Discipleship According to Third John: A Call to Action

Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast, where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.

My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to this podcast.

I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen you in the word of God.

Now, come along, let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here today.

All right, we're going to go ahead and continue our study in first, second, and Third John.

So we've preached through First John, and we just finished Second John last time.

And so tonight, naturally, we are in Third John.

So if you have your Bibles, you can turn there with me.

It's almost at the very end.

So if you want to find a quick way to find Third John is to go all the way to Revelation at the end, go back to Jude, and then go back one more to Third John.

And it's a short book.

We know here it's only one chapter, 14 verses.

And even though we know that there are shorter books in the Bible, doesn't mean that they're lacking in the content that we can grow in and understand and learn from.

So First John was all about having fellowship with God.

Fellowship with God starts with faith, and then with faith comes the opportunity to know him in a personal relationship and walk in that confidence and walk in that clarity and walk in that strength in the Lord.

And then in Second John, we looked at what it means to walk in truth and in love.

And so how do we deal with things that are not true?

Well, we deal with it with honesty, we deal with it with truth, but at the same time, we deal with it love and deal with it within grace, and understand that we're trying to always lead someone to the truth.

So if it's an unsaved person, we're trying to lead them to Christ in faith and salvation.

And then if it's a saved person, it's an individual who knows Christ as Savior, then we lead that person to something called edification to build them up or to exhort them.

So you can think about those three words.

Those three words, evangelism.

Evangelism is the term we use to lead people to Christ.

So.

So one opportunity for me with a person is to lead them to Christ.

But if they're already in Christ as a believer, the other two steps that we can do within a situation with someone dealing with truth is exhortation, that's challenging them and encouraging them, and edification, that's building them up.

So those are some fancy words there, but I think they're important for us to understand that as Christians.

Those, that's really our goal with every situation.

Either to lead them to Christ or to build them up in Christ or to encourage them in Christ.

So that's all Second John, that's, that's what that's about.

And then we see here in third John.

What's Third John about?

Third John is all about good examples, following good examples and not following bad examples.

And we all know instances and experiences in our life in which we could say that's a good example to follow.

And then we also know the other side of things.

There's some times in our life where we've watched people and maybe we've been that person that has been a bad example to follow and we shouldn't be going in that direction.

And so today there's so many bad examples out there in the world, but just as many bad examples, I believe there are good examples.

And here in third John we see two good examples and one bad example of an individual who we would want to follow.

In the case of this first guy, we're going to talk about Gaius, we're going to see that he is a good individual to follow.

Why?

Because he follows Christ.

Not because he's a good man, not, not because he's an honorable citizen.

But really we even know that in the New Testament, the Bible tells us that Jesus said, follow me, right?

We know that we're supposed to follow Jesus.

But then in the case of Paul, Paul says, follow me as I follow Christ.

And so there's nothing wrong with looking at somebody who is following the Lord and modeling certain aspects of our life to that person.

Again, we're not worshiping that person, but we're looking at an example of the biblical truths that we can apply to our lives.

And so let's look here in three John.

We're going to just go through this slowly, as slowly as I can.

I know that sometimes I get moving and so I want to do my best to kind of point out to you all the truths from this, this text.

And 1 John, or excuse me, 3 John, verse 1 says this the elder unto the well beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.

Now we'll stop there.

That's his greeting.

Who, who is talking here?

Well, ultimately God speaking through the apostle John.

The apostle John.

This is the same John that wrote the Gospel of John.

This is the same John that wrote first and second John.

And this is the same John that wrote the book of Revelation.

So the elder unto the well beloved Gaius, and so the immediate receiver of this letter would be this guy named Gaius, which we're going to learn a little bit about.

And he says, whom I love in the truth.

And so this greeting is wrapped up in his love.

And the reason why he loves this individual is not because he's loved him, but because of the simple fact that they love each other in the common bond of the truth that they have in Jesus Christ.

