Our Sermons

Bible Passage: 2 John 1-6
Pastor: Pastor Berg
Sermon Date:  October 23, 2022

A preparatory school dean of students was sitting in his office one day when an angry man came storming in. He was upset over something he’d seen in the local newspaper. A couple of students from that prep school had been cited by the police for underage drinking. You could see the disappointment in his face as he said to the dean, “How could you let this happen? I thought this was supposed to be a Christian school!” How would you respond to that question? 

You’re standing around church before the start of a midweek lenten service when you notice a pair of visitors coming in. You look uncomfortably at the sanctuary and the twenty or so people sitting there. The visitor says, “Kind of an intimate group tonight, huh?” How do you respond?

You pray that God would bless your efforts as you work through the list of prospects. You call the twenty-five people on your list to invite them to our upcoming friendship festival. When the day arries, only one of the people you called winds up attending. How are you going to feel?

Our first instinct is to see the glass half-empty, isn’t it? Only one of your invitees attends and you wonder what happened to the other twenty-four. There are only twenty people in church and you find yourself apologizing for everyone who’s not there. You shake your head and wring your hands and mutter, “Kids nowadays.” 

Don’t we want to rewrite John’s letter to this dear, chosen lady? Dear lady, I’m a little disappointed because I’ve found that only some of your children are walking in the truth. The rest of them have obviously ignored what we said to them. It pains me to have to say this again. I can’t understand why you didn’t get it the first time. Could we please, just maybe, try and love each other. I don’t know how many times I have to say it but let me spell it out for you, not that anyone is going to listen anyway. 

Sounds a little ridiculous, doesn’t it? But isn’t that what we do? Don’t we, unfortunately, tend to focus on the negatives? Don’t we have a tendency to look at our congregational glass as half-empty?

No big deal? Maybe? But what happens when things don’t seem to be going well? What happens when your local high school football coach can’t win enough games? What happens when the profit margin isn’t where it needs to be or there isn’t any profit at all? What happens when the prosperity that your local representative promised hasn’t come to fruition? Things change, don’t they? The football coach is replaced with a new one. The business manager is looking for a different job. The politician loses the election. Good, you say? That’s what needs to happen! Perhaps, in those instances that is what needs to happen. But what happens if that same mindset finds its way into the church? 

Your pastors are called “unloving” because they won’t let your relatives who don’t share our fellowship attend the Lord’s Supper. Our congregation is viewed as backward and unenlightened because we hold to the truth of God’s Word, all of it. Can’t you see the danger here? If we allow ourselves to look at things from a half-empty perspective, if we allow ourselves to see our doctrine and practice the way the world looks at things, the temptation is going to be great to change and to compromise. The temptation is going to be great to relax our practices to compromise on the truth in order to get rid of that “unloving” tag. The danger is real that in trying to be loving in the eyes of the world, we become unloving in the eyes of God. 

At the end of his life and the end of his ministry, John is considered to be the leader, the elder of the church at Ephesus. During those last days, he already had to deal with heresies, false teachings about Jesus. The one most prevalent around Ephesus was the false teaching of Gnosticism. Gnostics believed that the Bible was a good start, but there was a higher knowledge that needed to be attained to be truly enlightened. That meant that the Gnostics didn’t hold too much stake in doing what God said in his Word. They took their higher knowledge as a way to excuse the sins that they were committing. It was exactly Paul had warned Timothy about. In his last will and testament, his second letter to Timothy, Paul urges him in his closing words, “I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom: Preach the word. Be ready whether it is convenient or not. Correct, rebuke, and encourage, with all patience and teaching. For there will come a time when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, because they have itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in line with their own desires. They will also turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths. As for you, keep a clear head in every situation. Bear hardship. Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry.” 

Is that any different than today? Sound doctrine is seen as unloving and uncaring and incompatible with our society. It’s very easy to look at our congregational glass as half-empty. But thanks be to God that he has given us this encouragement from John. This encouragement increases our faith. It allows us to depend on God completely.  John says ,“Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, in truth and love.”  The grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ will be with us in truth and in love. God is with us! Jesus is with us!  How are they with us? In truth and love. What does that mean? What is truth? What is love? John tells us in his first letter, “God is love.” What is truth? Jesus prays, “Sanctify them by the truth, your Word is truth.”  God showed his love, he showed who he is by sending Jesus to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. All of those sins of being pessimistic and focusing and what we don’t have rather than what we do. Those sins of thinking we can abandon the truth and be loving, Jesus came to atone for all of those sins. God has shown that love to all. Notice what John says as he begins this second letter, “The Elder, To the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth—not only I, but also everyone who knows the truth—because of the truth that remains in us and will be with us forever:”  Everyone who holds to the truth of God’s Word is living in God’s love. That Gnostic idea that there was more than God’s inspired Word, that’s not the truth. That was a group of people who couldn’t handle the sound doctrine that they couldn’t play any part in their salvation, that their dependence on God had to be total. 

There were some in this congregation that had done the same. But John doesn’t want to focus on them. Instead John wants to focus on the positive. He sees the glass as half-full. He says,     “I was overjoyed to find out that some of your children are walking in the truth, in keeping with the command we received from the Father.”  John rejoiced that some had held on to the truth. John rejoiced that some were living in God’s love as he had instructed them to do. And in order to encourage them to keep on living this way, John points them back to Christ and the encouragement he had given to John himself. “And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing a new command to you, but the one we have had from the beginning—let us love one another.” Love one another! Isn’t that the true definition of Christian fellowship! Love one another in all that you do. Well, how do we love another?  “And this is love: that we walk according to his commands. This is the command: Just as you have heard from the beginning, keep on walking in it.” We share in the highest form of Christian fellowship when we walk in obedience to God’s commands. When we do what God says, everything he says, when we totally depend on him, then we are loving as he asked us to love.

How can we do what he says? How can we totally depend on him? Only through the righteousness Christ has given us through faith. We can only do what God says by using the power of the gospel, that God has made us his children and has restored his image in us through Christ. And it’s that very power of the gospel that allows us to look at our congregation with the glass half-full. 

Remember that prep school dean with the angry parent? Here’s how the story really ended. The dean calmly looked at the man and he told him, “Sir, sin doesn’t cease to exist as students cross the lines of this campus. The devil is working hard to lead our students into sin. To be perfectly honest, I’m thankful that it doesn’t happen more.” Then he proceeded to show the stunned man all of the wonderful, worthwhile things that those students did everyday that didn’t get reported in the newspaper. He showed him how the majority of the students were a light for that community the great majority of the time. Without ignoring the sin, without denying that sin, that prep school dean chose to focus on the positive things his students were doing rather than dwelling on the negative. Without negating the law, he chose to focus on the motivating power of the gospel. 

Remember that midweek Lenten service? Wouldn’t a wonderful response to that visitor be that we may be few, but isn’t it wonderful  that God has promised to be where two or three are gathered together! Isn’t it great our all-powerful Lord and Savior has chosen to dwell with us this evening!

Remember that prospect list? Isn’t it a great relief not to have to worry about the results? Isn’t it a wonderful blessing to place the results in God’s court, to totally depend on him? And when that one person comes as a result of your invitation, you can rejoice with the angels in heaven who do the same when one sinner repents!

Love one another! The best way that we can do that is by loving what God loves, by walking in the truth of his Word. And when we do that, when we walk in truth and we walk together in love, when we totally depend on our God, then our congregational glass won’t merely be half-full, but overflowing with God’s grace and mercy and peace! Amen.