The offended and attacked. People who are experiencing false
doctrine and false behavior. Theological things that are becoming
offensive and frustrating. And the answer to all of that
is that Paul is saying by the command of Christ, here is how
the church ought to live. This is what the church ought
to do. You know, I think about training sometimes, and I have
a lot of training in a lot of different things. Musical training
and martial arts training, and I'll leave it all at that, but
it's interesting that when you train certain things and you
train certain ways, the training does take over. The discipline
takes over. I remember in high school when
I had some compulsion to expel my air. Constantly. I felt like I couldn't get a
full breath. I felt like I had stale air.
This was the thought that kept invading my mind, that I had
stale air in my lungs, so I couldn't get it all out. I wanted to get
a full breath. So I found, after a couple of months, that I was
literally walking around doing this little tick. And it was
so common that I had stopped noticing it. James, you all right?
Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. I can't really do it
now because it's comforting in some sense. But what you find
is that when you change the behavior, when you discipline yourself
to act in a certain way, to approach thoughts and feelings and even
the discipline of certain types of activities, when you do it
correctly, practice makes permanent. When we do life correctly in
Christ, practice makes permanent. When we're driven by emotion,
when we're driven by anger, which is an emotion, when we're driven
by fear, When we're driven by our own desires and affections,
when we're driven by what we know, how things should be, instead
of practicing and being disciplined in that which God has prescribed
for us, we can expect nothing from the Lord. That's what James
says. And what he means by that is that why ask God to intervene
and to work out these things according to his purposes when
his purposes that are very clear have been given to us in simple
terms, simple language, childlike instruction. If we don't do the
basics, we cannot expect the great things. We cannot expect
the simple outcomes. Changing habits are very difficult. But once we have disciplined
ourselves to practice in such a way, to live in such a way,
to operate in such a way, to think in a certain way, to put
to death the flesh in a certain reality, then what happens is
when all of the stuff that's gonna come and it's always gonna
come, that song we just sang, It's so full of everything that
I've been thinking about over the last few months and especially
this week. It is so full of the truth of
God's sovereignty and that His people above all people who stand
firm in the discipline and the instruction of the scripture,
we are going to suffer in a major way in comparison to those who
don't. Because those who don't, don't
stand in the discipline of Christ. Those who don't suffer typically
give up and walk away from that which Christ has clearly instructed
us. And John says it like this, those who leave us were not of
us. The same thing's happening in
Ephesus. Same thing's happening today in our culture, all over
the world. And Paul is literally saying,
there's a joke in that, this is how we ought to act.
This is what we ought to be doing. This is how God will overcome
these circumstances. Chapter 3, verse 14. Paul says,
I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to
you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave
in the household of God, which is the church, the assembly of
the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. Great
indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested
in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed
by the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in glory. Now, if you read this letter,
and if you're familiar with Paul, you know, this is not foreign
for Paul. Paul is always about singing a hymn or throwing some
doxology in the midst of his writing. He's very versed in
that. I mean, after all, this is what
the gospel does. When we suffer, but we are gospel
grace recipients, we rejoice. We go, wow, hallelujah, in the
midst of the greatest pain ever. And that is the work of God,
the Holy Spirit, truly and always, certainly in his people, if we
are disciplined to listen. And the test that Paul gives
and the Apostles give in the New Testament is they write these
letters by umption and drive and command of God the Spirit.
Different than any letter that you or I would ever write. And
what I find as someone who reads and researches and writes and
teaches and talks and words and words and words, words are always
coming out of my head. Even if they're not coming out
of my mouth, there's a constant conversation in my head about something every
single hour of the day. And if I'm blessed, it'll shut
off and I go to sleep. But sometimes it doesn't. And
there's a whole lot of words. And it's amazing how verbose
I must be to explain what God can simply teach in his word
with just one thought. The question is, are we listening?
Or better, do we have spiritual ears to hear? Do we have spiritual ears to
hear? Paul wants to come to Ephesus.
He helped plant this church. He did plant this church. He
trained Timothy personally to be the elder of this city. And
then he left Timothy there to appoint more elders who were
qualified men who could continue the image of Christ and humility
and oversight and care and doctrine, not only in the things of God
in his revealed self, but also in the commands of God in his
revealed self. And Paul is writing this and
he goes into this doxology by saying I want to come. I want
to be there because being with the body is the point. Being with the body is when you
get your prayers answered, when you get your needs met. God,
I wish somebody could come alongside me and help me, but I'm all by
myself. It's like the old joke that we
used to have in middle school where this guy was really devout,
and the floods were coming, and he gets up on the roof of his
house, you know, and this boat comes by, and another boat comes
by, and a helicopter comes by, and, oh, I'm trusting in the
Lord, and then he dies. He's like, well, I was trusting.
He said, well, I sent two boats and a helicopter. What were you waiting on? God
has sent the church. God has given elders and deacons
to the body to serve and to teach and to oversee and to make sure
that the work of the ministry is done. Ministry is not about
what we do in the context of cultural ideologies. Ministry
is not what the world has said ministry is. Worship is not,
biblically speaking, prescribed the way we do it. What we do
in worship and why we do in worship is to the point of the praise
of His glorious grace so that then we might grow into maturity
into Him who is our Head, the fullness of Christ by speaking
the truth in love, by living, by giving ourselves for one another.
And when we find ourselves isolated it is because we are not practicing
the discipline of trusting the sovereignty of God. I'm going
to say that again. When we find ourselves isolated
in our faith and in our lives, It is because we are not trusting
in the prescription of God and His sovereignty. We are not trusting
in Him. I didn't say anything about your salvation, beloved.
It is about the disciplines of the faith, which is why this
letter was written. I'm going to write these things
because if I delay, we don't know what's going on with Paul.
