and what that meant for them. And beyond that, as we learn through the gospels, when we believe in Jesus, we don't just kind of have this abstract, distant relationship with him. No, he comes and makes his home with us. He actually comes to dwell in us through the person of the Holy Spirit. And so we have the truth in us in two senses: through belief in the gospel and through the actual presence of God.

13:00That's why they enjoyed this great unity, is because the truth was abiding in them, and that's why they loved one another so much. And so, friends, in the same way, we are going to grow in unity as a local church as we grow in love for one another. And we're going to grow in love for one another in direct proportion to the degree that we increasingly embrace and submit to the truth. I want you. To look at what John Stott wrote about this idea. Look on the screen. He says, Since Christian love is founded upon Christian truth, we shall not increase the love which exists between us by diminishing the truth which we hold in common. In contemporary movements towards church unity, we must never compromise the very truth on which alone true love and unity depend.

13:59In other words, the truth is the foundation for Christian love and unity. So John closes out the introduction here in verse 3, and he does so in a fairly common way. He prays grace, mercy, and peace upon them. But what I want you to notice as he closes this introduction is what he says about this grace, mercy, and peace. Who are they from? He says they're from both the Father and the Son. Do you see how he goes to great pains to make that known? From God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son. He doesn't leave that ambiguous at all. He wants us to know that grace, mercy, and peace are flowing not just from God the Father, but also from Jesus the Son, because Father and Son are both equally divine. They are both equally God. And that's really important because of the controversy facing the church that we read about. 1 John, and that we're going to read about here again in just a few minutes. And so he's going to transition now into a request, a warning, and a command. So let's look together now at verse 4.

15:19John says, I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. 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.

15:50So John says here in verse 4 that he rejoiced because some of the members of the church were walking in the truth. Now, I have to admit, as an elder in a local church myself, I found this a bit perplexing. Why would John rejoice because some of the members of the church were walking in the truth? I mean, isn't the goal to see everyone walking in the truth? It feels a bit like you walked into your house and like 25% of your stuff was stolen, or rather, left there, and 75%. Percent was stolen, you're like, well, at least they didn't take that part. You know, why would John be rejoicing that only some of the members of the church were walking in the truth?

16:42And as I studied and meditated on this passage, here's what God revealed to me: John didn't allow what was wrong with the church to keep him from celebrating what was right with the church. He didn't allow what was wrong with the church to keep him from celebrating what was right with the church. Now, to be sure, John did not ignore the problems that the church was facing. He just didn't allow the stuff that was wrong to keep him from celebrating what was right.

17:15And for me, that is a necessary corrective. You know how they say people are glass, half full people, or glass, half-empty people? Well, for me, the glass is not just half-empty, it's also dirty. It has like fingerprints and lipstick stains and backwash in it. That's kind of how I look at things. So, when John says, I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, that just doesn't compute for me. If only some of the children are walking in the truth, not all. Of them are, and that means it's all wrong. That's how I tend to look at things. But that's not how it should be. That's not how John looked at it. He didn't allow what was wrong with the church to overshadow what was right with it. And so we've had to really recognize this as kind of part of our church culture here and our staff culture at New Life, and we've sought to make some changes.

18:24And so, one of the things we do now is every single Monday morning, we get together, our staff, and we pray together and we celebrate all the things that are going right at New Life Baptist Church. We just thank God for those things. We praise Him for those things. We pray about those things. We don't mention anything that went wrong. Nothing. It's not allowed. And when we get together three times a year for our all-staff meeting, as we did this past Saturday, we spend the first 20, 30 minutes just sharing all of the good things that God is doing through our various ministries and celebrating and praising God for those things because we've had to make it a discipline, a discipline to celebrate the good things that God is doing. Because that doesn't come naturally to this guy. And this guy has been setting the culture for a long time. So it's glass, half-empty, dirty culture. There's just things to fix all the time. And so I would just encourage and challenge all of us to allow John to speak to you this morning about this and say, listen, there's so many good things that God is doing. Not just in our church, but in your life, in your family's life, in your career, in your relationship. Don't allow the things that are wrong to overshadow all the good things that God is doing. We're commanded to be thankful, and we have to discipline ourselves to do that.

