Good evening. It is a joy and a privilege to be with you once again to bring you the Lord's Word this evening. I ask that you would turn in God's Holy Word to 1 Timothy chapter 3 verse 15.
Thank you for being willing guinea pigs for me. I've never really preached in a more systematic fashion before as we've been looking at word pictures of the church. Typically I exposit verse by verse through a book, so I want to thank you for your patience with me as I've tried to change things up just a little bit. Just to remind you where we've been, we've looked at the church as God's or Christ's treasured possession.
Of all the things that Christ has created, what he values and cherishes most is his church, his bride, you, his people. We've also looked at the church as a kingdom of priests. We live in a kingdom under God's rule and authority, living according to his rules, his holy and moral standard, encountering discipline when we break his standard.
But we are also a kingdom of priests. We intercede. We intercede for one another.
We intercede for the world. We offer up ourselves as living sacrifices. We offer up the sacrifice of praise. We offer up the sacrifice of gifts and offerings to God. We're also the church is the household, the family of God, and we've seen how we are to treat one another as family, as spiritual fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers. We are to encourage one another, to love one another, to bear with one another's burdens, to forgive one another, to be reconciled to one another. We've seen how we are to act in the corporate worship service, how things will be done decently and in order, unlike the chaos that was the church at Corinth. There is structure that God has given to the church. We also saw under that picture of the family of God that we are not to cause unnecessary division. Instead of looking for one reason to leave a church, look for the many reasons to stay at a church. Don't leave a church unnecessarily and thereby cause division. Well, tonight we're going to look at one more word picture.
There's many more that we could look at, but I'm just going to do one more. Tonight we're going to look at the church as the pillar of truth. And so I ask that you would stand in honor of the reading of God's word from 1 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 15. Paul writes to the church, he writes to Timothy, to you and to me, he says, 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. The word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
Please be seated. In ancient Ephesus, the temple to the Greek goddess Artemis was adorned with 127 large columns that went all the way around the perimeter of the temple. These columns were 60 feet high. They were four feet in diameter. They were all made of marble, so they were large. And these columns helped support the roof of the temple. They helped to bear the weight of the roof. Without these columns, there was no roof, there was no covering, there was no protection from the elements.
There was nothing over your head. So imagine, if you will, Paul, who has traveled around the known world at this time. Paul would have known of these columns.
He would have seen these columns and pillars adorning the temples of these false gods of pagan worship. I think he would have had these in mind when, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he writes that the church of the living God is a pillar and buttress or foundation of the truth. So I want us to explore this word picture of the church as the pillar and buttress of the truth.
We're going to do it under three headings tonight. Heading number one, the church proclaims the truth. The church proclaims the truth. Number two, the church promotes the truth. Number three, the church protects and preserves the truth. The church proclaims the truth, promotes the truth, protects and preserves the truth.
The alliteration is intentional. First, we must understand that the church as a pillar proclaims the truth. The word truth here, as it's used in the book of Timothy, refers to the Christian faith in its totality. All that God has been pleased to reveal in scripture is encompassed in the truth.
So when Paul says the church is a pillar and buttress of the truth, think about everything that is written in scripture. In the previous chapter, Paul equates salvation with coming to the knowledge of the truth. All those who have saved have come to the knowledge of the truth. And so the truth here represents all of the Christian faith, all that God has revealed. It equals the gospel. It equals the good news of Jesus Christ, for Christ is the sum and substance of all of the scriptures.
The Old Testament foreshadows Christ, and the New Testament reveals Christ, who reveals the Father to us. The Christian faith is the truth. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth. And this is the message that has been given to the church to proclaim. The church has been given no other message, but the message of the gospel and the truth of the Christian faith.
The church doesn't proclaim a mere morality. Be a good person. Be the best that you can be.
Be all that you can be. That's not good news. The church doesn't proclaim political talking points.
There's nothing good about political talking points, it seems these days. The church doesn't tell good stories. It doesn't tell fairy tales.
It doesn't tell myths. The church proclaims a life-giving, heart-changing, transforming message of Christ and Him crucified. No other earthly institution has been given this message to proclaim.
Not the scientific community, not the public schools, not the earthly governments. It's the church that has been entrusted with the message of Jesus Christ and all that is entailed in Holy Scripture. This is the truth, and we must proclaim the truth. This proclamation involves proclaiming everything that is true about God that He has been pleased to reveal in Scripture. It means that we proclaim God as triune, one God in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. Yet there are not three gods, but one God, equal in substance, power, glory, majesty, dominion. All the perfections and attributes of God are equal in each of the three persons. It means the church proclaims that God knows the entire future, not because He looked down the corridor of time and saw what would happen, as if He was watching a video or a DVD, but because He has decreed whatsoever comes to pass. And yet He has decreed it in such a way that He is neither the author of sin, nor are we puppets on a string. It means the church proclaims that Jesus Christ was and remains both 100% God and 100% man, two natures in one person.
