They must learn to trust God’s wisdom before they can be trusted with wisdom and rule themselves. Forbidding the knowledge of good and evil is like forbidding children from driving cars. Driving cars isn’t sinful or wrong. But it’s for adults, for the mature. A child must grow up and demonstrate responsibility before he is given the keys.

The main reason you should rest is not because it’s the way you get to live a healthier, happier, more productive life — I hope you do — but the main reason for rest is that you remember that the God who made you does not need you. And what a gift that is!

We are to take the rooted loveliness of the world, guard it, protect it, and then, wonder of wonders, make it lovelier. We are to taste the goodness of the earth’s absolute givenness and make it greater.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. “Heaven and earth” means totality. It means everything. God created everything, and he did it out of nothing. Which means, he didn’t just arrange the puzzle pieces, he created the puzzle pieces, in fact, he created the very idea of the puzzle. God made things exist that did not exist.

"For us it is difficult to handle this tension. Yet the Bible often puts these two concepts, namely, our responsibility, and God's control, next to each other. We are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling and at the same time it is God who is at work in you."

"True doctrine is accompanied by living in the light. And in fact, one of the ways we fight for the gospel is by living in a way, acting in a way, behaving in a way, that fits with the gospel. Which means this: contending for the faith, a lot of times, has more to do with how we live than with what theological boxes we can check."

Imagine if you had been there as John began to write this letter. Perhaps he’s dictating it to Demetrius. He says, “I have no greater joy . . .” and pauses. Wouldn’t you say, “Jesus. Say Jesus. You have no greater joy than Jesus, right?”

But John turns and says, “I have no greater joy than Gaius — no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.”

Because we practice weekly communion, every week our professing children watch the bread and wine pass, and so every week we communicate to them, “You’re not fully a part of us.” Which means we need to have an answer for them when they ask, “What do I have to do to become a full member of this congregation?”

His main point in the letter can be summed up like this: listen to Jesus, and love one another — and do it in a world full of opposition. That’s what John says in this letter, and that’s what we’re going to look at today.

God has his own timing. That’s Peter’s point. I don’t think we’re supposed to literally convert the 1,000 years per each day. The message here is just that God has his own timing and it’s not ours. And this is really important, because until we understand that God has his own timing we will tend toward accusing him of not doing what he says, until eventually, we will misunderstand his motives toward us.