19:49And so, in verse 5, John transitions to the request. And that's significant because he doesn't command as an elder or an apostle, but he could have done that. He just makes a request. And what is his request? He says that we love one another. And he goes on to define that as walking according to his commandments. Now, friends, that's not anything new. In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, love and obedience are equated. So to love is to obey, and to obey is to love. That's how both the Old and New Testament talk about it. So we know this. The question is, why does John, along with the rest of these New Testament authors, why do they hammer this concept so much?

20:35Why does Jesus hammer the concept of the call to love one another? I think it's because we're not very good at it. And we need constant reminders, constant teaching on the fact that we are called to love one another. And so look at what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 on the screen. You've heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

21:44See, Jesus is getting at this reality that anybody can love those who love them. That's not distinctly Christian to love people who love you. He says, look, the Gentiles do that, the tax collectors do that. Everybody does that. Everybody greets their friends. Everybody greets their family members. Everybody invites those kinds of people over to their house for dinner. That's just how normal people act. There's nothing distinctly Christian about that. What is distinctly Christian is making the choice, the hard choice, to do the works of love to people that you don't necessarily get anything from.

22:23So you'll hear a lot of times, you know, people talking about local church or local churches, and they'll say, You know, I just don't get anything out of it. It's like, well, you know, that's sad. I mean, that's sad as a pastor to hear something like that. I mean, you don't want that to be people's experience. But at the same time, why are we really all here? Are we all here to get things out of it? Or are we here to seek to love and serve one another?

22:51Because if everybody is loving and serving everybody else, there's nobody that's not being loved and served. And so that should be our mentality, both in the local church and in our community. And so I think by way of application, we need to think through what does it look like to love each other here at New Life? Well, first, and especially in light of what 2 John is talking about, we can help one another know and believe and obey the truth.

23:20That is loving, to help each other know, believe, and obey the truth. And that's why we focus so much on expositional preaching and teaching. So that in every one of our settings, whether it's during corporate worship or it's in one of our discipleship classes, you're getting the opportunity to hear the word of God. And we're getting an opportunity to discuss it and pray about it so that we're helping one another know and believe and obey the truth.

23:50Secondly, we can love one another by living in community with each other. And I want to be careful to define that because I. Think, you know, again, in our society today, people talk a lot about living in community. That's just kind of a buzzword. But living in biblical community means that we are doing the works of love for one another. We're not talking about it, we're not thinking about it, we don't have a bunch of theories about what it would look like to live in community. We're actually doing it. So when needs pop up, we seek to meet them, whether they're spiritual needs, or emotional needs, or physical needs, or financial needs, because we're living in community together. That's why we have life groups here at New Life. It's not because we can point to a chapter and verse and say, Thus says the Lord, this is a great church program. But it's because we're putting one another in position to be in relationship with people that are both older and younger, less mature and more mature in their faith, so that when we're all together, we can learn to live in community because it doesn't come naturally to any of us.

25:00Third, we can love one another by seeking and extending forgiveness when we sin against each other. Sinning against one another is inevitable in the local church because the local church is made up of sinners. But I'm so concerned because in the 21st century in America, you have so many different church options that what happens these days a lot of times is that someone sins against someone else and then the person is Sinned against just says, Well, I'm going to go find another church. That's easy to do, right, in our community because you've got dozens of choices all around you. Not as easy to do if you're living in the Middle East or in some other country where there might be one church in your region. They just have to work it out.

25:53And so, friends, we should have to work it out too. Loving one another looks like seeking forgiveness when we have offended another brother or sister. And it looks like extending forgiveness when we've been sinned against. And then, finally, loving one another looks like assuming the best about each other. Assuming the best about each other. We heard in Psalm 15 in the opening reading today that the righteous person does not slander others, does not cause disunity among believers.