It means the church proclaims that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we may be saved but the name above all names, Jesus Christ. It means that we proclaim that Jesus Christ really was crucified, really did die, really was buried, really was in the grave for three days and really did physically rise again. You know there are people who deny that?
Some people go so far as to claim that Jesus never even really existed, that He wasn't a historical person. We proclaim, yes He did live, yes He did die, yes He rose again, and yes He is coming back. There is a day coming when Christ will return and all people will rise on this judgment day.
The sheep will be separated from the goats and the saints will dwell with God forever while the wicked will be cast into the lake of fire. All of these truths are truths that have been revealed in scripture. All of these truths pertain to the gospel of Jesus Christ. All of these truths are part of the truth which the church is a pillar and a buttress. We uphold these things as true.
One thing I did not mention about the pillars that would adorn these pagan temples is that they didn't like to just have solid stone so they would carve ornate designs into them to add some beauty to these pillars. As the church, as we are the pillar and buttress of the truth, as we proclaim the truth, we should set forth the Lord God and all of His truths as the most beautiful and precious reality that there is in this world. We should hold forth God. Our God is the source of beauty as well as the standard of beauty. I hate to break it to you but beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is according to God's standard. The psalmist prays in Psalm 27 that he may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life in order to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. In Psalm 50 it says that Zion, where God shines forth, Zion is the perfection of beauty. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary, Psalm 96. And we are called to worship God in the splendor or beauty of holiness, 1 Chronicles 16 29.
And in the reformed and presbyterian world we tend to be focused on the intellect, which I think is good and right. We must never lose sight that these truths are not just for our minds, they're for our hearts, they are beautiful truths, they are precious truths, they are valuable truths. It should impact our hearts, it should affect our emotions to see the beauty of our Lord God as He has revealed Himself in Holy Scripture. And as we see our God as beautiful and valuable and precious, we will want others to see and experience this same beauty for themselves.
Just like people put on display valuable diamonds or beautiful paintings for the world to see. So we should proclaim God and His truth as the most valuable and beautiful reality that one can possess in this world through faith in Jesus Christ. Charles Spurgeon once preached, quote, it is the business of the church to uphold the truth in its deep foundations, to conserve and preserve it intact.
Thus, it is the ground to lift it up and bear it aloft in beauty and in all its fair proportions. In this, the church is the pillar of the truth, end quote. Not only does the church as a pillar proclaim the truth, but the church as a pillar promotes the truth.
What do I mean by this? I mean that we promote the truth against every single lie of the evil one. The church promotes the truth of Christianity against the lies of every other religion that is out there because they're false. Every other religion in the world is a works based religion. If you try hard enough, if you work hard enough, if you do all the right things, you can work your way up to God.
You can be like God. All of these religions are false and corrupt and they're works based because they originated in the hearts of unbelieving, fallen, corrupted man. Christianity is unique.
It is not works based. Not by works that anyone may boast, but by faith which is the gift of God. It is faith based and grace based because it originates with God himself, not with man. The pagans of the ancient world and many today in what we call third world countries look to idols of wood and stone and gold and silver to deliver them and to meet their needs. And they try to manipulate the gods through their offerings, both human sacrifice and animal sacrifice and sexual immorality to get what they want. The pagans of the ancient world believe that their ruler was a god. Pharaoh was God. Nebuchadnezzar thought of himself as God.
All of this was from that lie that originated in the Garden of Eden. You shall be like God. So now fallen man tries to be God and he worships things that are not God. He worships the creation instead of the creator. He worships his own desires, his own thoughts, his own vain imaginations.
Today people worship the concept of self. My identity determines what is true. My feelings determine what is true. And so I have my truth and you have your truth and there's all these truths out there even though they contradict one another. Over against those lies we promote the truth that God determines what is truth. He determines what is true because he is true. He's the true and living God. He is truth. Your word is truth.
The church promotes the truth against atheism. Mankind in his corrupt rebellion against God denies the very existence of God and claims there is no higher power. And so this life is all that there is. Once you die, nothing.
You don't exist anymore. No judgment. No heaven. No hell. Just nothingness.
You simply cease to be. And so because of that, why not eat, drink, and be merry? Do what you want. If all there is to life is this life, then live life to the fullest.
