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So like some of the songs and the offertory that we just did, you might be able to guess the topic of the message this morning.

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It has to do with the nature of the church .

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All of these hymns have to do with the church of God.

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“The Church is One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,” the hymn that we just sang.

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So for the text this morning, I’d like for you to turn to 1 Timothy chapter 3.

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And we’ll read from verse 14.

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Paul has just given Timothy the instruction and qualifications of the overseer or the elder, and also the instructions and qualifications for the deacons.

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And then in these last closing verses, he gives us this addendum, this reasons for writing his instruction.

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And so let’s read this passage together and explore what God has for us in his word.

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1 Timothy 3:14 through 16: I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long.

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But in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one should act in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.

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Beyond question, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed in the world, taken up in glory.

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This is the word of God.

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Let’s pray together before we look at this passage.

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Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for the truth in it.

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We pray as we look at it and study it this morning, that you would guide us into your truth.

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For your word is truth.

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We ask this in Jesus’ name.

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Amen.

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In the year 507 BC, the Athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced a system of political reforms that he called the demokratia, or the rule of the people.

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Demos is people and kratos is power, or rule or power of the people.

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And it was the first known democracy in the world.

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The system was three, well, it was three different institutions in this system.

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You had the Boule, the Council of Representatives from the ten Athenian tribes.

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You had the Dikasteria, which is the court system.

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It’s the popular courts.

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The way it would work is, they figured that the most fair way would be, instead of people being elected to the courts, it was just a system of jurors.

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And so people would be chosen at random to consist of this this jury pool and they would decide the court cases.

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There were no really no police or or justice system and there was this this court system.

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And the last institution was the Ekklesia, which was a sovereign governing body that wrote laws, they dictated foreign policy.

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They were the ones who declared war and elected magistrates.

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So if you’ve ever been on jury duty, I had that privilege a month or so ago, you probably know that the majority of those people who serve in any kind of civil capacity in in in a jury duty type setting, they usually don’t really want to be there.

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So, uh, you have to entice them to come.

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You have to summon them to come.

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And the way it was very much the same in ancient Greece.

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And so, uh, what was the solution?

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Well, the interesting thing about the Ekklesia is, anybody who was a citizen uh was able to be part of the Ekklesia.

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It’s kind of like our Congress, uh but instead of your elected representatives, anybody who was a citizen could go and vote.

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And so, uh at any given time, there was probably five or six thousand people in the big outside auditorium there in Athens who would who made up this this this group, this Ekklesia.

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So how did they get people to fill the quorums?

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Well, they had about 300 officers of the courts, uh and they had these ropes that they would dip in red dye and uh they would go out into the um into the crowds, and they would whip the ropes around.

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And if you were found to have any red markings on you, well, you had to go serve in the Ekklesia that day, or else uh be subject to some kind of penalty.

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So in this passage that we just read, the word that Paul uses for church is really interesting because it’s exactly that same word: Ekklesia.

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The word is comprised of two parts.

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The first part is ek, which is a preposition, it means out from.

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And the second part is the word kaleo, which means to call or summon or I call or I summon.

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And this is the most common way that the church is described in the New Testament: the Ekklesia, the called out body.

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The question is, called out from what?

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What have the Ekklesia been called out from?

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In 1 Peter 2, believers are described as having been called out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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The picture is of someone uh rotting away in a dungeon, or or actually, the better picture would be Lazarus.

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In the in the in the tomb, you can think of, you know, his body which has been dead for so many days, decomposing in this dark uh tomb.

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And the only thing that had that awakens him and revitalizes his decaying body is the words of Jesus.

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Jesus says, “Lazarus, come forth!”

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And with each uh step coming out of the tomb, Lazarus walks forward, pulling the burial uh bands from him.

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Trying to imagine what it would be like as Lazarus, walking out of the tomb, the sunlight is probably hitting your eyes that have been in darkness for so many days.

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You’re squinting through the light.

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He probably has his hand up to try and shield his face.

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And the first thing that he sees after his eyes focuses, is uh the smiling face of the Savior.

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It’s interesting because that picture of being called out of darkness, that’s that that that description of Lazarus, that’s who we are.

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We are those who have been called out of the tomb of darkness, the same way that Lazarus was.

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We’ve been called into the marvelous light of our Savior.