26:34And so, friends, one way we can love one another is simply by believing the best about each other. If there's a question about motives, if there's a question about actions or attitudes or words that may have been said or were actually said, we assume the best until we go to them and talk to them directly about it. It only breeds disunity for us to assume, and haven't we all done this so many times? We assume that that person meant to hurt us. We assume that they did this thing when they actually didn't do that thing, or they said this thing when they actually didn't say that thing, or they didn't mean that thing. And then we're bitter and angry at them for no reason. And so that's another way that we can love one another. But, friends, the only way to preserve unity in the church is to love one another, and the only way to love one another biblically is for all of us to be grounded in the truth so that we're doing more than just hearing it and even knowing it, but we're actually obeying it, we're putting it into practice. And that's why challenges to the truth threaten church love and unity. And that's why John goes on as he does into verse 7. So let's pick up there in verse 7.

27:49John writes, For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist. Watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting. For whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

28:32So, why is it so important that we walk according to the commandments? Well, John tells us the reason is because many deceivers have gone out into the world. And what is the deception? It's the same one that we encountered back in 1 John chapter 4 and elsewhere in the letter that Jesus Christ did not come in the flesh. If that sounds strange to you, you have to kind of understand the context of the day. Before and during the early Christian period, there was a lot of philosophy and theology out there that taught the spirit and the spiritual world was good, and matter and the material world were evil.

29:18So, therefore, people could not conceive of a God who would unite himself with the material world by taking on flesh. Not only would any God not want to do that, but if any God were to do that, he or she would be permanently tainted by that connection to the material world. And so, this blew people's minds that Christians were teaching that God had come and taken on flesh. But of course, that's what did happen. Not only did the Old Testament prophets say again and again, this is what's going to happen, but we know from the New Testament. Authors that Jesus had a human mother and that he experienced all of the things that we as human beings experience. He became thirsty and he drank. He became hungry and he ate. He became tired and he slept.

30:20See, Jesus is unique in the sense that he was willing to enter into the brokenness and mess that is this world, to get his hands dirty, so to speak. He was willing to do that when no other God, no other false God, I should say, was willing to do that. And so this teaching is out there that Jesus didn't really come in the flesh, and that's a big deal because if Jesus didn't really come in the flesh, then there's no way for him to be our Savior. The only way for Jesus to be our Savior is if he is fully divine, fully God, and fully human. Because we needed someone to be able to stand in the gap between us and God who could obey perfectly in our place as a human being and die sacrificially in our place as a human being, but also resurrect himself from the dead victorious over sin and death.

31:20We needed a Savior who is fully God and fully man. And so if Jesus didn't come in the flesh, he'd be unable to save us. That's why John says, Anybody who teaches this is the deceiver. First of all, they're not telling you the truth. They're deceiving you. Jesus did come in the flesh. That's a historical fact that's not really disputed by anybody anymore. Every secular historian will tell you that there was a man named Jesus of Nazareth. Now, whether you think he's God, that's a different question. But that first question, was he a real person or is he a made-up fable? That's settled.

31:57And so if he didn't come in the flesh, he cannot be our Savior. So anyone telling you he didn't come in the flesh is first the deceiver and secondly the antichrist. And as we talked about in 1 John, that doesn't mean someone who's pretending to be the Christ. It means someone who is opposing, antichrist. That's why he uses those terms. So now we get to the warning. Look at what he says in verse 8. Watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.

32:35That's what John wants for this church. He wants the members of this church to win a full reward. And I understand that to be referring to salvation from the context, not to just simply heavenly rewards. Because remember, some of them, not all of them, are walking according to the truth. And as we learned in 1 John, what are the three characteristics? Of a Christian. You believe the truth, you obey the truth, and you love other people, especially Christians.