And so that's really one of the major reasons why we can say that we can love other Christians, not necessarily because that person does things for us, not because that person is lovable, but because of the simple fact that we can stand together in truth, maybe from different backgrounds, maybe from different socioeconomic classes, maybe from different countries, for that matter.

And then we can come along and say, look, you know what?

I don't know you, but I can tell you that I love you.

Why?

Because we can love each other in the truth of God.

That's why.

Sometimes from the pulpit, I'll say, I love you guys.

And there's people like, hopefully the people here know that, but sometimes we'll have visitors, and they're like, you love me.

How do you.

You don't love me.

You don't know me.

And.

And the truth is, is that, yeah, I don't know you, but I don't need to know you because God has called me to love you.

And that's a hard pill to swallow sometimes, because sometimes people aren't lovable.

Right?

And we're taught in our society what we're taught in our society to love people who love you.

We're taught in our society to love people who give things to you, to, you know, the whole concept of, you know, if you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours kind of concept.

And that's not the biblical concept of love.

The biblical concept of love is, I'm going to love you because it's the right thing to do.

I'm going to love you even if you don't deserve it.

That's actually what exactly Jesus did for us.

He loved us even when we didn't deserve it.

And so that's what he's talking about here.

He says, I love you in the truth.

And so we don't know this specific guy, Gaius.

It could be an individual that's mentioned in the Book of Acts.

There's a gas mention in First Corinthians, chapter one, and there's also one mentioned in Romans, chapter 16.

It very well could be that individual, or it could be a totally other person.

Why?

Because that word Gaius, that name Gaius was a very common name in the Roman Empire, and so wouldn't have been outside the bound of thinking that this is a totally different person.

So look at verse number two with me.

It says this beloved.

Again, that's another endearing term here.

He's speaking of someone who he has fellowship with.

He says, beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health even as thy soul prosperous.

So, so even verse two here is very interesting because his prayer for this individual is that he would prosper.

Now, what does that word prosper mean?

In our culture, prosper means to get something to.

To maybe gain funds or gain control.

But here, in this case, the word prosper literally means to have a good journey.

If you were to go back to the original Greek, this is what John is telling Gaius.

He says, I hope you have a good journey.

Now, I don't believe he's talking specifically about a real journey that he's having.

I believe he's talking about the journey of being a Christian.

Right?

We all know that we're on a journey.

We're all on a path, we're all in a race.

And so he says here, I hope that you have prosperity.

I hope you travel well.

And then he says, and be in health even as thy soul prosperous.

And so I think there's really interesting thing here because I think a lot of times people think that when I am physically prospering, then I must be spiritually prospering.

And so that would mean that my physical health is always automatically tied to my spiritual health.

And there's actually people that believe that.

So, like, if I have enough faith, I will be in physically perfect health.

And that's not what he's talking about here.

He's not linking spiritual health to physical health.

Even though there are certain spiritual decisions that can harm our physical health, right?

We know that.

We know that living in sin can cause destruction to our physical being.

But we also know that because of Scripture, that there are many people, many people that have lived godly lives, but yet still face physical struggle, Job being one of them, Paul being another.

I mean, the list goes on and on.

And so what he says here is this.

He says, my prayer for you simply is this, that you would have prosperity and physically be healthy.

I think it is appropriate to pray for somebody's health, but we don't link their health immediately to their spiritual condition.

Why?

Because he says that in verse two.

He says, I pray that you prosper and you're in good health.

Even as thy soul prospereth, meaning this, your soul is already prospering in Christ.

As a believer, you already have your spiritual prosperity.

There isn't anything more that we need if we're already in Christ.

So the idea is this.

He says, as you are spiritually prospering, as you spiritually have hope and riches in Christ, I hope also that your physical follows along with that.

But the truth is that we can obviously, in a common phrase, basically say, hey, I wish good things upon you.

But ultimately, as a Christian, we know and we have certainty that other Christians have the same hope that we have.

So some people have read this passage and take the guarantee that there is always wealth and perfect health with Christians.

So you've heard it.

You know, the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel.

We have to be very careful with that, because what we have to.