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Just like the Athenian Ekklesia was comprised of the citizens of the state, the church Ekklesia, Christ’s Ekklesia, is comprised of those who have been made citizens of heaven by the mercy of Christ.

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And that hymn that we just sang, “The Church is One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord, She is his new creation by water and the word.

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From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride, with his own blood he bought her and for her life he died.”

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So in this beautiful hymn, we see the universal the unity of the universal church across all nations throughout history.

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You see the church, the Ekklesia, those for whom Christ died.

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And even in the second part of the verse, “Elect from every nation, yet one over all the earth.”

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You see this beautiful picture of the church in this beautiful hymn.

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The universal church of God.

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Millions of people today, all worshiping God together at the same time.

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And it’s such a beautiful picture that it it it’s really tempting to just focus on that and then close.

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Because, uh that’s that’s really what we long for, is this this universal unity and all of the church of God.

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But it’s to do that, to to just close right here, for one thing, it would be the shortest message in this church.

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But the uh it would it would be a disservice because we’d be missing out on some something really really powerful.

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And the fact is, we haven’t achieved perfect unity yet.

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We have unity in Christ with all of these uh other believers throughout the world, but we haven’t achieved perfect unity.

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Um, we will see that unity in eternity.

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And that’s something that we long for.

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We long to be unified completely with with all of these people.

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Even in this hymn, you know, in the in the in the next verses, you have this part.

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So, “Though with scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.”

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And that’s because we live in a fallen world.

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We don’t have perfect unity yet.

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That’s something that we are awaiting and longing for.

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We’re longing for this kind of perfect unity with all of the believers and one another.

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In the meantime, we have to deal with the fallenness of man and the lies and the deceit of the devil.

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And so when you look at the landscape of Christianity all throughout the world and our own nation, we you can’t help but wonder just like the hymn said, at all of the varying beliefs and doctrinal systems, all of the really the disunity that you see.

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If you happen to talk to a Catholic especially or maybe sometimes our Lutheran friends, they’ll point out the thousands of different denominations that exist in Protestant Christianity.

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They might ask, and you might wonder yourself sometimes, how can there be any continuity or unity among Christians if there are so many differences in doctrine?

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So, in order to keep things civil between us, or uh maybe out of resignation sometimes, it’s tempting to come to the conclusion that all of these differences in teaching and all of these different types of churches don’t really matter that much.

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And uh everybody’s a Christian after all.

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How long as long as people love Jesus, what does it matter what doctrines certain churches believe and teach?

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Is a pursuit of doctrine even worth it or does doctrine only divide?

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So we come to the question, is doctrine important?

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And uh now I know to ask the question, is doctrine important while standing in the pulpit of a church, is like a politician standing up in Congress and asking, is the Constitution really important?

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Not that there aren’t politicians who do that.

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But there are some growing sentiments among modern Christianity that that to emphasize doctrine, and by doctrine we really mean truth .

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To emphasize doctrine and truth, is uh to create division.

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So according to some, we must jettison doctrine if we are going to find any unity.

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So is this true?

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Is unity found separate from a pursuit of truth and a love for doctrine?

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In this passage that we just read, that doesn’t seem to be Paul’s teaching at all in this passage, or or in any other passage.

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In fact, it’s the exact opposite.

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It is a pursuit of truth where you find true unity .

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And God willing, we’ll we’ll see that in this passage today as we continue to explore it.

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So as we uh look into this question, is doctrine important?

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The first thing that we need to make note of is the simple fact that the universal church, where we want to see this full kind of unity, this universal church is composed of individual churches.

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And this is a very simple fact, but it’s really important.

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The universal church is composed of individual churches.

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Individual churches.

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And each individual church is given a purpose and a calling to pursue and love truth.

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That’s what a true pursuit of doctrine is, a pursuit and love of truth .

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The word Ekklesia that we’ve uh looked at already today, uh it is true that in the New Testament that word Ekklesia is used in that universal sense, the universal body of Christ.

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But it’s interesting because the majority of the time that it’s used in the New Testament, it’s referring to individual local churches, the Ekklesias.

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Paul says, you know, to the the Ekklesias in Galatia.

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You know, and then at the end of Romans, he talks about an Ekklesia that was meeting in someone’s home.

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So it’s used to refer most of the time to individual local assemblies, individual local churches, individual called out groups of people.

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So when we are saved and called out of darkness in that passage in Peter, we are placed into the body of Christ, and we are placed and called to be part of a church, a local assembly, an Ekklesia.