33:12So you have these people in their midst who are not walking according to the truth, either because they're not believing the truth or they're not obeying it or both. And that's a big problem. And so John is saying to them, look, we've worked hard to bring you the true gospel so that you can be saved. But in order to be saved, you have to cling to it. And if you don't cling to it, you'll lose what we've worked for. You'll lose what Paul and Peter and all of the apostles and everyone else who carried the gospel with them to these distant places. You'll lose what we have worked for. So he's not saying that genuine Christians, if they don't work hard enough, are going to lose their salvation. The New Testament never teaches the idea that you can lose your salvation.

34:00It's very basic when you understand that God, before the foundation of the world, has chosen to save undeserving sinners. He's elected his people. And so obviously, if that was done for you before you were ever born, before if you ever did anything good or bad, there's nothing you can do in this life that's going to cause you to lose that free gift of God that was given to you. So he's saying to us, we don't want you to lose what we've worked so hard to bring to you.

34:30So that's why it says in verse 9, look here. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. As we've said over and over throughout this study, the Son is fully God and the Father is fully God. You cannot have one without the other because they're both fully God. You either have both or you have neither. That's the reality.

35:10If the Father is God and the Son is God, you cannot have only one of them. You've got to have them both. And so it's important for you to answer the question today. Do you have Jesus by faith? Have you personally turned from sin and trusted in Jesus Christ, not one of your own imagination, not one that you've heard of somewhere along the line, but the Jesus of the Bible? Have you personally trusted in him? Are you holding to him in faith? If so, you have the Son and the Father, but if you find yourself in the position where you're not holding to Jesus through faith, you have neither the Son nor the Father. And John wants you to have that. I want you to have that. Want you to have that.

36:02So, John wants to ensure that they abide in the truth, both for themselves and for everybody else in the church. That's why he doesn't want them to allow false teachers into the church who would lead others astray. So, look again at verse 10 here. This has been a confusing passage for many, was for me for a long time. He says, If anyone comes to you, that is, comes to the church, remember the context, and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house. Now, remember, where did the early church meet for worship? In homes, right? They didn't have church buildings, they met in homes for worship. Do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

36:51So, allowing a false teacher to be greeted by leaders or members of the church and then having that man or that woman into the church to teach their false doctrine would imply acceptance of what they were saying. And that's very dangerous because, of course, if you're a mature believer, you can listen to false teaching and you could say, All right, look, I know that doesn't square with what the Bible actually teaches. I'm just going to reject that. That's not true. But if you're not a mature Christian and somebody's standing up there with the implicit acceptance of the leadership and the rest of the church, you're thinking, Well, I guess that's true. They had that person in here to teach. And so that's why he says, don't greet them, don't allow them into the church to teach. So John is not saying, don't invite unbelievers into your home. He's not even saying, as many have taken the application, don't allow Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses or other people who come to your door into your home. He's not even saying that. I used to think that's what he was saying. And shortly after we got married, I had a very long and sweaty conversation in the parking lot of our apartment complex because I was convinced that the right application of this verse was that he couldn't come in the door.

38:08So all that resulted in was not only no progress being made on either front, but just sweat. It was just hot. It would have been much better to just sit on the couch in the air conditioning and disagree with one another. So that's not what John is saying. He's saying, don't allow false teachers to bring their teaching into the church. If we do, they could lead others astray, and we're taking part then in their wicked works.

38:35And friends, this matters so much because what we believe and teach affects people with immortal souls. What we believe and teach affects people with immortal souls, and those people are going to spend eternity in heaven or in hell. I want you to consider that truth because I think. For even a lot of us who are serious about following Jesus, committed church members, we tend to push that reality out of our minds a lot of the time. That everyone is going to spend eternity somewhere, either in heaven or in hell.

39:17Listen again to what John's thought says. If John's instruction still seems harsh, it is probably because his concern for the glory of the Son and the good of human souls is greater than ours, and because the tolerance on which we pride ourselves is in reality an indifference to truth. He wrote those words a long time ago. And he's actually quoting another commentator there. The tolerance on which we pride ourselves is really just an indifference to the truth.

