First Timothy lesson 18 cont.

We are in 1 Timothy chapter 3, and we're working through verses 14 and 15. Paul writes, these things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly. But if I'm delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, that is, the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of truth. So we answered last time a question, what is the primary reason Paul sends these instructions to Timothy?

And we talked about what do the verses tell us about the church? And that's kind of where we are. We've talked about the word church and how the word church itself is not referred to as a building, building in the New Testament. So that the body of believers is the building. I think it's important to understand that, because there's so much emphasis in Christianity today that the building is everything.

I invite you to just someday, when you have nothing else better to do, go to the Catholic Cathedral down on Broadway. All you have to do is walk in that place and realize, wait a minute, I think they missed the memo. Or the Vatican. Or the Vatican, yeah, if you got money, go to Italy and go to the Vatican, or any church in Italy, it doesn't matter. Gee whiz. So, what's the primary, in these verses, what's the primary function of the church? According to this verse.

The pillar and foundation of truth. Okay, that's right. It's the upholding of truth. primary, and so therein lies why we do what we do with classes and teaching and that kind of thing, so we know what the truth is. That's why God gives gifted men who are teachers and elders to the church so that they can learn, everybody in the church can learn the truth. And that's the pillar. So the teaching, the maintaining and defending of the doctrine is the major duty of the church.

Okay? You can't say that Holly Hills would be a place where we would have a focus on defending the doctrine. But we do have resources. We know where we can go for apologetics and for defense. But the fact that you know the truth is enough for you to be a defender of the truth.

Does that make sense? So therein lies part of all believers' responsibility is to read God's word, grace, and motivated by grace, and learn the truth in opposition to any other truth that you may have held up until this time. Two guys come to our Tuesday Bible study, both buddies of mine from college. One of them, a staunch Catholic, goes to Mass every morning, seven days a week.

And I don't know if he understood what we were talking about or not. We'll see. Go forward. But bless his heart, you know. Truth. Truth. Because they're convinced. Catholics are convinced that they have the truth. They're convinced because they're told that all the time. Well, so are the Presbyterians, but so is Islam, you know?

So, it's interesting how that, the truth, the truth is God's word, and God will teach you what the truth is if you read it, you know? Well, you don't understand a lot of it, you know. There's birth truths, salvation, and then there's what we describe as growth truths, service truths, positional truths, identification truths, we won't put names on them. And going through the Book of Romans over the last couple of years, Romans is Christianity 101. It's the basic survey of the Christian doctrine.

So, the last word we were going to talk about in this verse, I asked the question, the word ground, what does it mean? In other words, we said that the church is the living God, a pillar and the ground of the truth. What's the ground mean? And then associate it with the pillar, because they go together. The word ground just means it's firm and stable. And the word pillar and ground are in apposition, meaning they have the same relationship to the word church. Because a church is not a brick-and-mortar building, but it is a house in which God occupies, and in that house there are pillars and solid ground, not in a building. Do you get that? So where in the church is the pillar and the ground?

We are. We are. You know, the body of Christ is made up of souls who have been called by God to eventually be the bride of Christ. And as a church, which is a called out assembly, they, as a group, are the support and the pillar of the church. And the new American standard has pillar and support of the truth. Instead of ground, the support. So, me being the engineer, this is, yeah. Pillars and foundations. The foundation is the ground that holds everything up, and the pillar is the structure.

I think we're the pillar of support and truth. I think of, that's now in the church, we are that. I think of Israel was, they were the, kind of the, Holders of the Oracles of God, they were the pillar and support of God's Word up until Christ. And now we are the pillar and support of truth. I think truth is the Word, and so I think we are the ones who uphold and support the Word that is the Church.

You know, and it's really interesting because I think each one of us, as members, and we'll talk about this later, as members of the body of Christ, our sphere of influence, where we live, really is where people see the structure. You know, it isn't that I'm nagging on you or anything, it's just the way we live. We live by a whole different set of principles, and we're settled about that. And we can answer questions about that, or get out the Bible and show, you know, if anybody's interested.