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We can’t exist as Christians on our own.

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Um, this is what we’ve been studying for weeks in 1 Corinthians.

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That when we become Christians, we become members of one another and members in a local church.

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I remember one time I went to go do a photo shoot up at a house up in uh Hunting Hills.

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And as I’m photographing the house, I noticed, uh I go out and he had started packing up boxes uh full of books.

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And I glanced through the books because I like books and so I wanted to see what uh he was had been reading.

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And it’s kind of interesting because they were all Christian books.

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Um, they’re all emerging church books, but still they were all Christian books.

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And so I asked him, uh, what uh, what uh, you know, I was just started talking to him about his faith, Christianity and everything.

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And uh we were having a good conversation.

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I asked him, uh, “We went to church?”

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And uh he goes, “Oh, well, uh we we don’t go to church anywhere.

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Uh we we he’s he said me and my wife, we we do we do church at home just the two of us.”

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And uh he explained, “You know, where two or more are gathered.”

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I didn’t say it, but I was thinking, you know, that passage, “I can do all things through” a verse taken out of context, right?

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It’s interesting because nowhere in scripture do you ever see Christians alone.

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Christ doesn’t call us to individualism.

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To be Christians, he he doesn’t call us to be Christians all by ourselves, but to be members of one another in a local assembly, in an Ekklesia, a local called out body of believers.

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In 1 Corinthians 12, in that passage that we have been studying a few weeks ago, when Paul talks about the members of the body, the hand, the eye, the foot, you know, he’s not he’s not talking about being a severed hand, you know, floating in a jar of formaldehyde.

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He’s talking about being a member of a body.

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Emphasizing your gifts in the local church right here.

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And he’s also not talking about being a member of a global universal church in the sense that we are not global citizens or citizens of the world in that same kind of sense.

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We have responsibilities.

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And each one of us, when you think about our church, each one of us is vitally important to each other.

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In that passage in 1 Corinthians 12, of course, is true for large churches with hundreds of members.

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But when you think about our church or or a small church, you know, it’s even more poignant because when just one or two of our members are missing like like they are today, you know, it feels like the cold vacuum of space.

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So each one of us is vitally important for the building up of this church, for accountability to each other in love, for spiritual fellowship and edification, and all purposing together to uphold the word of God.

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So when we talk about our church, we often talk about our church family.

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And a church should be a family.

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In fact, when you look at this passage that we are looking at today, that’s the very language that Paul uses here.

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He in this passage, look at the verse.

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He says, uh he says, “So that you will know how one should act in what?

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In the family of God, in the household of God, in God’s household.”

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We don’t just think of one another like family.

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We are a family.

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A family, when you look when you think about a natural family, a family lives together in the same house.

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They eat the same meals.

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They rejoice together when a new member is added to them either a new birth or marriage, and they grieve together when one of them goes to be with the Lord.

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They work together.

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They take care of each other.

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They have purposes in common.

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This is what families do, and this is what our church family does.

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The church is the family of God.

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And so when we come to Christ, salvation not only reconciles us to God, but it unites us together with one another.

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In this family, the passage says, in the next phrase, this family, this church family, the family of God, this is the church, the Ekklesia .

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The Athenian Ekklesia was called together for a purpose.

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And that purpose was for maintaining a political order.

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Christ’s Ekklesia is called together for a purpose as well, and it’s say it’s in this purpose that you find true unity.

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So what is the Ekklesia, what is the church called out to do?

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We talked about how the members of the church have been called out of darkness, but what are they being called to do?

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What purpose have they been given?

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What charge, what mission does the local church have from God?

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Well, there are many things, of course, that a church is supposed to do.

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Worship, you know, all of these things.

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But one of the main ones is this one that we read in 1 Timothy 3.

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So what is the purpose of the church in this passage?

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Why is the church been called out?

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What mission has it been given?

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Let’s take a look at verse 15.

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So verse 15 describes the church as the called out assembly of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth .

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The pillar and support of the truth.

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We have a unique gift given to us by God.

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And that gift is his word.

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Just think about the Bibles that you hold in your hands.

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You know, my dad was talking about this last week, you know, sometimes we take that for granted, but you have ultimate truth bound between two covers that you hold in your hand.

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And not only do we have the truth, but we’ve been entrusted with the truth .

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And that’s a little bit different.