What we do sometimes is we mislead people.

If we.

If we preach that or if we live that way, we're misleading people to some sort of security that is not found in scripture.

Now, does it mean that God wants everyone not to be healthy?

Well, no, God.

God.

God wills what he wills.

And so what we have to understand is that when we see this and we pray for someone's physical health, we also need to separate that to the spiritual health.

And so when I pray for your, like, a lot of times we got our prayer sheets here.

And specifically speaking, most of the needs that are on the sheet are physical needs.

And that's okay.

That's appropriate.

But what we have to understand is that just because somebody is going through a physical problem, that doesn't mean necessarily that they're going through a spiritual problem.

Think about Job's friends.

Remember what Job's friends said?

They said, job, you got to confess your sin because obviously you're sick because you have unconfessed sin in your life.

And Job's like, no, I don't.

And we know by the bigger picture that he didn't.

There's another individual that Jesus heals, right?

There's an individual that's.

That's lame.

And.

Or, you know, he's.

He's hurting and he's sick.

And then Jesus goes, hey, it's not because of him.

It's not because of his sin.

And so what we can see here in this case is that he is saying that, hey, look, though, spiritual health is vital.

Physical health is important, but physical health does not overcome the spiritual health that we should be having as Christians.

And so John here makes an analogy between the condition of our health and the condition of our soul.

And so a lot of Christians would look to physical health and allow the physical state that we're in to dictate to us our spiritual state.

What do I mean by that?

I mean this.

When we wake up in the morning and we feel great.

And for many of us, there's not a lot of those days anymore.

But the idea would be this.

Sometimes when we feel good in our emotions or our physical state or our circumstances, we link that to being happy in the Lord.

You ever seen that?

Like, if you wake up and you're, everything's going your way, praise God.

Jesus is.

Jesus is my Savior.

Everything is good.

But are we willing to say those same words when we wake up and we don't feel good when we don't have the right circumstances?

It is hard for me to praise God the same way when I'm going through struggles as when everything's going my way.

But what we know is that, I mean, Job would be a great analogy of this is the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

And that's.

That's a tough prayer.

That's a prayer out of maturity.

An immature Christian cannot understand the concept of, well, things are going bad in my life, in circumstance, but God has still got me.

And that's essentially what we can see.

Here is a testament to the idea that he says, I'm praying for you, but remember, there's a difference between your physical and the spiritual.

And so what John does here is he says this in verse three.

He says, for I have rejoiced greatly.

There's.

There's joy in John's heart as a spiritual leader.

When he sees Gaius following in obedience, he says, I rejoice greatly when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in the truth.

Essentially what John is doing is he's giving a testimony of Gaius faithfulness.

And he's like, that makes me excited.

There's nothing that makes.

Nothing that should make a pastor or a teacher or even any Christian more excited than other people learning the truth of God and growing in that and walking in the truth.

You know, we're there.

There are.

As a pastor, it's sometimes almost embarrassing how many people try to show their blessings to us.

I mean, we're.

We are abundantly blessed.

People are so kind and so caring.

And it's like, so much to say, like, as a pastor, it's almost embarrassing that people are that nice to us.

But at the end of the day, the Greatest joy that I have is not someone coming up and giving me big gifts.

The greatest joy as a pastor should be when someone follows in the truth of Jesus Christ and walks in the truth.

That is an amazing, amazing experience to see that.

And even better when you get to be a part of that discipleship process.

I can tell you, and some of you can attest to this, to lead someone to Christ and then obviously not in your strength, but you get to be a vessel and then to walk alongside of them in discipleship.

That is a wonderful experience.

It's a beautiful experience.

Sometimes it's a painful experience because sometimes the very people that you invest into over many, many years will eventually maybe turn away, maybe they'll go through a tough time, maybe they will stop talking to you.

And that's painful.

But at the end of the day, it's because of what God has done for us that we turn around and we impart that same type of love to other people.

So what is John saying here?

John's essentially just saying this.

