Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening. And
now for today's program. Welcome to our program. I'm glad
you could join us. Today, I'll be preaching, if
you'd like to follow along in your Bibles, I'll be preaching
from the book of First Timothy, chapter three, and I'll be dealing
with the last two verses of that chapter, verses 15 and 16. First Timothy three, 15 and 16,
concerning this subject, the mystery of godliness. The mystery of godliness. Now, I often show on this program
from the Bible how if you consider the truth of Scripture, the Bible,
how the whole human race, and this may sound very simplistic,
but it's so now when it comes to a relationship with God, and
that the whole human race is really divided up into two classes
of people. And each class of people, each
one of these two classes, is described in different ways in
the scripture. For example, we can talk about
the elect and the non-elect. Now, I know people don't like
to hear that, but if you're going to speak biblically, you have
to speak that way. We can talk about the just and
the unjust, the justified and those who are not justified. We can talk about believers and
unbelievers. And in that vein, in that description
of the two classes of people, we can also talk about this subject,
the subject for today. There are the godly and the ungodly. Now, the godly, would refer to
sinners saved by the grace of God who have been brought by
God to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and true repentance. And they walk after the Spirit. They've been born again by the
Spirit. They started out as ungodly as
we all do. We're all, having been ruined
by the fall, fallen in Adam into sin and death, and born spiritually
dead in trespasses and sins, we all begin our lives as ungodly
people. Now that doesn't mean we're not
religious by nature. We can be religious, you know,
a person can be religious and still be ungodly. Think of the
Pharisees and the Sadducees. Think of false religion. Think
of people who are trying to be, trying to work their way into
God's favor, work their way into heaven, let's say. And salvation
is not by works, it's by grace. Well, they are ungodly people.
And they may be moral in the eyes of men, they may be kind,
generous, all kinds of things that we could say of them. But
unless you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and follow
Him according to the Bible now, You are an ungodly person. Now,
again, that may seem offensive, you know, because, you know,
I've had people tell me over the years, you know, well, I
know a lot of people who are in other religions, Muslim, Hinduism,
who are very nice, moral, kind people, and that's okay, they
are, but they're not godly people. And I'm gonna show you why in
this message on the mystery of godliness. So all who are sinners
saved by the grace of God, that's how salvation is. Salvation is
by grace, not by works. And that's one of the unique
things about true Christianity. And that's why even false Christianity,
when they tried to interject works into the scheme of salvation
as far as attaining or maintaining salvation, They deny what true
Christianity is all about. And I quote on this program all
the time, Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, for by grace are you saved,
through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of
God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So those who have
been born again by the Spirit, in whom the Holy Spirit, God
the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, inhabits, in
whom He exists. They are sinners saved by grace
and they have been brought by God to faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ and repentance of dead works. And they are godly people. That doesn't mean they're perfect
in their character and conduct. It does mean they are righteous
in Christ because His righteousness, the merit of His obedience unto
death, has been imputed, charged, accounted to them. And as a result
of that, they've been given spiritual life, and they've been given
faith and repentance to walk in a godly way. And those who
are not believers are ungodly people. Well, how does an ungodly
person become a godly person? Well, if you'll look in 1 Timothy
3, verse 15, the apostle Paul here is writing to a young preacher,
young pastor, young evangelist named Timothy. And he says, and
he's wanting to come to Timothy. I believe Timothy at this point
in time is in Ephesus working with the church there. And Paul
says that he, verse 14, he said, these things ride I unto thee,
hoping to come unto thee shortly. I wanna come and be with you.
I wanna come and have the fellowship and to teach. And verse 15, he
says, but if I tarry long, if it's a long time before I get
there, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself
in the house of God, or in the household of God, in the family
of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and
ground of the truth. So he's talking about the church.
Now, a lot of people are misguided and confused about the issue
of the church. What Paul is talking about here
is the people of God, the household of God. And when you look around
in our world, in our little city here and all around the world,
there are buildings that we call churches, church buildings. And they're made up of various
people who believe different things. They're different denominations. But technically speaking, that's
not how we define church or churches in the Bible. The true church,
and this is important now, and this ought to help you if you're
looking for a church to go to. You need to understand this.
The true church is made up of true believers. And as you go
around and you look at these buildings we call churches who
are full of people or very few people, whatever, you have to
understand that you cannot say that all of these are true churches.
Some of them are what the Lord called tares, T-A-R-E-S, and
that's false churches. The reason he called them tares
is because the tare, the word that he used there in Matthew
chapters five, six, and seven on the Sermon on the Mount, or
I'm sorry, Matthew 13 rather, the parable of the wheat and
the tares, the word that he used is opposed to the wheat. The
church would be defined as the wheat And the tare is a dead
plant that looks like wheat, but it's not. Some even said
it was poisonous, I don't know. But there are false churches. But the true church, you know
what church, the word church in the Greek was ekklesia, which
means called out ones. They were called out of the world.
