3 Simple Rules – Do Good
Sycamore Creek Church
September 19, 2010
1 John 4:7-12
Tom Arthur

Peace, Friends!

What comes to mind when you think of rules? Probably not something all that positive. Most of us have a pretty negative impression of rules. They keep us from doing what we want to do! But rules aren’t always bad. In fact, sometimes rules are actually life giving. Take riding a bike. If you want to stop it’s a good rule to mostly use your back break. If you brake mostly with your front break, you may end up over your handlebars. If you’re riding a motorcycle, the opposite is true for braking. Good rules to know. Or take the rules that our church uses to protect our children. If you’re going to work with our children or youth, we have two rules you must pass. First, is the six-month rule. In other words, you have to have been regularly attending SCC for six months. Predators don’t wait for six months. They head out looking for another place. We also run background checks on anyone who wants to work with our children and youth. These are two good rules to provide health and well being to our children and youth and our community as a whole. Or lastly, consider the rules for hunting. There’s a pretty basic rule of not pointing a gun at another person. I learned this rule the semi-hard way last year at CRASH when we were at the shooting range. I had a shotgun in my hand and I swung around to look at everyone. I was of course, then pointing the gun at all the guys. Thankfully, Chris Alderman grabbed the barrel of the gun and pointed it at the ground. It’s always good to have people around who know the rules that will keep everyone alive! So rules aren’t always bad. In many ways rules can be life giving.

We’re in a series right now about three simple rules. They’re so simple that an elementary student can learn and understand them, but that doesn’t mean that they’re always easy to live out. The three simple rules are:

1. Do no harm.
2. Do good.
3. Stay in love with God.

Following Jesus is as easy as that. Three simple rules.

We’re exploring these three simple rules in John’s letters. Don’t confuse this with John’s gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), but rather 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John that come later in the New Testament. Today we’re going to look at 1 John 4:7-12:

1 John 4:7-12 (NLT)

7 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God — for God is love. 9 God showed how much he loved us by sending his only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10 This is real love. It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love has been brought to full expression through us.

This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God!

John makes a pretty startling claim here in verse ten. He says, “This is real love” (4:10). Real love. That should get your attention. Basically what we’re talking about here is what it is to do real good to people. For John real love is two things: proactive and selfless. Let’s look at both.

Proactive

John goes on in verse ten to say, “It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us” (1 John 4:10). God’s love for us is proactive. God loves us first! Our love back is always just a response that is made possible first by God’s love. God came to where we were. I’m reminded of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who took his preaching out into the fields and the mines to where the people were at. Or Francis Asbury the founder of American Methodism who stayed in America during the American Revolution even though he was British. He took the message of God’s love to American soil where the people were. Both of them did this at great risk to themselves. Ultimately, real love and real good isn’t waiting around for an opportunity, but going out and finding it, being proactive. This love of others and doing good to others can happen in several different places. Let’s look at four: the church, the suburbs, the city, and the country.

Proactive – The Church
John expands this more in verse twenty-one when he says, “And God himself has commanded that we must love not only him but our Christian brothers and sisters, too” (1 John 4:21, NLT). God has set the model down for our doing good to others. We know what doing good to others looks like because we have seen God do good to us by loving us. Here are some ways we can do good to one another first and foremost here in the church:

• Prayer – for healing, support, strength, perseverance, etc.
• Food – providing food for those who need it. One way to do so is to buy them a Great Food for All box.
• Childcare – Every parent needs a little respite care for themselves and their marriage. We can watch each others children.
• Money – In times of great need or crisis sometimes we simply need some money to get us through the week or month.
• Listening – We do good by listening to each other and bearing one another’s burdens in this way.
• Sharing – We don’t all need to buy every household item. We can do good by sharing our possessions. Sarah and I have seen this lately in the generosity of women in our church lending Sarah maternity clothes.

The big question is of course, “How do you know about these needs?” The answer to that question is that if all you’re doing is coming to worship on Sunday morning, you won’t ever get to know about the needs that exist in our church. You’ve got to go deeper in relationship with others. You’ve got to be proactive. One simple way to do so is join a small group. In a small group you hear about the needs in people’s lives in a deeper way than you ever would just coming on Sunday morning. We also have begun a support small group that meets on Wednesday nights and is lead by Pat Orme and Rick Ray. This is a place where you can go to find support in times of need.