He was like, hey, I am so happy that you are walking in the truth.

I am glorifying the Lord that you are walking in truth.

And oftentimes we don't celebrate other Christians faithfulness.

Sometimes we're, I'm speaking for myself here.

Sometimes it's easy to jump on people who aren't faithful, but what we need to be doing more often, and I, I, I can attest to the fact that I don't do this enough to remember and ultimately edify and exhort people that are walking in the truth.

Sometimes it's the ones that are always having problems that get the attention.

But sometimes what the reality is is like we should be excited and sharing for people when they're faithful.

Now, sometimes faithfulness is boring, right?

Sometimes faithfulness is just doing the right thing every day.

It's a bunch of small good decisions in the, in the grand scheme.

And sometimes that's not as noticeable.

What we see here is that John notices that Gaius is walking in the truth.

And so this means more than just living the law and following rules.

Because what does it mean to walk in truth?

Well, essentially means this.

To walk in Christ, to yes, be in sound doctrine, but to do it in the right way, to have the right motivation, to have the right heart, to love God.

You know what?

As a pastor, it would be not easy, but it would be easier for me to say, here's the list of rules of what it means to be a good Christian.

And then I walk around every day and I Say, okay, you know, so and so.

How's your.

How's your, you know, did you do point number one?

Okay, should you do point number two?

Good.

And you go down the line?

Now, now that is easier for us because we like to have everything clean and nice and on paper.

But the reality is, is that there could be somebody who did all of those things, but yet their heart is not where it needs to be.

And so as a spiritual leader, I could point people to a rule, or I could point people to loving Jesus with all of their heart.

And when you do that, everything else is going to fall in line.

You're going to treat.

Know if I walk to up to a man, the first thing I'm going to talk to him.

If he's married and he has children, I'm say, how.

How's your, you know, how's your married life?

How do you treat your wife?

How do you treat your children?

Well, I'm trying to be a better husband.

I'm trying to be a better father, trying to be a good guy.

Well, how are you trying?

Well, you know, I'm reading this book, and it's telling me I got to take this step with my wife.

I have to make sure I do this.

You know, the truth is the real.

The real truth, Biblically speaking, is the more that we pour ourselves into our love for God, the more every other human relationship that we have will strengthen.

It's an amazing truth to see that our love for Christ manifests itself by being the right type of husband, father, Christian worker, boss, whatever it is, whatever roles that we have, it's pointing people to walking in the truth of the love of Jesus.

And so to walk in truth means to walk in a way that's real and genuine.

But ultimately, seeking after the Lord to be real and genuine means this.

You know, we could walk into the church building and we could pretend like everything's okay.

So, like, hey, how you doing?

I'm doing fantastic.

And then I go to my car and I start weeping because of all my problems in my life.

But I've got it under control.

No one, no one needs to know.

Everyone, I. I do this.

I do this all the time.

People ask me, how you doing?

And I'm like, inside, I'm like, I'm about to cry, but I'm doing fantastic.

Everything's great.

Praise God.

And the reality is, is there's sometimes, and I think hopefully all of us understand.

It's not necessarily that I don't like that person.

It's because I'm Trying to hold on to some semblance of how I'm perceived.

But to walk in the truth sometimes means to tell people the truth of how you're feeling.

And there might be days where we feel difficult, but at the end of the day, if the answer is walking in the truth of God, not walking in my truth, there's a lot of people that will say, well, you know what my truth is?

Is this.

What.

What her truth is, is that there's only one truth from the truth of Jesus Christ.

The word of God.

Sanctify them by thy truth, Thy word.

God's word is truth.

So he says in verse four, I have no greater joy, no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.

Now, sometimes that verse is used for, like, our biological children, which I think would certainly be applicable to that.

Like, my prayer for my children is that they love Jesus.

Not.

Not that they.

Not that they're good kids, even though I want my kids to be good kids.

But they will be the right type of children if they love Jesus.

So we want to point them to Jesus.

We want to point them to the Word.