39:57And that's a difficult thing to wrestle with for us. But we can't be indifferent to truth because what we believe has consequences, and because truth is the foundation of Christian love and unity. So let's wrap up now with what John says in these final two verses and see how he concludes this brief letter. Look at verse 12. John says, Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete. The children of your elect sister greet you.

40:43So, John has a lot more that he wants to say, probably in general, but especially regarding the situation with the false teachers. But you notice that John also has no desire to simply pastor them from afar. No, he wants to come and talk with them face to face so that their joy would be complete. And I think that's such an important corrective. In an age where Christians will refer to Matt Chandler or John MacArthur or John Piper or others as their pastor, even though they live hundreds or thousands of miles away from them, it's a very important corrective because that is just prevalent among Christians today. Friends, technology, whether we're talking about ancient papyrus and ink, now remember, that was the best technology they had. I mean, he's writing these letters with ink on papyrus and having them carried to this church. That was great technology. It was better than the chisel and the hammer for crying out loud, right?

41:57Whether we're talking about that or whether we're talking About a modern text message or FaceTime call, that's a great blessing. And if you ever forget that, just ask our missionaries how great of a blessing that is. But, friends, at the same time, technology is no substitute for embodied, face-to-face communion and fellowship. And if you ever forget that, just ask our missionaries. We've had the joy of having several of them here with us over the summer for a week or two or a month. And every one of them, when they were up here on the stage, shared with us what a blessing it was to be here face-to-face with us. Singing with us, praying with us, learning with us, doing life together with us, because it's just not the same over Skype or FaceTime or anything else. It's great that we have those things, but it's just not the same. We simply can't experience the fullness of joy that John talks about through technology. And that's because we were created in God's image and likeness to live in embodied community, right alongside one another, where we're physically present with each other. And you see that truth all throughout the Bible. Israel was a physical place inhabited by physical people where they worshiped together in a physical temple.

43:31And if you go all the way to the book of Revelation, you see the new heavens and the new earth. It is a physical place. Thank God it's not clouds and harps. It's a physical place, a beautiful city with rivers and trees decorated immaculately with the presence of God there. It's a physical place inhabited by physical people with real bodies where we get to worship and enjoy the presence of the physical Lord Jesus forever. And so now in this intermediate time, we are called to live together in embodied community in a way that points one another and everybody else who doesn't know Jesus to the gospel, to the good news that Jesus took on flesh. He became embodied in order to obey the law perfectly on our behalf, die in our place for our sins, and then rise victorious over sin and death on the third day.

44:34That's what this community that we're living in is supposed to point to. Through faith in him, we have been placed in a family, the church family, and we are called to live together in unity. And not just within our local church, but across churches as well. As you see right here in this last verse, the children of your elect sister greet you. See, it becomes more and more apparent that he's writing from a local church. To a local church, sharing this love together, sharing this unity together, because their life is based in truth.

45:10See, John loved these believers, and he was grateful for the unity that he shared with them. But he wouldn't compromise the truth in the name of love or unity. He couldn't. Because as we've seen, truth is the foundation for Christian love and unity. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that this very brief letter has been preserved all of these years, for thousands of years, so that we could be instructed and encouraged by it today. God, forgive us, we tend to overlook certain parts of the Bible, maybe because they seem small and insignificant, maybe because some of the things in letters like this are hard to understand.

46:16And so, even though we say that we believe 2 Timothy 3, that all scriptures God breathed and is useful, we don't always live that way. So I pray today that we would be reminded that you have included every part, every letter, every poem, every historical account in the Bible for a reason. It's there to instruct us and to build up our faith. And so God, I pray that our faith has been strengthened today. And I pray for those who don't yet have faith in Jesus, that are among us this morning, that you would meet them where they are, that you would reveal yourself to them through your word and through your gathered people. And that they would turn to Jesus in repentance and faith and receive him as Lord and Savior today.

47:18God, we thank you for the great privilege that it is to meet together and worship you. And we pray that you would be honored this morning. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.