Presented to Swift Current Corps 10 Feb 2013. Based on a sermon presented on 15 May 2011. By Captain Michael Ramsay
Late one night, a burglar breaks into a house that he thinks is empty. He tiptoes through the living room but suddenly freezes in his tracks when he hears a voice say: “Jesus is watching you!”
When it becomes quiet again, the burglar creeps forward. And again the voice says, “Jesus is watching you.”
The burglar stops dead in his tracks. He is frightened. Frantically, he looks all around. In a dark corner, he spots a… birdcage and in the cage is… a parrot.
Gathering his senses, he asks the parrot: “Was it you all this time who said, ‘Jesus is watching me?’”
“Yes”, said the parrot.
The burglar breathes a sigh of relief, then gaining some confidence he asks the parrot: “What’s your name?”
“Clarence,” says the bird.
“That's a dumb name for a parrot,” sneers the now confident burglar. “What kind of a silly person would name a bird, ‘Clarence?’”
The parrot replies, “The same person who would call his attack dog ‘Jesus’… Jesus is watching you.”
Parrots are good imitators and our verse today is exhorting us to be good imitators, it says, 3 John 11: “Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.”
Pertaining to this imitation: I think that we have all heard the analogy at one time or another in a sermon about counterfeiting counter-measures and how the authorities spot counterfeit currency. What they don’t do to learn how to identify counterfeit money is study counterfeit money. Instead what they do do is study real money. When they can identify the real thing then they know that all else is not the real thing. It is the same with us as it is only when we spend more time focusing on Christ, in prayer, worship, and Bible study, and less time on ourselves indulging in the selfish values of the world that we recognize what is good and what is evil. And also as we spend more of the currency of our time with God we will obviously become more like Him; however, there are those who will choose instead to use their time spending the counterfeit currencies of the world doing what is selfish and what is evil. 3 John tells us these people have not even seen God. We need to spend time with God to see Him and we need to spend time imitating what is good to build up for ourselves the real treasures that are in heaven (Matthew 6:19-24).
3 John 11: “Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.” This seems pretty simple. But sometimes we make simple things a little more complicated than they need to be, don’t we? When I was first reflecting on how simple this verse seems to be I was reminded of a few quotations that also point to the obvious. I have been promising for a couple of weeks to give us a test again. I have one for us today. Let’s see how we do. Let’s see if we can finish off these famous quotes. Bonus marks if we can say who said them.
- Sometimes a cigar is just a ______ (cigar - Sigmund Freud)
- When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a _______ (duck - Cardinal Richard Cushing[1])
- A rose by any other name is still a ______ (rose – William Shakespeare’s Juliet in Romeo and Juliet)
- Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen ______ (God – John, the elder)
These famous quotes are all telling us what should be abundantly obvious to us: ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar;’ ‘if it swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck;’ ‘a rose by another name is still a rose;’ and ‘anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.’ Therefore do not imitate what is evil but what is good.
Our Biblical quote today is from this very short letter that John the elder, wrote to his friend Gaius (Verse 1) who probably lived in the city of Ephesus in the Roman province of Asia.[2] The Roman province of Asia: roughly what present day country is in this area? (Turkey). John, in all likelihood probably even founded this church in what is now Turkey.
As we read this letter John writes to this Ephesian church he may have founded, we notice that someone in this church, Diotrephes, is challenging John’s authority (Verse 9); Diotrephes is making false accusations about John and his companions; Diotrephes is not even accepting missionaries that John sends to visit the church (Verse 10); and Diotrephes is even kicking the people out of the church who are good to the missionaries and to John’s friends. This is infuriating!
Now, if anyone is faithfully doing their readings as laid out in the reading plan in the bulletin, we remember from 2 John this week that what Diotrephes is doing to John and his friends is exactly what John told people to do with the Enemy’s people. Antichrists: we should not even accept them into our homes (2 John 7-11). Now someone in this church here is turning the tables on John in this way and Diotrephes is encouraging people not to accept John-sent missionaries into their homes (1 John 10).[3] John is not pleased. John is very upset. And John, with all of this going on, John is telling his friend, Gaius, in this short letter to a divided church how to know who to trust and how to know who not to trust in this conflict. John says, “Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.”
