2 JOHN
‘Look to yourselves, that you may not lose what you have worked for, but
may win a full reward’ (8). Don’t let things slip. Build on the work
that has already been done. This will not be easy - ‘many deceivers have
already gone out into the world’. Such people do nothing but harm. They
are wreckers. They will destroy the work of God - and think nothing of
it. They are ‘antichrist’. They are doing ‘wicked work’ (7,10). When
God’s work and God’s glory are at stake, we dare not be too
‘easy-going’. The ‘anything goes’ attitude will undermine the work of
God - if we’re not careful. ‘A charge to keep I have, a God to
glorify...To serve the present age, my calling to fulfil...Arm me with
jealous care, as in Thy sight to live; and O, Thy servant, Lord,
prepare, a strict account to give’ (Revised Church Hymnary, 518).
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3 JOHN
Some people do a lot of good. Others do a great deal of harm. Diotrephes
thought he was a big ‘star’. He ‘loves to be first’. He ‘likes to put
himself first’. He wasn’t a star. He was a disaster! He took ‘nothing to
do with’ God’s servants. He did ‘not acknowledge’ the authority’ of
Christ’s apostle. He was ‘gossiping maliciously about’ God’s servants.
He did not make people feel ‘welcome’. He drove people ‘out of the
church’ (9-10). Demetrius was very different. He was ‘well spoken of by
everyone - and even by the truth itself’. He wasn’t just popular. He was
real, genuine, true. There was a ring of truth about him. These were no
empty words of flattery. God’s ‘true’ servants said, ‘We also speak
well of him’ (12). What kind of person are you?
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JUDE
The wrong kind of people had come among God’s people: ‘certain men whose
condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among
you...godless men...’ (4). Such people do not like to hear the words,
‘The Lord rebuke you’. They ‘speak abusively against’ those who speak
the Word of the Lord to them (9-10). God’s Word warns us against such
people: ‘In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their
own ungodly desires. These are the men who divide you, who follow mere
natural instincts and do not have the Spirit’ (18-19). With people like
this around - life gets like a ‘minefield’. You never know where the
next “explosion’ is going to come from! How can we ‘stand tall’ and not
be dragged down by this kind of thing? ‘Keep yourselves in the love of
God’ - He ‘is able to keep you from falling’ (21,24).
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