I mean, people argue. There's a lot of confident assertions
in historical theology, by the way, and a lot of confidence
assertions in church history. Oh, this is where Paul was. This
is what he was doing. This is what he was wearing. No, we don't know.
You know, while we don't know because it wasn't important for
us to know. Paul was writing to Timothy by the Spirit and
now we have these letters for the elders of the church to know
what it is that they need to be doing and that you can also
read them. They're not hidden special knowledge, they're direct
knowledge. Now the church can know all of
the details too. There's no special handbook of
pastoral care. It's the Bible. If I delay, he's probably in
prison. There's no telling where he was,
it was very common for him to be sick or in prison. You may know,
I'm writing this letter, this letter, not what I'm about to
say, what I have been saying and continue will say, I am writing
this letter so that you may know how one ought to behave in the
household of God. Now think about that for a second. Now as a kid, I remember hearing
those times when we'd go to church or whatever, I've heard before. Probably numerous times, depending
on the family member in which you were. I've heard before,
and I can't tell you who or where, but I've heard before. This is
the house of God. You ever heard that? Don't run
in the house of God. Don't talk loudly in the house
of God. Don't drink coffee in the house of God. Don't go to
the potty in the house of God. This is not the house of God.
This building was a bra store, shoe store, wig store, everything
else. We've done Kung Fu in here. We've done karaoke in here. Heaven
knows what our youth have thrown around and abused in this building. I've seen mannequins set up in
here in odd places that weren't supposed to be here. This is
a building. It is not holy. God does not
dwell in this building. There is nothing in which God
can be contained. But what is this household? Now,
I could go through scripture. I could really just pull out
20, 30, 40 verses and read them all. But let's just speak generally
in the sense in which Paul is expressing this. What does Paul
say to the Hebrews? We are the pillars. John talks
about the church being the pillars, the household of God, where the
temple and the tabernacle gave the imagery. The point of all
of that was to show that God's people were his house. God dwells
with us, His people. God dwells within us in His Spirit. I want you to hear this to the
point where the Word teaches, the Lord teaches, where two or
more are gathered in My Name, Jesus speaking, there I am with
them by the authority And by the power of Christ, when we
gather together, Christ is with us. When we are alone, Christ
is with us. I will never leave you, nor will
I forsake you. Why? Because God the Father has
forsaken the Son and judged Him according to the law. and poured
wrath upon him to pay the penalty of the sin, just like I teach,
the mortgage is paid, the dead note has been paid, there is
no other payment to be had, there is no other anything, no other
condition whatsoever that must be met for sins to be paid for,
period. God's elect are free. And we proclaim that. That's
called the gospel, the evangel. We do that in gospelism, evangelism. We share the good news, the good
story of God's finished redemption in Christ Jesus for His people.
And when God so chooses, He grants faith. He changes the mind of
the believer supernaturally by His Spirit, which is the word
repentance. And that we know someone has
been granted repentance because they trust fully in the promises
of God for salvation, which are finished in Christ Jesus. That
is faith. And it's a divine work where
the person rests, not only in their mind, but in their spirit.
And I don't have time to talk about Plato and Aristotle and
their ideas of spirit, mind, and all that other garbage. Just
generally speaking, you know what I mean. So here we have Paul writing
1 Timothy and 2 Timothy so that the church ought to know how
to behave. You know what's funny? Is that there's nothing in this
letter that is indicative of a problem in behavior in the
church itself. But the problem is people making
confident assertions about how things ought to be theologically
and what people ought to believe theologically. To the point where
they're becoming divisive, derailing the oversight of the Word of
God. They're derailing the authority
of Jesus Christ Himself. And then those who agree with
them are being tugged away this way, and those who disagree are
being tugged away this way. And the Bible calls that demonic. Why? Because it is not God's
prescription for how we ought to behave in the church. And
let me say that the main thing that really takes place as we
see throughout the scripture and anecdotally in our own lives,
we probably all could have experienced this. One of the main things
that does this is when people open their mouths about someone
else who's not standing with them. It is murder 100% of the
time. No exceptions whatsoever. There is no place in the Bible
where any believer, even an elder, has the right to talk bad or
negatively about anybody even if it is the truth. You can't do it. It is a sin
before the holiness of God. It is an abomination to Christ
himself who spoke not a word in his own defense and hung himself
on a cross to die for his people. And it is probably the number
one thing in my entire life in ministry that has always caused
serious, serious, gross death. So guess what? Nothing's changed. What was going on here? I can
already feel it. You know what's happened. We've
talked about these things here in Ephesus. These people were
the point of discussion. There wasn't good worship. Let's
talk about these people. Let's talk about what's going
on. Let's talk about who's right or wrong. Let's figure out what's
what. And God himself comes through, through the apostles. Jesus Christ
says, this is why I've written this letter so that you ought
to know how to behave. Yes, all this is going on. I've
entrusted the elders of the church to handle this thing according
to the commands of God Almighty himself and everybody else. Mind your business. See, and
you know what's ironic about the experiences that we had two
years ago? Is that all that was ever said
is that we will submit to the lordship of the word and the
sovereignty of God in his word. And then everything went sideways.
Not any more conversations were had with the people involved. That's demonic when it goes sideways from there. And anyone who would charge that
it's not, they themselves speak for Satan. Now, that's extremely
hard dogma. If you don't like it, take it
up with Paul. If you don't like him, just tell Jesus there's
a problem. Yep, it's a fallacy. But I have the microphone. And
there's no debate right there, you see. If I'm wrong, that's
okay. The scripture will correct us.
