This is the last Sunday of 2024 and in just two days it will be New Year’s Eve, the day that we promise ourselves that “This year, I’m going to be different! This year I’m going to be a new person with new ideas, new thoughts, and new ways of doing things!” We call these “new ways”, “New Year’s Resolutions”, and maybe about half of what we want to do will happen in the new year, that is, if we really are serious about making some changes in our lives. So let me draw our thoughts to a passage that we don’t read very often and certainly a passage that I have never used for a New Year’s message, but it’s a passage that just might challenge us to make a different kind of new year’s resolution. Turn with me in your Bibles to the third letter of the Apostle John, the one entitled, “Third John”, and let’s look at this letter together. We are going to examine the testimony of three men, two good, and one bad, and hopefully learn something about bringing a good testimony about the love of Jesus Christ to those around us.
In this letter of encouragement, John is writing specifically to his good friend, Gaius (pronounced “Ga-us”). He begins with a prayer that he has for his friend. “My dear friend, it is my prayer that you prosper in every way and be of good health, just as your soul prospers.” It is a prayer for good things to come into his friend’s life, and a prayer that he will be of good health and that he will be successful and blessed in everything that he does. It’s like a prayer of good wishes. You know, it’s a good thing that we pray for good things to come to those we know and love. That’s what John prays for his friend. And then he praises Gaius for the good testimony that he has heard about him and his conduct towards others and his love for the truth. “I was glad,” he says, “when I heard some of the brethren bring a good testimony of your love for the truth of God’s word, and of how you are believing God and are living a life that is pleasing unto Him.” It’s not only a good idea that we pray for good things to come to those we know and love but that we also walk in such a way that people know that we stand for the truth of God’s Word, the Bible, and are living a life that is pleasing unto Him. There is a modern song with the byline, “They will know we are Christians by our love.” The world and all those around us need to see and know what a real Christian is like by the testimony we live before them.
Then John speaks about a fellow that used to have a living testimony about Christ before others but something happened along the way and now that testimony has become sidetracked and self centered, and caustic towards fellow believers. His name is Diotrephes (Dio-tree-fes), and his love is pride. He loves to be the center of attention and to have the choice seats in the house and to point out all his “goodness” so that others will see his “testimony” about just how great he is. On one occasion Jesus tells the parable about a Scribe who comes to the temple, all decked out “to the nines” and in his prayer, he boasts about how good and great he is, and how he always does what is right, and about his giving of his finances to the church. But over against that Scribe is a poorly dressed, shabby man, who can only beat his breast and, without so much as looking up towards heavens, he says, “Oh Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Jesus says of the two, it’s the poorly dressed but humble man whose prayer and testimony is heard. Isaiah said that “our righteousness” is no more than “dirty rags”. Not much to boast about, is it?