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In fact, in Jude verse 3, we are called to “contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all time handed down to the saints.”

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And by faith in this passage, Jude is talking about truth.

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We’ve been given this truth, handed down to us from from all the saints that have come before us.

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And it’s been entrusted to us as a gift.

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And just like any gift that God gives us, we’re to be good stewards with it.

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We’ve been given a gift, a gift more precious than a talent of gold, and just like in that parable, we aren’t to bury that gift in the dirt as we wait for our master’s return.

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We’re to do something with it.

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So the picture here in our passage this morning, by when it says that the church is the pillar and support of the truth.

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It doesn’t mean that the church gives authority to the truth, or that the church is foundational to the truth.

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That’s uh that’s how uh Catholics take this passage.

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But rather that the church is called to uphold the truth that’s revealed in scripture.

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And the truth is, of course, uh the word of God, as John 17:17 says, “Sanctify them in your truth, your word is truth.”

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Writing on this passage, Jonathan Edwards says, “The church is the pillar that supports and holds forth the truth to the view of the world.

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As a candlestick is as it were a pillar to support and hold forth the light that is set in it.

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And therefore churches in Revelation are called golden candlesticks.”

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(Revelation 1:12).

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“As here the church is called the pillar of truth.

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The church is set to hold forth light to the world.

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And therefore Christ says in Matthew 5, ‘Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick.

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And it giveth light to all that are in the house.

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Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.'”

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This is the very argument that the Apostle seems to be making with Timothy in this verse.

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So to the extent that a church is faithful to uphold and teach the word of God free from the traditions of men and the doctrines of the world, they are accomplishing this mission in 1 Timothy 3.

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So the question is, how do you be a pillar and support of the truth?

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How does your church become a pillar and support of the truth?

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And the answer to that is is easy, it’s the practice that’s difficult.

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The answer is to be intentionally faithful to the word of God without compromise .

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To believe it, to teach it, and above all, to love it.

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That’s why I wanted to read that passage in Psalm 119 today, because it shows the heart of a Christian, one who loves God, shows their heart when it comes to truth.

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Psalm 119 says, “I have treasured your word in my heart that I may not sin against you.”

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I have treasured your word.

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It also says, “I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies as much as in all riches.”

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So our question is, do we treasure truth?

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Do we rejoice over the doctrines of God as we might over riches?

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It shows the heart.

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What are the other reasons that we as a church need to be intent on upholding truth, is to protect ourselves from error .

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In the book of Acts, one of the last instructions that Paul gives to the elders is found in Acts 20:28-30.

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He says, “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his blood.

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I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

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And from among your own selves, men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.”

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That’s a really interesting passage of scripture because he’s not talking about the persecution of Rome or any outside persecution.

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He’s talking about the propensity towards corruption and evil that man naturally has, along with the prompting of Satan, I believe.

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The prompting and the inclination to take the beautiful truth of God and to fashion out of it something that is other, something that is either evil or something that’s far less than what God would have for us in his word.

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So a church that makes an emphasis on truth, a church that makes their emphasis on truth, their purpose is a church that intends to stay true to God and what God would have for us.

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In writing on this uh passage, in the passage that we’re looking at this morning, John Calvin says that he says, “Paul does not wish that any society in which the truth of God does not hold a lofty and conspicuous place, shall be acknowledged to be a church.”

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And that’s a very powerful statement.

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I’ll say it one more time.

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Paul does not wish that any society in which the truth of God does not hold a lofty and conspicuous place shall be acknowledged to be a church.

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If a church, so he’s saying that if a church fails to be a pillar of truth, then what they’re doing is, they’re failing in the very meaning of what it means to be a church in the first place.

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What the church is supposed to be doing.

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We’ve been given this miraculous gift of God’s word.

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And the church is entrusted with it.

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And if we fail to, if we if we bury it in the ground, then what we’re doing is, we’re failing in in what it means to be a church.

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So truth should be at the center of everything a church does.

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A standing firm in truth by giving our energy to upholding truth, each of the members of a church is proclaiming Christ.

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And that is because Christ is the embodiment of truth.

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Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

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So to whatever extent we deemphasize truth, what we’re really doing is we’re deemphasizing Christ himself, and we’re losing our way.

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To see a great example of how a love of doctrine can protect from error, we don’t need to go any further than the very next verse in this chapter.