If I'm right, the scripture will promote me in that context, will
undergird that which I say. If my spirit is wrong, that's
for me to deal with the Lord. If my spirit is right, praise
the Lord. When God gives us repentance in our sin, we celebrate. When
God changes and transforms our ideology so that we can have
unity, we celebrate. We don't further than dig. to
destroy that which God has put together. Beloved, Paul goes
here because he's already been talking
about the kind of conduct that the church ought to have in the
midst of extreme, negative, deadly, false teachers. is that they
must have good doctrine. We've talked about that over
in chapter 1, verses 1 through 20. We must know the truth. Doctrine
is important. It's the foundation, what is
taught. And we're going to talk about
doctrine. Doctrine, the word means teaching. So if I teach you how
this microphone works, that is doctrine. If I teach you how
to speak in front of it, that teaching of public speaking is
doctrine. The word doctrine means teaching.
I'm teaching you. The Bible teaches us theological
things. and subject matter, and the Bible
teaches us application things in behavior, and they are all
the doctrines of Christ. Anyone who subdivides those and
says, well, the doctrines of Christ is all about the redemptive
work and the theology behind it, baloney. Baloney, that's
garbage. Beloved, we got to get away from
that myopic ignorance. It doesn't matter that you can
recite the gospel. If our love is gone and we can't
submit to the gospel bringer, it's worthless. That's not me,
that's Paul, 1 Corinthians 13. And Jesus in John 13, 14, 15. And Jesus in Revelation chapter
3 and 2. You see, so we get to the place
where we get overcome by ignorance, thinking that we are Confident. And then we end up becoming just
like the false teachers here in Ephesus who we confidently
assert what must be. We need to understand the gospel
picture in creation. We need to understand the gospel
picture in the subjection of the church in the picture of
the gospel in marriage. We need to understand the role
of the church in learning, men and women. We need to understand
that not every man, just because you're a man, doesn't give you
the right to teach the Bible at the church. You must be a
qualified man who is approved according to the scripture. And
when someone has a call or a gift, and the scripture teaches us
very clearly, to allow and permit and to grow those gifts for the
sake of the church. The same thing with elders and
deacons. When the person is tested and ready, we present them to
the church as a servant, as a gift. And we should all be gifts to
one another. So what does Paul hope to accomplish? Well, we know what's going on.
And he's teaching in this letter, as the apostle, he has the final,
he's already said this, he has the final and divinely gifted
wisdom for the church in all matters. Now, see, that's a high
order, isn't it? If I stood up here and said,
my name is James, and I, by God, know everything that needs to
be known, and you're gonna do what I say, or boom, you should
just come talk to me afterwards, and we'll see about how long
I'm not gonna be in the pulpit. Might have to go somewhere for
a couple of weeks and chill out. That's not how it works. But Paul gave that assertion.
The apostles gave that assertion. To the point where Paul will
say, if anyone disregards anything I write, treat them as not a
brother. I'm gonna say that again. Anyone
who disagrees with my behavioral commands or my doctrinal propositions
are to be treated as an unconverted person. Oh, yes. It's all or none, buddy. All this mess going on, we need
to do something in the world. You see, this is where our fear
is, isn't it? We get on social media that we're inundated with
information that we're not supposed to have. I mean, I remember seeing
early newspapers where, like in my great grandmother's house,
that people would come over and visit and there was a guest log.
And they'd write in who, and at the end of every week she'd
submit that to the enterprise and it would, you know, well
Eunice and Lala got together and they talked, they had tea
and coffee and made some incredible pound cake and discussed the
matters of such and such. And there was a whole section
in the newspaper of who was visiting who and what they did. No lie. And that's not information that
we need. That's the first Facebook, folks. You think it's strange,
but we do it too. Look at my pie. Look at my flower. Look at my cat. Look at my new
shoe. Why does my poo look like this?
I mean, you know, you see some crazy stuff. This is private.
Stop it. But we're all inundated with information that we're just
not supposed to have. And so because of that, we feel
out that we have the right to be involved in every thing in
the world. We're all the president. We're
all the secretary of state. We're all the governor. We're
all the mayor. We all know everything exactly how it ought to be. And
we make assertions. I've talked to two people this
week who made assertions about political things that were absolutely
completely made up. And I'm in good place, so I just,
I went with it. It's like the telemarketer. Sometimes
I like to answer those calls. Get them all the way, oh, sorry,
can you repeat the credit card number? Hold a minute. Hang up. So I'm like, okay, tell me more,
please. That sounds very damning. I need
to know not to vote for this person. Can you give me details?
Can you give me examples? What did they do? Oh, well, uh,
uh, uh. and then they make up a narrative
based on pieces of information. You know our brains work like
that, don't you? If I say to some of you, do you remember
the time we had coffee and we talked about this and that was
true? And then I say, now remember
how I said this and I say a statement that I didn't talk about? You'll
agree with me? And the next time I'll say, can you tell me what
happened in our coffee? You'll tell me the thing I made up as
if you experienced it. That's how our brains work. Your
memories are fabrications, about 70% fabrication on the details
of things. And all it takes is your mom
to show you a picture of something. Say, remember you did this? And
then you'll think it happened. And you'll elaborate. And by
the time you're 50, you'll start telling people's story that's
completely different. But you go to bed every night
thinking that it's true. Beloved, we can't trust what
we believe we remember. We can trust, though, that if
we stick to what scriptures taught us about how to handle these
things, we won't be inundated with fear and failure. The apostle has the final authority,
the divinely gifted wisdom for the church in all matters. So
if we want to find out how to handle stuff and the Bible says,
this is how you do it. We sit down together. No, I'm
not sitting down. Then you're now the problem.
I'm leaving the church, then you're the problem. God helped marriages who operate
like that. God, in his mercy, man, if we
just follow the prescriptions, sometimes marriages work out
after disasters. Sometimes relationship problems
work out because Christ has given the details on what we do. And so Paul is teaching. He's
given doctrine. That's what the word means. Doctrine
literally means teaching. So it refers only to what is
taught. It's the very act of teaching. The subject matter
of teaching. And there are many ways to teach
something. And it can be taught rightly or wrongly. Its information
or instruction can be accurate or inaccurate. But it's still
doctrine. Doctrine is what is taught through
the written passages of scripture when we talk about doctrine according
to the faith. And it means in every sense.
