The Danger of Pride

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This morning, we’re going to be in 3rd John. We’re going to be at the end of 3rd John to finish up our series on these letters from John, the last apostle, as he looked around and saw he was the last of those who walked with Jesus Christ, the last one to be on earth, and looked at these generations of Christians coming after him and thought, what is it that I need to tell them? We’ve spent several weeks looking over these things and learning from his three letters that he wrote toward the end of his life.

And he ends, 3 John, he ends this last letter with a discussion about pride. And pride is deceptive and pride is destructive. I read a story just this week, and it’s on here, so I have to look at it here.

I read a story talking about the Frasier-Ali fight back in, I believe it was 1971. Anybody remember that? Okay.

I don’t, but I’ve heard about it. There’s an interview that Muhammad Ali gave before this fight with Joe Frazier, where he was quoted as saying, there seems to be some confusion. We’re going to clear this confusion up on March 8th, and I wish I could sound like him when I said it for full effect, but you’re just going to have to use your imaginations.

We’re going to clear this confusion up on March 8th. We’re going to decide once and for all who is king. There’s not a man alive who can whoop me.

And it says here in parentheses. He jabbed the air half a dozen times with a blinding laugh. He said, I’m too smart, as he tapped his head.

He said, I’m too pretty, as he lifted up his profile to show everybody his face. He said, I am the greatest. I am the king. I should be a postage stamp.

That’s the only way I could get licked. And that’s pretty clever. I’ve got to give him credit for that.

That’s pretty clever. I wish I was that quick to come up with stuff. And then history teaches us that Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali after all that bragging.

And I don’t know if he lost because he was not as good as Joe Frazier. I don’t know if he lost because he let his pride get the better of him and so didn’t practice the way he should have. I don’t really know the cause, but I know that’s an unfortunate thing to be on the record having said right before you lose the match.

What’s that? Yeah. Pride goes, Proverbs chapter 16 says, Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Scripture teaches that. We were discussing that during the OU game yesterday. But it seems like for years they come out real strong in the first half, and then I don’t know if they get cocky or get prideful or what, but the second half I just sit there and watch and say, What are you doing?

Where’s the team that was on the field in the first half of the game? Anyway, somewhere else, yeah. And I don’t know if that’s pride or not, but the fact is pride is dangerous because pride leads to an overestimation of how great we are, how important we are.

It leads us not to prepare the way we ought to. It leads us not to do the things that we ought to. And it’s one of the things that John warns about as he comes to the very end of the very last letter.

He warns these early churches. If you recall, we started 3 John last week and talked about he was writing to this church where Gaius was serving, and probably somewhere in Ephesus or Pergamon, somewhere in the western part of Turkey, what we know of as Turkey today. He writes to this church, and he writes about hospitality.

He writes about how they supported missionaries. And wouldn’t you know it, there are always, as I told you all last week, I can count on one hand probably the number of times I’ve preached on money and giving during my more than a decade of ministry. And wouldn’t you know it, every time I do, the place is always full of first-time visitors.

Just to reinforce the idea that churches just want your money. Hopefully I clarified that, that’s not what I was talking about last week. But he talked about giving, and he talked about the way they supported the missionaries and their generosity.

He then goes on to say, and by the way, in some churches in your area, as a matter of fact, he said, that’s not always happening. and pride is at the root of why that was not happening. And John, oh, I know you’re not supposed to do that these days, but John goes out of his way here to name names, which is always fun.

And it’s easier for me than it was for John because this guy is long dead. He’s not going to be mad at me. And his supporters are long dead.

But we’re going to start in verse 9 today where he talks about this pride. He has gone through explaining this generosity, you know, commending Gaius and his fellowship for their generosity. And then he turns in verse 9 and says, but Diotrephes, which was a man’s name.

He says, I wrote unto the church, but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not. So he says he wrote to this church requesting that they help these missionaries, these disciples of John who were going around in the area preaching, and it says Diotrephes, who loves to have preeminence among them. In other words, he loves to be the big guy.