Because the church is not, it's the one institution on the planet that isn't in chaos. It's the one place where there's rest, you know, and there's a reason for that because it's God's church. God is a God of order and rest and peace, you know. We're the ambassadors with the light. This is how the world sees Christ now, through us and through his word. We're the ones who get the word out. He'll use the Holy Spirit to work on people. He's ultimately the one. But he's using us as instruments to be Christ in the world today. And so that's, yeah, we are the building, the people who would see to come to, so to speak.

I was talking to this guy that came on Tuesday afterwards, and he started asking me questions based on a building. You know, well, how do you support yourself? Or he said, do you support yourself? I said, yeah, we're doing fine. I said, as a matter of fact, you can pick up a P&L going out the door if you want. He said, really?

He said, boy, a lot of these smaller Catholic churches are having a tough time. I said, yeah, well, that's because they got loans. And they live under law, not grace. They're always squeezing it. I said, we don't even pass out the plate anymore. He said, you don't? Nope.

I said, the church of God, as God takes care of it, is going to be here and function because he's decided, and we're a local body, and he'll take care of us. And we don't need the world parameters to function. He said, well, that's different. I said, well, the church of God is different. And I said, we don't have a clergy. We have gifted people within the body that do different things, and we function focusing on growing in Christ. That's our whole job. And the word of God is the most important thing we do.

And it has nothing to do with incense, candles, any of that, or vestments, or holiness, or whatever you want to call it. It's real simple. And I think he was kind of astounded by that, because how simple it is. Just a question. not that knowledgeable about the Catholic Church. Do they have a lot of extracurricular, extra books and things? I don't know how many. I just think this is God's Word, and anything you add to it is And they do, they add stuff all the time.

I can remember having this discussion with my mom when I was first saved and the Catholic priest in Nebraska. And I insisted that the one document that we need to have in our hands when we talk is God's Word. She said, well, there's a bunch of other stuff in the Vatican that we don't know about. I said, I don't care about that. care about the published word of God. That's it. What the Vatican says they got, gee, I said, Mom, I even knew then, Mom, when some cult says, we've got some secrets that only we know, and you've got to come to us to find out what they are, that's a cult. I said, the word of God is real simple. I said, you have a Bible, even though it's this big, and you can read it, and it'll tell you everything you need to know that God wants you to know about Him. It's right there.

I think in the Mormon, when we were over in Salt Lake City, we were out there, and we went to whatever one of those things, and it was like, they had the secret room downstairs with 12 golden cows or something. I forget, there was a whole bunch of wizardry and handshaking and secret handshaking. It was like, what? It was, you know, as you say, the secret stuff. Well, charismatic church have this afterglow room. I think sometimes we make Christianity way more complicated than it needs to be. It's pretty simple.

Anyway, what I've done going forward, this next part, when 19 starts, we're going to these next verses with what Miles is going to talk about in 19. So verse 16, interesting verse, he said, to put it in context, says at the end of 15, But if I am delayed, I write to you that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of truth. And then he says, by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the flesh was vindicated in the spirit seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up into glory. There's a whole bunch in this verse.

So what I say in question nine, go through each phrase and explain what the meaning is. I thought it was really important to do that. When you look at the words, by common confession, what does common confession mean? It means it's without controversy. It just means to agree with. So we're not fighting back and forth, you know. Although we do fight in the church all the time, doctrinally.

And when he talks about the fact that the mystery of godliness, who's he talking about? Notice the word godliness isn't capitalized. So who's he talking about? It's not talking about God. He's talking about believers who live a godly life. So let me put that in context.

If you remember way back in Romans chapter one, when we were studying why man has such a great problem with God, And I should have written down the verse, but the verse, I think, goes like this, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against sinners. It doesn't say that. It says all ungodliness. Why is that a key phrase? It's exactly the same thing as Romans 11, where the Jews were offered God's righteousness, which would have gotten them into the kingdom, and they said, no, we want to work for it.

So notice the issue here. What is the one thing you've got to have? Let's say, in order to get to heaven, you've got to have a ticket. What's that ticket's got to have on it? Yeah, it's got to have God's righteousness with your name on it. I thought it was a destination, where are you going? Yeah, because the one criteria to be with God is to be like him.