Anything written in the Bible, if it's taught to someone, that's
doctrine. You understand that? If it's taught to someone, it's
doctrine. And as much as I wanna say, man, I don't ever make a
mistake, that's garbage. As much as I wanna think that
my mind is clearly open when I open the scripture and I'm
always able to absorb just the context and never err in my own
judgments, that's ridiculous, that's impossible. AI algorithms can't even do that. But doctrine, what is taught
through the written pages of scripture, in every sense, and
what are some of those ways in which we can learn? How is doctrine
taught? Historically, we see what people
did. We see what God told these people
to write. We see how they acted and what they said. We read the
Psalms, we see what they thought. The poetry. We see the prophets,
so we can learn what the prophets were told and what the prophets
said and what the prophets did. We see Jeremiah weeping and praying.
We see Jonah running and angry. We see Moses hiding and murderous,
relenting and caring. A true pastor, kill them all. No, don't kill them. We see the poetry. We see the
apocalyptic. writings, the reveal things,
these incredibly somewhat cryptic type readings, and we see the
didactics. So out of all of that we can
learn, there's doctrine there, but the doctrine of all these
other things, the genres of scripture, the different things, what we
learn from the history is the history. The teaching is the
history. And then we only do and obey that which is prescribed
for us by the ones who give didactic. In other words, here's the truth,
here's what the prophets meant, here's what the Old Testament's
trying to say, here's what creation really stands for. Now, therefore,
do this, act this way, don't do that, don't act this way,
don't say these things. This is what the Bible is for,
for the body, for the people. It is all revealed by God of
God to His people. God the Spirit giving understanding
as His people study and learn His word with humility. I mean,
how many times have you met someone who knows a whole lot about the
prophets and can come in and talk about Deuteronomy and all
this other stuff about the law and people come in and get Nehemiah
and then start trying to apply that to the United States or
to the church or to whoever. There's no application there
except God sovereignly working as a picture of showing He is
the one who will rebuild and buttress the gospel through the
church of Jesus Christ. It's not about building a wall.
Isolationism in the body of Christ is a wicked sin. Buying property in the middle
of nowhere so all the Christians can hang out without any influence
of the world is evil. It's a direct disobedience to
everything found in the apostle's writing. And people that think
that way are warped. Now, have I ever thought that
way? Yes, I think it would be great. Until I read the Bible,
I go, well, that's just, you know, it'd be nice, but it wouldn't
be fruitful. And it is not of God, you see.
It's one thing to have an idea, it's another thing to teach it
to somebody else as if it's good and pleasant and beneficial to
the Lord. I mean, for the Lord's people.
So the only means of order in the Christian life is the local
assembly to live according to the scripture as given to the
local assembly. Now see, what happens is when
we say what scripture says concerning the local church, a lot of people
then say, oh, so now you're ecumenical. Now you're about, you know, the
hierarchy of the church. Are we going to have bishops?
No. Come on, folks. Just because everybody in the
world has an example of where some of this kind of reality
and some of this truth was abused to an incredible extreme doesn't
mean that we ignore it. We don't ignore it. Just because
we have misogyny and all this other wickedness against women
doesn't mean we ignore the created order of God's picture in marriage
and leadership in the church. Just because we have things that
we don't particularly care for because people have become hateful
and done all sorts of things against. I mean, nobody I know
says the Crusades was a thing of God these days. I'm sure there
are people who would think that, but nobody that I know. But yet there's nothing different
in me taking a sword under the authority of the crown and killing
people who don't come to my theological position as there is for me to
go out into the world and destroy somebody with my mouth because
they don't see my theological position. It's still a crusade. It's still murder. It's still
wicked. And Paul was wanting to prevent that. If you notice, gas dropped 40
cents over the weekend. A gallon. There's 370-something
over here yesterday. It's 420 Wednesday. And I don't hear anybody saying,
woo-hoo, gas going down. Yay, things are good. Things
are good. No, but let that thing go up $0.05. And the world's
ending. And everybody's a politician.
Everybody knows exactly why it happened. They're buying bumper
stickers to stick on pumps. and think it's cute. I don't
think it's cute. First time I saw it, I thought,
oh, that's pretty funny. And then I realized, you know what? That's a violation
of what scripture teaches the church to do. So I don't want
to I don't want to find that funny anymore. Lord, help me in my
humor. But the church. The only means for order in the
life of the Christian is the local church. Several years ago, I
don't know when I said it, but it came up in Facebook this week
that, you know, reminded me of what I was thinking. Thanks.
I was trying to forget that. That's why we should know pine
so negatively sometimes on social media, because when we're a cure,
we might be reminded of how bad we were or how bad it was. But a true church has. true polity,
a true church has true oversight, a true church has things operating
together just like life is indicative of certain things and conditions
that must be and you have to have brain that's operating your
cardiovascular system and your pulmonary system. Or you have
to have something artificially keeping that running because
without the proper amount of oxygen in the means of the body,
things start to die. You're not alive. Without the
church having elders and deacons in a body and submissive to the
instruction and the commands of the New Testament apostles,
then we're not a church. If we're not local, we're not
the church, you see. We're not operating according
to the prescription of God's order. And this order that we see in
the New Testament that Paul is writing to Timothy about is not
for the world. It's not for the church to go,
now see here, this is how you ought to be living, neighbor.
You need to be in church and you need to do this and you need
to do that. No, live your neighbor, let your neighbor live. Okay,
Psalm 73, I read it this morning before service started. And it's
one of those things where Asaph is looking around, sort of like
Solomon, you know. He's looking around and seeing
all the wicked and everything that's going on. He's suffering
and everything else is going great for all these people who
don't worship God. He's like, this makes me bitter. Why am I paying
for all this? And they're getting away with
it. And the scripture teaches us that he got on his knees and
bittered and started to look after the heart of God and God
showed him. He said, that fit's gonna slip. And if it weren't for my grace
to you, you'd be in the same boat. You'd be a self-righteous
person thinking, look at all those bad people out there. This order is not to be given
to the world. It's required. of the church, not of the world.
