in 1st Timothy chapter 3, and I'll read 14 to 16. I hope to come to see you soon, but I'm writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how an ought to behave on the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar, and buttress of truth. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
Well, let's pray and ask God to help us think through this passage. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we bless your great and awesome name. Thank you that the God we worship is lovely, is marvelous, that he was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit and seen by angels.
Give me strength now to proclaim him, here, and Siloam Springs. Give us all hearts to believe on him. May we glorify him in how we live and think even now. And we ask that you would do this for Jesus' sake.
Amen. Well, this has never happened to me before. And it may be the first time that it's happened here at Redeemer. I bring to you tonight a rarity in a sermon.
My sermon makes only one point tonight. That's right, a one point sermon, not three points, such a cliche, not two points, itself an oath to efficiency, but one. One point, this sermon makes only one point. Here it is.
The church is about the gospel, and the gospel is about Jesus. The church is about the gospel, and the gospel is about Jesus. That's the one point. Now, to understand the point, we'll need to think about the church as a household, an assembly, and a buttersome pillar.
We'll also need to think about Jesus, his birth, his death, resurrection, and ascension, as well as our response to him and proclamation, belief, and exaltation. Then, of course, we'll have about two points of application. So it's a one point sermon tonight with 12 subpoints. So first, the church is about the gospel.
The church is about the gospel. In order to explain what the church is, Paul uses three different concepts, taken from the family, from politics, and from architecture. First, he appeals to the family, verse 15. The church is a household.
Having given, in chapter three, a careful description of all the requirements for overseers or elders and for deacons, Paul explains why it is so important to watch the lives of those who have positions of authority and influence in the church. It's because they don't have some role in a nameless institution. They have a position in God's own household. If you're anybody in God's household, you ought to behave yourself accordingly.
But if you have an official position in God's household, then you should know that what you do reflects to the world who your master is. The goal of the church is not to protect the reputation of wayward elders and deacons. The goal of the church is to protect the reputation of the master of the household, namely God himself. The International Institute of Modern Butlers has a professional Butlers Code of Ethics.
The Code of Ethics includes things like confidentiality, personal development, and integrity. Under the heading, dedication, the Butler's Code of Ethics says the following, perform your duties diligently, impartially and responsibly to the best of your ability. Activities outside, working hours must not diminish confidence in you or your ability to perform your duties. Activities outside, working hours.
You see the modern day Butler is always a Butler, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If he goes down to the pub and gets drunk, there's no use saying that he wasn't on the job. People aren't going to say, oh, Butler John Doe got drunk at the pub. No, people will say the Queen's Butler got drunk at the pub.
Or a member of President Obama's domestic staff was found in compromising circumstances. The point, if you serve in someone's house, then what you do reflects on your master, regardless of whether or not you're on duty at the time. And we are in God's house. And what we do reflects on our master.
Next fall says that we are the Church of the Living God. Now the word for church is actually a political word for assembling. Timothy, remember, received this letter in Ephesus. And if you were here last week, you'll remember, perhaps, that I mentioned that there was a riot in the sea.
That isn't the city of Ephesus. When Paul preached the gospel there. Luke recorded it for us in Acts chapter 19. I mentioned the riot now because in Acts chapter 19, Luke uses the word that we translate church in its non-Christian political way.
So the people were rioting. Great as Artemis of the Ephesians, they were shouting. The assembly was in an uproar. And people, if you remember, didn't even know why they were there.
Then the town clerk got up and hushed the crowd. He told them to wait for a regular or a legitimate assembly. Then he dismissed this ragtag assembly of Ephesians and told them to go home. Otherwise, he said we could be charged with rioting.
Well, just now, whenever I use the word assembly to describe the riot and the town clerk's response to it, know that that's the same word that Paul uses when he talks about the church. The church is the assembly of the living God. But in contrast to the frenzied and confused assembly and Ephesus screaming for about two hours, great as Artemis of the Ephesians, the church is a legitimate assembly of the true and living God. Why is this important for us?