And so salvation gives you a new life, a resurrected life of Christ, that from a positional perspective, you're just like him. So you're in. I was looking at the Greek common confession, the Greek word, at least in the 30 articles, without controversy. So without any controversy.

Great is the mystery of godliness. Because you just said about the church, which is the body of believers, pillar of support. Yeah. Is this, you know, the greatest mystery of godliness? This is, as opposed to the Jews who had work and law and this, the mystery now of godliness is basically being in Christ and the mystery of, you know, all the things we talked about, being placed into Christ, now it's by faith rather than by works. So the mystery, I think, is now of godliness or being in the body is now by faith rather than by law. That was the mystery, I think, that he's kind of explaining.

Yeah, it's interesting, Courtney, though, you know, if you go to John 5, when you have this back and forth between Nicodemus and the Lord Jesus, Nicodemus shows up in the middle of the night, and he's got all the credentials that the Jews thought you needed to be in the kingdom.

And he just starts into his talking to Christ, and Christ says, a man must be born again if he's even going to see the kingdom of God. And then he says, unless you are born again, you've never entered the kingdom of God. And so Nicodemus is going, wait a minute. Are you saying I've got to go back into my mother's womb? No, he's saying, you have to have God's righteousness to get into the kingdom.

And that wasn't a mystery to the Jews. Now, they made it a mystery because they said, well, the only way you get that is by faith. They said, no, we don't want to do the faith thing. We want to earn it. Right. Yeah. Yeah, just the difference. That's what I'm saying.

The mystery is from what they had seen before, which was works of law, to now, it's by faith. Same thing, righteousness to get in, but it's by two different paths, so to speak. The Jews were, the mystery was like, we have to work, we have to keep these laws, we're going to get in by our own effort. Now it's by the gracious gift of, you know, salvation through faith.

So in 2025, what's changed? Nothing. The gospel message is to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and His work and you will be saved. But what is the the natural world or Christendom take the laws of Moses and use that or the laws of whatever. Yeah. Yeah. You have to, you gotta do ABCD and every religion on the world is the same. If you want to get to whatever the goal is, here's the criteria only in in the person and work of Christ. It's the only one. And so it's by faith and by grace.

That's why I hate this world. I thought you were a big fan of it. Oh, no. No. It's so important to understand that because we still have sin natures, we gravitate to the law. We want to know what we can do to fix it or make it better, or what do I got to do to earn my ticket? And God says, real simple, you just believe. Say, yeah, but I don't get any credit for believing. That's the whole problem. That's the whole issue. God gets all the credit.

So what's the word mystery mean? Great. Great is the mystery of godliness. We've been over this word a lot lately. It's a secret which was not revealed previously. My God. That's how you get to know it. So, in the religions of the Greeks, they used the word mystery a lot because they used it, like you were talking about, the Mormons, they used it as a secret ritual. of being initiated. I remember when I was initiated into her fraternity, there was some secret thing that all the guys had to go through, but you couldn't tell anybody what it was. I remember when we got to the end and I found out what it was, I thought, that is so stupid.

But God doesn't reveal everything. He didn't reveal everything to Abraham. because his son was coming and he was going to be the revelator of truth. One of the things I've ran into, and I'll just read it to you and see what you think, the word is also used as such things as the mystery of evil. which is a mystery, not to be understood at least, on this side of the grave. An interesting comment. That's from Kenneth Wiest. Now, run that back again. Yeah.

The word is also used for such a thing as the mystery of evil. which is a mystery not to be understood at least this side of the grave. What do you think about that? You know, we see things transpiring. I think we see evil in the world, but a lot of people don't. They just think good is out there. I don't know. The world definitely doesn't see it's evil. Believers, we have at least some ability to decipher good and evil, what we think. But you look at the world and they think it's just, we can solve it all. The Green New Deal or anything we can solve. It's very destined. It's going to be great here. But we who know, you know, it's Romans 3, you know, all have sinned, we're all desperately wicked.

And I don't think the world sees that, or we don't even. I mean, I started to think about it, and maybe this morning, I can't remember, one of the hungry hearts is, the hardest thing is to look at ourselves, and to see how wicked we are in the flesh. And that's even hard to do. Oh, it's really hard to do. That's one of the hardest things, I think. Believers now, we think we're just these wonderful, great creatures. Or at least we have some of that. But yeah, the hardest thing is to see how, you know, the Roman seventh.

