Pastor of Congregational Care & Missions Jason Dunn preaches a stand alone message from 1 Timothy 3:14-16 and the importance of God's family living, telling, and loving the truth.
This passage is drawn from our M'Cheyne Bible Reading plan, which you can hear more about here.
Pastor of Congregational Care & Missions Jason Dunn preaches a stand alone message from 1 Timothy 3:14-16 and the importance of God's family living, telling, and loving the truth.
This passage is drawn from our M'Cheyne Bible Reading plan, which you can hear more about here.
Hello everyone. This is Pastor Damian. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando. At New City, we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom. Thanks for listening. Holy Spirit, open our hearts to your word and, through your word, create in our hearts a home for your presence that we might live for the glory of the Father and the kingdom of his beloved Son. Through Jesus Christ, we pray Amen. Today's scripture comes from 1 Timothy 3, 14-16. 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 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 among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. This is God's word. Thanks be to God you may be seated.
Speaker 2:So I want to start with a question what do you think of? When I say the word family, you know what comes to your mind. If you're married, like me, do you think about your spouse and your kids. Or if you're married or not, do you think about your family of origin? Or if I were to ask the question a little bit differently, what about a Bible story that represents family? Maybe we would think of Naomi and Ruth and Boaz and their faithful loyalty to each other through grief and loss.
Speaker 2:Or whenever I think about family, I always go back to Genesis. Right, and you got the patriarchs and you have Abraham and his family. And in Genesis we see all sorts of things, even before Abraham. Right, we see the fighting between brothers, cain and Abel. But we also see in Genesis, we see murder, which I just described, we see betrayal, we see lying, we see backstabbing, we see abuse of all kinds, and on and on. It goes in Genesis.
Speaker 2:So when I ask the question, what do you think of when I say the word family? Some of you, that brings to mind like a nightmare. It brings to mind trauma, it brings to mind a place where God is far from you. For others of us. I know that we are filled with gratefulness for the families that we were raised in. We feel grateful for the families that we have and I see the reality here in New City that we are grateful for the family of God that we've been given in this church. We are living in a cultural moment where the conventional idea of family is eroding, partly because of what I was just describing right in the book of Genesis, but also partly because of our own experiences in seeing how families are failing. Sophia Lewis, who's an activist and a writer, who wrote the book Abolish the Family, she says this no one is likelier to rob, bully, blackmail, manipulate or abuse you than family. And she isn't alone in this judgment, and we know this to be true in our own experiences, but also as we see and look out into the world. So I really want to be careful when I talk about the word family today. I want to be aware of that struggle, but I also I really want to trust God, because he uses familial language in scripture so that he can redeem the idea of family and the life in family.
Speaker 2:Jesus Christ is the head of the family. He is our perfect family leader, he loves families and he works through families to bring about the redemption of the world. And one thing that I really love about family is that in families we get to develop traditions. This is what I always think of Olaf right, he's looking for traditions in one of those shorts in the Disney movie, and we develop traditions. It's another way of looking at how we develop our cultures within families or how we develop our house rules. For example, we know that the Sheeters are readers, leaders, learners and lovers. Right, yes, that's right. And we know that the Cants aren't cannibals. You can ask Augie on that one. For my family. We don't have a phrase that we have worked out yet, but we make popcorn every time it rains and guess what? It rains in Florida quite often. We prefer stories right, we prefer stories over games, and we love singing and dancing in the evening around the piano. We're campers, we're travelers, we love people of different cultures. So that's the culture that I've been building within our family, that Katie and I have been building within our family.