But I think that this has a broader lesson in the context of children, meaning people that we have led to Christ or are discipling in Jesus Christ because.

Because we know that the.

The elder John is not the.

We don't believe the biological father of Gaius.

It doesn't ever indicate that.

But he mentions in verse 4, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk.

We even know that there are other individuals in Scripture that called their disciples, that followed them as they followed Christ's children.

And so we can see here in this case that he's talking about the joy of discipleship.

He's talking about the joy of showing another Christian what it means to walk in the truth of Jesus Christ.

And so there's a word that I want our church to understand.

I want our church to.

To think about, to pray about.

That is the word discipleship.

It's a word that sometimes gets glossed over.

We hear the word disciple, and what do we think of Peter, Think of maybe Judas?

We think of some of the others that we can remember.

Thomas the Doubter.

But that's.

That's not what we're talking about when we're talking about discipleship, even though they were disciples of Jesus.

Discipleship literally means to.

To teach someone how to be a follower.

The word disciple means follower or learner.

And so discipleship just means the process in which we teach somebody what it means to be A follower of Christ.

There's a lot of people that want religion.

There's a lot of people that want some type of peace.

But the Bible speaks more of what it means to be a disciple.

What does it mean to be a disciple?

What does it, what does it mean to be somebody's disciple?

Right.

Someone who's being discipled.

Well, I want to take you to just one verse.

I could take you to a lot of verses, but I won't do that tonight.

I want to take you to just the one verse that I think we can get an idea of what it means to be a disciple.

And that's in the book of John, very appropriately.

Right.

The same human author that wrote the third John wrote something to us in John, chapter eight, that I think can teach us what it means to be a disciple.

And then if we know that we're called to be disciples and we're called to lead other people to be disciples, because I, I will take you.

I, I, I did kind of tell you a little bit of a fib there.

I will take you to another verse because I got to show you something else that connects this.

So we're, we're called to be disciples ourselves, and we're called to make disciples, which we're going to see in Matthew, chapter 28.

So if we are called to be disciples and we're called to make disciples, don't you think it would be important for the Church to know what it means to be a disciple?

What does it mean to be a disciple?

Well, I'm going to try to be like Peter.

Well, no, that's not what that means.

So In John chapter 8, verse 31, it tells us exactly what it means to be a disciple.

John 8, 31.

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, if you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed?

So he says, here, look, you believe in me, but what does it mean to be a disciple?

It means to continue in my word, to get deeper into it, to, to not only know it, but also believe it and obey it.

That's what that word continue means.

So it's not just about believing that God's word is God's word.

It's continuing in it and allowing it to guide us in the path of life.

Then he goes on to say in verse 32, how we do that, he says, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

So the idea here is that we have amazing freedom when we walk in the truth of God.

And that's, and that's what he's trying to tell us here in this case is that we need to be those ones that, number one, you can't be a discipler.

You can't disciple other people unless you yourself are a disciple.

So if we're called, we're going to that other verse that I told you that we're going to go to.

Because lest we think that, well, hey, you know what?

The disciples are just like the super Christians.

And you know me, I just, I just want to be, you know, a casual Christian.

I just want to be.

I call it the status quo Christian.

I just want to keep just what everybody wants me to be, okay?

I'm, I'm a Christ follower and all that.

But, you know, Matthew chapter 28 gives us a command and it is called the Great Commission, which basically means the big job that we have.

And this is not just written to pastors, even though pastors are included with this, or missionaries, even though missionaries are included with this.

We see at the end of Matthew chapter 28, Jesus is about to ascend into heaven on the Mount of Olives.

And when I praise God, speaking of how embarrassing it is sometimes that people bless us when the church blessed us to go to Israel, Alicia and I there, there were certain, like, what we would call cornerstone moments or moments that we just felt like, this is, this is something special here.

One of those was the Mount of Olives, because had an opportunity to stand on the Mount of Olives.

And from one angle, you can be on the Mount of Olives, you can see the Temple Mount, you can see the eastern gate, which depending on different people's philosophy of the end times, that's the gate that Jesus is going to come through.