Sure. I just had a thought, and it went over here somewhere, and I can't get it back. Because there was two trees in the garden. The trees of knowledge of good and evil. Yeah. And the tree of life. Yeah. And the tree of evil, I bet, involves... Yeah, I remember as a Christian, that was one of the first understandings I had was, here's this tree. the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And over on the right side were all the evil branches, and over on the left side were all the good branches.

And I thought, well, all that really happened was I just moved over here. But then I found out, no, God took you out of the tree, took you down the garden, and put you up in the tree of life, who is the Lord Jesus himself. So good and evil is not the issue. Life is the issue.

I thought that was really, really cool, you know, that he did that. And it's interesting that God termed this tree the knowledge of good and evil, you know? Yeah, I think, I mean, yeah, we see evil around and that kind of thing, but we don't see the extent of it. As an example, I've been studying for the Mark class on Tuesday, and we're right at the beginning. We're talking about the Lord Jesus is witnessed to by John the Baptist. He gets baptized. The Father witnesses to the world that this is my son. The Spirit of God comes down by him as a dove, and angels rejoice.

And the very next thing, it says that the devil led him out into the desert to tempt him. And I thought, when I saw that, I thought, oh, wow. And I thought, what's the reason he did that? Because all of the testimony about the Lord Jesus, the devil says, I'm going to prove to you that you're lying. I'll get him out in the desert. and I'll work on him, and he'll deny you." Now, it turns out that was a mistake on his part.

But I find it interesting, a lot of times with us, we will learn a truth in God's Word, and the very next thing that's going to happen is the test to see, is that truth right? Do I believe it? But now God is going to put us through a document. to prove that what he told us is true. And when you first go into that, you think, oh, Lord, I'm not supposed to have all these trials.

Yeah, you are. How else is he going to prove? Because Satan stands up there, bold as brass, and says, I'm going to prove to you that God lied to you. Because that's what he told Eve. He said, did God really say? That's what evil is. Did God really say, answer, yeah, he did.

Couple more notes. The contents of this truth or mystery in Christ revealed in the gospel as the savior from ungodliness. That's really what he is. He's the savior from ungodliness. So another interesting thing is that in Romans 6.10 it says, for the death that he died, he died unto sin once and for all, but the life that he lives, he lives unto God. So when you look at the context, a lot of times you don't see the word God in the best text. Rather, you see a relative pronoun. which refers to Christ as his antecedent. So, he's really talking about Christ in these verses, as an example.

By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the flesh, the Lord Jesus, okay? So, the Lord Jesus was manifest in the flesh. What's that mean? Manifest just means to make visible, okay? So, was the Lord Jesus just another holy man that showed up? He was the visible, invisible God.

That's right. What did the Lord Jesus tell the woman at the well? God is spirit, you can't see him. Because that's what he is, he's a spirit, you can't see him with these eyes. But then the Lord Jesus is the manifestation of God in the flesh. Because that's what he is. Or who he is. So when you have this thing called the incarnation, the invisible son of God becomes visible as he took upon himself a physical body. Now, a lot of times I think we study the Lord Jesus Christ and his life. There's Thomas Akempis, a Catholic theologian, who wrote a book called The Imitation of Christ, 700 pages.

How do you imitate God? Can you imitate God? Answer, no, you can't. You can't, as a human being, look at God and say, oh yeah, I'm going to pay real close attention. I'm going to imitate his life. And I think it starts because, as Courtney was talking about, the mystery of evil. We don't have the capacity to live a godly life in and of ourselves. We have to have the resurrected life of Christ in us for that to be even possible. But that's the requirement. Does that make sense?

Okay. So, the Lord is manifested in the flesh. So, God is manifested to man in the person of the Lord Jesus. Okay? vindicated in the Spirit. What's that mean? The manifestation of His flesh has to do with the Lord's life on the earth as man, the man Christ Jesus. Would you say the spirit would be what refers to that, what he was in his pre-incarnate state as pure spirit, as deity? I think so. That as being in the form of God, as being the express image of God's substance.