Do whatever you want so you can be happy. Because after this comes nothing. My friends, I have to tell you that is a very depressing world view, is it not? That this fallen world is all that there is.
And yet that is the world view of atheists. And over against such a depressing world view, we offer a world view of hope based on God's truth. We promote the truth of God which brings joy and contentment. We promote God's truth which informs how one can endure the hardships of life that come from living in a fallen world. We promote God's truth that you don't have to go through it alone. He has created you to be part of a body.
He has created you to be in fellowship with one another. We promote God's truth that one day everything wrong with this world will be fixed. Everything wrong with this world, everything that's broken about it will be corrected by God himself. Not only do we as the church promote the truth against false religions, against atheism, but we also promote the truth against secularism. Mankind, as I've already said in his pride, thinks that he can reach to heaven's heights in every area of life. Science tries to explain the origins of the world and humanity apart from God and tells us that eventually we will evolve until we don't need such things as religion anymore.
One day evolution will free us from all that is wrong with this world. Social justice warriors try to provide and talk about a justice apart from God. As if justice is something we can achieve in our own power. Secular government tries to take on the responsibilities of and substitute itself for parents, substitute itself for the church, substitute itself for God. Just turn everything that you have over to the government.
We'll take care of you. What was it that Ronald Reagan said? The worst word somebody can hear is, hi, I'm from the government and I'm here to help? People think that different economic theories and philosophies will deliver them from all the inequities and injustices of life. If everybody just is on an equal playing field, give everything to the government, the government will give a fair distribution to everybody. That will solve all the world's problems.
Or how about you can maximize your greed and multiply your possessions so that the more you have, the happier you will be. Politicians make the promise that they are the ones who will be able to unite a divided people. Secularism makes empty promises because it makes promises apart from God and without taking the truth into consideration. So we promote a truth that says God is God, not science, not government, not economics, not politics, not biology. If all truth is God's truth, then any truth discovered about the world through science, about economic theories, about politics, about biology, about the government, those truths should all lead us back to God and to his glory alone. And those truths tell us that the only solution to fixing the problems in this world is if people will come to faith in Jesus Christ, if they will repent of their sins.
That is what's really wrong. These things cannot touch the heart. Economic theories, science, the government, politics, they can't touch the human heart. Only Christ can. Only the good news of the gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation, can change a dead heart, a heart of stone into a heart of flesh, into a heart that loves God, desires God, hates sin, and wants to live more and more unto God. But we also promote the truth within the church as part of Christian discipleship. We want the truth to be ever more in our minds and in our hearts in an increasing manner, do we not? Colossians 3 16 calls for us to let the word of God dwell in us richly, not meagerly. I want and all of us should desire for the richness of God's truth to be ever growing and informing our minds and our desires, our thoughts, our emotions, and our habits.
We also want to encourage one another in the truth, do we not? We endure hardships in life and so when we're depressed, when we are in despair and it feels like we have no hope, we feel like we're being drowning in the ocean of God's frowning providence. We need our brothers and sisters to come alongside us, we need to hear from the word of God preached in the pulpit, the truth of God that he will never leave us or forsake us, that there is hope. That he's with you and he walks with you and he shepherds you even when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death. When our hearts are heavy with sorrow, we need to remember the hope that is found in Christ Jesus. Proverbs 10 28 says the hope of the righteous brings joy. In Lamentations chapter 3 24 it says the Lord is my portion therefore I will hope in him. You know what's going on in the book of Lamentations, right?
They're mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, they're mourning the destruction of the temple of God, they are suffering the wrath of God for their disobedience. And the lamenter says the Lord is my portion therefore I will hope in him, I will not hope in Jerusalem, I will not hope in the temple, I will hope in the Lord and I will cling to him. We have a hope, brothers and sisters in Christ, we have a hope that does not put us to shame.
We have a firm foundation that can never be shaken. And we constantly need these reminders in our ears. But I'm afraid that we're not being discipled by the truth of God's word as we should be. At least in generalities I'm speaking, maybe not true of every individual or every person who hears this, but what are we being discipled by today?
Netflix, Disney Plus, ESPN, Instagram, TikTok. I'm not saying these things are inherently bad or evil, but we frequently let into our minds and into our homes through these various avenues things that go against the word of God. And we tolerate it. One author said we let people into our homes through the television that we would not let through if they were in person, we would not let them walk through our doorway. We're being discipled by the world.