He loves to be in the spotlight. Some people love that sort of thing. Some people love that sort of thing even if they don’t love the actual physical spotlight.

He said, Diotrephes loveth to have preeminence among them. He loves to have all the attention. He wants to be the one that everybody looks to, wants to be the one that everybody listens to, the one that everybody gives the credit to.

He said, he wants to have preeminence so he receiveth us not. Now, I would think as a church, I mean, you don’t want to get into hero worship with the apostles. But I would think as a church, if you have one of the apostles, one of the men who actually learned at the feet of Jesus, saying, these missionaries are coming to work amongst you, I’m sending them, they have my stamp of approval, you would think you would consider that and say, hey, maybe we ought to listen to these guys.

But Diotrephes, who was one of the leaders of this church, if not, might have even been the pastor, said, no, we’re not going to listen to these guys. We’re not going to receive them, we’re not going to help them, we’re not going to hear from them. And it was all because of his pride.

It was all because he wanted to be the big man that everybody listened to. He says, wherefore if I come, John says, wherefore if I come, I will remember his deeds, which he doeth. He says, and by the way, if I get to come and see you, I will remember this.

That doesn’t square with what we know of what we’re supposed to be about as Christians. That almost sounds vengeful. I don’t think it is vengeful or God wouldn’t have included it in inspired scripture.

I don’t think he’s saying, I’m going to get you diatrophies, but it would be foolish if somebody is letting pride get in the way of the work of the kingdom, not to remember that and consider that next time you’re planning what needs to be done. And especially as an apostle, it might be worth pointing that out to his congregation and saying, by the way, here’s what’s wrong here. I mean, Jesus did this.

One of the first things I preached on when I came to this church was the seven churches of Revelation, Jesus’ messages to them. And Jesus loved all seven of those churches, but he didn’t hesitate to say, by the way, here’s what’s wrong, and I’m about to spew you out of my mouth. Jesus loved them, but loved the members of these churches, but as churches, he was saying, you’ve got some problems and need to get your act together.

So it’s not unscriptural to say, John’s not threatening, John’s not calling names here, and it’s not a personal vendetta that he against diatrophies. He’s saying, here’s the problem with diatrophies, teaching, and behavior, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But he says, I will remember this when I come, what he does, prating against us with malicious words.

Now, I went and looked up what these words mean in the Greek, and I’ve written them down. I’m not going to, again, I’m not going to try to pronounce them for you, but this word that is translated as prating means babbling or berating. Have you ever seen somebody that is so mad they just lose control and they’re sputtering words and they’re it’s just incoherent?

Have you seen that before? Have you ever done that before? I won’t tell anybody.

I wish I could think of a better example because I doubt many of you have seen this show, but do any of you know the actor John Cleese? I think he was in Monty Python and some other things. There’s a British sitcom that he was on back in, I’ve seen it on Netflix, that he was on back in the 70s where he played this hotel owner, and he’s constantly just losing his mind with the staff, and he’s screaming, and it’s incoherent, and I wish I could have shown that clip for you, just so, one of many clips for you, so you could see what I’m talking about, but that’s the sense that I get from this, that it’s a babbling and a berating, just people so enraged that they’re spitting, They’re trying to spit out what they’re trying to say, and it’s just not even, it doesn’t even make sense.

They are so beyond reason. And so the picture that he paints for us here is that Diotrephes is prating, he’s babbling and berating, he’s trying to spit out all this venom toward John and his supporters, that it just comes out in an avalanche of incoherent words, angry, angry stuff. And this idea of malicious words means evil, malicious or hurtful.

I mean, that’s a pretty easy thing. He is basically slandering John in every way that he can. He’s making up malicious rumors about John.

And he sort of gets on a roll and it becomes incoherent. He just spits this out. I can’t fathom that kind of anger.

I mean, that’s really what was at the heart of it, anger at John, Because Diotrephes’ pride was being injured by, how dare John think I need to hear from somebody else? How dare John think my church needs to hear from anybody else? I’m all they need.