The Bible is not written. The New Testament is not written
so that we can get governments and policy and everything else
under the confines of God's hierarchy and things like this. Get out
of Genesis and get into what Genesis means by getting into
the Gospels and getting into the teaching of the apostles. Because I can promise you, when
God told Moses to write out Genesis, He was not considering influencing
the governments of the world. And he was also not considering
taking and that the church might create an incredible people who
worship God like the nation of Israel never could do. Look at when critical mass is
an explosive or exponential growth and Christianity in the world,
beloved, it's not the true gospel. It's always self-righteousness. And some people say, well, what
about this? What about reform? What about all this? These are very
small individuals who made very small impact in a very short,
a very long period of history. It wasn't a movement. It was
individual here being persecuted and silenced and being done with,
but yet somebody in God's purposes picked that up and ran with it
and went to another small community and began to teach. And another
person went into a community and began to teach, and the church
began to live. The church will always live. Because, I mean,
look at the Puritans. I don't want to be like them.
There's no joy. There's no hope there. There's
only a few Puritans that I can even read and even then I need
to read them in the context of the poetry of scripture because
if I read them in the New Testament, they almost put you in a place
where you can't be saved. To where it would be just as
easy to go back to the monastery and beat myself every morning
in my prayers and burn myself with wax. Shave my head and tear
my clothes. This is not the way of grace.
There's order, but it's not for the world. The Bible is not for
the world to be set apart. The Bible is for those who are
set apart by God from the world. Set apart by God in election
and redemption, but adoption and instruction, salvation and
then worship. We live our lives according to
Paul in Romans 12 that we live our lives as worshipers. Jesus
in John chapter 4 would come and say, but we worship, a true
worshiper worships in spirit and in truth. And this woman
from Sychar, she was always trying to figure out how to worship
rightly and do the right things and become the right person.
But she could never become the right person because she was
tainted. She was dirty. She was unclean. And she could
never escape that sinful tarnish, except that Jesus Christ take
the guilt on himself. And he showed her this. He showed her
this, and she became a true worshiper of Christ. God instructs doctrine
on how the church ought to live according to right worship. God's
will then, therefore, is revealed clearly for His people through
the teaching. We don't have to dig into the Bible to try to
find a hidden will. If God has a hidden will, then
it's always hidden. We see Paul talking about the
mystery. He uses the context right here as we get to it. He
uses the word mystery, but it's not a mystery in that it can't
be found or that it needs to be discovered. Paul's use of
the word mystery is that it was once hidden, but now has made
known, you see. And so God's will is revealed
for his people through the teaching, the doctrine of the Bible. And
though we might be ignorant of it today, when we read the scripture,
we will not be ignorant of it tomorrow. And he also reveals
for his people his will through the means and order of the life
of the church, which he commands, and there's no other way. A couple
of things in this text. Paul knows that his visit to
Ephesus would be the best answer, but God delayed him so that he
would write Timothy so that the church today would have the letter.
I want you to hear about that for a second. I could seriously
just talk about God's sovereignty in the context of the authority
and sufficiency of scripture right now. And Paul does that
in the second letter that he writes to Timothy. So Paul's plan, apostolically,
by the command of Christ, was to go to Ephesus and help clear
all this, teach this stuff in person. And it's not the first
time Paul taught Timothy what to do, and then he's reminding
him, what do I do now, Paul? You didn't tell me what to do
when people came up out of the ranks of the church and started
becoming divisive and creating factions. What do you do? What
do we do? Paul's reminding Timothy what
to do. You charge them by the authority of Christ to be quiet
and to submit to the learning. Do you know when that happens?
If somebody came into our church and, beloved, unbelievers and
believers are gonna exist together in the local church until the
day of justice, to the day of judgment. That is God's plan,
that is God's intention. Anybody who thinks that we can
have a congregation of full, only spirit-filled, regenerate
people is just hogwash. It's silly. We take people at
their profession of faith, and when they come along with some
knuckle-headed idea that sort of de-veins the truth of the
gospel, we say, hey, hey, hey, you said you believe the gospel,
the Bible teaches this. You know what, I'm wrong. We don't then
look at that moment as their moment of conversion. You know
what's the largest idol, I think, in the evangelical church? Is
the point of conversion, the conversion experience. The Bible doesn't talk about
it at all. The Bible doesn't give any teaching, any doctrine
concerning when we're supposed to say, oh, I was saved right
then. You don't know that. That's why every time we learn
more clarity or distinctions in the context of the gospel
of grace, we think we've been born again. That's hogwash. Being
born again is a divine work of God, the Holy Spirit, as he wishes,
where he wishes, when he wishes, with whom he wishes, and only
that to rest in the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ for
your sins. And it doesn't come through improper means. It doesn't
come through false doctrine. It doesn't come through a false
gospel. That's obvious. I didn't show you the box that
the food was going to come in and you say you had food. Look
at this empty box. There's a food in there later.
