If you turn in your Bibles to
1 Timothy chapter 3, we've just been looking with a bit of a
hiatus, but a really wonderful diversion to see the Queen of
Sheba's journey to Solomon. She'd seen, she'd heard, and
she was overwhelmed with Solomon's God. She came with all those
questions. She came and laid out what was
on her heart. And she was overwhelmed by the
God of all grace. But 2 Timothy 3.15 is a marvellous
passage in a remarkable book. And he talks in verse 15 about
the fact that he's longing to see Timothy and he says, but
if I tarry long, if I'm delayed, that thou mayest know how thou
oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the
church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And then we have what seems to
the commentators and seems to me from the way the Greek rhymes. It says, and without controversy,
great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. justified in the Spirit, seen
of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the
world, received up into glory." And if anyone ever asks you what
this church stands for, you can take them to that passage and
say, this is what those people down there believe. This is what
we hold dear. Six wonderful, wonderful gospel
statements. And for you children, you can
write them down and mark them off and you can study them. And for those of us who think
we're older and smarter and wiser, we can spend the rest of our
days with those six statements, and we would spend the most delightful
time. Every one of them can fill our
world with delight. They are a great declaration,
a great summary of the Gospel, and as you probably noticed,
they are all about the Lord Jesus. And they are a beautiful picture,
aren't they, that God began in heaven, what began in heaven
comes to earth and then returns gloriously up into heaven, a
work done and finished. And so it begins in glory, it
ends in glory. And as so often in the way they
wrote they tended to sort of couple ideas together and so
in the first two of those we have the revealing of the Lord
Jesus. In the middle two we have the
proclamation, the making of Him known. And then we have in the
last two that exaltation in the hearts of men and in heaven,
the reception of Him. It is just a remarkable description. And it's good to go back in that
verse, isn't it, and just look in 15 at what we are talking
about. We're talking about how we are
to conduct ourselves in the house of God. There is just one. There aren't a whole bunch of
houses of God. There is just the House of God
and there is the Church of the Living God. One of the remarkable
things about going to America, and I've told you many times,
is that with our brothers and sisters over there, you would
go into their services over there absolutely seamlessly. Nothing is any different. What
they do is the same as we do. Not because we've all got together
and collected ourselves and said, now we're going to create this
system of how we worship God. We just do it because that's
the way the book does it, and it's the way God's Spirit leads
people. It's the Church of the Living
God. the pillar and the ground of the truth. And we looked a couple of weeks
ago at the fact that this foundation, this foundation which holds up
this pillar, is the foundation that God has laid. It's the foundation
that God has laid in eternity. As Paul says in the next book
in 2nd Timothy, he says, God's foundation remains sure. And what was that foundation
that remains sure? It's a sealed foundation. It's a standing foundation. And the foundation is, the Lord
knows them that are His. The knowing there is more than
just an intellectual knowledge about things. It's a knowing
in a relational way. He foreknew people, he knows
them. And so it's the Church of the
Living God, it's the place where he is honoured. It's a place where he reveals
himself. It's a place where he teaches
his own, which is why his people see eye to eye. His people don't have arguments
about it. You might say, what about all
the divisions in the church and what about all the doctrines
that various people believed? Just look down here at those
words in the beginning of 3.16. It says, without controversy. He's saying that we all say the
same things. In His day, you either agreed
with Paul, and you agreed with John, and you agreed with Peter
about the Gospel, or you went to hell. It's as simple as that. You agreed with what they say
about God, about man, about the Lord Jesus and what He did on
the cross. You believe those things, or
you face God as a rebel. In the house of God, those things
are believed without controversy. The controversy comes from the
outside. It always has its beginnings
in the outside. In God's house, These things
are proclaimed clearly and passionately and we know from history and
we know from the promises of scripture that even from within
churches people will rise up and distort the truth and that
Satan will sow the tares where the Lord has sown his good seed. But you see the beginning of
the truth is not in man. Just think of this last 2,000
years of Christian history. You think of the bombardments,
the constant opposition the truth of the Gospel has had in this
world. And yet, here it is, at the end
of 2013, in Nauru, being proclaimed. in England being proclaimed,
in the world being proclaimed. Why? Not because men are clever,
but because our God rules and our God teaches. And when God teaches, His people
get the lessons. They get the lessons he wants
them to get. And one of the great lessons,
of course, is contained in these next words, isn't it? And if
I asked you about godliness, there is so much talk amongst
Christians about godliness, isn't there? They say it's all very
well for you people to believe these doctrines, but what about
Christian living? And in my early days, as in many
of yours, we got very good, didn't we, at carrying a little whip
around and a little book of rules, and we were very good at flogging
our brothers and sisters, weren't we? We were very good at putting
them under a burden, and we'd spend hours talking to them about
quiet times and the things that we did, and we'd hassle them
about witnessing, and we'd hassle them about giving, and we'd hassle
them about what they do. It is remarkable, isn't it? Just
look at the words there, my friends. You see, if godliness is good
moral living, then there is no mystery about it. There is no
mystery. You go to any religion in this
world, go to Hinduism, what does it say? Live good moral lives. Give, give, give, do, do, do,
live good moral lives. You go to Buddhism, do, do, do. You go to Catholicism. Do, do, do. You go to the Masonic
Temple down here. And what are they going to do?