The world is constantly in our ears, whether it's CNN or Fox News or our entertainment media or social media. So we have to fight hard to spend time in God's word to let the word of God dwell in us richly, to battle those lies that we encounter from the world through these various avenues. And through the discipleship of the truth of God, we will grow in joy, we will grow in hope, we will grow in truth, we will grow in Christ's likeness.
Which is the aim of the Christian life while we draw breath on this planet is to be more like Christ and less like the world. But that comes through the truth that the church is to proclaim and that the church is to promote. So the church proclaims the truth in her preaching, in her teaching, the corporate gathering. As we go about discipling our children in family worship, we proclaim the truth. We also promote the truth. We defend the truth of Christianity against the lies of the world. We show the world that the Christian worldview is true and beautiful and good and consistent with itself.
And finally, the church protects and preserves the truth. Here I'm talking about those who would infiltrate the church and draw her away from the truth via heresy, or as scripture describes it, twisting the scriptures to their destruction. 1 John 1 says, if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
We say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. The theologian Louis Burckhoff writes, quote, the church is the guardian, the citadel, and the defender of truth over against all the enemies of the kingdom of God. Heresy and distortion of the truth have no place in the church, no matter what a person claims. No matter what an entire denomination may claim.
The church has always had to contend with false teachers and preachers in her pail. The church has had to contend with heresies that deny the Trinity. Jehovah's Witnesses today maintain an ancient heresy that Jesus is just simply a created being.
He's the archangel Michael. He's not the second person of the Trinity, not the son of God eternally, begotten of the Father. Mormons claim that the Father was a human being and worked his way to Godhood, had physical relations with Mary, so that Jesus is just another ordinary human being who worked his way to Godhood. And so you try to work yourself to Godhood following the example of Jesus. That's what Mormons teach.
No virgin birth, no eternality of the Father, no eternality of the Son. And a multitude of gods, they're not monotheists. Islam denies the Trinity. Hinduism has 40,000 plus gods in their pantheon. All of those truths about what these other groups teach, that right there should be sufficient to rebuke the notion, to rebuke those who say that all paths lead to God and that all the world religions can coexist.
That bumper sticker is the bane of my existence because it shows how ignorant that person truly is. They know nothing of what any religion in the world teaches and how they cannot coexist. You cannot have 40,000 gods and say there's only one God.
That doesn't jive together. One early Christian heresy denied the full divinity of Jesus on one side, only partly divine or became divine at his baptism. Well, another Christian heresy denied his full humanity.
He was only partly human. He didn't really have a human mind or he didn't really have a human will. The heresy of open theism, which was popular in evangelicalism back in the mid 2000s, teaches that God doesn't know all of the future. So some things catch him by surprise and some things are out of God's control.
That's a very disturbing thought. If God is not in control of everything that happens, even the hard and difficult and sorrowful things that happen, because I know that if God is in control and has sent me into it, he will be with me through it and will bring me out of it. But if God is not in control, I have no hope.
I have no guarantee that he will be able to overcome that for my good. The modern heresy of feminism has infiltrated the church. They attempt to turn God into a woman. I saw a clip on social media.
I shouldn't be on social media, but you've got to be familiar with these things. I saw a clip on social media where this church had changed the lyrics to a, it's more of a broadly evangelical hymn. I don't think it's in the Trinity hymnal, but they were singing about God being a woman and oh, how she loves you and me. Those are just a few examples of the sorts of deviations that have infiltrated the church. Why have they infiltrated the church?
How did this happen? Because the church or the entire denomination slowly started walking away from protecting and preserving the truth. The first time the church failed to promote and protect the truth, sin and death entered into the world. The first time the church failed to promote and protect the truth, sin and death entered into the world. Adam and Eve entertained the serpent in the garden temple of God.
They let him in, they let him speak, and they listened to his words. And so it is today, any time the church fails to preserve and protect the truth, sin and death follow in its wake. The church of Rome has distorted the truth by their wicked understanding of the Lord's supper as a re-sacrificing of Christ every time the mass is offered.
You realize that's what they teach in their official dogma? That Christ is sacrificed? That the priest pulls him down from heaven and sacrifices him again on the altar?
It's not a table to them, it's an altar. That does away with the sufficiency of what Christ did here in his earthly incarnate ministry. Add to that purgatory. Jesus didn't pay for all of your sins sufficiently enough so now you've got to pay for the rest of your sins and atone for them in purgatory before you can enter into heaven and behold the holiness of God. Christ's work wasn't sufficient for you.
Elevation of Mary, praying to the saints, mixing works and faith. You have a church that claims to be the true and indeed the only church that when evaluated in light of scripture is not a church at all, it's a church in ruin. Peter warns us in 2 Peter 2, quote, false prophets also arose among the people, he's talking about the Old Testament church. Just as there will be false teachers among you, New Testament church, who will secretly bring in not just heresies, destructive heresies. Even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.