And nonetheless, though, even if, even if didn't believe that that's the gate that he's going to come through, what I will say is this.

From the Mount of Olives, you can see the Palm Sunday road coming down the road that Jesus walked down.

And they remember, they threw all the, the things out on the ground there, their clothes and the palm branches, and they said Hosanna.

And then shortly after they turned on him.

And then as you go down the Palm Sunday road, there's the Garden of Gethsemane on the right and all these different things.

And so as Jesus is on the Mount of Olives teaching, he's.

He's about to ascend into heaven.

And then one of the other things I thought about when I was sitting on the Mount of Olives is the Great Commission, right?

Jesus was ascending to Heaven.

And the last thing he said was this and that, like, struck a chord with me again.

This is what he says.

He says, all power, verse 18 in Matthew 28, all power is given unto me in heaven and earth.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

Now, in the original Greek, there when it says go and teach, because it looks redundant here it says, go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son of the Holy Ghost.

Verse 20.

Teaching them.

So it's like teach, teaching them, teaching them.

Well, really, there's.

It's.

It's two different ideas.

There is teaching involved with it, but the first reference to teaching there means this.

Make disciples, he says, make disciples.

Make disciples by what?

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you.

And lo, I'm with you all way, even to the end of the world.

So with all of those pieces of the puzzle together, what does he say?

He says this.

Follow me, be a disciple, and then make disciples.

Then that's when we can have the joy of saying, look, I see my children walking in faithfulness.

I. I see my children walking in the truth.

Now, I would go back and venture to say that if we have any parents in the room, or anyone that's raising children still, maybe a grandparent, the idea would be this.

Your first discipleship opportunity is your home.

My.

My wife and my children are my first priorities when it comes to discipleship.

I am.

I am locked in on that.

Okay, but then for other purposes, we know that it should go out.

But one of the travesties has been, and many of you have maybe witnessed this, is that there have been individuals so interested in others that they've missed the people that are right there in front of them.

But what I would say is this.

Find somebody within your life, starting from your closest relatives or your friends and building out, and find somebody to disciple.

You.

Say, well, I'm not.

You don't want me to cycle people.

You don't trust me.

Well, you might not be where you need to be at this moment, but what then?

What's the challenge then?

Challenge then is to get to a place where I could be.

So.

So then be hungry to be the disciple.

Say, who can I find?

Who.

Who can be my.

My John?

Who can lead me?

Who can be my Paul?

I want to be a Timothy, and I want to learn and I want to glean.

And that's what Third John's all about.

Looking at good examples to follow and looking at bad examples to not follow.

And again, there's people that have positions of authority that we would say are not good people to follow.

I mean, I would even say that there are people preaching today in the world that we would say not good examples to follow because by the way, we listen to a preacher preach, but we also look at an individual's life because their life has to match the preaching.

They're a preaching and their lifestyle is completely off.

That in the Bible that says like that's one of the tests to a false teacher.

They might be saying very compelling things from behind the pulpit.

And, and it doesn't mean that a person has to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm nowhere close to being perfect, not even close.

But the truth is, is that when we walk in, as it says walk in truth.

Walk in truth.

And so it's the idea of the walk.

So the first four verses here just simply are the greeting.

But there's so much there even in third John that we can look at and say, man, we can take that.

And I, I want to be a discipler.

We, we have many opportunities here at our church to find some avenue of either one, learning as a disciple E, if you will, or disciple.

Okay?

But for the sake of the argument, we have disciple E, the person who's being discipled and the disciple or the person who's doing the discipling.

Okay.

There are many avenues for you to find that.

And, and I would venture to say that the best avenue for this because, because we see the example in Scripture is either one on one discipleship in the appropriate setting or small group setting.

Because discipleship is not best over a pulpit with 200 some people, right?

Because sometimes with discipleship there's questions.

Now there is a time and a place to preach the word.

It is the centerpiece.

Because without preaching there's nothing to base anything off of.