They are going to encourage you to live good and honourable and
moral lives. It is remarkable, isn't it, that
here we have a mystery of godliness. See, real godliness is a mystery. Human worked up godliness, human
religious godliness is no mystery whatsoever, brothers and sisters,
is it? Do all of these things, do all
of these good things and God will be pleased with you. God
will reward you. Reward you on this earth and
reward you with extra jewels in your crown. There is no mystery. There is no mystery if godliness
is just good moral behaviour. The world has just been saddened
by the death of Nelson Mandela. What a remarkable man he was. What a remarkable example he
was to humanity. of perseverance under extraordinary
strain. What a remarkable example he
was of forgiveness and reconciliation. What a remarkable human being
he was. No doubt in history's books one
of the remarkable men of our time or of any time. He's a great testament to what
man can do. What remarkable moral characters
we've had in these last 20 or 30 years. Think about the wonderful
ones. Think about Mother Teresa, Pope
John Paul II. Think about them. What will people
say? These were godly lives. But here, before us, brothers
and sisters, is a word from God Himself about Godliness. And the first thing He says,
it's a mystery. True Godliness is a mystery. And true Godliness is actually
a mystery that's revealed, and true Godliness is all about the
Lord Jesus Christ. It begins with the Lord Jesus
Christ, it finishes with the Lord Jesus Christ, and there
is nothing else but the Lord Jesus Christ. It's interesting
isn't it? All false views. of Christianity,
all false views of our relationship, the relationship between us and
God, all false views put something in between, don't they? They
put our works, our worth, our religious duty, All of them put
something in between. I love the words of a hymn written
by a Negro slave who became a pastor of a Baptist church in America
last century, and he says, Jesus is mine, there's nothing between. Nothing between my soul and my
Saviour, so that His blessed face may be seen. Nothing between my soul and my
Saviour. You see, godliness is about the
Lord Jesus. Godliness is about who He is
and what He does. That's why true godliness is
a mystery. It's a mystery to the world. It's a mystery to our families. It's a mystery remarkably to
us even. but it's a mystery that has been
revealed. And just one further comment
before I move on, is that so many people who talk to us so
much about godliness, and the godliness they're talking about
is Christian moral activity, and they talk so much about us.
And then we are criticised for talking much about the Lord Jesus
and much about what He has done. Here is God's description of
godliness and remarkably God's description of godliness is about
the truth of who God is. It is remarkable in the history
of our church and our time, that the people who talk much about
godliness, much about practical Christian living and practical
holiness, are prepared to compromise and deny the very things that
God has written here. The two ultimately go hand in
hand, don't they? God's true revelation of himself
produces in his people a holiness which is energised by heaven. It begins in heaven It has its
power in Heaven. It bears its fruit of the Spirit
by Heaven's activities. But also it bears witness and
bears testimony to the Lord Jesus as He's revealed in this book,
not as He is in the minds of men. May God cause us not to
compromise the truth of who the Lord Jesus is for the sake of
friendship with the world and fellowship with the world. Firstly,
the other thing is, of course, that these mysteries, there are
six or seven of them in the scriptures, and it's remarkable if you go
and look up the word mystery, you will find that the mysteries
are mysteries that are revealed. That great mystery of the union
of the Lord Jesus as the husband with his church, the bride, in
Ephesians 5, is a mystery revealed. The mystery of the calling of
the Gentiles in Ephesians 3, 4 and 6 is a mystery that Paul
wants you to understand. In Romans 11 there's a mystery
of the fullness of the Gentiles and all Israel being saved. And
it's a mystery that he doesn't want people to be ignorant about. And he talks in 1 Corinthians
15.51 about this mystery of the resurrection. That last trumpet
shall sound and the dead will be raised. But he's saying, I
want to show you this mystery. And in this same passage of scripture
in verse 9, he talks about a mystery. The mystery of faith. Holding the mystery of faith. with a pure conscience. The mystery
is something that you can hold, brothers and sisters. In so many
debates we have this thing called the mystery box, isn't it? We
create two wheels of God We create two or three purposes of God.
