Thursday, May 8, 2025

PT-1 "The Test of Christian Hospitality" (2 John 9-13)

 

EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/8/2025 8:39 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  Guarding the Truth”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                         Reference:  2 John 9-13

 

            Message of the verses:  9  Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son.

    “10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; 11  for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.

            “12 Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your joy may be made full. 13 The children of your chosen sister greet you.”

 

            This morning while taking my walk I listened to a sermon by John MacArthur on the verses above from 2 John, and this was his last message on this short letter of 2 John.  It took him a while to get into these verses as he had some things to talk about before explaining what these verses mean, and I found what he was talking about in his long introduction very interesting very and so I decided to quote from his sermon in order to help us understand his introduction and also what he gleamed out of these verses.  I will make a decision on whether or not to use the outline in his commentary after I get done quoting from his sermon, which will take a fairly long time to get through it but I believe it will be well worth looking at.  In his sermon he entitles it “Test of Human Hospitality.”

 

Truth: The Test of Christian Hospitality

2 John 9–13

Code: 63-4

            “We now find ourselves so privileged as to hear the voice of God by turning to His Word, 2 John, and looking, really, at the last portion of this very brief letter, verses 9 through 13. And we’ll read those in a moment. Let me introduce our fourth and final look at this little epistle by reminding you that we have titled it, “Living in the Truth.”

            “Now, all genuine and faithful Christians have always understood the great commission. All true believers who understand what the New Testament teaches and what Jesus commands know what our duty is. It is to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and to preach it to every creature. That is unmistakable, unambiguous. It is a clear command. It is a mandate. It is an obligation. It is a duty not without privilege but rather with high privilege but nonetheless a duty. We know we have been told to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.

            “We also know and Christians have always known that apart from the knowledge of the true gospel and faith in the true Christ, no one can go to heaven. That is not a revolutionary statement, that is a fact laid down in Scripture and affirmed by true Christians since the New Testament. Sinners must hear the gospel. They must believe the gospel. And they must embrace the gospel. This clear command, understood by all faithful biblical Christians, has been maintained through the centuries by all of those who sought to obey the Lord.

            “It is behind all the witnessing and all the evangelizing and all the missionary work that has ever gone on. Since faith comes by hearing, and hearing only by the message of Christ, we know what we are to do. We are to preach Christ and Him crucified. Time, years, lifetimes of millions of people have been invested in this, the highest and greatest of all duties. Money - incalculable sums of money has been spent in this effort, teaching, preaching, witnessing, training, strategizing, acquiring languages, traveling, building, establishing, printing, producing media that the gospel indeed might be taken to the ends of the earth to every creature, an unrelenting effort to use every means available and call every Christian to this duty and this privilege.

            “And here we are at a time when we have the greatest means to do this in history - unquestionably. We have the capability, virtually, to reach the world. We can get there physically faster than ever. We can translate and print material faster than ever with the use of computers. We can mobilize people, train people, and dispense people faster than ever. We can use the media. It’s instantaneous, whether it’s the Internet or whether it’s tapes or whether it’s CDs or DVDs or videos or - you name it. Never has the church had this capability to fulfill the great commission - never - to disseminate the gospel to the ends of the earth.”

            Now that is the reason that I write Spiritual Diaries and put them onto my two blogs, which the Spirit of God cause them to go around the world as many different countries have looked at them each and every day, and the total continues to rise through the power of the Holy Spirit as over 872,000 have been viewed since I began this about 10 years ago, but in the last two plus years the numbers have grown which shows me that the it is because of the Spirit of God getting the message of the gospel out around the world.

            “It is astounding to me that just when the church has its greatest opportunity; it has become confused about its message. This is unthinkable. This is unimaginable. Frankly, for me this is inconceivable, that we would reach the point - really the ultimate point in all of the history of the church when we can go everywhere faster than ever and get the gospel in the hands of people and now we’re not sure what the message is. In fact, the church is confused enough to debate what the message is, to argue what the message is, to tolerate a minimal kind of gospel.

            “The church seems to be embarrassed by its narrowness. It seems eager to redesign it to make it more acceptable. Now that we can reach everybody, we’re afraid of what they’re going to say when they get the message. All those people who gave their lives for all those centuries, all those people who battled and fought in the hardest periods of the church’s history to train and prepare and to learn the meaning of the Word of God without all the tools we have today, without all the endless books and commentaries and resources, all those people who traveled for months and sometimes years, all those people who made sacrifices away from their families.

            “All those people who died from diseases in hard places, all those people who laboriously worked to create languages, reduce into writing and translate the Scripture, all of that effort passed down to us, and here we are in the high-tech world, we can expedite all of that like never before and we’re not sure, one, what we want to say, and, two, whether or not we want to say it because we’re a little embarrassed about the fact that it’s going to condemn them.”

Lord willing, more tomorrow as I continue to look at MacArthur’s sermon on these remaining verses of 2 John.

5/8/2025 9:11 PM

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