The key here is to follow God’s lead of doing good: BE PROACTIVE, look for ways to do good to one another in the church! Don’t wait for the opportunity. Go out and find it!

Proactive – Suburbs
How about the suburbs? That’s where I live. If you drive through my neighborhood you find mostly beautiful houses with well kept lawns and children running around having fun. On the surface it doesn’t seem like there’s much need in the suburbs, but the reality is that there is need in the suburbs. That need is often just hidden. You’ve got to go find it. You’ve got to get to know your neighbors.

Sarah and I hosted a community BBQ several months ago now. We got to know our neighbors in a way that we wouldn’t if we just waited for the opportunity to do good to simply pop up out of thin air. I heard about a couple who works opposite shifts and rarely get to see one another. I heard about single folks who were desiring friendship with their neighbors. I learned about individuals who were looking for ways to live differently in the suburbs. They wanted to not be so isolated from one another but to share life together and tips for how to live more lightly on this earth. Needs are present in the suburbs, but they are often hidden. We have to go out and find them. Be proactive! Look for ways to do good to your neighbors in the suburbs!

Proactive – City
It’s not hard to find the need in the city and opportunities to do good. In the city the need is often very obvious and very “dense.” It’s right there for everyone to see. If there is anything hidden about the need of the city, it’s that we don’t go into the city neighborhoods to see it.

This past summer our youth went to the city of Detroit to serve with Motown Missions. Detroit is a kind of scary place for some of us. We hear all kinds of stories about how dangerous it is. But think about the danger that God faced in coming to where we were “in the flesh.” That didn’t stop God from taking on flesh and moving into the neighborhood in Jesus Christ. And the fear of Detroit didn’t stop our youth from going to serve people there. We can follow their lead and be proactive! We can go into the city of Lansing or Detroit or any other city and find ways to do good in the city!

Proactive – Rural
The need in our rural country is often very subtle and spread out. Sometimes it is very obvious, but it’s just not all condensed in one place. Sarah and I lived in Petoskey for eight years in a rural part of our state. Eight years is long enough to begin to really see the need in the country. I found a unique need and place to do good in the country: widowers.

One day I was taking a care package to a shut-in. He was the only man on our list. He lived by himself down a dirt road. I got to his house, and he was so overcome with joy that I had visited, that he gave me a gift in return. I told him over and over that I was not there to get anything from him, but he insisted. He made wooden crates. They are beautiful and practical creations. He didn’t stop with just one. He gave me three of them! He longed for companionship that he had lost when his wife died.

Several years later I was visiting with a couple while the wife was dying. I went and visited them several times. When she died, I just kept going to visit this man. His name was Homer. Homer was 90 years-old. I stopped by once a week for about an hour. We played pool or chess when the weather was bad, and when it was nice we played horseshoes in his back yard. At 90 years-old Homer bought a computer so he could keep in touch with his grandkids. Often times we would sit at the computer and I would try to show him how he used it. I was so impressed with his courage to attempt such a new thing at the age of 90. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?! Homer died a couple of years later while I was at seminary.

I went back to serve at Petoskey UMC one summer before coming to Sycamore Creek Church. During that summer I went to visit a man whose wife had died while I was at seminary. He had stopped coming to church. When I went to visit him we had a great time catching up. He and his wife and I had done many great things together. He told me that one of the reasons he wasn’t coming to church was because he couldn’t get his socks on anymore. His wife had put his socks on for him because he wasn’t flexible enough to do it himself. He felt embarrassed coming to church without socks on. I told him that if it would help and so that he wouldn’t be alone, I would lead the worship service without socks on. We had a good laugh about that. He came the next Sunday. When I saw him, he pulled up his pant legs and there hiding below the cuffs were bare ankles. All it took was a visit and a little bit of laughter. He attended all summer long while I was there.

Be proactive and find ways to do good in the country, even when the need is subtle and spread out!

One good way to do all this is to join a small group. I’m not talking about the needs of those in your small group, but rather I’m speaking about the initiative we’re going to be putting into place early next year connecting small groups and missions. Instead of having a missions team, we’re going to be making each small group its own mission team. Each small group will eventually commit to being proactive and meeting the needs in our community in some way either in the church, the suburbs, the city or the country. Be proactive and join a small group or be proactive and find a way to do good!