We create five or six different loves of God. We create all these
things and then we have this box called mystery. So then we've
actually created a mystery. Then anything that's a problem
we throw into the mystery box. And fortunately you have priests
who can unlock the mystery box and figure it out for you. This
is a mystery that's revealed, a mystery that's held, and even
for you children, it's a mystery that we can understand, a mystery
that is remarkable, a mystery that is great, a mystery that's
held by God's people without controversy. They are believed. They are delighted. They are
depended upon. They are the resting place for
the souls of God's people. In life's storms, they are a
pillar. They are a foundation. They are
a ground, a grounding, a stabilising of the truth. That's the mystery that is now
revealed. What a remarkable thing. The
first of these six statements and we only have time to look
at them briefly. This mystery now revealed, God
was manifest in the flesh. God was revealed. who is spirit, God who is invisible,
God who is infinite, God who fills this whole universe with
his presence. This God was manifest in the
flesh. The first thing of course is
that the Lord Jesus Christ is gone. It's really simple, but
profoundly important that God reveal to us that his son, his
darling son, that one born of a virgin, that one who grew up
in Nazareth, that one is God himself. See, it's something
that is great. Who can explain it? How do you
explain God, who created the universe, who sustains the universe,
coming into the womb of that Virgin Mary? God. As he grew as a man, he
was God. As he lived in that family, as
he worked as a carpenter, he was God. He was a man who was
hungry, a man who was thirsty, a man who was tired, a man who
was weary, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, a man,
a real man, tempted in all points as we are, You haven't suffered
a temptation, you haven't been exposed to anything that he wasn't
exposed to. And his sufferings were not diminished
because of his deity, but were increased because of his deity. Think of what it must have been
for him, a man who was God, to be in that garden and to know
that in that morning all the weight of all the sins of all
of God's people would be laid on Him, and they really would
be His, and He would claim them as His own, and God the Father
would turn His back on Him. The one thing that repulsed Him
throughout all time was sin. And yet the Bible says remarkably,
the reason He became man is that so He could become sin. You know
the verse well and it's good for us to be reminded of it again
and again in 2 Corinthians 5, that great summary of the Gospel. For he hath made him to be sin
for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. Without Him being a man, there
couldn't be that beautiful and that glorious and that mysterious
substitution. Without Him being a man, there
couldn't be that bond of union between man and God. Without Him being a man, we couldn't
be the children of God. What remarkable things it is,
what a remarkable thing to contemplate, that God's children are heirs. We are heirs. We have an inheritance
which is ours by right. We are joint heirs with Jesus
Christ. How wealthy are you, brothers
and sisters in Christ? I'm the joint heir of a universe,
thank you very much. I'm the joint heir of a universe
that goes on forever and ever and ever, thank you very much.
Talk to me about dollars and cents. The streets up there are
paid with gold. Think about the jewels that are
there. And most of all, think about He who is there. joint is with Him. His inheritance is our inheritance. Shall He not, along with Him,
give us all things? And of course, He was made manifest
in the flesh. Made manifest in history, and
only by the mystery of the Gospel is He going to be made manifest
in the hearts of people. In that same section of Scripture
in 2 Corinthians 4, it says, but if our Gospel be hid, It
is hid from them that are lost, in whom the God of this world
hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should
shine upon them. For we preach, not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves, your servants, for
Jesus' sake." Then he talks about how this manifestation is made. No wonder it's a mystery to the
world. For God, who commanded light,
the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. We're in the
face of Jesus Christ. That's where true Godliness is.