I'm so full. No, there's no empty gospel,
non-gospel that God uses as a means through which he brings life. But God instructs the church Paul instructs the church. God
instructs the church through Paul. He wanted to be there,
but God and his sovereignty prevented him to be in there. So he wrote
a letter so that God would sovereignly have a letter for us. And then
God prompted Paul to write this letter by the Spirit succinctly
and perfectly. It's a perfect letter. There's
nothing wrong in this. There's nothing wrong in 1st
and 2nd Timothy. There's no error here. There's
no contradiction of things. So if you feel like sometimes
when you hear me say these things about doctrine and you think
that I'm being contradictory, then you've got to ask yourself,
then where is it in Paul and John and Peter's writing? Is
it contradictory there? And you know what, as someone
who's been in academic circles for a long, long time, yes, there
are people academically who would charge contradiction, especially
between Paul and James, but they don't know what they're
talking about, because they're not reading the letters in the
sense of its purpose. They're reading a verse or two
in its syntax without its context, and that's called a pretext. So God prompted him to write
the letter. And then God wrote this letter then so that elders
alone are charged with overseeing the order of the saints in life,
of the church, the assembly, the gathering. And so this letter
is written so that the gathering professing Christians, some of
which will probably be false converts, would know how they
ought to live under all circumstances. And so when we have people acting
differently, disobeying, or thinking different theological things,
we confront them as elders and we charge them to listen and
we teach them and they say, yes, I agree. Yes, I'll straighten
out this behavior. Then we rejoice. It's over. There's nothing to be done. And
all the while, the rest of the church doesn't need to have any
involvement whatsoever in those things, because typically 99
out of 100 times, the church elders can deal with disciplinary
or correction issues without there ever being an incident
known to the public. Which is good and honorable. and profitable for the church,
and it is the command of Christ. What about Titus? If you're not
an elder of the church, you can't obey what God calls the elders
to do. You see? Satan's got a big platform. He
spoke out of the platform of Peter, and he speaks out of the
platform of us when we do and say things that are out of order.
And even that is in God's sovereignty. So we can rest. We can rest. God doesn't need us to take up
the mantle of defending Him or changing things according to
what we think He needs to be. So these gathering Christians
know how to behave in every circumstance. We've got false teachers. Everybody's
divisive. What's going on? be submissive, learn quietly,
learn submission, be qualified in your leadership. And if they're
not, then sit them back in the pews and let's let them be qualified.
And when they are, we can bring them back into leadership. Let's get the doctrines right
and correct. And those who don't either come under the right doctrine
or come under the right behavior are to be dismissed as unbelievers
until they do. Well, I didn't think works had
anything to do with that. They don't. But if you're going to be part
of the church and you're going to give God glory and honor and you're not willing
to submit to the works that are commanded of the order of the
church, then you can't be part of the church. You're not part
of the church if you're not part of the church. The word church
is gathering. In the first century, the same
word for church was used for governors gathering together
or an assembly. A movie theater. Coming together. This letter's written so that
the gathered professing Christians will know what to do in all circumstances
without exception. Well, this, you know, what about
this? Well, then the commands that we're given in behavior
and attitude and action and submission and humility, they're given to
us. So we do those things in every circumstance. The gathered professing Christians
will have guidance and order in dealing with those who stray
from right doctrine. which is the teaching of scripture
regarding God and salvation, and also the teaching of scripture
regarding obedience and submission, order, humility, which is the
point of Jesus Christ as the image before the Father in salvation.
I mean, think about that for a second. Jesus Christ submitted
to the Father, lowered himself to become a human being, did
not make much of himself, always gave glory to the Father and
deprecated his own position before man. Called himself the son of
man, not even taking deity as something to be grasped. Spoke
not in a defense of his own word. Kept quiet, remained silent,
passionately went to the cross. obediently subjected himself
to the Father and the Father's will, who hates murder. But yet
God, the Father, decreed and ordained and purposed and caused
the greatest murder that ever happened on the dirt of earth.
And that is Jesus Christ, his son, so that in that death he
would redeem a people for himself. So Jesus is the example. The
church is the thing that the church are the ones that what?
that give the manifold wisdom of God a picture. The church includes the ones
bought of Christ. As I've said, we'll have true
and false sheep among her into the day of judgment. But God
is the creator and the savior of his church, his household.
Look at this text. I've been teaching it, but I
haven't been saying it, which is the church of the living God,
the church of the living God. He bought her. And the pillar and buttress of
the truth. So Jesus Christ has purchased
his church. He's purchased the true sheep.
He's purchased them. Nothing will change that. Even
though many professors will come in, many professors will come
in and also not live according to the standard that's required
of order. They too must be put at arm's length. And when they
are out, They're out until what? Until they decide to submit to
the scripture. It's very simple. There is no
burden, according to John, that any Christian can be called to
that is impossible nor overcoming. I think about that for a second.
The church can't say, you gotta dress this way and color your
hair this way and brush your teeth this way. The church can't
tell you and interfere in all this. I mean, we give wisdom.
Is that wise? You know, you're going to a job
interview, but you're in a tankini. I mean, you know, is that wise?
Oh, it's at the swim pool. Okay, that's fine. You're good.
Oh, it's at a lawyer's office. You're probably not gonna get
the job. You haven't bathed in a month.
Well, you know, it's not ungodly to be nasty, I guess. But you're
probably not gonna find that girlfriend you've been looking
for. And, you know, she passes out
from the smell. Not going to happen. We're not going to dictate
those things. We're not even going to dictate
anything in the context of of life, except that which the scripture
would give us those commands. And even then, we're going to
look to the clarity of what these commands are and what are they
really to love one another as Christ has loved the church.
That's the command, and what's crazy about it is that we could
mold ourselves into any picture that the culture would dictate
much easier than we could love our neighbor, much easier than
we could love our brother or sister, much easier than we could
love those who aggravate us or hurt us, who are just mean and
we don't like. But Christ has loved us. The church of the living God.
We are the holy ones. We are the bride of Christ. We are the
sharers of His glory. We are the beloved. We are the
heirs. Joint heirs of righteousness and glory and majesty. But not just that. That's a whole sermon in
itself. We're not just that. We're a pillar and buttress of
the truth. Now we don't use a whole lot
of pillars. We use walls. We load-bearing wall. Knock down
a load-bearing wall, the house falls down. It's true. You can't change it. And if you
want the wall to be open, you have to put pillars. Pillars
hold up the structure. They keep it from falling over.