And so his pride gets injured and he responds in anger. This is a man with real problems. And honestly, this is why some of the qualifications are given for elders or pastors in Scripture. One of them says, well, they all said that you’re supposed to be a man of self-control, not a rioter.

Not somebody who flies off the handle in anger. Do we all get angry at times? Yes, but your leader, not just your leader, but your leadership in church should not be composed or comprised of people who have this kind of anger and lose control.

And it was because of his pride, because he loved to have preeminence. If any of you are wondering, is he talking about somebody here in particular? No, I’m not.

I’m telling you this because this is the next passage we were on. And the best time to deal with a problem is before it becomes one. So there we go.

He said, I’m going to remember this the way he prayed it against us with malicious words. And he says, and not content therewith. It wasn’t enough that he got up in front of the church and he slandered John and he slandered these followers of John.

He said, he wasn’t content therewith. Neither doth he receive the brethren. Okay, so it’s not enough that he not received them, but he forbiddeth them that would and casteth them out of the church.

So, for example, we’ve had missionaries here. We’ve had Brother Hawkins come and talk about the ministry to the reservations. And it would be, to show what Diotrephes did, it would be as if I said, no, we’re not going to hear from Brother Hawkins.

I’m not going to have him preach to you. We’re not going to take up an offering for him. But on top of that, if you give him any money, if you give him any support, you’re out of the church.

And I just make that decision on my own. We’ve got lots of problems with this Diotrephes attitude. So he would take these people that would hear the followers of John, these teachers that John had sent.

They’d say, okay, I know you’re not going to speak in the church, but at least let us give you a place to stay on your way through town. He’d throw those good-hearted, generous Christians out of his church. Pride has become here a real detriment to that church.

He says, you’ve got to fight against this. And he holds that up. John holds that up to the people he’s writing to as a negative example and says in verse 11, Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good.

He that doeth good is of God, but he that doeth evil hath not seen God. So what we have here is the example of Diotrephes, a man of pride. And again, as I said at the beginning, pride is really overestimating how important and how good you are, how much you matter.

The opposite of pride is humility. And humility doesn’t mean to think, oh, I’m dirt, I’m nothing. Humility means to put yourself in your proper place.

Humility and humbling yourself and raising other people up doesn’t mean saying I’m nothing and getting down in the dirt. It means putting yourself in the proper place and raising other people up in comparison. So the idea for what Diotrephes should have done is not, oh, I’m Diotrephes, I’m nobody, God could never use me.

It’s to realize that, yes, God has put you in this position of influence and authority, but not to think, because of that, that I’m the king of everything. And this becomes a problem. I mean, it’s funny to look at Muhammad Ali and what he said.

It’s not so funny when this happens among God’s people. It’s dangerous when this happens. It’s spiritually dangerous when this happens among God’s people.

It happens among preachers all the time. I remember hearing a story, I can’t remember who told the story, I’m fairly certain it’s true, but it’s not my story, about a young preacher who started out preaching as we all do at some point, and he comes in for one of his first sermons and he struts up into the pulpit thinking he’s cock of the walk, and he gets up there, he’s got all his notes and all the things he thinks he knows, and he stutters and he stammers again as we all do at some point, and he just makes a mess of the whole sermon and, you know, doesn’t do anything but try to glorify himself and say how smart he is and ends up doing neither and then comes out of the pulpit with his tail tucked between his legs, shoulders slumped, humbled.

And the story goes that an elder pastor looked at that and said, you know, if the young man had gone up into the pulpit the way he came down, he would have come down the way he went up. That if he’d gone up there with a humble spirit and tried to lift up Jesus, he would have come out on top of the mountain. You know, as people who stand before you with some degree of influence, I don’t know how much, but some degree of influence in God’s church, it’s easy to start to think, well, hey, I must be pretty important.

And look at all the preachers that we see the scandals with. It’s just all the time. I haven’t heard of any in the last week, thank goodness.