Firstly, God was manifest in the flesh. Secondly, He was justified
in the Spirit. He is not justified by human
wisdom or reasoning or debate. No one was ever like this man. The Spirit of God bore witness
in him. His words were the Spirit and
life. The Spirit of God bore witness
with him. His words went to man's heart. The Spirit of God bore witness
to him. You think of that witness of
the Spirit at its conception. he was said, she was said, this
holy thing which is going to be born of you. At his baptism
the spirit bore witness to him, justifying him as the true one,
as the Messiah. At his transfiguration, for just
that brief glimpse, his deity shone through, as it were, his
humanity. And the Spirit of God bore witness
to him at his resurrection. You can read it in Romans chapter
1. Paul calls himself a servant,
a slave, and he was separated by God. called to be an apostle. And he talks about his Gospel
concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord which was made of the
seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the
Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by
the resurrection from the dead. That is resurrection. he was justified by God the Spirit. At that remarkable day in Acts
2, on that day of Pentecost, there is this remarkable justifying
of the finished work of the Lord Jesus at Pentecost. As the scripture said, He ascended
on high and received gifts for men. Yes, for the rebellious. Any rebellious people here? Yes,
for the rebellious also. That the Lord God might dwell
among them. What a remarkable day. What a
remarkable day. When the Lord Jesus is proclaimed. victorious when that gospel is
proclaimed before that rebellious crowd. That crowd that had mocked
Him six weeks beforehand, that crowd that teased Him as it were,
condemned Him on the cross as He hung there. Who is now justified? Who is now justified by the Spirit? Three thousand souls that day. and he's still doing it today,
isn't he? He's justified by God the Spirit. God the Spirit bears testimony
to the fact that his work is done, that he has As Romans 3.19.20 says, Therefore
by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his
sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the
righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being
witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness
of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ, unto all and upon
all them that believe. For there is no difference. For
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." What a
remarkable testament to human sin those events were. And then it says, being justified Isn't that the most beautiful
word? Justified freely. It means that
we are justified and there is no cause in us. It's not as a result of our works
and our activities. Justified freely, by His grace,
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. You see, He
is justified again and again, isn't He? He's justified in the
conversion of His people. He's justified in their sanctification. He's justified in their preservation. He was put to death because of
our offences and He was raised again because of our justification. He justified in the Spirit because
He fulfilled this Word, and all of the promises of this Word,
this Spirit-written Word, are yes and amen in Him." I love
how Romans 5 follows on from that verse that we read in Romans
4.25. It says, "...therefore being
justified, being justified by the finished work of the Lord
Jesus, by faith we have peace with God. can only bring peace because
his work is perfectly and completely finished. He didn't come here
as God manifest in the flesh to try and do something. He did
his work and he was justified in the Spirit. Then he was seen
of angels What joy there is in heaven now as the angels gaze
upon that lamb as if he'd been slain, and they see that finished
work, and they see their great God, and all of His characters
revealed. What wonders it was. No wonder
they came at His birth. and sang those songs of heaven
to the men of this earth. Those angels came to Joseph and
said to leave and go to Egypt. Those angels came and they ministered
to him in the desert when he was tempted by Satan. An angel
came in the garden of Gethsemane when his sweat was like great
drops of blood. They came and they comforted
him. In the tomb they rolled away the stone. The angels of
heaven, what joy it was for them to come and roll away that stone
to say to the people of this earth, it is finished. He is
not here. He is risen. They proclaimed
him as a resurrected God, worthy as the lamb that was slain. And
they look upon Him, and in His Church they are here now. And how much it is beholden of
us who collectively are the Church of the Living God. how much is
it beholden of us to make sure that he is honoured in such a
way that the angels delight in what they hear and what they
see. So they are now sent by him to
be ministering spirits to his beloved bride. You may not have
seen them, but you can't walk a step on this earth without
them being around you. No harm is going to come to the
righteous. These angels are watching over
us and they look down as they did on the Ark of the Covenant,
didn't they? They look down on that Mercy
Seat and how they must have looked in wonder for all of those years. How must they have looked in
wonder as their blessed Creator was led to Calvary's cross? He was seen of the angels. He was seen of those which are
closest to Him in glory. And then it says He was preached
under the Gentiles, those who were seemingly the furthest away,
from the closest in heaven to the furthest away on this earth. The Gentiles, Paul describes
us in Ephesians in Remarkable Worlds, doesn't he? He says we
were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, in a sense alienated
from the covenants of God, having no hope and without God in the
world. And yet, him having finished his work,
we are the recipients of that preaching. For 2,000 years he
has been preached under the Gentiles. No one had preached to the Gentiles
prior to this time. Until the Lord Jesus was glorified,
it was only to the Jews only. And as the Lord Jesus said to
the Syrophoenician woman, that just a few crumbs fall to the
dogs. And she delightfully took her
place as a dog under the table, waiting for the crumbs of grace
to appear. And the Jews would have been
shocked. to think that God had granted repentance unto life
to Gentile sinners. And it's remarkable, isn't it?