All of this infighting is happening in the church itself, remember. This isn’t people outside the church persecuting Christians. This is people inside the church who are tearing each other down. Sadly this happened even in the first century and sadly this happens even in the 21st Century. Do we ever learn? Some people always, I think, try to grab power and authority for themselves that is not theirs to grab; reminiscent of Eve and Adam -I think- who, in disobeying God through reaching for the fruit, tried to be as God (Genesis 3:4).
In our text here today, in the midst of a power struggle between John the elder and his adversary the self-serving Diotrephes, John is away as he writes this letter to Gaius at home in Ephesus (Verse 1). John tells Gaius that when John’s friends stayed with Gaius that they only had good things to say about him (Verses 3-8) – unlike Diotrephes – and John tells Gaius too that he has an ally in Demetrius in their fight against Diotrephes and his selfish ways as Diotrephes is challenging God by challenging John’s God-given authority in this, His church.[4]
John, in 3 John here, is shoring up support and trying to put down the self-serving revolt from within the church. In so doing John gives us this sage advice when he says that if it appears that Diotrephes is selfish, acting badly, and causing troubles; if it appears that he is not a believing God-server but rather a self-server; if it appears to be that way then we have to realize that it probably is that way and we should not be drawn into acting that way ourselves: ‘sometimes a cigar is actually a cigar;’ ‘if something swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck;’ ‘a rose by another name is still a rose;’ and, Verse 11, ‘anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.’ ‘Do not imitate what is evil but what is good.’ This seems simple and it is and it is actually very important for us to remember in this day and age.
It is basic for us in our world today. I think we have lots of people trying to tell us that a cigar isn’t really a cigar anymore and that a rose isn’t really a rose anymore. The values of our Canadian society seem to be being turned on their heads. Some people, like Diotrephes perhaps, make these long, convoluted arguments that are nothing more than attempts to obscure what should be abundantly obvious to all (Cf. Romans 1-2). These people act and these people talk in self-serving, rather than God-serving ways. There are people even in our country and in our community here who say a whole lot of things that sound really good but that are actually opposed to God.
And so because of this I think it is very important for us to remain faithful; I think it is very important for us to keep reading our Bibles so that we not to be deceived. When we pray and read our Bibles we can tell when someone is making grand speeches to lead us astray. When we pray and read our Bibles, we can tell and we can recognize when someone is trying to deceive us. When we pray and read our Bibles, we can tell and we can avoid being deceived by self-serving ploys. When we pray and read our Bibles can will realize that ‘a cigar is just a cigar;’ ‘if something swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck;’ ‘a rose by another name is still a rose;’ and as we pray and read our Bibles we will realize the simple truth that, Verse 11, ‘anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.’ Therefore ‘do not imitate what is evil but what is good.’
Now about some of these quotes: Do we know the origin of the “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” quote? It is attributed to psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud but a critic of Freud actually probably uttered the phrase. They have found no actual evidence of this quote anywhere in Freud’s myriad writings. Freud was an antichrist, openly. Freud had no time for religion at all. He thought it was for weak people and, evolutionarily speaking, he considered it to be primitive and outdated.[5] Freud, in all his wisdom, thought that all people went through certain stages in our lives and that at some point in our lives Freud thought that boys will all have crushes on their mothers, Freud thought that girls will all have crushes on their fathers. Freud thought that women each envy a certain part of the male anatomy and Freud thought that as people have oral fixations, that certain items – like cigars – Freud thought, are phallic symbols (for that part of the male). In response to all this, a critic probably said, “Oh come on now, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
Do we know the origin of the rose quote, “a rose by another name is still a rose?” William Shakespeare put these words into the mouth of Juliet in his play, Romeo and Juliet: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Juliet is talking about her love. Juliet says that you cannot change the beautiful nature of something by just simply renaming it. It doesn’t make it any different. A rose is still as beautiful even if you call it a turnip or a skunk.