Selfless
John doesn’t just tell us that real love is proactive. He tells us that it’s also selfless. Going back to verse ten we read that God “sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins” (1 John 4:10b). That’s a lot to give up. God gives up God’s son and Jesus gives up his life. There’s not much more selfless good that you can do than give up your life.

The movie Rudy is a story about giving selflessly. Rudy goes to Notre Dame not expecting to play football himself, but by being a practice player, he hopes that in just one game he can suit up. Rudy gives his body selflessly every practice for his teammates. Toward the end of his time at Notre Dame, Rudy finds out that he won’t be allowed to suit up. His teammates find out and one by one they go into their coach’s office and turn in their jersey so that Rudy can suit up. Their coach has a change of heart and allows Rudy to suit up for this one game. Rudy gives up his privilege of playing for his teammates to be better players. His teammates give back selfless love to Rudy by giving up their privilege of playing. In each case, they are willing to give sacrificially so that they don’t get what they want.

But what about boundaries you ask? Can we always go around giving up everything sacrificially? Well, if we follow Jesus’ lead, we will give at a great price to ourselves. But I also think that Jesus presents a kind of model of healthy self-denial. Each of us have some basic personal needs. Jesus often withdrew from the crowds to meet those basic personal needs. We read in Matthew that “after [Jesus] had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray” (14:23, NRSV). Jesus needed time alone and he made sure that he got it. In fact, it was that time alone with God that probably gave him the strength to give sacrificially when he was on the spot. The problem we have is that we are so often afraid to go to that place of sacrificial giving that we talk about boundary issues before they have even come up!

But what about enabling people? Shouldn’t we have a kind of tough love that tells people to help themselves? That’s how the old saying goes: “God helps those who help themselves.” Well, that’s not actually in the Bible. George Herbert, a Church of England priest in the 17th century, wrote a book to pastors called The Country Parson. What he tells pastors is, I think, applicable to all of us whether you’re a pastor or not. He says that the pastor “allows his charity some blindness… especially since…we are more enjoined to be charitable than wise.” I find Herbert’s counsel to be provocative especially in our help yourselves culture, and well worth contemplating for each of us.

I have a basic general rule about doing good and helping people. I almost never give cash to people who ask for help. Rather, unless I’m exceedingly burdened by a time commitment, I offer to go with them right now and get whatever it is they’re in need of. In this way, I find that I not only do good by helping meet someone’s need, but I begin to build a relationship and friendship with that person too.

I had this happen a couple of weeks ago. I was down at the Garden Project’s resource center in Foster Park. A guy came up to me and asked if he could use my cell phone to make a call. I said sure, and gave him my cell phone. He made the call and gave it back to me. A little later he came back and told me that he needed to get somewhere but didn’t have the gas to do it. He asked if he could have some money for gas. I said that I’d be happy to go with him to the gas station and get him some gas, so we went and got gas. Along the way I asked him if he had a church family. He said NO so I invited him to church. I haven’t seen him yet, but that’s not my job. My job is to do good and make the invitation. That’s really all any of us can do.

Real Love
Real love. It’s proactive. It doesn’t wait till the opportunity to do good shows up knocking on our door. Real love goes out and finds the good to do. Real love. It’s selfless. It gives sacrificially when it finds the good that it can do. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism had a way of simply summarizing this rule to do good. He said, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

Friends, do good.

3 Simple Rules – Do No Harm
Sycamore Creek Church
1 John 2:9-17
September 12, 2010
Tom Arthur

Peace, Friends!

What rules do you live by?  We tend to think of rules as a negative, but rules can also be life giving.  For example: while driving, it’s a good idea to stay on your side of the road if you want to live.  Or in sports rules actually make the game fun and safe.  When you’re in the kitchen, there are some basic rules if you want to remain healthy: wash the cutting board between meats and veggies.  Rules don’t just put restrictions on your freedom.  In many ways good rules give abundant life.

In this series we’re exploring three simple rules:

1. Do no harm.

2. Do good.

3. Stay in love with God.

That’s it.  You can’t get much more simple than that.  We can understand them even if we’re in elementary school, but there’s a difference between understanding and living.  They may be simple to understand, but they’re not always so simple to live.  Today we begin to explore the first of those rules: do no harm.  We’re exploring this rule by studying John’s letters.