The way he is made manifest is by preaching, not by men's other
schemes, by the simple preaching of this simple declaration of
who he is and what he's accomplished. But God is pleased by the foolishness
of preaching to save them that believe. Faith comes by hearing,
and hearing by the word of power. And how shall they hear without
a preacher? You see, if you're going to be
saved, if your friends are going to be saved, the most essential
thing is that they get to hear the preaching of the Lord Jesus. And who were these people that
were sent to do this preaching? Not the high and mighty and learned
people. He sent fishermen and tax collectors. What a great mystery. What a
great mystery. You take the lowest of the low
to proclaim the greatest of all, so that, brothers and sisters,
it is God who is seen to have done all the work. And what's
the result of preaching? The next wonderful statement
is believed on in the world A wonderful statement of Spurgeon's about
faith. He says, Faith is so contrary to nature. Do you find it contrary
to your nature? I certainly do. It's a mystery. Faith is so contrary to nature
that its existence in the heart, is like a spark burning in the
sea. Faith is so attacked in this
evil day that it is like a candle kept alight in a cyclone. The faith that glows and energises
and causes Sins like us, to look to God, is a mystery to the world. It can only come from God. It can only be sustained by Him. He was believed on in the world. What a world it was, a world
given over to sin. given over to lusts, given over
to the wisdom of men, given over to philosophy, to religion. What a fortress Satan had established
in this world. What a great and mighty fortress
he had, and what a remarkable weapon to batter down that fortress
and to set the prisoners free. You take a few fishermen and
you give them a message about a man hanging on a cross. And you batter down all of that
philosophy and all of that wisdom. A simple gospel. A shepherd. Isn't it remarkable? If you are
a sheep, the very last thing you want is for a shepherd to
lay down his life for you. You need a shepherd to protect
you. You are at your most vulnerable when a shepherd is laying down
his life for you. This great shepherd laid down
his life for his sheep, that his sheep will never be separated
from him. This great Gospel is believed
contrary to the wisdom of the world. It puts man's wisdom in
its right and proper place. Man's pride, man's worth, man's
will, all that we have as our foundation is torn asunder by
the simple Gospel. the glorious affirmation of God's
truth. No wonder the world fought so
violently against it. Think of Paul's journey. This
preaching went out to that Gentile world and wherever he went there
was this remarkable controversy and this remarkable division
between men and this remarkable believing You could go to the
Greeks with all their philosophy and you preach a risen Lord Jesus,
nailed to a cross, risen from the dead. And those brilliant
Greeks who spent their lives discussing philosophy are won
over how? Because Paul was clever and intelligent. See, it's the Gospel that has
the power of God. It comes from God with His purpose
and His power. In every place He went there
were believers. And the end result of all this,
brothers and sisters, is beautiful, isn't it? This finished work,
this glorious work, this extraordinarily mysterious work, is culminated
by Him being received up into glory. Glory is the word which
so remarkably characterises Heaven. We have a glorious Saviour on
a glorious throne of the universe and He receives these praises
of glory from angels of men. This One whose name is above
all names. Glorious because his work was
completed gloriously. Glorious because it brings glory
to his father. Glorious because it brings his
people into glory. This man who was seen, who was
preached, who was manifest, in the flesh is now the glorified
man sitting on the throne of this universe. And remarkably
brothers and sisters in Christ, we are sitting there with Him. We are remarkably, because of
this glorious work, we are said to be partakers of the divine
nature. We will, according to his promise,
be like him. He says as he was leaving, I
go to prepare a place for you. He's finished that work. The
place is prepared. He's on his way back again. What
a glorious return it is. So this is what true godliness
is about, isn't it? It's about being captivated by
this glorious God. It's not, as Paul talks about,
that form of godliness that people have. They have an outward form. and they deny the power of it. We have just read about the power
of it. The power that they deny is the
very Gospel itself. They talk much about morality
and they talk much about religion, but they talk much in the same
way that these men talked about this glorious Saviour. May God make him glorious in
our eyes. As someone said, where Jesus
is honoured, souls can safely be sheltered. What a place to
rest. What a place to hide. What a
place to be at peace in this world. Let's pray.