So preaching, trust me, I love preaching.

Preaching is a wonderful thing.

We should do that.

We should constantly preach, preach in every setting.

But what I will say is that there is an avenue of growth that needs to come outside of the Sunday morning preaching.

You've heard me say this before.

If the only time you're eating food is a Sunday morning for one hour, you're going to be full on Sunday.

But probably, I don't know about you, but probably by Monday I'm getting a little hungry.

Tuesday I'm getting a little bit more hungry.

If I haven't eaten in three days, I'm Ready to eat anything.

And that's the idea for a Christian.

We cannot think that just the preaching is where I'm going to get my discipleship.

That's where I get fed, that's where I get my big meal.

But where comes my daily.

Well, you can go to the Lord and you can study that on your own.

But at the same time, sometimes there's not individuals that are, are like, I don't know if any of you have dealt with this yourself, or maybe you've dealt with someone who has dealt with this.

You say, okay, start learning about God.

And you give them a Bible and they're like, where do I start?

Well, you know, just read it.

I, I agree with that.

Just read it.

But it's like again, we hand, hand a steak to a six month old.

Sometimes we have to cut it up, sometimes we have to puree it, sometimes we have to point them in the right direction of where to go.

So just practically speaking, I don't want to speak just theoretically here.

What do we do if someone comes up to us and says, hey, I want to know more about God, I want to, I want to start reading the Bible.

Where should I start?

There's a lot of opinions.

There's not one right answer for this, by the way.

I'm not going to say that there's one right answer, but I will say that a good method that, that I have seen and that I've seen others use is pointing someone to who Jesus is.

I would venture to say the Book of John is a great place to start.

One, one tool that I have used with an individual who says, I want to know more about God, but I don't know where to start and I don't know what questions to even ask.

Sometimes there is questions that they know what to ask and sometimes they're like, I just don't even know where to start.

What I would do and what I have done and what I've seen as effective is read the book of John.

And as you're reading the Book of John, write down your questions.

Just write them down.

Okay, so John 1:1, in the beginning was the Word.

Okay, I'm gonna stop there.

Who's the Word?

Write that question.

Okay, what's the beginning?

Where, where?

What does the Bible say about the beginning?

Great discipleship, opportunity to go back to the book of Genesis.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Well, how can the Word be God and also with God at the same time?

Great opportunity to talk to Someone about the Trinity.

Great opportunity to talk to someone about Jesus's eternality and the fact that Jesus is not created.

There's going to be some people that think, well, Jesus is a created being of God.

That many, many different cults and different teachings teach that.

Well, know the Bible says that Jesus is eternal from the beginning of time.

He was there, the Word was God.

And so we can go through all that.

And, and just as you can see, right, just in the first couple verses, we've got Trinity, we've got Jesus, we've got eternality, we've got all of that.

And that's how we can disciple, Right?

But sometimes what happens, and I'm going to get off my, my soapbox here in a second, but sometimes what happens is this.

We say, okay, read your Bible.

Or someone listens to, to preaching and then they'd like, I have no idea what that person's saying.

I have no idea what Pastor Josh has said.

He just said something in Greek.

I don't even speak Greek.

Okay, I understand that.

So never be afraid.

There shouldn't be a setting in which we're afraid to ask questions.

Ask questions.

Okay.

If you say, well, I don't know who to ask in this church.

Okay, well, there's a many good people to ask, but I'm just going to give you an open door.

Okay, door's open.

I will not be upset if you come up and ask me a question about something that I said or that's something that you've read or something that you watch.

I'm not going to belittle you and go, well, I can't believe you thought that.

You know, it's, it's an amazing thing to start dialogue and questions.

And so that's how discipleship works.

It's not this formula.

It's just discussing and talking about what it means to fit.

Follow God, follow his word.

Remember John 8:31.

You continue in my word, you're my disciples.

Indeed.

So it's continuing in the Word.

It's not based in feeling.

You know, I know a lot of people that say, well, discipleship is just like we get together and we have a good time and we have food.