And how were they called out? By the power of the Spirit in
the preaching of the true gospel. And that's why he says here in
verse 15, he says that the house of God, which is the church of
the living God, not a dead God, not an idol, but the God who
is alive, the pillar and ground of the truth. And what he's speaking
of specifically, he defines in verse 16, which is the mystery
of godliness. And the truth is, That, it concerns
the truth of salvation, how God saves sinners, and how sinners
can have a right relationship with God by His grace, you see
grace and truth go together, by His grace, through the glorious
person and the finished, successful, accomplished work of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who himself is the truth. And that's what he
said in John 14, six. He said, I am the way. The way
to where? The way to God. The way to salvation. He said, I am the way, I am the
truth. The truth that leads sinners
to know what salvation is, how God saves sinners. Christ is
that truth. And I am the life. He gives life
to the dead, life to his people, spiritual life. That's what salvation
is, or part of salvation. And so the church is the pillar
and ground of truth. And where we find the truth,
and I'm gonna preach on this later on sometime, we find the
truth in the written word of God, the Bible. And that's why
when you go to a church, as you call it, The first thing you
ought to be concerned with, it's not how many people they have,
it's not can they entertain you, it's not how many programs we
have, even programs for your children. What you first ought
to be concerned with is are they preaching the word of God? Now
that's the key. A lot of churches, a lot of them,
they put the Bible on the shelf. And then they entertain people
and they call that the Holy Spirit because of the emotions that
it incites. But do they preach the word of
God, the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation? That's what I'm
concerned with on this program to preach the Bible because this
is the word of God. Jesus Christ is the embodiment
of the word. He is the word. John 1, in beginning
was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
He is the incarnate Word, the Word made flesh, John 1, 14,
in dwelling among us, dwelt among us. He is the subject, the main
subject of the written Word from Genesis to Revelation. This is
a book of Christ and how God saves sinners by His grace through
the blood of Christ, the righteousness of Christ. who is God in human
flesh without sin. And he is, if I'm preaching the
truth, then he is the subject, the main subject of my preaching,
the preached word. And so when he says the pillar
and ground of truth, well, look at verse 16. He says, and without
controversy, without debate, without argument, great is the
mystery of godliness. And then he lists several things
here that shows us the mystery of godliness. Now, a mystery
in the Bible, remember, is not like mystery books that you read
or mystery shows that you watch. A mystery in the Bible is not
something that people can go into the Bible and pull out different
clues and figure out the mystery. No, a mystery is something that
is hidden from people until God is pleased to reveal it. That's
what it means to uncover it. The way of salvation is a complete
mystery to men and women until God reveals it. And that's why
Paul said he was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ in Romans
1.16. He said, for it is the power
of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first
and the Greek also. Verse 17, for therein is the
righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is
written, the just shall live by faith. It's revealed, it's
a revelation. It comes from God. The message
of the gospel, the mystery of godliness, is not something that
man has concocted or formulated. It is a message from God. Paul
told the Galatian churches, he said, the gospel that I preach
to you is not from me, it's not from man, it's from God. 1 Corinthians
1 and 2 tell us that the princes and the nobles, the philosophers,
the thinkers of this world, the gospel, the true gospel has never
even entered their minds. In all of their thinking and
writing and philosophizing and all of their theologizing and
theorizing, the gospel has never even come into their minds. This
is something that God has revealed and does reveal to his people.
And he says the mystery of godliness. What is godliness? Well, godliness
is worshiping, believing. It's believing, worshiping, and
following God as he reveals himself. That's what godliness is. Some
of the theologians say it's godlikeness. And certainly we want to imitate
the Lord God in those communicable attributes. that he expresses
in and by the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God, God-man, God in human
flesh. But godliness is believing, worshiping,
serving, following, glorifying God. That's what godliness is. And without understanding this
mystery, that God reveals in the glorious person and finished
work of his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no godliness. There may be religion, there
may be human morality as we judge that, there may be kindness,
generosity, there may be philanthropy, but there's no godliness because
here's the mystery of godliness and look at point number one
here. He says, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest
in the flesh. Now that's the first key. And
what is that about? Well, who is God manifest in
the flesh? Well, that's Christ. That's the
Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus, whose
name means salvation. And there's several things that
we draw from this. First of all, we have to understand that salvation,
godliness, which means salvation, which means, as I said, faith,
believing God, worshiping, serving, following, glorifying God in
our lives by the power of God. Godliness is not something that
man achieves by reaching upward to God. Do you understand that? We try, many people try and try
to work their way up into a right relationship with God. But that's
not the mystery of godliness. The mystery of godliness begins
with God coming down to his people. God was manifest in the flesh. Now, I quoted it earlier about
Christ being the Word. John 1, in the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Well,
in John 14, it says that, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt,
or tabernacled, literally, among us. That's how godliness comes. It comes from God down to us. It's God working. It's God intervening. It's God interjecting Himself
in the person of Christ. Matthew 121 says, His name shall
be called Jesus, which means salvation, for He shall save
His people from their sins. And then Matthew 1.23 says, his
name shall be called Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God
with us. Isaiah 9.6 says, unto us a child
is born, unto us a son is given. That's speaking of both the deity
and the humanity of Jesus Christ. And so Christ, God manifest himself
to His people in the glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ,
God manifest in the flesh. You see, that's who Jesus Christ
is. He is God-man. He's every bit God, divine in
every attribute of divinity, co-equal with the Father and
the Spirit in His divine nature, but He also is human in every
aspect of human nature without sin. And understand that. Without
sin. That's who Jesus Christ is. And
so the mystery of godliness, how a sinner who's ungodly by
nature can be made godly begins with the Lord Jesus Christ who
is God manifest in the flesh. His person. Do you understand
that? So a person who claims to be
a Christian, who denies either the deity or the humanity of
Christ, you can mark it down, that's not a godly person. And
then look at the second point. Great is the mystery of godliness.