But it seems like several times a year we hear of some prominent preacher who’s gotten himself in some kind of legal trouble, either double dipping in the money or dipping in the money in the first place, or having an affair, or being involved in drugs, or this, that, and the other. And usually what’s behind it is they’ve built up a system where they have no accountability, where nobody calls them on anything when they’re wrong, and they start thinking they’re indispensable. And I can do whatever I want because I’ve got my own little kingdom.

I struggle with pride at times, but I’ve found God has ways of keeping me humble. God shows me all the time I don’t know everything. And I’m not the most important person in the room.

I can tell you, those of you who were here Wednesday night, one of my least favorite things in the whole world is to not know what I’m talking about or to look like I don’t know what I’m talking about. And I tell you all the time, check what I’m saying against the Bible. and make sure I’m telling you the truth.

I hope you don’t mind me sharing this. It happened in front of everybody Wednesday night. I brought back that stump the preacher, and we really did stump the preacher.

I brought back that stump the preacher presentation on the form we take in heaven. What will we look like? Will we know each other?

Because I did that about six months ago and nobody remembered it. The question was coming up again. So I pulled the presentation.

I looked over it again, and honestly, I didn’t look over it in as much detail as I should have. And as I’m going through a list of things, Brother Greg says, wait a minute, go back two slides or something like that. How do you get that from that verse?

Okay, well, let’s turn to it. And not only am I looking at the wrong verse, I’m looking in a different translation than what I had been reading. And so I stand up there and stutter and stammer for about two minutes trying to explain what I was thinking when I made this presentation two months ago.

And it’s things like that. And I’m glad that happened. It will be a reminder to me.

You know, even if you’re redoing something you’ve done before, make sure you’re familiar with the material. But God uses things like that where I end up not knowing what I’m talking about to remind me I’m not indispensable. I’m not all powerful. I’m not the most important person in the room.

And I can be wrong. As I was reading stories about pride this week, some of you may be familiar with the name Chuck Colson. He was in ministry for many years after he got out of prison for his role in Watergate.

And he said one of the problems with Nixon was that, and this is a guy who was absolutely loyal to Nixon back in the 70s, said one of Nixon’s biggest problems was that he could never admit that he was wrong about anything. Said that even if he had a cold, if his nose was red, everything was running and dripping and he was sneezing and coughing, he couldn’t admit that he had a cold. Well, God forces me to admit I’m wrong all the time.

And I’m thankful that he puts my wife around me to point out when I’m wrong all the time. No, not all the time, but we tend to get prideful when we don’t allow ourselves to be checked. And I’ll admit, I don’t like to be wrong.

I would sooner keep arguing the point, knowing that I’m wrong than admit it, but that’s not possible all the time. But we see that it’s possible for leadership among God’s people to get built up with pride if we’re not careful. If we don’t have people around us who will take a pin and pop that balloon of pride every once in a while before it gets too puffed up.

We need that. It also happens in the pews. It doesn’t just happen in the pulpit.

I’m easily susceptible to it, given a position of leadership, but everybody’s susceptible to it. We can get a sense of spiritual pride looking around at the people around us and the lost in the world and say, well, I’m better than them. Sometimes it’s hard not to walk through the store and think, well, I’m better than them.

No, we’re not. God saved us out of the same sin and depravity that he could save them. It’s easy to come in because we’re so, in our Western consumer culture, it’s easy to, you know, we can have it our way at Burger King.

I can go into Chick-fil-A. I don’t even have to walk in and order. I can do everything on my app and get it just the way I want it right when I want it.

It’s easy to think that that applies to everything. We can do that at church where we can think it’s all about me. Customer is king.

I want what I want. And we walk in and we feel like, well, the church is not meeting my needs. The church is not giving me what I want when we forget that we’ve been called here to serve, not to receive.

And folks, that’s true for me. That’s true in the pews. It can happen to any of us.

Where pride convinces me, I’m the center of the world. And that’s what happened with Diotrephes. He had let his pride convince him that he was not only the center of the church, but the center of the world.