That can be a part of discipleship to bridge the gap, to get people to what the word fellowship is not discipleship.

Fellowship is an avenue of encouragement within the church.

But I cannot grow in the Lord by getting together with somebody and just having a good time if the word of God is not presented or talked about or grown in.

And so I'm not Tearing down the idea that, hey, we should, you know, only get to, you know, for example, I.

Maybe some of you don't know this.

I'm not going to just sit and preach to you all day if we hang out, okay?

Like, I. I have other interests.

I like to talk about other things.

But the.

The core of it is.

Is the word of God at the base of our discipleship and our spirit.

And sometimes what we do is we have a lot of people that are.

Are good, like chameleons, like, oh, I. I see that they're acting that way, so I. I probably should act that way.

Or I see that person's not doing that, so I probably shouldn't do that, at least in front of them.

Or I see how the people sit in church and how they open up their Bible.

Okay, that's how I should do it.

That's great, but that's external.

If I don't know the why behind what we're doing, then it's like, well, what am I even doing?

It's just a ritualistic.

And so we have to go deeper.

And so in those first verses, first four verses, we see it's a greeting.

But I think it's also a teaching on what biblical discipleship looks like and what the product of that is.

I have no greater joy than to hear my children walk in truth.

So think about this.

I don't know how many people we have here this evening.

We got people spread out all over the property tonight.

But those that are here, those that are watching, think about if every one of us just.

Every one of us just took one person, one person that we were like, okay, I want to teach them what it means to walk in truth.

No, I didn't go to college for math, but I think if every one of us picked one person, that would double the disciples, right?

And then think about those people and think about those people doing that.

Think about.

Think that that's how it worked.

It started with 12 guys and actually got pared down at one point to 11.

And the Bible says they.

They turned over the world, and now we're preaching the gospel in Middletown, Delaware.

That's an amazing thing to think about.

God's not done with the church yet.

God's not done with his people yet.

And I think that's what we have to start realizing.

And so we're gonna come back.

Don't have time to keep going on unless someone was like, hey, you know, by the way, pray for us.

We got a trip coming up this weekend, so this, like, tomorrow Morning.

We're leaving super early, so pray for us as we drive down to Florida.

I have a wedding in our family that we're going to be taking part of, and so it's an exciting time for us.

So just be praying for us.

And then next week, remember, next week is our packing party, so we won't be back here next week studying.

Third, John, I encourage you to come and help us pack boxes, but I would love for you to come back in two weeks.

Yeah, two weeks.

And we're going to look at these examples.

There's.

There's three examples here.

We have a guy named Gaius, who is a good example.

Then we have another guy, Diotrophies, who is not a good example.

Now, I don't know about you, but I haven't heard that many people named Diotrephy around here.

But the.

I don't know if it's because he's a bad example or just it's a different name for us.

But he.

He's an example of what not to be in his pride.

He teaches, he wants position, but he doesn't want it for the right reasons.

And then at the end, we ultimately see another good example and in a guy named Demetrius.

And so we'll come back and study that.

And if you want to see what a good example is, come back.

I would encourage you to read it yourself.

I would encourage you to dive deeper into the word of God all the time.

But if you can't tell.

Discipleship is near and dear to my heart.

It's something that I've want.

I admittedly have given my life to.

And I want to.

If.

If I stand.

When I stand before God one day, When I stand before God one day, I want to be able to say, you know, I did everything that I could to promote the gospel and discipleship.

That's.

That's really what it is.

There's a lot of things that people can be known for and a lot of things that we can hang our hats on, but at the end of the day, man, none of that is going to matter.

And so let's.

Let's all get busy about that discipleship and what that means.

And so I pray that that can speak to you as it has spoken to me.

Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast.

I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.

If you would like to find out more information about our church or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org or find us on Facebook or YouTube.

You can also email me directly at Josh Massaro@middletownbaptistchurch.com if you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and follow along for future podcast and updates.

Thank you so much.

God Bless.

Have a wonderful day.