Well, a political assembly has regular meetings. It has strict criteria for membership. People can't vote in the assembly unless they are, in fact, members. In order to conduct business, a quorum, a specific number of voting members had to be present.
And the church is also an assembly, an institutional structure with formal rules, requirements for office, and conditions for membership. The church isn't just a household, an organic gathering organized around principles of respect and care. It's an institution too. And to be part of God's community is certainly to be a child and God's family.
But it's also to be a member in God's assembly, God's church. So the requirements for office that we've been considering in First Timothy 3 aren't some bizarre addition to the easy, hippie, free-for-all going-zawn that was the church. On the contrary, we ought to expect that there are specific requirements for officers in God's church, because God's church is a formal assembly. So the church isn't just an organism, a household, it's also an organization, an institution.
Now, some of us will find this rather off-putting. We rather prefer a hippie-style, easygoing, free-for-all. I say this, and I'm preaching in chocos. But that's a mistake, at least for two reasons.
First, God doesn't see things as casually as we do. We could have, in God's providence, God and churches to be, he could have decided that churches should be called families instead. I could have said at the start of the service, welcome to redeemer, Presbyterian family. But I didn't.
I said redeemer, Presbyterian church, because we are a church, an assembly with structures and rules in place. And that's where that way, because that's what God desired. And then there's a second reason why I think it's a mistake to assume that we're just a rag-tow mob, some kind of random social gathering. It's because of our witness to the wider world.
The goal of the church is not to make us feel comfortable in our casual Friday fast food culture. The goal of the church is to do the work of the living God. And doing the work of the living God, Paul makes clear in chapter three, is carefully choosing elders and deacons, receiving members. And it also means, and I say this not glippantly, but soberly, it also means tripping elders of the right to teach, disciplining members.
That's because in addition to being a household, we're also an assembly. Finally, Paul turns to architecture. We are a pillar and buttress of the truth, the pillar and buttress of the truth. Now to understand Paul's language, we need to think about these things the way the Ephesians did.
If I say that church is the twin towers of the truth, that you're not going to think of the Patronus twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the tallest twin towers in the world. No, you're gonna think of the twin towers. They were in New York City, and were destroyed on September 11th, 2001. Well, unless of course, you're Malaysian, then perhaps you think of the Patronus twin towers.
Context is important. Well, when we hear pillar and buttress, we think about pillars that is columns and buttresses, that support for walls. But you know what the Ephesians would have thought of when they heard pillars? They would have thought of the over 100 pillars of their temple, Dardomus, one of the seven wonders of the world.
Each pillar was made of marble. Some of them were covered with gold and studded with jewels. One commentator said that every single pillar was a gift of a king. So a pillar just isn't for support.
It's also for decoration, and it's also lifts the roof of the temple high so that people can see it. This temple's pillars were actually 60 feet long. Thrusting the roof into the air. How could people see this majestic temple at such a far distance?
Because of its height. Because of its height. Now a buttress is a support, and in fact, one translation uses the word support, which I actually think is helpful. And I remember camping in the desert with friends.
And this is my example of a buttress. And the wind was so bad that the tent poles actually buckled. And so during the night, the wind was so bad that the tent poles would actually collapse against the wind and wack us in the face, which is an unpleasant situation. Just in case you were wondering.
Well, our solution, I say our solution, but of course I'm a philosopher, so other people actually did the work. But I thought it was a good idea. Was to tie, I guess, tie lines or something like that to rocks and whatnot, to support the poles. To give them added resistance against the wind, to protect and defend the tent.
And those in it trying to sleep. Well, the church is a pillar and butchers of the truth because like pillars, the church beautifully lifts high the gospel, the good news about Jesus. And because the church, like a buttress, doggedly defends and protects that same good news. So let's be clear.
Paul isn't saying that the church can just make up or invent ideas about God and that God will then come along and say that's the truth. No, not at all. Instead, the church's job is to lift high the gospel like a pillar and to protect and defend the gospel as a buttress. And because the church does this work, the church is right to be passionate about telling people about Jesus.