God was manifest in the flesh and justified in the spirit. Now what does justified mean?
It means that Christ was vindicated by the spirit of God. Now how
was he vindicated? Well, when he went to the cross
to die for the sins of his people, which had been imputed, charged,
accounted to him, He suffered, He bled and died, the just for
the unjust, but He went to that cross to pay their sin debt,
to pay the sin debt of all His people, to establish the only
righteousness whereby God could be just to justify the ungodly. The righteousness of Christ imputed
to His people by which we have a right relationship with God.
He died, He was buried, and by the Spirit of God, He was raised
from the dead. and that's his vindication. It means this, it means that
he finished the work that he came to do. It means that he
accomplished the redemption of his people. He didn't try to
save anybody. No, he didn't try to save everybody. He came to die for his sheep
and he accomplished their salvation by his death on the cross He
established, He made an end of sin, He finished the transgression,
He brought in everlasting righteousness by which they are secured into
complete salvation and He's vindicated by the Spirit, justified in the
Spirit. We who are godly are justified,
forgiven of our sins and made righteous in God's sight based
upon Christ's righteousness imputed to us. And then he says in the
next line, he was seen of angels. Now that means, that has to do
with a testimony from heaven. When Christ arose from the dead,
you see that was a testimony from heaven, he was seen of angels.
And you could take this all the way back to his birth and all
through his life, he was attended by angels. He's preached unto
the Gentiles in verse 16. That shows that he's the true
Messiah. Because in the Old Testament,
as the unbelieving Jews tried to keep God's blessings in favor
for themselves because of their Jewishness, their pedigree, the
Bible has always said that God has a people out of every tribe,
kindred, tongue, and nation. Jew and Gentile, the elect of
God. and the gospel's been preached
unto the Gentiles. And then he says, believed on
in the world. That's an amazing, see, believing
on Christ is a miracle of God's grace. If any of us truly believe
the gospel, truly believe in Christ, that's a miracle. That's
not something that we accomplish because of our cooperation or
enacting our goodness or our free will, no sir. A sinner saved
by grace who comes to faith in Christ is a walking, talking
miracle of God's power and grace. Let me go back to Ephesians 2.8.
For by grace are you saved, through faith, and that is not of yourself. Salvation is not of yourself.
Faith is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. And then verse 10, it says, for
we are his workmanship. created in Christ Jesus unto
good works, not because of, but unto good works, which God hath
before ordained that we should walk in them. Christ said, if
you're not, you must be born again or you cannot see or enter
the kingdom of heaven. Those who receive Christ are
those who are born of God. And so the fact that he was believed
on in the world by anybody, shows the mystery of godliness involves
faith in Christ, following Him, worshiping Him, and then lastly,
he says, received up into glory. Where is Jesus Christ? Where
is He? He's seated at the right hand
of His Father, ever living to make intercession for His people.
He's not a dead martyr. He's not just a historical example. People make pilgrimages to Jerusalem
or here or there and they look for different artifacts. And
one of the things they look for is the tomb of Christ. Why do
you want to find his tomb? There's no power there. He's
in glory. He is the intercessor, the one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, the God
man. And what's he doing? He continually
intercedes as the advocate, the mediator of his people to ensure
their preservation. And he pleads the merits of his
own blood. He pleads the merits of his own
righteousness, which is his blood, the same thing. And that's where
he is now. We serve a living Savior. You can find tombs of these dead
martyrs and all of that, but that does you no good. We look
unto Christ, the author and the finisher of our faith if we're
godly people. That's what a godly person does.
That's the mystery of godliness. Hebrews 12, it's looking unto
Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. He's the beginner
of it, he's the completer of it. And that's the mystery of
godliness. And so what Paul was telling
Timothy here is this mystery of godliness is all wrapped up
in the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.
It's all wrapped up in Christ, who he is, what he accomplished,
why he did it for the glory of God, and where he is now. He's
in glory, making intercession for his people, and he's coming
again. to receive His people unto Himself. I hope you enjoyed
this and I hope you will join us next week for another message
from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1-1-0-2-EAGER. Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia
31707. Contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
or email us through our website at www.theletterofgrace.com. Thank you again for listening
today and may the Lord be with you.