These days, there are a number of different ways that some even in our churches in this country are trying to convince us, like Diotrephes was trying to convince the good people in the Ephesus church, that a rose is something other than a rose. Over the last few years we have heard people trying to rename a rose, telling us that the Bible is not the inerrant Word of God (TSA Doc 1). From this deception they then proceed to tell us all kinds of things that should be obviously untrue. The Diotrephes of this world are selfish and they tell us that we have to look out for ourselves before serving God through others. The Diotrephes of our world today tell us that even though the Bible seems to say that certain selfish behaviours can be changed for the better, the Bible doesn’t really mean what it says: the Diotrephes of our world today say that you can’t even change your nature so don’t bother trying. The Diotrephes of our world today are telling us that we are born certain ways and we’ll never be able to change. This is sad. We know that’s not true.
We have all seen people change. We have all heard testimonies of people whose lives and world God has changed from the inside out. Many of us have had our lives changed as we have turned them over to God but the Diotrephes of our world today say that a rose is not a rose and a duck is not a duck and that not only can we not change the selfish and evil behaviours that have enslaved us but that they tell us that we can and we must embrace them and even build our identity around them: ‘why call a sin, a sin?’, they ask. ‘Don’t think you can be free of sin’, they say. ‘Enjoy your selfish actions’, they say. ‘Look out for number one’, they say. ‘Don’t worry about what God and the Bible says about loving God, your neighbour, and being perfect’, they say, ‘we all sin all the time’, they say, ‘just look after yourself’, they say, ‘and everything else will be okay.’ They say... They say... They say.
This is selfishness. This selfishness is sad because by putting oneself first instead of God and others, many people are denying the power of Christ to change even us from the inside out. It is sad because they are ignoring what is plain to see that is: we can all be changed, we can all be sanctified, we can all be made holy. This is the gospel truth. The epistles of John record that we can be free from sin; we should not be deceived. We do not need to be deceived it is as obvious as the fact that ‘a cigar really is just a cigar;’ ‘something that swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, is a duck;’ ‘a rose by another name is still a rose;’ and, Verse 11, ‘anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God.’ And we can see God and we can do what is good. Therefore ‘do not imitate what is evil but what is good.’
Returning to the earlier analogy about the counterfeit money. How do we know what is evil in order to avoid it? Do we do this by studying evil and watching all the bad shows on TV or reading the bad books or surfing the bad Internet sites? No. We know evil and avoid it by spending time examining what is good. “Dear friend,” John the elder writes, “do not imitate what is evil but what is good.” The experts, who want to identify and stop counterfeit money, they don’t spend time around what is bad and fake, they spend time around what is good – the real thing. The more they spend time with the real thing, the more they are prepared to face the counterfeits. The more time we spend with the Lord in prayer and in Bible study, the more we are prepared for the counterfeits, the evils in our world. The more time we spend with the Lord in prayer and in Bible study, the more we are conformed to His likeness – not by our doing but by His.
We are all invited to spend time with our Lord praying and reading our Bibles; we are all invited to spend time serving our Lord and doing good – giving hope today. We are all invited to do this and as we do, we can be assured that we are indeed spending the Lord’s currency and building up for ourselves treasures in heaven. Life’s that simple: if we seek the Lord, we will find Him. And as we find Him, we will be transformed into His likeness no longer doing evil but instead doing good.
So then, in conclusion, life’s not as tricky as some would have us think: ‘a cigar is just cigar;’ ‘if something swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck;’ ‘a rose by another name is still a rose;’ and so, Verse 11, ‘Dear friend[s], do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God. And we can all see God and we can all have our lives transformed by Him so that indeed He can do what is good through even us.
Let us pray.
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[1] Cardinal Richard Cushing’s duck quote available on-line at http://quotationsbook.com/quote/2701/#ixzz1LumYAmwv
[2] D. Moody Smith, First, Second, and Third John (Interpretation: John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky: 1990), 21.
[3] Cf. D. Moody Smith, 153-154 for a good discussion of this possibility, assuming of course that 2 John and 3 John are written by the same person.
[4] Cf. John R. W. Stott,: The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1988 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 19), S. 236
[5] Cf. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, 1926. Translated by James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1968.
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