And the church is right to hold firm to the truth against false teaching, which is a topic that Paul is actually going to take up in the next section in chapter four. That's because that's who we are. We are a household, an assembly, an epilcher and buttress of the truth, namely the gospel. The good news about our Lord Jesus.
So the church is about the gospel. Now let's talk about Jesus. The church is about the gospel and the gospel is about Jesus. Look at verse 16.
Now notice if you're looking out in the pew Bible, or I think perhaps every but most modern translations at least set the text off from the margin like a poem. And that's because the structure and the content of this verse give every indication of being a hymn. On that almost everyone agrees. I didn't find anybody who thought otherwise.
So it's a hymn. But here's the question that's going to draw in those of you who are musically inclined. How many stanzas are there? Well, perhaps you say it's clear that there's a single stanza.
It's a single stanza, maybe you think. If that's the case, then if you count the last line taken up in glory, if you count that as somehow referring to the coming again of Jesus in glory, then you have in this one stanza of him the entire chronology of Jesus' life. From he was manifested in the flesh. That is his birth, his incarnation.
All the way to taking up in glory, somehow meeting, he'll come again to judge living in the dead. Now that's the one stanza interpretation. Others have suggested that there are two stanzas, not one. On this account, manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit and seen by the angels, are talking about the appearance of the Lord Jesus from his incarnation, death, and resurrection to his ascension, received by angels.
The second stanza then proclaimed, believed, and taken up, described the proclamation of the good news about Jesus and the appropriate response to it. So here on this two stanza interpretation, taken up in glory would mean Jesus gets lifted up in glory whenever people come to faith in him. Finally, there's the three stanza approach. Look at the last lines of the hymn, flesh and spirit, angels and nations, world and glory.
On this interpretation, the hymn is structured around three pairs of ideas. And so here, taken up in glory would be held in contrast to the world. What would the point then be while Jesus is in his glory and we on earth get to believe in him? Now providentially, not much is writing on whether or not we have before us a hymn with one, two, or three stanzas.
But I'll mention in passing why I've come to think the two stanza approach makes most sense. It's kind of a process of elimination. For the one stanza interpretation, I think that claiming that taken up in glory somehow means Jesus coming down from heaven seems a bit forced to me. To the three stanzas interpretation, though I do like the pairing, I find it very attractive, I think we should be careful.
If these ideas are paired, you can somehow they're seen as antithesis, that is their ideas held in opposition to each other, then that places the flesh of Jesus in opposition to the spirit of God, which is a mistake. Jesus was manifested in the flesh, but he was sinless. Jesus was fully human, but his flesh, unlike our flesh, was never set against the spirit. Hence, I fall into two stanzas approach, but you can disagree, that's fine.
But let's talk about the hymn itself. He was manifested in the flesh, verse 16. That is, Jesus, God himself, really and truly, took himself a human body with a rational soul and was born of the Virgin Mary. He was vindicated by the spirit.
Jesus was executed between two thieves, even though he was completely innocent. In the Old Testament says, cursed is anyone who's hung on the tree, and Jesus was hung on a tree. But God showed that Jesus never sinned, but he became a curse not for his own sin, but for ours. And how did God vindicate Jesus to show that he never sinned?
He raised him from the dead. Jesus came back to life in a glorious vindication, his resurrection. Jesus was seen by angels at his resurrection. If you remember there were angels waiting for the women when they came to the tomb that Sunday morning, when they found that the tomb empty and the stone rolled away.
Angels were at his ascension, when he was lifted high into the heavens and hidden by a cloud. So what's the good news that the church is to proclaim? Jesus is God who became man to be punished for sins, sins that weren't his own but ours, and he came back to life because death could not hold God's innocent servant. Jesus is now in heaven, having risen from the dead, and having raised himself up, even higher still.
And if you look at verse 16, the next line, proclaimed among the nations, Jesus is proclaimed among the nations. He's believed on in the world. And when people proclaim Jesus' message, the gospel, and when people believe that message, then Jesus is exalted. He is lifted up, lifted up high and glory.
So do you want to see Jesus lifted high? Tell people about him and trust in him yourself. So the church is about the gospel, and the gospel is about Jesus. So now two quick words of application, purity, and proclamation.