Speaker 2:But also just to share a little bit about me, I was raised in a particular family. One tradition that I had growing up as an adolescent was my dad was a school teacher and a counselor, and so he had his summers off, completely off, and we would just pack our station wagon. It was a Volvo I was still driving Volvos, I don't know, there's some connection there but we'd pack in the camping gear. We would pack in all our clothes connection there, but we pack in the camping gear, we pack in all our clothes, we would pack in our books and when we would just head from Florida, we would head north to maybe Prince Edward Island, as far north as that, canada, or we would head west, as far west as Vancouver, british Columbia, right, and we would be on the road for months at a time. And these trips, you know, what we do is. This is as I was learning to drive, right, as a teenager. We're learning the rules of the road, how we ought to drive on our adventure. So all families have house rules, the ways that we ought to behave, and it could be a steep learning curve from knowing the rule and actually living out that rule. In life In the family of God, we must learn how to live those rules in light of the truth of those rules and to be able to tell others who are coming along the journey about those house rules. So we're going to explore that in our text today. In this way, god's family lives the truth, god's family tells the truth and God's family lives the truth. God's family tells the truth and God's family loves the truth.
Speaker 2:So open up your Bibles or your devices to 1 Timothy, chapter 3, and start it in verse 14. Paul says this to Timothy or to the church in Ephesus really I hope to come and to us. Or to the church in Ephesus really I hope to come and to us, I hope to come to you soon. But I'm 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 of the living God, a pillar and a buttress of the truth. Our text here so we've been walking through in the McShane plan, as Damien had mentioned, and I think we're getting towards Titus, right I think, beginning of today, and so we've been walking through 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy and our text here in 1 Timothy actually is the very heart of the pastoral epistles, in some way All of Paul's instructions around the pastoral epistles. They of how a church epistles, of how a church should function, of how a church should operate and administrate. They all should be read in light of this small paragraph in chapter 3. In a way it's a key that unlocks all the instructions in the pastoral epistles. It's the very center, and lots of everything else kind of radiates out from this passage. So we see in verse 14, paul tells us and he's writing these instructions, you know about the qualifications and how to administrate the church, so that we may know how ought to behave in the household of God. Paul is instructing the Ephesians in how the household of God should and ought to behave and live. There is so much beauty in these two verses as I take time this week to study.
Speaker 2:There's phrases here that Paul uses to describe the church. The church is the household of God. The word here in the original languages could mean you know a building or could mean a house, but I think the ESV has translated helpfully in describing it as a household, because it's actually referring to the family that occupies the building. And so we can see that throughout the rest of the chapter, in chapter 3, how that same word is used, because this is a really important thing to be noted, because we are not talking about a building when we say the household of God, but we are talking rather about a people. This language of household is the realization that we have been adopted. We have been adopted as sons and daughters. God has made us family members. God has adopted you, god has adopted us, and thus we are the very family of God. God's house is in his people and not in their possessions.
Speaker 2:Paul says elsewhere, in 1 Corinthians 3,. He says do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you? The second descriptive expression of the church is that we are the church of the living God, not a God made by human hands. We don't worship a deity who's dead and who can do nothing, but we worship the one who is alive, the one who listens, the one who acts, the one who is in our present need. He comes to our aid, he comes to our help, he promises to always be with his people, that he is the living God who will dwell with us and we shall be his people.
Speaker 2:As I was preparing this week, that phrase about we are the church of the living God came afresh to me because I got a text from a friend who was walking in Nepal. And this friend. He was walking in the middle of a Hindu temple. He actually sent me a video and the Hindu temple was an outdoor temple and it was along this river and had all these different altars that people were coming up to and putting sacrifices on and burning. And I texted him back and I thought, wow, what's the connection here between the fact that here's these people worshiping dead deities in Hinduism and here is my friend who's a Christian he is the church of the living God as he walks through there. And I just texted him back saying I am so grateful that God's church can extend there and bring life.
Speaker 2:God is a living God. He is in our midst, he lives in us, he dwells within his people. This is the glorious reality that we are the household of the living God. He is in our midst, he lives in us, he dwells within his people. This is the glorious reality that we are the household of the living God and thus we ought to behave within the house rules of that reality. God's family lives the truth. Well, how are we doing at living that truth? Ray Ortlund Jr, a pastor.