And where he said to John, one of the men who walked with Jesus, he said, we don’t need you or your kind around here. I’m all we need. And it severely hampered the church’s ability to do ministry.

And we see from his example that pride can weaken our effectiveness for the kingdom. What these churches were supposed to be doing is what was spelled out in the beginning of 3 John and the end of 2 John, where they were supposed to be discerning these teachers that came through. And the false teachers, they were supposed to be saying, no, we’re not going to do anything to support and enable your ministry.

But the guys who really were coming through and were preaching the gospel, they were supposed to take them in. They were supposed to support them. They were supposed to feed them, give them a place to stay, let them preach, let them minister in their area, and send them on their way.

Support the work of the ministry. They were supposed to do this, but Diotrephes didn’t have time to support the traveling missionaries. He didn’t have time to do his part of spreading the kingdom because he was too busy with his prating, with his malicious words.

He was too busy to spread the gospel because he was so busy and so focused on making sure everybody thought he was top dog in his church. If you want to boil it down to its simplest point, he didn’t have time to make Jesus known because he was too busy trying to make diatrophies known. And I hope when I get to that point that I’m too busy to make Jesus known because I’m trying to make Jared known, I hope God knocks me upside the head every time that happens and says, you need to get right and get back to what you’re supposed to be doing.

And please understand, I love you when I tell you this, but I hope God does the same thing to you. I hope that if you get to that point where I’m too busy to make Jesus known because I want to make me known. I’m too busy to make Jesus important because I want to make me important.

I hope God knocks you upside the head too. I’ve given this example many times and nobody seems to know what I’m talking about. Does anybody remember the Golden Corral commercials from several years ago with the little flying chef with the skillet and he’d hit the people in the side of the head and they’d say, I think I’m going to Golden Corral. Does anybody remember those commercials?

Okay, a few of you do. Finally, somebody remembers these commercials. I feel like sometimes that’s what God has to do to me my attention.

That I’m just going along doing my thing, having my day, and God sends his angels to fly up behind me with a skillet and knock me upside the head. And I say, gee, I think I’ll do what God told me to do today. That’s sort of how this works.

But it can weaken our effectiveness for the kingdom, this pride, when we think I’m the center of everything. We stop worrying about what God wants to do, and we start worrying about what we want. We stop supporting the work because we’re too busy trying to make ourselves known.

Diotrephes evidently had a lot of influence over these people that nobody thought to question him, that nobody thought to remove him from his position. He evidently had a lot of influence over these people. Imagine if he had used that influence to stir them up to spread the gospel.

What could have been done? Imagine what Diotrephes could have done in his community with that kind of influence to spread the gospel and make Jesus known. But no, he was too busy trying to slander those who were doing it.

He was too busy trying to slander John, and not because John was teaching something wrong. Hey, if he was talking about a false teacher, somebody who’s preaching a false gospel, and he said, hey, don’t listen to this guy. We’re not having him in the church, and here’s why.

Here are the teachings that are wrong. That’s one thing. That’s biblical. But say, I don’t like him, or he threatens my position.

That’s not biblical, and he was too busy slandering John to preach the gospel. Folks, we can’t let ourselves get into a position where we’re too busy trying to make ourselves important to make Jesus important. Pride, this idea that I’m so important will ruin our effectiveness for the kingdom.

Second of all, pride can discourage others in their ministries. Pride spreads, or at least the effect of pride spreads. The effect of my pride can impact your ministry.

Did you know that? Because look at what he did. It said he wasn’t content enough with his ability to not support these people himself and to keep them away himself.

He went to the people around him in his church. And again, I don’t know if Diotrephes was the pastor or just one of the leaders. I don’t know if he was the top or not.

But he wasn’t content enough with saying, I’m not going to support you because I want to be more important. Diotrephes went to the others in his congregation and said, and if you support them, you’re out too. Think about that.

Think about the audacity that it takes when God says, do this, to come along and say, if you do that, you’re out of the church. This man should have been out of the church, honestly. It wasn’t enough for Diotrephes that he refused to help those who were in ministry, those who were preaching the gospel.