John’s third letter is written to his friend Gaius.  We find that some traveling teachers that are working with John have come to Gaius’ church and some in the church have accepted them and some have rejected them.  John is writing to say, “What’s up with that?  Who are these people who reject our teachers?  We were the ones who saw and touched and heard truth in Jesus Christ, God’s son!”  So John tells Gaius, “Dear friend, don’t let this bad example influence you. Follow only what is good. Remember that those who do good prove that they are God’s children, and those who do evil prove that they do not know God” (3 John 11, NLT).

Don’t let this bad example influence you.  In other words, don’t do this kind of harm.  For John harm is rather simple.  It’s the breakdown of community so that it no longer walks in the way of truth.  He says, “I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children live in the truth” (3 John 4, NLT).  John is interested here in two things: truth and others, especially community (notice that “children” is in the plural).

So what are the kinds of things that do this kind of harm, that keep the community from walking in the way of truth?  If we jump back to John’s first letter we read about this kind of harm.  John says:

⁹ If anyone says, “I am living in the light,” but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is still living in darkness. ¹⁰ Anyone who loves other Christians is living in the light and does not cause anyone to stumble. ¹¹ Anyone who hates a Christian brother or sister is living and walking in darkness. Such a person is lost, having been blinded by the darkness.

¹² I am writing to you, my dear children, because your sins have been forgiven because of Jesus.

¹³ I am writing to you who are mature because you know Christ, the one who is from the beginning.

I am writing to you who are young because you have won your battle with Satan.

¹⁴ I have written to you, children, because you have known the Father.

I have written to you who are mature because you know Christ, the one who is from the beginning.

I have written to you who are young because you are strong with God’s word living in your hearts, and you have won your battle with Satan.

¹⁵ Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers you, for when you love the world, you show that you do not have the love of the Father in you.  ¹⁶ For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world. ¹⁷ And this world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever.

This is God’s story for us today.  Thank you, God!

Let’s focus in on verse sixteen where John mentions three things that cause us to walk outside of the truth:

¹⁶ For the world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father. They are from this evil world (1 John 2:16, NLT).

Here we see John saying that three ways we do harm is lusting for physical pleasure, lusting for everything we see, and taking pride in our possessions.  Let’s take a look at each one of these three, see some examples of each one, explore the harm that each one brings, and see the truth that each one misses.

The Lust for Physical Pleasure

We do harm when we neglect to walk in the truth by lusting for physical pleasure.  What does John mean when he says “lust for physical pleasure”?  I think he means seeking to gratify all the bodily senses and desires and passions.  There are many ways that we lust for physical pleasure:

• Sexual lust: when we cultivate sexual thoughts about someone we are not married to.  Continual entertainment: when we often seek to have our bodies gratified by having them continually entertained by TV, media, and the like.
• Laziness and sloth: avoiding any kind of exercise or physical labor.
• Overeating: eating more food than we need.
• Overindulgence in eating: eating too much junk food or on the opposite side of things eating too much fancy and expensive food.
• Oversleeping: getting more sleep than we need.
• Retirement in leisure: spending your retirement on providing leisure for yourself rather than on serving others.
• Comfort and security: seeking for your life to be comfortable and safe rather than seeking God’s will for your life.

These are just some examples of ways that we lust for physical pleasure.

But where is the harm in these?  The harm is that we think that freedom is giving your body what it wants, but true freedom is the freedom to not always give your body what it wants.  When we lust for physical pleasure, we become enslaved to our physical desires.  It’s not that our physical desires are inherently bad, but rather lusting after them is a kind of disproportionate love of them.  Our physical pleasures are actually good at their base.  They are a gift of God, but the lust after them is taking that good gift and distorting it.  Evil is always a distortion of the good.  Evil is never something in its own self.  Evil is like darkness.  Darkness is nothing.  It is only the absence of light.  Evil is the absence of or the distortion of the good.  In this case we end up loving the wrong things, our physical pleasures, too much and the right things, God and others, too little.  In order to notice how much we are controlled by our physical pleasures, it is necessary to dial back our desires from time to time.  It’s only when we withhold the satisfaction of our pleasures that we notice how much they control us.

So if the harm here is being enslaved to our bodies’ pleasures, loving them too much, what is the truth?  The truth is that we have been set free by Jesus not be a slave to our body, but to be a slave or servant of Jesus’ body, the church.  We read elsewhere in the Bible that “Whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ” (1 Corinthians 7:22, NRSV).  Those are strong words, but we no longer serve ourselves.  We serve Jesus.

