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).
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