Speaker 2:He gives a helpful distinction between gospel doctrine and gospel culture, or Francis Schaeffer speaks of it as orthodoxy of doctrine and orthodoxy of community. We need not to only know the truth gospel doctrine but that truth should inform how we ought to live gospel culture. In the American South during the civil rights days, there's a misalignment, a complete misalignment, with the gospel doctrine and gospel culture. I've seen a photo of members of the KKK assembled within a church standing in front of a banner that says Jesus saves. Faithfulness to the gospel requires more than right doctrine. Purity right. Jesus is the one who saves. Faithfulness to the gospel requires relational, whole living of that truth.
Speaker 2:I know that illustration sounds extreme, but Paul warns us that, as the family of God, we ought to live our gospel culture in line with our gospel doctrine. The truth we believe should instruct the truth we live. God's family is supposed to live the truth. Here's some examples of that. How about the doctrine of adoption? Right. This should create a culture of inclusion. Right. We have been outside of God and he has made us family by adopting us.
Speaker 2:Well, how are we at welcoming those who are different than us? How are we at welcoming those who are outsiders and need a place to belong before they believe? Or how about the doctrine of election? That should create a culture of humility, right, because we have been elected, we have been chosen. We have been elected in a sense that had nothing to do with our own merit. Are there areas in our lives where we're standing above those around us? Are we apt to say with the Pharisee, I thank you, god, that I am not like them? Or how about the doctrine of the cross and the finished work of Christ? Should we create a culture? It should create a culture of rest and Sabbath.
Speaker 2:But I look at that one particularly a lot because I feel like I'm striving all the time. Why aren't we able to slow down? And it really got me this week as I was preparing for this, but I also had some unplanned work in my schedule that kind of threw things off. My doctrine of rest and Sabbath didn't align with my gospel culture and the way I was living it out. So how do we live the truth? I think, just right back the series we just did the beatitudes. It brings to life jesus's vision for living the truth right, jesus's vision for human flourishing. In that series we have seen the right gospel doctrine can live, we can live that out with the right gospel of truth. So and I've seen that in so many beautiful ways in this church. I have seen people who have been deeply hurt choose to forgive and seek shalom, contending peace. It's a beautiful thing. I have seen so many of you with tender-hearted compassion as you sacrifice for children in foster care and you guys love them just as your own. I have seen you generously share with your neighbors. You listen empathetically to each other and you speak right-making aches to each other and you have lived the truth as the family of God in so many ways.
Speaker 2:My family recently we went out on a prayer walk with a friend here in our congregation who's just amazing he's an evangelist in my mind and we saw somebody out in the field and he was practicing the kind of this unique exercise and we're like, oh, should we go talk to that guy? And we walked up to him and my friend you know he said, hey, we're Christians and we just would love to hear more about, like what, what you're doing here, and we'd love to pray for you. And he received our prayers and this is a way for us to live the truth out in witness-bearing courage. So my encouragement to you all in application about how we live the truth, is to go back to the Beatitudes series, pick one of those sermons and really live into it, lean into it that as the family of God we are supposed to live these truths out. But not only are we supposed to live the truth, god's family also is supposed to tell the truth.
Speaker 2:Look down again with me, starting at verse 15. If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is our first point, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. Here is the third descriptive expression of the church. The church is a pillar and buttress of the truth. Paul's contention in the pastoral epistles is that the relationship of the church to the truth is that the church is to serve the truth by telling the truth. We are to confess it and proclaim it among the nations verse 16. If we look closer at the illustration Paul gives us, we see two ways the church serves the truth by being a pillar and a buttress.
Speaker 2:Think with me for a second about those architectural features. Right, and I'm not an architect, but I am an engineer, so I know some architects and I know there are maybe a few architects here in our sanctuary. But what is the purpose of a pillar? When I think of pillars, I go right to Athens, greece, to the Acropolis and I think of the Parthenon. Right, there's these big, massive pillars that are as thick as I am tall. Well, generally pillars have two purposes. The first purpose is structural support. Right, they hold the loads that are put on them, whether it's a roof or another floor above them. But the second purpose of a pillar is that they have aesthetic purposes. Right, they're representing the significance of a building to the outsider. Pillars help push buildings into the sky for all to see. What about the buttress? And I think of the iconic Notre Dame, for example, and her flying buttresses right on the side of the building, those winged elements. If you can imagine that those buttresses help protect against and transfer lateral forces that could cause damage to a building. Right, you have these big open spaces and these walls, and then you have these butcheresses that are trying to help protect the building.