When we lust after physical pleasures we become enslaved to the desires of our body rather than being a “slave” of Christ and serving his body, the church.

The lust for everything we see

The second harm that John mentions is “the lust for everything we see.”  What does he mean by that and what are some examples?  I think that a “lust for everything we see” is a lust of the eyes, especially a lust for novelty, for the newest and greatest thing.  Take porn for example.  Porn is always a lust for the next image.  One image never satisfies this kind of lust.  One image of porn only creates a desire for more images.  But the lust for everything we see isn’t just about porn.  I think it also takes the form of a lust for the newest and greatest technology.  Do you have to have the newest cell phone, TV, computer, iPod?  What about the newest car or home?  Can you be satisfied with something old?  Or must you always have what is new and shiny to the eyes?

One way that our culture seeks novelty is in fashion and style.  This shows up especially in women’s fashion.  Have you ever noticed that you can tell what decade a film was made in based almost entirely on the actresses’ hairstyles?  In the 50s you’ve got the big and bold beehive.  In the 60s there was the flip.  In the 70s we’ve got the hippie hairdo.  In the 80s are big bangs and lots of feathering.  In the 90s we’ve got the bedhead and highlights.  All these hairstyles and more can be seen here: http://www.greathairstyletips.com/hairstyles-through-the-decades.

Lest you think that men are not susceptible to the same lust for the novelty of fashion, I present to you some pictures of myself growing up:

This is my 9^th grade baseball picture.  Notice the long hair in back and short on top.  Yes, that’s a mullet.  Don’t forget to notice the curls in the back.  Yes that mullet is permed.  And if you look really closely you’ll notice that I have Vanilla Ice stripes in the sides of my hair.  What was I thinking?!

By my senior year I had progressed a little bit.  Here’s one of my senior pictures:

Ah…The Guess suede leather jacket off the shoulder.  The Gap t-shirt.  The hair moussed up in a kind of wave.  These pictures are kinda scary.  If I were you, I think right about now I’d be wondering about the stability of my pastor.  This is what happens when we lust after everything we see.

The harm in all this, if it isn’t obvious by now, is essentially materialism.  It is the seeking of a kind of ultimate satisfaction in the things that we buy.  We try to fill a God-shaped hole in our hearts with things that change, like porn, technology, and fashion.  In the process of doing this we consume so much that we are now on the verge of destroying great parts of God’s creation.

The harm of lusting after everything we see is novelty that leads to materialism, but what is the truth?  The truth is that only God can satisfy, and God does not change.  We read in the book of Hebrews that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, NLT).

When we lust after everything we see we end up with the empty satisfaction of filling a God-shaped hole with changing things rather than finding peace in God who does not change.

Pride in Our Possessions

A third harm that John mentions is “pride in our possessions.”  What does he mean by that?  I think that what John is talking about is a kind of honor and prestige that comes with how much stuff we have.  Our self-identity gets wrapped up in what we own.

When I was a teenager my dad took me shopping for shoes.  At the time I had a pair of off-brand shoes that I got made fun of for wearing at school.  When my dad took me to the store I wasn’t going to walk out of that store with anything less than Nike shoes.  I didn’t care what kind of Nikes they were, but I was tired of being made fun of.  My identity had unfortunately become wrapped up in the kind of shoes I wore and how they compared to others.

We tend to compare our stuff to the stuff that other people have.  Is our car nicer?  How about our home?  We even do this with our relationships.  We talk about “trophy wives” and “trophy husbands.”  I’m even guilty of talking about “trophy girlfriends” when I was still in the dating scene.

So what’s the harm in this kind of pride?  Ultimately it drives us into fundamental competition with others.  C.S. Lewis talks about this in his book, Mere Christianity, under the chapter titled, “The Greatest Sin.”  He says:

Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive – is competitive by its very nature – while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. That is why I say that Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. The sexual impulse may drive two men into competition if they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as likely have wanted two different girls. But a proud man will take your girl from you, not because he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he is a better man than you. Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride…

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity – it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that – and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison – you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

Lewis has a way of cutting through everything and getting at the core of the issue.  Pride is essentially competitive and when it comes to God, who is beyond anything we can ever be, if we are proud, we will never be able to love God.