They keep it from caving in. The church is not the foundation
of the truth. Jesus Christ is the foundation of the truth.
The gospel of free and sovereign grace is the foundation of the
truth. And he has built pillars upon himself in his death. And
upon the church, upon the people he has saved, rest the reality
of his picture, of his glory. Ephesians chapter 1. Brother
Trey will be in this letter periodically throughout the rest of the year. The manifold wisdom of God is
displayed in the church. To the powers and the principalities
in the present age. in the heavenly places, the angels
and the demons. See, the church holds up the walls
of truth. There's no other means for which the truth is held,
not only just in theological things, but in attitude and action
and love. You see, isn't it simple to see
that most of the time the world in which we live, they pick one
or the other? They want to be dogmatic in certain doctrines,
and there's nothing wrong with being dogmatic in certain doctrines,
but they do it without love, and they hear the words of their
Savior, as Jesus writes to John in the Revelation. You have forsaken
your first love. Or you find a church that says,
no, we don't want to offend anybody by teaching patiently, humbly,
and long-sufferingly the truth, because the truth hurts. So let's
just love and feed and care and comfort and coddle. Let's just coddle and do all
these sorts of things and let's just love and everybody flocks
to that. And then the rear ends and the jerks flock to the doctrines
only. The true sheep desire both. Why? Because the Word of God
teaches us that. And when the elders of the church,
as we've already seen two weeks ago, when the elders of the church
are known as being aggressive, they're not elders. Jesus is considered passive by
most Christians today. He just didn't do much. And then
the ones who say that He's not, He turned up tables and He called
them dogs. Yeah, but you know what? No human
being alive can turn over tables. And no human being alive can
ever call somebody a brood of vipers or dogs. Unless, of course,
they're talking to snakes or coyotes. Because we're not God. And we're
not fulfilling the promises of God the Father and the purposes
of the prophecy as the Christ. Only Christ could do that. It
was done and then He showed what? His purpose. Everybody wants
to have an attitude of, I'm going to be like Jesus, and I'm going
to take the world by storm, and I'm going to stand up, and I'm
going to... But we don't have that authority. What we do have
is the command to be like Christ in His humility and death. Nobody
wants that. I'll die charging hell with a
water pistol. No, you won't. If hell were indeed
as most people portray it and we were shown a picture of it,
we'd die. If we were shown a picture of the righteousness of God and
justice and wrath, we'd die. Because that's what hell is,
by the way. God's wrath. In the church, there is no other
means but the church to be together in unity and right behavior and
right truth. There are no such thing as mavericks in the faith.
There's no Lone Ranger, no soloists, no defender, no true sheepest. I'm a true sheep by myself. No,
you're not. It is the body that is in order alone that will uphold
the truth. And yes, there are some people
who cannot find a local assembly, and by the means of God's purpose
and technology, we can relate to them and love them and shepherd
them as best we can as friends and as brothers and sisters in
the faith, but that is not a platform through which God will buttress
the truth. And we're called to our own homes
and to our own lives and to our lives together with each other.
And we're called to the community in which we rest. And the community
in which we rest is not made up by borders and townships and
governments. It's made up by proximity. So
just because you live in one county or the other county doesn't
mean that this isn't our communities. And we will be influential of
being people for Christ in those communities by living in a loving
way and submitting to this text of Scripture without judgment. God will not permit any other
method of revealing His manifold wisdom in this present age except
through the local assembly of believers. None. Hear that church. I don't care
how many people follow, listen, or learn, it's not what God intended. The church is not a building,
it's not a website, it's not a social media structure, it's
not a group, it's not anything, and it's not conditioned on what
we want or what we like or what we say must be determined in
order for it to be truly the church. God's Word has established
that. So we submit to Christ, who put
her together, who purchased her. And sometimes we end up with
sheep and goat in the same pen, and until the sheep are revealed,
we stand firm. If we cannot stand on the simple
grace of God in the church, we most likely have no standing
before Him in justice anyway. Why? Because God dwells with
His people. And beloved, where God dwells,
God teaches. Now, I've even had somebody tell
me last week, talking about this very thing, they said, well,
you know, Paul and Barnabas had a fight. They didn't like each other.
They divorced from each other, blah, blah, blah, over John Mark.
That is not what the Bible says. The Bible says they had a strong
disagreement. on John Mark's position in the
retracing of the missionary journey in the context of his fruitfulness
based on Paul's authority of Christ having him with him. So
God, in His sovereignty, as brothers, Paul and Barnabas said, okay,
brother, I love you, why don't I take John Mark and I'll take
him with me here and you go on and do this. Why did God do that?
Because God had plans for both. And then we see in Paul's second
letter to Timothy, who does he call for? Who does he call for
on his deathbed? Who does he call for when it's
time to get things finished for the sake of writing to the churches?
Who does he call for when God the Holy Spirit is calling Paul
to finish the Bible, the New Testament? He calls Timothy to
come and to bring John Mark because he is important to the work of
Christ in the church. Everything the apostles did was
for the sake of the church, local and visible. Everything that
Christ did in redemption is manifold. The wisdom of God is all this
crazy unknowable. That's what manifold means. This
multiplicity of His wisdom is displayed in the local church. God dwells with His people. So God is displayed in His truth.
And this is not my interpretation. This is the literal reality of
what the scripture teaches. That we display Christ when we
live together rightly. Even when we have disagreements
and false doctrines, when we respond to them rightly, we display
Christ. And the world is amazed that
anyone would tolerate the other in the local assembly. He was
manifested, look, great indeed. Verse 16, we confess is the mystery
of godliness. We know it, we see it. It's Jesus
Christ and he's the mystery of godliness. He says it right there,
he was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit, seen
by angels, six little things, proclaimed by among the nations,
believed on in the world and taken up in glory. This is a
hymn of praise to share and like a doxology of who Christ is.
