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The Bible Breakdown
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The Bible Breakdown
2 John 01: Love With Guardrails
The shortest book in the Bible packs one of the most powerful countercultural messages for believers today: sometimes love requires boundaries. In this exploration of 2 John, Pastor Brandon unpacks the Apostle John's urgent letter about "Love with Guardrails" – the delicate balance between Christian hospitality and spiritual discernment.
Written by Jesus' closest friend in his final years, this letter arrives during a pivotal moment in church history. False teachers were infiltrating house churches, denying Christ's physical incarnation through a heresy called Gnosticism, while Emperor Domitian was executing Christians in horrific displays. Amid this chaos, John provides startlingly clear guidance: refuse hospitality to those teaching falsehoods about Christ.
Pastor Brandon expertly connects this ancient wisdom to our modern context where comfort and aesthetics often trump theological substance. He shares a powerful story about a friend who initially chose a church with perfect presentation but questionable doctrine before realizing that no amount of excellent coffee, perfect music, or engaging children's programs could compensate for teachings that contradicted Scripture. The lesson is clear – even small deviations from biblical truth, if left unchecked, can lead believers drastically off course.
What makes this episode particularly compelling is its challenge to our culture's emphasis on unlimited tolerance. The truth is that authentic Christian love operates within boundaries established by God's word. As John writes, "Love means doing what God has commanded us." This episode will equip you with the discernment to recognize when hospitality serves truth and when it enables falsehood.
Ready to deepen your understanding of how to love others while maintaining biblical integrity? Listen to this episode, then share your thoughts with our growing community of believers who are putting these principles into practice daily on the Bible Breakdown discussion group on Facebook.
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The More We Dig. The More We Find.
Well, hello everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host, pastor Brandon, today, 2, john chapter. Well, the only chapter, chapter one, and today's title is going to be Love with Guardrails Love with Guardrails. We're going to do. One of my favorite things is that we're going to intro 2, john, and then we're going to talk about and go through the chapter. But before we do that, as always, if you like what we're doing here while you're getting your Bible out, pause this real quick and make sure you like, share and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help because when people are looking to get into God's Word and to know more about God's Word, it helps them because they're wondering what can I expect? What are other people getting out of this? I know I do that and I'm looking through things I want to know, like what is this all about? And so make sure you let other people know how you are experiencing God's word through the Bible Breakdown podcast and make sure you're going to the Bible Breakdown discussion on Facebook. There's an amazing group of people who are doing devotions every single day, and the more we dig, the more we find, and I'm just going to tell you listen, I love God's Word. I love every bit of God's Word. I think you do too. But if you are listening to this as we are doing, it live. Praise the Lord for the New Testament. We have been in the book of Ezekiel for like 12 years now and we are now in 2 John, and it's one chapter, and then we're gonna be diving back into another old testament book and one that we really love. But let's take a moment and just enjoy second john for what it is. So here's the great thing about second john. Second john is, if we were to sum it up in one phrase, it is love with guardrails. I would say the theme verse of 2 John would be 2 John 1, verse 6, when it says this, it says love means doing what God has commanded us, and he has commanded us to love one another, just as you heard from the beginning, and so obviously we're going to be getting into what that means.
Speaker 1:But first let's break this down just a little bit. Like, what is 2 John? Who wrote it, all this kind of stuff? Well, if you're brand new to Christianity, 2 John is in the New Testament, and it is toward the very back of your New Testament, it is almost at the very end. And let's do some of this and talk about how.
Speaker 1:First of all, the author. Who is the author? Well, the author. Who is the author? Well, the author is the Apostle John. Now, john wrote the Gospel of John. He wrote 1st, 2nd and 3rd John, and then he also wrote Revelation.
Speaker 1:Now, many scholars have different ways of thinking about this and we're not exactly sure when he wrote all of them, but most likely he wrote them all around the same time, and so this was written by the Apostle John. And the Apostle John was the oldest living disciple and he was most likely Jesus' best friend. That is according to John. So we don't know if he was or not, but at least John thought he was. And where did he write this? Well, he wrote this most likely in a city called Ephesus.
Speaker 1:Now, at the very beginning of Christianity, the early church time, antioch, other than Jerusalem, antioch was the number one city where everybody went to. But as things continued to just spread out throughout the known world, ephesus eventually became one of the epicenters for the Christian movement. And you had, you know, timothy was the pastor and you had all these different things. Well, can you imagine? You're a young man, probably 30 years old, timothy is pastoring these people and one of the people in your church is the apostle John. I mean, that's crazy, right? Well, according to history, what happened was, after everything started to spread out everywhere, right before Jesus died, that Jesus looked at John and said hey, john, will you take care of mom for me? And he said yes, sir. And so, after the resurrection of Jesus and after the book of Acts is happening, john ended up moving Mary to Ephesus and she would spend the rest of her life, most likely in Ephesus, and that's where John's headquarters would be as well.