So if pride leads us into the harm of being in a fundamental competition with others, even God, then what is the truth that we are called to walk in?  The truth is that true love is sacrificial.  Instead of using others to love things, we use, even give up, things to love others.  John tells us, “We know what real love is because Christ gave up his life for us. And so we also ought to give up our lives for our Christian brothers and sisters.”  This is the exact opposite of being in competition with them.  Instead of competition, we give sacrificially.  God showed us what this looks like most fully in Jesus Christ who gave up all the comforts of heaven by taking on flesh, to the point of even dying to show us this love.

When we take pride in our possessions we end up using others to love things rather than using things self-sacrificially to love others.

Harm is the breakdown in community when it no longer walks in the way of truth.  Doing no harm is rejecting the lust for physical pleasure, rejecting the lust of everything we see, and rejecting pride in our possessions.  But doing no harm isn’t enough.  We must not just “not do.”  We must also “do.”  Do good.  That comes next week.

Prayer

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast in your mercy.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

3 Simple Rules – A History
Sycamore Creek Church
3 John
September 5, 2010
Tom Arthur

Peace, Friends!

What comes to mind when you think of rules?  Usually rules have a negative connotation.  Don’t they?  But there are life-giving rules too.  Consider various rules while driving.  One particular life-giving rule is to stay in your lane on your side of the road.  If you ignore that rule, you, and someone else, may lose their life.  Or consider the various rules that make sports fun and safe, like the no facemasking rule in football.  You can’t grab the facemask of someone and use that to tackle him; it might cause their neck significant injury or even death!  Then there’s all the rules for cooking that keep your insides working well like cleaning your cutting board between cutting meat on it and cutting vegetables.  There’s also some pretty basic rules for friendship that keep our relationships thriving.  No lying is one that comes to mind.  If you’re “friends” with a compulsive liar, your “friendship” really won’t be that great will it?  Or what about the rules that govern the most intimate of friendships: marriage?  A basic rule that keeps your marriage going strong is don’t cheat on one another.

In each of these instances, rules aren’t something that takes away fun, but rather lay the tracks down for fun, thriving, and loving living.  We’re entering into a series called Three Simple Rules where we’ll look at three simple rules for a thriving life.  They are simple to understand, but they’re not always simple to live out.  When we do follow these three simple rules, we find that we live much more fully into the abundant life that God has called us to and created us for.  So what are these three simple rules?  Here they are:

1. Do No Harm.
2. Do Good.
3. Stay in Love with God.

That’s it.  Rules as simple as they come.  But where did these rules come from?  And how do they come to us today?  In this message I’d like to introduce to the history of these rules and where they came from so that you’ll have a better appreciation for the power that they can hold.

Let’s begin with scripture.  We’ll be looking at John’s letters throughout this series with special attention on the third letter of John.  It’s a very short letter.  So short that it has only one chapter.  Here it is:

3 John (NLT)

¹ This letter is from John the Elder.

It is written to Gaius, my dear friend, whom I love in the truth.

² Dear friend, I am praying that all is well with you and that your body is as healthy as I know your soul is. ³ Some of the brothers recently returned and made me very happy by telling me about your faithfulness and that you are living in the truth. ⁴ I could have no greater joy than to hear that my children live in the truth.

Caring for the Lord’s Workers

⁵ Dear friend, you are doing a good work for God when you take care of the traveling teachers who are passing through, even though they are strangers to you. ⁶ They have told the church here of your friendship and your loving deeds. You do well to send them on their way in a manner that pleases God. ⁷ For they are traveling for the Lord and accept nothing from those who are not Christians.   ⁸ So we ourselves should support them so that we may become partners with them for the truth.

⁹ I sent a brief letter to the church about this, but Diotrephes, who loves to be the leader, does not acknowledge our authority. ¹⁰ When I come, I will report some of the things he is doing and the wicked things he is saying about us. He not only refuses to welcome the traveling teachers, he also tells others not to help them. And when they do help, he puts them out of the church.

¹¹ Dear friend, don’t let this bad example influence you. Follow only what is good. Remember that those who do good prove that they are God’s children, and those who do evil prove that they do not know God. ¹² But everyone speaks highly of Demetrius, even truth itself. We ourselves can say the same for him, and you know we speak the truth.

¹³ I have much to tell you, but I don’t want to do it in a letter. ¹⁴ For I hope to see you soon, and then we will talk face to face.

¹⁵ May God’s peace be with you.