The end result of failing to protect and preserve the truth is destruction. Any institution that takes away from Christ's person, that downplays Christ's work and the sufficiency of it, that ignores some or all of God's revelation in scripture is not truly a church regardless of what they claim. Regardless of what they claim. This means an institution like the Church of Latter Day Saints.
You know who that is, right? Mormons. They call themselves a church. They're not truly a church.
Mainline denominations have caved into the cultural winds. They approve of homosexuality, homosexual ministers. They deny sin. They deny hell. They deny scripture. They are no longer churches. They may have been at one point in time. But they've drifted away from the truth. They no longer preserve and protect the truth. It should sadden us to see once Christ honoring and God glorifying denominations like United Methodist Church traces all the way back to the Westleys. Whatever faults they may have had in their theology, they were true believers. At one point a true church.
The PCUSA. Liberal Baptist list could go on and on. All these denominations have apostatized. They've deviated from the truth. They no longer preserve it and protect it. They moved away from Christ. They moved away from the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. They are no longer pillars and buttresses of the truth.
Oh, sure. They make claims to be the church. They make claims to truth. But it's the truth of the world, which is not true at all. It's the lies of the evil one.
They now call evil good and good evil. The truth is a lie and the lie is the truth. Listen to Charles Spurgeon again, who preached this quote. The church, the truth of God is as a treasure in the church of the living God, and it is never removed from her keeping. Therefore, if the truth is not maintained by any so-called church, it is not the church of God, end quote. And friends, it only takes a small crack and a pillar for it to begin the process of weakening until it can no longer bear the weight of the truth. And it will crumble. So it is in the church, small deviations from the truth grow and spread like a crack on a windshield until it no longer functions as it should.
So a couple of implications for us tonight as we bring this to a close. First, we are to evangelize our neighbors who belong to these apostate denominations. We can't take at face value when somebody says they're a Methodist or Presbyterian or Baptist that it means they actually are a Christian.
It requires more digging into what they believe. Who is Christ? Who is God? What is sin? What is man's problem? How has God overcome man's problem?
How, what must I do to be saved? We've got to dig into what they believe or dig into what their denomination confesses. And for those true believers who may still remain, those small groups of believers who may still be in these apostate institutions, the Lord opens their eyes to see that they're no longer part of a true church. We are to call them to come out from these apostate institutions, to join themselves in membership to a true church, a church that protects and preserves God's truth, no matter the cost. The second implication is I want to encourage you here tonight to contend for the faith, the truth that was once for all delivered to the saints. You, the church, are called to stand firm in this truth against all opposition, against all winds of change, against all cultural change. The truth remains the same. When the winds of change come calling and somebody says something to the effect that Christianity must change or it will die, you've got to downplay or deny these truths or you'll no longer be relevant to the culture. Refuse to give in to such a lie.
Refuse to downplay the truth in order to be accepted by the world. Do not give the devil an inch because if you give him an inch, he'll take a yard and then he'll take another yard. And soon you will be in ruin. Be on your guard, especially you elders and ministers, be on your guard to watch over the flock and protect them from the wolves.
They're out there, whether it's in writing or on TV or in their neighborhoods, the wolves are out there. Watch over your sheep that Christ has entrusted to your protection. Fight the good fight of faith. Run the race set before you. Earnestly contend for the truth, knowing that the truth will win out.
Why? Because God is true and he has one day promised to come back and to destroy all wickedness and evil. That means every falsehood is going to be destroyed when Christ returns. All these false religions and the vain thoughts and imaginations of mankind are going to be torn down at the second coming.
And what is going to remain? The truth. The truth. Paul writes to the church in Second Corinthians 4-2, we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word. We will not mess with the truth.
So it must be with us today. It is in the church where we are to expect the truth to be proclaimed. Expect the truth to be promoted. Expect the truth to be protected and preserved. So as children of the light, let us love the truth.
Let us speak the truth in love. Let us defend the truth. And let us proclaim the truth all to the glory of God alone. Amen and amen.
Let us pray. Lord, how great is your truth? Your word is truth. And we ask that by the power of your indwelling spirit, you would sanctify us in your truth. Lord, help us to strive more and more to listen to your word. To not listen to the lies of the evil ones in the world around us. Oh, Lord, would you preserve your church? Would you build your church through your truth? Help us to grow in love of your truth and earnestly desire it more and more each and every day. Through Christ, our Lord and Savior, we pray. Amen.
