How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent word.

Welcome to Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

I'm Steve Sweats, your host on this five-year journey through the whole word of God,

and we're in the tiny book of Third John.

Now, as you know, the Bible is a book about God's work in people's lives throughout history.

And the Apostle John wrote this letter over 50 years after he walked with Jesus.

And it highlights the lives of three different

people, actually three of the earliest followers of Christ, and then gives us a snapshot of what

it's like for the church at the end of the first century. To prepare us for our study, Dr. McGee

recorded an introduction on the nature of man, which is the same no matter what year we're living

in. Let's listen now and then come back together to pray. Here's Dr. McGee. So let's take a look in the

word of God. It's the mirror that shows man who he is. And we have that picture, by the way,

given of man. It's in the little book of James.

And I want to turn to the first chapter, verse 23 for just a moment.

Will you notice this?

He says, for if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer,

he's like a man beholding his natural face in a mirror, for he beholdeth himself

and goeth his way and immediately forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whosoever looketh

into the perfect law of liberty and continueth in it, he being not a forgetful hero, but a doer of the work,

this man shall be blessed in his deed.

Now, the Word of God is a mirror.

So let's go to the mirror today and take a look at man.

...