Your friends here send you their greetings. Please give my personal greetings to each of our friends there.

This is God’s story for us today.  Thank you, God!

So what’s going on in this community that John is writing to?  Let’s look specifically at verse five:

Dear friend, you are doing a good work for God when you take care of the traveling teachers who are passing through, even though they are strangers to you (3 John 5, NLT)

Here we see that traveling teachers (maybe from John) have come to Gaius’ community and Gaius has taken care of them.  But when we read further we see that not all have welcomed them.  Diotrephes and his crew aren’t so hospitable to these traveling teachers.  John is writing to say, “What’s up with that?  Who are these people who aren’t showing hospitality to us?  We were the ones who saw, touched, and heard Jesus, the light and truth of God!”  So we’ve got traveling teachers who are accepted by some and rejected by others.

This same basic dynamic happened some 1700 years later in what became known as the Methodist movement in the Church of England.  But how do we get from 3 John to the 18^th century?  Here’s a quick history lesson covering those 1700 years.

So we begin with Jesus and his disciples.  Shortly after the beginning of Christianity Christians begin to be persecuted by Rome.  But in the 300s something rather extraordinary happens.  The Roman emperor Constantine converts to Christianity and stops the persecutions.  In 313 he issues the Edict of Milan which doesn’t make Christianity the state religion, as it is often said to have done, but makes Christianity acknowledged by the state as one of several acceptable religions.  The state and Christianity become intertwined from this point on, and the merits of this event continue to be debated today.

The first really big split in the history of the church is between the East and the West.  In 1054 the Eastern Orthodox church and the Western Roman Catholic church split.  Our story follows the Western branch of the Christian family tree

In the 16^th century there is an increasing dissatisfaction with the Roman Catholic Church throughout Europe.  Reform movements within the church begin, but some of those movements break away and form new churches who “protest” the Roman Catholic Church.  They are thus called “Protestant” Churches.  The first of these is founded by Martin Luther in 1517 which we now know as the Lutheran Churches.  In 1530 John Calvin’s reformed movement begins which results in the reformed churches of today such as the Christian Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church.  Another branch of Protestants are the Anabaptists.  “Ana” means again so the Anabaptists baptize again those who were baptized by other churches.

The branch of Protestants that we find ourselves following is the Church of England which separates from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534 when King Henry VIII wants a divorce from his wife and the Pope won’t grant it to him.  Here we see the total integration of State and Church because King Henry declared himself the head of this new church!

After several hundreds of years within the Church of England many were becoming restless with the spiritual state of the Church of England.  One of those was a Church of England priest named John Wesley.

Wesley was born in 1703 to Susanna and Samuel Wesley, who was himself a priest in the Church of England.  When Wesley went to Oxford to study to become a priest he formed a group of friends who met daily to hold one another accountable to self examination around various virtues.  They used particular “methods” like journaling and soon became known as the “Methodists.”  This was at the time not a nice name.

In 1736 Wesley accepted an assignment as a missionary to the colony of Georgia.  On the way to Georgia, his boat ran into a horrible storm on the Atlantic.  There were a group of Moravian Christians on board who seemed to Wesley to have an amazing peace in Christ while looking death in the face.  Even though he was a priest in the Church of England he didn’t have the same peace himself, and he wanted it.

When he got to Georgia he began what was ultimately a fairly unsuccessful ministry in the colony.  His ministry came to a crisis point when he refused to offer communion to a woman, Sophy Hopkey, who had accepted the marriage proposal of another man rather than his own marriage proposal to her!  The biggest problem this posed to Wesley was that Sophy had friends and family in high places in Georgia and a warrant was soon put our for Wesley’s arrest. He high-tailed it out of Georgia back to England.

As you can imagine, this was a particularly low point in Wesley’s spiritual life.  Shortly after returning from Georgia in 1738 he tells us in his journal that he went “very unwillingly to a society in Alderstgate.”  They were studying the book of Romans.  While they were reading Martin Luther’s preface to the book of Romans, Wesley had the kind of experience he had been searching for.  He writes in his journal, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”  This experience did not always stay with Wesley, but it did catapult him back into vigorous ministry.

Wesley began preaching a heart-felt faith in the pulpits of the Church of England.  One by one, these churches didn’t like what he preached and began barring him from ever preaching there again.  So Wesley and his friends from his Oxford days, began taking the message to where the people were.  They began preaching outside!  Sound familiar?  Remember 3 John 5:

Dear friend, you are doing a good work for God when you take care of the traveling teachers who are passing through, even though they are strangers to you.  (3 John 5, NLT).