First, purity. The church is rightly obsessed with purity, with being clean and clear. We ought to be concerned both about moral purity, how we live and act, and also about doctrinal purity, what we believe. If we're easy going about how our elders and deacons live, then we're telling God in the world that the gospel doesn't matter.
If that's how we live, we show others what we really think is important. What really matters? People's feelings. What really counts?
People's reputations. And Paul says, no. No. Paul is concerned to fight against anything that will harm the church's well-being.
He's so concerned about any possible delay, verse 15, that he's sending off this dispatch. He's firing off this letter. Why? Why is he doing that?
So verse 15, that we have no doubt whatsoever how Christians should behave. So you may know how when ought to behave in the household of God. The church's job isn't to protect the church. The church's job is to protect the gospel.
Also often, we think about relationships, or to put it more bluntly. All too often, we think about what people think of us. More than we value the good news of Jesus. And Paul reminds us that it's a big mistake to live that way.
Avoiding conflict doesn't show love for the people that are in God's house. Nor do we protect God's reputation when we allow sin and false teaching to flourish. One commentator offers a blunt, concrete example about the purity to which the church is called. If an overseer is not a one woman man, then he must be removed from office.
Why? Because the proclamation of the gospel is at stake. Unless the Ephesian church stops sinning, the gospel will not be preached, and people will not believe. So friends, we must be dedicated to purity, both in how we live and in what we believe.
Because the church isn't about making the membership feeling comfortable, but is instead about getting the gospel out to the wider world. The church is concerned about purity because in verse 16, we see that God has entrusted this great gospel to us. We must be pure so that we can proclaim his message. In contrast to the angels who know Jesus by seeing him, people among the nations, people in the world, can only hear and believe if we go and tell.
So we must speak. And what do we proclaim? In verse 16, Paul calls the gospel the mystery of godliness. Now, as we talked about last week when he uses the language of mystery, he's not saying that the good news about Jesus is some kind of human speculation about what will remain hidden forever.
On the contrary, the gospel is a mystery revealed. The mystery's been revealed. Think about it. How can a holy god let sinners into his heaven?
They must be punished for their sins, mustn't they? Well, their sins must be punished, yes. But they won't be. Because Jesus was punished for their sins instead.
So they're not punished, but set free. When Paul uses the word godliness there in the mystery of godliness, when Paul uses the word godliness later in 1 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 7, he tells Timothy to train himself or to train yourself for godliness. And that sounds like something that Timothy is being encouraged to do. Timothy works towards reverence for God, works towards proper piety.
And that's right. But notice here that in chapter 3, verse 16, notice here that the godliness that we confess in this hymn is not something that we need to do, nor is it something that we can do. Instead, the mystery of godliness is everything that Jesus has already done. Jesus was manifested vindicated, seen, proclaimed, believed, and exalted.
Now that's godliness. And when we proclaim the gospel, we are telling people about something that already happened, something that happened on their behalf 2000 years ago. So yes, we should discipline ourselves in godliness. And we must be concerned for purity.
But let's be clear. The message that we proclaim is that Jesus did all things for us, and Jesus did all things well. The gospel is something that we have the privilege of sharing, the good news of rescue in Jesus. And if you don't think you need to be rescued, then you cannot possibly believe in the rescuer.
And it would be wrong for me to let you leave here thinking that you can live a life pleasing to God all by yourself. You cannot. And that's why the message of the church is not about the church. Instead, the message of the church is about the Lord Jesus, who is manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit, and seen by angels.
That's the Jesus that we proclaim. That's the Jesus we must trust if we are to have our sins forgiven. Let's pray. Oh, love it will not let us go.
We rest our weary souls and you. We give you great praise. Our Lord Jesus, that you do not leave us and our sin and are wondering whether you came and you found us. Work truth in our hearts.
We pray. Open our eyes to our sin. Make us bold for the gospel. May we willingly and gladly serve you all the days of our lives.
And it's in your strong and powerful name and pray. Amen. Amen.