Speaker 1:And John was over eight different churches, different cities and churches, ephesus being one of them. So, even though Timothy was the pastor, he was kind of over Timothy, in a way an apostle over these different cities, which, by the way, when you look at Revelation, chapter two and three, he's writing to the seven churches. Those seven churches most likely were the seven churches that he would oversee during this time. Now, to whom and when did he write? There's a little controversy here, but he wrote, and we're going to see this just a moment. He says to the elect lady. Now, the reason why that is so very interesting is because we have no idea who that is. Elect lady. Now, the reason why that is so very interesting is because we have no idea who that is.
Speaker 1:It is one of two things it is either a particularly godly woman who is over a church or a metaphor for the church. Now, there's a couple of ways of looking at this. First of all, it depends on if you are egalitarian or complementarian as to whether you immediately agree with one of these or not. Now, egalitarian are people who think that there are no dividing lines in the church, there's no roles for men and women, everybody can do everything at all times. Right, that's egalitarian. Complementarian thinks that the church world should follow the order that God established in the home, in the book of Ephesians and other places, and so therefore, complementarians automatically go. Well, it couldn't have been a woman, because women can't be lead pastors. Egalitarians, you know, they on the other side saying, well, I sure enough can be a woman, because blah, blah, blah. So here's the thing In the time, churches didn't have buildings.
Speaker 1:They would meet in houses, sometimes in caves and stuff like that, and in the time the world was man's world, just like the great theologian said. It's a man's world, right? But the house was the woman's world, and so, whereas the man would go out and get the bacon, the woman's the one who cooked it. And so many times a man would defer to the judgment of a woman while he was in her home. This was her domain. And so there's many people who say, well, absolutely, that there may have been men who were in charge of the overall city, but very much so it's possible that there were women who were in charge of these house churches, because that was considered her domain. So it very well could have been a lady in that aspect of it. So it very well could have been a lady in that aspect of it. But it is also likely that he was writing to a particular church, because throughout the New Testament, god uses the metaphor of a marriage to talk about how Jesus is the bridegroom and we are his bride, and so either way, he's most likely talking to a particular church, and this happened around 85 to 95 AD, near the end of his life, and so, most likely. What many scholars think is he probably wrote the Gospel of John all three of you know 1st, 2nd and 3rd John and Revelation probably close to about the same time.
Speaker 1:Now some background. The main idea of this is the big idea is that God has called Christians to be hospitable and to love people. However, god wants us to have guardrails so that we can still use our common sense. In other words, he doesn't say just invite anybody into your home for any reason. There's guardrails around this for very good reason, and we're going to get to that in just a moment. And why is it important? It reminds us that believers are to remember that love and truth go together. It warns us against the dangers of false teaching, especially about the identity of Christ, and it teaches Christians how to balance hospitality with spiritual discernment, welcoming people without welcoming false doctrine. And that's important because elsewhere in the world, christians are now experiencing serious challenges.
Speaker 1:The number one challenge they're dealing with is something called Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a false doctrine that was saying that Jesus was not truly human. And so what they would say is on one side, they would say he wasn't truly human, he was really a spirit who looked like a human. On the other side, it was. You know, he was really just more divine than human. It was really interesting how they would do that. They downplayed the physical, upplayed the spiritual. There's a new form of this nowadays called New Age, where everything's super spiritual and super flaky and law of attraction, all that kind of weirdness, and it was a form of that. And what John is saying is like that's crazy. Don't believe that right.
Speaker 1:Another thing is Christians are being persecuted by a Roman emperor and I misspelled emperor. So if you're looking at the video, don't pay attention to that. But the Roman emperor, domitian, and Domitian was mean. He was one of the main ones who would put Christians into the Colosseum. There was a thing called a Roman candle where they would tie a Christian to a stake and then light them on fire and it would light up the area for a while. That was this guy right.
Speaker 1:And then the last one is the church is starting to deal with internal divisions and false teachers traveling from place to place. So John is trying to warn them about what's going on. We're getting there in just a second. A couple more things. This is the shortest book in the Bible only 13 verses. It's extreme because it's one of the first places, other than there's a couple places in the book of Corinthians and stuff like that the first Corinthians.