Speaker 2:So, the family of God, which is the church of the living God, it is a pillar and buttress of the truth. As pillars, we hold the truth up high so that it is seen and admired by the world. We confess it, we proclaim it, as verse 16 says, and as a buttress. We are to protect against false teaching, which is clear in the context of the pastoral epistles. We are to protect against false gospel culture. Living Calvin, john Calvin, who's a reformer, says it succinctly in this way the church spreads the truth as pillars and the church defends the truth as a buttress. As a pillar and buttress, god's family tells the truth in this way. It proclaims it to the nations, it confesses the mystery of godliness. And, from my vantage point, there's a task that remains for our neighbors in Orlando and there's a task that remains for the nations in the world. Right, and last time I preached I talked all about the unreached peoples. But how are we engaging in this task? It's not something that's out there, it's something for us to take on, it's something for us as the family of God to tell the truth.
Speaker 2:And I want to just apply real quickly, a couple different ways or three different ways that I see this from our common rhythm right, in our common rhythm practices, we have the practice of bless, where we ask the Spirit who we might bless with words, time, gifts, prayer service. So this is a way throughout the day. You know, you can put an alarm on your phone and you can pause and you can say God. You can take your scattered centers and say God, who should I reach out to in this moment? Who should I send a text to? Who should I send maybe, a Starbucks gift card to? Or how can I encourage my co-worker? So that's one way that God's family can tell the truth in the practice of our bless that we ask, that we try to seek to do daily.
Speaker 2:There's another weekly practice that we have called Feast, where we eat a meal with and for others. In this regard, ben he has started talking about this lately. He talks about how our homes can be kingdom embassies. It's places that the truth can be held up for the world to see, where we get to invite people to our tables to experience the generosity and the lavishness of God's kingdom. As we are the family of God that tells the truth, I hope and pray that each one of our homes would be a bright light and a tall pillar amongst our neighbors so they can experience the truth of Jesus.
Speaker 2:The last practice I want to connect to this idea of God's family is about God's family. Telling the truth is the practice of prayer. This practice of prayer is where we punctuate our days with prayer to practice dependence. So one of the ways I do that is on 1155 every day, my alarm goes off my phone and they label the alarm the kingdom of God. Right, and that sounds pretty grandiose, but I stop what I'm doing. I try to do it right before the lunch hour. I stop what I'm doing and I just pray through the Lord's Prayer and specifically, I pray and I think about different people, groups that I'm really connected with or familiar with, that are on my mind. But I also, in that time, I pray for people who are exploring the Christian faith that I know of. And this is actually, if you want, turn back in your Bibles to chapter two. This is one of the practices that Paul speaks of in this letter to Timothy.
Speaker 2:First, timothy, chapter two, verse one. Paul says this First of all. Then I urge that supplications 1. Timothy 2, verse 1. Paul says this First of all. Then I urge that supplications, prayers and intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people, and then you skip down to verse 3. This is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God, our Savior, who deserves all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. What is that truth? Paul goes on in that verse, verse 5 of chapter 2. He says For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. Himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. This is the truth that the family of God is supposed to tell that there is one God, there is one mediator, who has ransomed us to himself. Therefore, god's family not only lives the truth, god's family not only tells the truth, but God's family loves the truth.
Speaker 2:Look with me back at chapter 3, verse 16. Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit, seen by the angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world and taken up in glory. The mystery of godliness that we are to confess is that we have a god who loves us. We have a god who gave himself as a ransom for us, and we confess that through our love and through our worship of him.