He had to control what everybody else did too. I want to tell you what God’s word says, and I want to try to influence you in the right direction. I want to try to help you where you’ve got problems, and I want to try to invest in you so that you can have a solid ministry for the kingdom, but I don’t want to call the shots in your life, and no legitimate pastor should either.

I don’t want to dictate to you everything that you ought to be doing. I don’t want you having to call me and say, what should I have for breakfast this morning? It’s the kind of relationship that Diotrephes had with his congregation, and honestly, it sounds like Jonestown kind of thinking.

He wanted to control what they did too. And he prevented people in his church from helping John’s associates. And those who did it anyway were disciplined by the church, like they’d committed some kind of infraction.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe in church discipline. I know that word has gotten a bad reputation because I’ve seen it misused.

I’ve seen people come in with an agenda and, well, we’re going to vote you out of the church because I don’t like you. You offended me. And it was over stupid political stuff.

I don’t mean who you voted for. I mean politics and the church. I want to control it and you try to control it so we’re going to vote each other.

It’s ridiculous. On the other hand, I have seen church discipline work when it’s applied the way the Bible says it should be. I’ve seen people who were in adulterous affairs be taken through the steps of being confronted, then being confronted by a couple, then being brought before the church.

And, you know, we love you, but you can’t be a part of the church and continue on in this. And I’ve seen people voted out of the church, removed, disciplined from the church, only to come back and repent and be restored. I’ve seen it happen.

That’s the way it’s supposed to. . .

Church discipline is not supposed to be about getting your enemies. It’s supposed to be about pleading with your brothers and sisters. There is a place for church discipline the way that Jesus taught it, the way that the apostles expounded on it.

This is not that. To say, I don’t like what you did. I don’t like that you supported that guy when he threatens my position.

Diotrephes is the one who should have been disciplined here. And here he was throwing people out of the church for being obedient to God because of his pride. And he was keeping the others who still remained in the church afraid into submission to Diotrephes instead of to God.

Well, if they were in submission to Diotrephes instead of to God, how effective was their ministry? Not very. They were not doing what God told them to do because they were scared of Diotrephes.

See how his pride affected their ministry? And that can happen in a few different ways. It can happen when I’m afraid to let go of a ministry and let you do ministry.

I’ve seen churches where the church expects the pastor to do all the ministry. That doesn’t work. I’ve seen churches where the church wants to do ministry and the pastor wants to do it all himself so he can be important.

That doesn’t work either. And guess what? If I have to do all the visiting, everything that happens here, number one, it doesn’t get done.

But I also deprive y’all of the opportunity to be in ministry. And even before I was a pastor, when I was in college, I went to a church that had four or five hundred active members, three times that on the rolls, just like every other church. But I lost count at one point of how many things that I was involved in because somebody needed to do them.

I was working children’s church every Sunday. I was working in the college ministry. I was working with the youth.

I was in the orchestra. I was in the choir. I was in the men’s ministry.

I was the head of the missions committee. I lost count of all the things that I was involved in and I looked back on that and thought and think how much of that was because God called me to do those things and how much of it was because somebody needs to do it and I’m going to do it and then somebody else comes along and I can’t let go. I think we all get to that point.

This is my ministry. I can’t let, see on a smaller scale pride can get in the way of others ministry. So what’s the answer?

Here real quick. He’s already told them, don’t follow that which is evil but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God and he that doeth evil hath not seen God.

And he talks about someone named Demetrius in the next verse. And he’s already told them what they should follow. And that word follow literally means to imitate.

He says don’t imitate evil. See the word follow to us, kind of like Facebook, just see what’s going on with somebody. You can follow somebody on Facebook.

You don’t even have to be friends with them. Just follow them. You can see what’s going on.

Follow in their day meant to imitate. But I’m going to try to do the things that he did. or that he does.

And so John said not to follow or imitate evil, but to follow or imitate good. Don’t imitate evil, imitate good. He that doeth good is of God, he says.

He’s literally here telling his followers not just try to behav