It's the story of Jesus from start to finish And it is relating,
Paul is relating the person and the work and the finished redemption
of Christ to the local assembly of believers who live in an orderly
fashion to love one another under the subjection of Christ Himself
through the written words that Jesus wrote by the Spirit through
the apostles. Now the church is established
and equipped to do and be that which it is called to be and
commanded by the Lord for the sake of His name and glory by
the power of His grace. And so we do not honor Christ
in any other way if we are not doing these basic things. He
was manifest in the flesh. Of course, we know this is about
the incarnation. We too, as the church, are to
manifest in our flesh the love of Christ, the submission to
Christ, to be a slave to righteousness, to be a lover. Jesus was vindicated
by the Spirit. He was raised from the dead,
for He was not guilty of sin in and of Himself. Just like
we are not righteous in our flesh, in and of ourselves, we get the
righteousness of Christ credited to us, and the guilt of our sin,
the sin of the elect, was credited to Jesus. So one day we also
will be vindicated by the Spirit. We will receive resurrected bodies.
We need to live then as though we are not of this world and
that this meat suit that we live in and all of its conflict and
all of its pain and suffering is not the point of this life.
The point of this life is to set it aside as much as possible
so that we can gather together for the sake of doing the work
of the ministry. Because when we serve Christ's people, we
indeed are serving Him. When we pray for Christ's people,
we indeed are honoring Him and trusting in Him. And so, beloved,
as Jesus was vindicated by the Spirit, so shall we be. Jesus
was seen by angels. He was spoken of. He was proclaimed
at His birth by angels. We see the scripture throughout
telling the disciples, look, He's not here. He's alive. and so on and so forth. The scripture
talks about how angels look desperately and longingly into the things
of salvation, how they're watching this grand design of God and
His sovereignty play out for the sake of the local church
coming together in this earth in unity, every congregation
a pillar of the truth, holding up the beauty of the glory of
the majesty of Christ so that every time the people of the
world look, they have no excuse, just as when they see the clouds
in the sky, they see the truth of Christ and the love of his
people and their sovereignty of Christ and the rule of Christ
and their ability to see and understand and be disciplined
to answer all the world's conflict and all the church's conflict
in an orderly manner. Out of chaos comes order and
creation. Out of death and destruction
comes order and salvation. And that salvation is lived out
in this world through the local assembly of God, seen by angels. We will join this celebration
one day. We will join the angels. The only time we see the word
Ecclesia in any form is in Hebrews, where it talks about the Ecclesia
of all the nations together, the church in glory with Jesus
Christ. That is the only time the invisible
church is mentioned. But it is not invisible then
and it is not invisible now. It will be visible then. Forever
together. This is the preparation for that. proclaimed among the nations,
the prophets proclaimed Christ, the apostles proclaimed Christ.
Now the church proclaims Christ. Jesus Christ was believed on
in the world. He came to save his own from the world, not just
a select nation, but all his select elect out of all nations. Christ saves his people. In all
nations, in all tongues, in all tribes, we are on this mission
and we are part of this mission. We are the fruit of this mission,
beloved. We're not in competition with
the ministries of the world. We're not in competition with
anything. God will do everything He has purpose to do for His
people. And beloved, when you see them
gather together in gospel unity and gospel correction and gospel
living, God is glorified in it. And Jesus, as he was ascended,
he was taken up in glory and he promised to come and take
us to where he was. And this picture is something
we look forward to. This promise is something that
we wait for. Beloved, Paul has much to say
and he's going to begin to talk about the false teaching and
how it came into the church and how it can come into our lives
and how it has come into our lives and how God has been good
to work through it for us. How many times have we been wrong
and yet God has been patient to teach us? Where there is knowledge of sovereign
grace, kindness and hope and patience abound. Because when we look to Christ,
all that other stuff doesn't matter. And we're never going to be perfect.
We're never going to be patient. We're never going to be loving
like we should be. But we're never going to be any at ever
any point like that if we're not looking at the cross. We're
not looking at the finished work of Christ. And we're forever
going to be looking at how we're going to handle this or what
we're going to do. Just look at Christ and submit to him and see what
he's telling us to do. And we will be it. We will have
joy. We'll have peace until we start thinking again out of our
own flesh. And then we'll have to come back.
So we gather together as much as we can. That's why we encourage
each other. That's why we ought to have lives together intimately
outside of the just the assembly. But the assembly is the platform
from which all of those things come. And those who do not want to
be in the assembly cannot receive the ministry. It's not theirs. It's not theirs. It's yours. And so in that, just as Christ
is yours and you are his, we can worship together in this
beautiful, beautiful gospel picture. Let's pray. We thank you, Lord,
for your love and for your patience. And Father, for just how you
are always so patient, especially with me. God, I can get so wound
up. You've been kind to show my sin
to me and you have been kind to hide it from me sometimes
that I might not be in great despair. But Lord, in all your
wisdom, you reveal to us as you have seen fit and the timing
that you have purposed to show us your discipline. to correct
us and to bring us back to hope and peace. And so as we are together
today, there are many who are not with us because of travel
and illness and other things. So Father, as we prayed for them
already twice, we pray for them again in the end, Lord, that
you would hold them and keep them and bring them back into
our lives healthy and healed. But Lord, even so, let us minister
to those in need. Father, help us to focus on those
who are truly submissive to your word and to continue to preach
the gospel of grace that the sheep who have ears to hear will
hear and come to graze on the beauty of Christ together. And let us not worry about the
world's doing or the other churches are doing or other people might
be doing, but Father, let us be concerned with who we are and what we are
doing that we might live according to your commands. according to
your gospel, live a life worthy of the calling that you've given
us in Christ. So we thank you, Father, for
hearing our prayers for the sake of Christ, and it's in his name
that we pray these things. Amen.