Speaker 2:And you'll notice in your, in your Bibles that this text, verse 16, is kind of set apart from all their surrounding prose. This is probably a first century hymn or creed that Paul is quoting, which I just find remarkable. This is significant for many reasons, but let me walk through the structure of it really quickly. So I'll be talking about the structure. So make sure your heads are looking at that. It's a little bit nuanced here.
Speaker 2:The way it is in my bible. It shows it as kind of two different stanzas of three different lines. The first stanza he was manifested in flesh, vindicated by his spirit and seen by the angels describes the mighty works of Christ, his incarnation, his resurrection and his ascension. And the second stanza, lines four through six, they talk about how the proper response to Christ's work is to preach the gospel of Christ, proclaimed among the nations, so that people can come to faith, believed on in the world and, as a result, christ will receive glory that he deserves, taken up to glory.
Speaker 2:But what I find significant is that this is a hymn or poem that Paul is quoting. It is something that must been circling around, circled. It must have been passing around the time when he was writing the letter, right? He was there at Ephesus before and maybe this is something that they said to each other, or they sung, and Paul knew that the Ephesians would know that it's likely it was used in worship. I find that interesting because so often in the Bible I find that interesting because so often the Bible in the Bible, worship precedes action. I can think of Paul singing hymns in prison and then the prison doors opening up. Or I can think of a friend of mine, andrew Brunson, who's an American pastor, who was jailed in prison for over two years in Turkey. A lot of that two years was in solitary confinement, but he would dance as David danced before the Lord, and sing a song that he wrote that Jesus is worthy of my all. Their actions undergoing the imprisonments for living the truth and telling the truth came out of their love and their worship for Jesus.
Speaker 2:Poetry, music and the arts move us far more, far more than prose can. Here, in verse 16, paul breaks into worship. In his love for Jesus, who is the truth, jesus says that he is the way, the truth and the life. He is the one who is manifested in the flesh. In his incarnation, he was vindicated by the spirit in the resurrection and he was seen by the angels in his ascension to glory. This verse, this poem, it's full of emotion. You can only praise what you love. Poetry actually demonstrates that the truth actually feels true.
Speaker 2:Doxology precedes theology, love precedes our action. We love because he first loved us, worshiping and lovingesus helps us to actually live and and tell the truth. So how do we get that? How do we move towards that? Well, we behold him so that we can display him. We behold who jesus is so that we can display in our life, in our life, in our words, who he is. So I encourage you, as the family of God, behold Jesus, study him, study his life, really know the one who we put our faith in, who is the object of our faith. Then, like Mary of Bethany, who washed Jesus' feet with perfume out of her love for him, or like the disciples who left everything and followed him, or like the woman in John 4 at the well, who went and told everyone of what she had heard from Jesus, I pray that our knowledge of Jesus would turn to deep love and affection for him and lead us to live and to tell the truth in all circumstances.
Speaker 2:Paul is clearly worshiping and loving the one who is truth, and from that he instructs how God's family ought to live, and to how God's family is to tell the truth. God gives himself to his people in Jesus, so that his people should give themselves to him. It is only our relationship of love to the one who is truth, jesus, that will enable us to live and tell of that truth. Let us pray, father. We are grateful for your love for us. We are grateful that you sent your son to ransom a people to himself so that a people from all nations can come to worship you, the king Jesus. In you there is life, and your life is the truth that we behold. Spirit, fill us up and help us to love and behold you in praise. Excuse me, we give you the glory. Amen, matt, I lost it. Okay, don't step on that. It's probably really expensive it is.
Speaker 2:Okay, thousands of dollars. So at this point of our service, after we have some levity here, we want to take a moment. Actually, we want to take a moment and we want to respond to God. We want to respond to His Word. So you may know exactly how you want to respond in the moment. But if you don't know how to respond, I want to give you guys this question what is your relationship to the truth? Where, specifically, have you trouble living it and telling the truth to others? Ask Christ, who is the truth, to come and meet you in it. So we're going to take about a minute and a half or two minutes to think about that question when are you in your relationship to the truth?