The response was amazing.  People everywhere began making commitments to follow Jesus.  A serious renewal movement swept through the Church of England.  Wesley and his brother Charles, presided over this movement and sent preachers here and there to various groups of Methodists.  Wesley believed that if the people heard only one preacher over and over, their faith would become stagnant, so he kept them on the move every three months or so.

Wesley soon found that if the Methodists only heard sermons, they wouldn’t commit to the life-changing habits required to follow Jesus, so he set up small groups within the Methodist movement to help people grow in their faith.  Every quarter the small group leader would review the spiritual lives of the members of the group and issue tickets to those who were taking things seriously.  You had to have a ticket to come back the next quarter!

These groups were split into three different sizes.  The largest group was the Society.  A Methodist Society was made up of all the Methodists in a given area, called a parish.  This was not a separate church from the Church of England but a renewal society within the Church of England.  It was at the society meetings that Methodists sang and heard the preachers.  The focus here was on the head or gaining knowledge about faithfully following Jesus.

The middle size group was the class.  This was made of 10-12 people and was co-ed.  If you were in a Methodist Society you were required to be in a Methodist Class.  The focus of the class was on the hands or will power.  These classes followed three simple rules:

1. Do no harm.
2. Do good.
3. Stay in love with God.

Sound familiar?  These classes met regularly to help one another retain the will to avoid sin, love others, and stay close to God.

The smallest group within the Methodist society was called a band.  This was an optional group made up of about six people.  Bands were gender specific and also made up of people of similar age and marital status.  The focus of the band was the heart or training one’s emotions.  Bands met for serious accountability and intense spiritual growth.  They provided a space for ruthless honesty and frank openness not just about what one was doing, but about one’s motivations for doing it.  There were also several different kinds of bands.  There were recovery bands for those seeking to escape the grip of addictions such as alcohol and there were “select” bands specifically for current and/or future leaders of the Methodist movement.

All of this should be sounding like deja vu at this point.  SCC is based on a very similar model.  So how did we get from Wesley to SCC?  That’s the second half of the story.

In 1771 Wesley sent a young Methodist Preacher named Francis Asbury to America to help provide direction and support to the Methodist movement which had already begun to spread in the American Colonies.  At the time of the revolutionary war in 1776, one in eight-hundred Americans was a Methodist.  In 1784 the American Methodist movement split from the Church of England and the British Methodist movement for fairly obvious reasons.  What is surprising is how long they remained connected to their English parents after the American Revolution: eight years!  In 1791 Wesley died and in that same year the number of Methodists in America exceeded the number in England.  In 1795, four years after Wesley died, the British Methodists followed their American counterparts and left the Church of England to form their own church. By 1812 Methodism in American had grown at such a rate that one in thirty-six Americans was a Methodist!

The story from there in America is much too complex to tell briefly, but it involved several more splits, particularly North and South over slavery, and reunifications, especially the North and South.

As Methodism grew the numbers of people began to stretch the Methodist “method” of discipleship.  It became respectable to be a Methodist in America.  In 1866 the requirement to be in a class was dropped from Methodism.  Methodism became more about a civic religion.  It was the right thing to do as a good citizen.  It became less about a real transformation of the will and heart.  In many ways Methodists lost their desire for authentic life in Christ and their desire to grow.  But that need not be so today!

We read in 3 John that the traveling teachers “began their journey for the sake of Christ…so that we may become co-workers with the truth” (3 John 7-8, NRSV).  The early traveling preachers of the Methodist church also began their journey for the sake of Christ.  They did this so that we too may be their co-workers with the truth of Jesus Christ.  They, John Wesley and the early Methodists, began their journey as itinerant traveling preachers for the sake of spreading the good news of Jesus Christ and the transformation of the world.  Let us too continue to be co-workers with them by practicing three simple rules: do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God.

Throughout this series and for some time beyond our small groups will be reading a very small and simple book by Reuben Job titled, Three Simple Rules.  They’ll be looking at these three simple rules and seeking to help one another live into them.  Will you join a small group and become “co-workers of the truth” with John’s traveling teachers, John Wesley, and the early Methodists?  There’s a group that meets on almost every day of the week.  Find one and join it.