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In this verse, verse 16 is really interesting, it’s a really interesting passage because in it Paul writes, or either writes or he shares, uh this early, this is a like an early creed of of the early church.

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We don’t know if he is just sharing this, or or if he’s writing this himself.

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Um, but this is what it says.

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It says, “He or God, who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”

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It’s interesting because the reason why I said God there, um, I don’t know if anyone has a King James or New King James version, that could probably say God in the first verse of this passage.

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Um, there’s it’s a textual variant right there.

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Some manuscripts saying he and some saying God.

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Um, and uh if one wants to know more about that, uh I might uh talk about that some this evening.

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Uh because it’s interesting, but it’s not really pertinent to what we have this morning.

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Uh, but in either case, it is talking about God.

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It’s talking about Jesus.

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He who is revealed in the flesh.

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On this passage, uh Calvin writes, “He could not Paul could not have spoken more appropriately about the person of Christ than in these words, ‘God manifested in the flesh.’

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He says, ‘First, we have here an express testimony of both natures of Christ.

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For he declares at the same time that Christ is true God and true man.

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Secondly, he points out the distinction between the two natures.

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When on the one hand, he calls him God, and on the other, expresses his manifestation in the flesh.

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And third, he asserts the unity of the person when he declares that it is one and the same who was God, and one and who has been manifested in the flesh.'”

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And it’s really interesting because he continues with this, and uh I know these are uh some some big words, just was pointing that out to me.

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She said, “Are you really going to say those words?”

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And uh but it is interesting because uh in this single passage about the nature of Christ, God manifested in flesh, revealed in the flesh.

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By this single passage, the true and orthodox faith is defended against uh the heresies of Arianism, Marcionism, Nestorianism, and Eutychianism.

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And uh those all have to do with the nature and person of Christ.

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They’re ancient heresies in the church.

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From this one passage.

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And what Paul is doing here is, he’s giving us truth that should be foundational to the church.

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And so Paul’s emphasis is on doctrine in this passage.

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It’s really interesting.

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The uh the other thing about about us pursuing truth is that we are sanctified in truth.

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And this is the last thing that I want to talk about this this morning.

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And uh this is this is something that’s that that I think is really important.

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In John 17:17, that passage that we talked about, that that I quoted before, “Sanctify them in your truth for your word is truth.”

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We are sanctified in truth.

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We grow in truth.

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So when we uphold truth, it’s not only so that we can keep ourselves from doctrinal error.

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It’s so that it truth it’s so that we can bring about spiritual maturity in the lives of each one of our members.

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It’s impossible to have any kind of spiritual maturity when there is no emphasis on truth, because it’s in truth, it’s in the truth of God’s word that we grow and we know more about God in the first place.

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So when we come together with this mutual purpose, to place truth and the light of Christ high up on our candlestick.

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When we come together with this one mind to emphasize the truth of God, we experience then the kind of unity that we long for in eternity.

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The kind of unity that we wish to see in the universal church, we can have here in the in the in the local church.

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And that’s the main idea.

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That’s the main point that I wanted to communicate this morning.

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And that is, when we look at that beautiful hymn, “The Church is One Foundation,” when we think about the universal church and the unity that we have in part, and we feel that longing for that longing with each one of those churches that uh that we don’t have perfect unity with quite yet.

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We can see part of that fulfillment now, not in the global church, that’s coming in eternity when Christ makes all things new.

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We can see part of its fulfillment in our local church right here and right now.

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All of those things that we’re longing for, the family, the community, the purpose, the calling, all of these things are made available and accessible right here in the local church.

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The local church in this sense is to be a tiny picture of the unity that we will experience with Christ in eternity.

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So when we uphold truth, when we make our church a bastion of truth, a pillar of truth like this passage says, we grow in greater love, in truth, and unity of mind.

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In that sense we are sanctified in truth.

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Ephesians 4:16 says, “From whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped.

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When each part is working properly, makes the body grow, so that it builds itself up in love.”

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So this is the story of pursuing truth.

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And by making a love of doctrine central to what a church should be about, because in doing so, we find real unity and purpose as we wait for the return of Christ and the ultimate unity and peace that he will bring when he returns.

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And that’s exactly the way that that hymn ends.

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“In toil and tribulation and tumult of her war,” that’s where we are now.

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“She waits the consummation of peace forevermore.

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Till with the vision glorious her longing eyes are blessed and the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.”