So the Lord, sometimes, because the Lord Jesus is a human, We sometimes think of him as just a little bit lower than the Father. No way. He's God. Let God be true, though every man a liar. We could say that his flesh refers to his humanity and the spirit refers to his deity, but I think he's deity in both. A couple of notes. During his life on the earth, the humanity was clearly seen, but his deity was usually hidden underneath the cloak. That's true.

Very seldom did he actually begin to show his deity through his body, like on the Mount of Transfiguration. This is my beloved son, and here him. There's a lot of testimony about him, but he very seldom vindicated who he was by showing his deity. I mean, of all of the most incredible events as to have the Son of God, God himself, being murdered on a cross by man. And one guy at the foot of the cross, a Roman soldier, said, truly, this was the Son of God. That's why all the trials.

How do you mean that? Well, I was thinking that upon a claim. It's broken to reveal the glory. Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to find, too. It's in Colossians somewhere. I think, you know, it says, of course, it's fully God and fully man. Yeah. I forget. I'm trying to find the verse. I can't find it. For all the fullness of the deity dwells in him. Yeah. Which one is that? I forget. But I mean, that clearly says fully God and fully man.

Didn't all his miracles show his deity? His miracles showed his power. But the apostles could do miracles because he gave them the power to do them. They could raise people from the dead. Yeah, it's interesting. He verified to the Jews his ministries through the miracles. And, you know, when you start to think about it, he never met a man who had a physical ailment that he didn't cure. There must have been thousands of Jews running around Palestine who had encounters with the Lord Jesus and got healed. It's the ones, where does that power come from? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, when the apostles would demonstrate that power, they would say where the power came from, you know. But the Lord Jesus, his attitude was, I have the power, or I do this through the Father. All right, a couple more, and then we'll actually be done.

Seen by angels. When the Lord Jesus came into the Earth, get in your mind. what angels are all about. They're guys that are guys. They're beings that are messengers, and their whole job is to communicate messages, right, from and to. Imagine what they were thinking when the Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and they're out there with the shepherds, and they're singing. What a concert that would have been. Oh, my goodness.

But the angels saw him, and they knew who he was. Proclaimed among the nations or among the Gentiles, that's important to distinguish that the Lord Jesus is the Savior of both Jews and Gentiles, not exclusively to the Jews. And then it says he was believed on in the world, true, today, today. And believed on after he ascended, but he ascended and he was taken up into glory as a man. He's gonna return the same way as a man, okay?

Let's see. Why does it say, our life is hid with Christ and God? Is that a mystery? The hiding? No. No. That's a Colossian verse, I think. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Why is it written? I think it's written there in terms of that life can't be touched, right?

You have a life, and you are in Christ, hidden away and secure. Now, that doesn't mean the Lord doesn't allow you to be subjected to the things of the world so that you can be more and more informed about that life. You're staying out there. You know, there's so much that we don't appreciate because we're ignorant from an experiential standpoint, and that's why the trials. That's why trials are so important. It's why it's so important to understand, why do you have trials in a Christian life?

It's so that you can stay hidden in the life in Christ. You know, the hidden is, and I always love that, it's Colossians 3, 3, and it's, you're hidden in Christ, in God. I mean, what better place can you be? You're hidden, you're in Christ, and then you're in God. I think the hidden part is that, yeah, it'll never be touched. Nobody can get to you. That life can't be touched. That life cannot be touched. It can't be tarnished. There's nothing that, nobody can find you, you know, get you.

That's that's the you know, there's a very powerful verse. It was Christ there in Christ and then in God Mm-hmm. Could there be a better place sure You you're obviously your outward life can be affected. Yeah, you can sin, but that life that you have positioned in Christ That's Miles miles Stanford used to have a great metaphor for that.

He said it's kind of like a The Lord Jesus is over there, or is here with you, and there's Satan over there with an attack dog. And you walk up to the barrier, and the dog is snarling. You say, what's he there for? He says, he's to drive you back into Christ. Not to go out and fight him, but back into Christ and stay with your life in Christ.

All right, we got to let the singers go, so let's pray. Father, how we thank you for your word. We thank you that every part of it that we look at and we study is just overwhelmingly effective in our hearts, and we're so thankful for that. So we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.