Speaker 1:But John warns people to not allow false teachers to even come into their homes. Like he says, if you know this person is a false teacher, have nothing to do with them. Which is a pretty big deal, because there are certain places where God would be saying to different people excuse me, not God, but they would say things like hey, if someone doesn't agree with you, you should just try your best to be nice to them, blah, blah, blah. And John's like no, if that's what they're doing, you keep far, far away from them. And that's a big deal. And then, lastly, is some early Christians used house churches, so hospitality was a big deal, hence this strong warning. So, in other words, what's going on in this situation is John is telling them hey, listen, I know you love people, I know you love wanting to do good for people, but no, you got to have a line, and so I want to make sure we understand this and then we're going to move on.
Speaker 1:I want to show you something really quickly. If you're watching the video, you're going to get this. If it's a podcast, hopefully this will also make sense. But you've got 1, 2, and 3, john, and one of the things. To kind of help you keep it in your mind is this, and that is John is writing to three different types of people in this.
Speaker 1:So 1 John John is specifically writing to the overall church. That's when you're going to get the idea of him talking to different ones and him saying things like you know, we're all in Christ and all this wonderful stuff and it's important to think about if you want to keep them in your head. That 1 John is to the overall church. 2 John is to a specific church. Now, once again, we don't realize, or we don't know for sure, if he's writing that to a lady who is kind of overseeing a portion, you know, a house church within a church, or if he is just using it as a metaphor. But 1 John is to the overall Big C church. The specific church is in 2 John. And then 3 John we'll get into here in just a few weeks is to a specific person and that's going to be really interesting. We're going to talk about a particular guy who most likely was like a personal assistant of sorts for John and he is writing to him and just encouraging him and saying, hey, let's get together. I got some stuff I need to share with you all this kind of good stuff.
Speaker 1:And so today we're covering 2 John, which is his message to a particular church who must have been experiencing a lot of false teaching, because he is warning them what to do, what not to do and how to keep their head. So if you're ready, 2 John 1 says this this is from John the elder. I am writing to the chosen lady other translations say the elect lady and to her children, whom I love in the truth, as does everyone else who knows the truth. Pause. That's why you can see a little bit of that. I'm not so sure. Is this to a lady who is overseeing a house church, or was it something else? Either way, he's writing to a specific church.
Speaker 1:Verse two because the truth lives in us and will be with us forever. Grace, mercy and peace which comes from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Father, which comes from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Father, will continue to be with those who live in truth and love. Verse 4, how happy I was to meet some of your children and find them living according to the truth, just as the Father commanded. I am writing to you, dear friends, that you should love one another. This is not a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning. Love means doing what God commanded, and he has commanded us to love one another, just as you heard from the beginning.
Speaker 1:I say this because many deceivers have gone out into the world. They deny that Jesus Christ came in a real body. Such a person is a deceiver and an antichrist. Pause, now. John was one of the first ones to really talk about, or one of the ones to talk about, the idea of antichrist. Now, if all you've ever done is read the book of Revelation or watched the Left Behind movies, then you probably have this idea of an antichrist being one figure who comes at the end of days and raises up an army against God. Now, there's a space for that. There's also what's called a spirit of Antichrist. It is the spirit of anyone who comes out outright against God. So, in other words, he is saying such a person is a deceiver and someone who is out to come against the work of God. All right, verse 8. Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked so hard to achieve. The work of God. Okay, all right, verse 8. With both the Father and the Son.
Speaker 1:If anyone comes to your meeting and does not teach the truth about Christ, don't invite that person into your home or give them any kind of encouragement. Anyone who encourages such a person becomes a partner in their evil work. I have so much more to say to you, but I don't want to do it with paper and ink, for I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face. Then our joy may be complete. Greetings from all the children of your sister chosen by God. Wow, what a serious warning.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go back to verse 10 and 11, when he says anyone who comes into your meeting and does not teach the truth about Christ, don't invite that person into your home or give any kind of encouragement. Anyone who encourages such people become a partner in their work. Now, that's interesting, because there are places where the Bible talks about being hospitable, and there's even a place where the Bible says that there was a guy named Apollos in the book of Acts and he was teaching the ways of John, but John the Baptist, but he needed to be, you know, corrected, to know more about how to teach. You know the truth of Jesus. And so, instead of just casting him out, they went and taught him and he became an amazing teacher. And so where is that common sense? Well, the difference between Apollos and what's happening in this is Apollos wasn't teaching wrong, he just wasn't teaching the full truth. These are people he's talking about, who are coming in and they're perverting the truth, they're changing it so that it becomes something that it's not. And he has a very serious warning and he says don't just not let them into your home, not to let them into your fellowship, but don't even encourage them. Like, like, don't, don't encourage them to do bad, tell them, just tell them to go away. Anyone who encourages them has become a partner in their work. So what does that mean for all of us? And that is this notice how he said. He said anyone who wanders away from the teaching has no relationship with God. Watch, watch out, so you don't lose what you have I love this phrase worked so hard to achieve. Can I tell you something that I don't mean to point this at anybody, but this is just the way it is.
Speaker 1:Many of us, we give our lives to Jesus and we just wait for heaven. We just man. I'm thankful for Jesus, thankful I'm going to heaven. I'll die one day. Let's move on.
Speaker 1:That is not what God's called us to do Once we enter into the kingdom of heaven. He wants us to know him. He wants us to grow in our relationship with him. He wants us to read his word, to pray and to experience the fullness of the freedom that we have in him. And it takes work. It takes denying yourself and making it through the book of Ezekiel, you know, and all those different kinds of things, as we're growing and we're growing. And it takes a lifetime to build a lifetime legacy. Right, it's a process, and what John is saying is, once you have worked so hard to grow in your relationship with God, make sure that you guard what you have learned. And by that, what he's saying is is use common sense. It doesn't matter how new something is, it doesn't matter how attractive it is, it doesn't matter how fun it is. If it doesn't line up with God's word, you can't do it. You got to stay away. You got to be so careful. That reminds me of.
Speaker 1:I had a friend of mine who he moved to a new city and he went to this new church and he said, man, this place was awesome. He said all the coffee was just right, all the food was just right, the air conditioning was right. My kids loved it. Immediately they had people dressed up in like full Disney kind of outfits just to encourage the kids. It was wonderful. He said we got into the worship and he said man, I felt like I was in a concert. He said the lights were perfect, the music was perfect, everything was great, everything was just. He just kept saying the word perfect, he said.
Speaker 1:But then we got to the message and he said the further that that pastor got into the message, the more I realized he wasn't teaching the Bible. And he said can I tell you I'm ashamed to say, how long it took me before I was grieved, he said, because I wanted to just look over it, just be like. I know this isn't true, but God, there's free coffee and God, it's so beautiful in here and God, my kids love it. He said. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, he said I'd worked so hard to get to know God and I'd worked so hard to know his word. It didn't matter how perfect it was. He said it just wasn't right. He said I had to leave.
Speaker 1:And he said, man, the very next Sunday he said I went to this other church and he's like pastor, I know that you care about such things, so I'll tell you. And he went and he told me these stories and in these stories, pretty much everything that could go wrong did he's like. He's like it was. He said as far as in like just a presentation. He said it was terrible. He said it was just horrible.
Speaker 1:He said, but then the pastor got up and he said man, he opened up God's word and he said he started preaching. And he said it was a simple truth, but it was true. And he said it's just something in my spirit, said this is the place that honors my word, it's going to be okay. And he said, Pastor, can I tell you that there was a part of me that struggled because I wanted what felt good and what looked good. And he said but God's Word was more important. And he's like I just decided maybe I can be part of what can make a difference around here. And it was amazing to hear him say that.
Speaker 1:And please don't hear me say I'm not in any way saying that you need to find a church, where everything is a disaster and somehow things that are a disaster are more holy. That's not true at all. God doesn't move through chaos. All right. What I am saying is make sure that you prioritize in your own life, more than anything else, the truth of God's word, because if you get one percent off, for a long time you won't notice, but then one day you'll turn around and go how far and wonder how far you have gotten from God and how that happened. And it's because you got 1% off. You have to guard your relationship with God and if it's new it might not be true. So you get back into his word and realize his word hasn't changed. And so if it doesn't line up and it can't line up with one scripture, it, if it doesn't line up and it can't line up with one scripture, it needs to line up with the whole Bible. If it doesn't line up, don't take it. It's not worth your joy, it's not worth missing the reward that God has for you.
Speaker 1:Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you, god, that you lead us and you guide us and you know us in all things. And God, in this life there's such confusion. Sometimes we don't know what to do. We're trying to figure it out. That's why I'm so thankful for you, holy Spirit. You lead us and you guide us along the right paths. For your name's sake, I'm thankful for that.
Speaker 1:And, holy Spirit, I'm hoping, maybe, that nobody who's listening or watching this is experiencing this. But if they're experiencing a place right now, then maybe it's perfect with all the five senses. But it's wrong in their spirit. They know that your word's not being honored, it's not being taught. I pray, holy Spirit, you'll teach them to know what to do. Maybe it's not time to leave, maybe it's time to ask questions and then find out what they need to do. But, god, nothing's more important than your word. Help us to submit to your word fully, because it's your word that brings life, because it's your word that reveals Christ to us. We're thankful for that today. In Jesus' name, we pray Amen, what God's word says in 2 John 1, verse 6. This was the verse for today, and that is that love means doing what God commanded us, and he has commanded us to love one another. But, as you heard the rest of it with common sense, all right, I love you, I'll.
