Hold Up The Truth

So I've been asked many times over the course of the last couple of years during this time of, you know, chaos and crisis, and all of that. I've been asked a number of different times, "Pastor, what is God doing in the church through this season?" When I was asked that early on in this timeframe, I simply said, "We'll see," because I didn't wanna speak too soon. First of all, God hasn't given me permission to speak for Him in relation to everything in the world, contrary to what some people want me to do. And so I don't do that. As well, there are a number of voices that were clouding the air around what God was doing in His church during this timeframe. And I did not to add to the noise. But when people ask me now, I can answer. What is God doing in His church through this season? I usually just say yes. Is He correcting His church? Yes. Is He pruning His church? Yes. Is He refining His church? Yes. Is He purging His church? Yes. Is He exposing some things in His church? Yes. Is He strengthening His church? Yes. Is He shaping His church? Yes. Is He protecting His church? Yes. You see, in all these things and many others, we realize that God is fulfilling multiple ends in terms of what he wants to do in this season for His glory and ultimately for our good. He knows how desperately we need what He's doing. You see Jesus is the head of His church and He knows how desperately we are actually in need of everything that He's doing. There's been so much confusion in the church in America. Generally speaking, I know this from being connected to so many of them across the country. There has been a lot of confusion. There's been a lot of division. It's come from a variety of places and avenues. Obviously, there's people that have lived so, so isolated in their political echo chambers that they don't know how to talk to other human beings anymore. You've got people that have dug so far deeply into the recesses of the Internet that all they can think of is conspiracy theories. And as a result, they have a mistrust for everyone and everything. Even in the church, we've had so-called prophets in the church who were prophesying about outcomes of elections and outcomes and ends of pandemics, who were wrong, who were 100% wrong. A couple of them repented. And most of them didn't. They just moved the goalposts, just creating more confusion for people. And then over this season, we've seen the prioritizing and the magnifying of self above the sacrificial service to one another, and to our brothers and sisters. We need God. We need Him. And what He's doing in this timeframe, He's doing for His own glory. And what we've seen over the course of the last couple of years, is in some ways we've seen the exposure of the immaturity of His church in our country. We've seen it in the immaturity of leaders and we've seen it in the immaturity of believers. We've also seen great maturity in some places as well. But what this means is this is a season for re-evaluation, and this is a season for repentance, and it's a season for recommitment. And that's what difficult seasons can bring. Difficult seasons in the life of church can bring all of those things and we can learn from them. And so we realize, if we pause long enough, that we are not the first church, not talking about The Chapel, but kind of our season, our timeframe, this generation, we're not the first church that has gone through seasons of difficulty. And we won't be the last. This is something that has happened from the very beginning and inception of the church. And the early church went through their share of difficulties. We could talk about a number of the locals where that happened, but I want to specify one, and that's in Ephesus. Now we're going to talk about that because Paul established the church in Ephesus, and over the next number of weeks, we're going to see his council to his young apprentice named Timothy. And what I wanna make sure that you do is that over the course of these next few weeks, you need a Bible, because I'm gonna be walking through chunks of passages of scripture. And we're going to walk through 1 Timothy together over the next few weeks. So I want to encourage you to make sure that you have something with you, whether it's a hard copy that you grab in a seat back, or wherever it might be, or if it's a digital and you pull it up, that's fine. We're going to be looking at Paul's first letter to Timothy. Now Paul had established the church at Ephesus and you're saying, "Wait a minute. What does Ephesus have to do with Timothy?" Well, Paul established the church in Ephesus. And then he was staying there in Ephesus, probably in total for about three years that he was there ministering. And then when he was gone, some things started happening in Ephesus and he sent Timothy there. And he wanted a report of what was happening. And then he wanted to give some instruction to Timothy while he was there. And that's where we get this letter called 1 Timothy. The letter opens up by Paul establishing who he is. Here's what he says in the very opening verse of 1 Timothy 1:1, says, "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope..." Now, when Paul's writing this, he's not writing this to establish his credibility and he's not writing it to inflame his resume. "I'm Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ." He's not really doing it to try and establish his bonafides. He's doing it for Timothy's sake. You see when Paul would write a letter to a church, that letter would be read to the entirety of the body. Sometimes it would be read to the person that he addressed it to. Sometimes it would be read to just somebody in the church, would read it. But what Paul is doing and having sent Timothy is Paul is now saying, "I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ, as you all know." And what he's doing is he's saying this on behalf of the church and on Timothy's behalf because Timothy, this young man, has been sent into Ephesus where they're having all kinds of issues and all kinds of problems. And he's basically helping to put his stamp on Timothy. And in verse number two, it simply says this, "To Timothy, my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Christ Jesus our Lord." So Paul goes from establishing who he is as an apostle to addressing Timothy in very intimate terms. It's like, "Paul, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ." And then he says to Timothy, "My true son in the faith." Now, Timothy wasn't Paul's son in a biological sense. He was a son in the faith, so to speak, but truthfully Timothy came to faith in Jesus Christ because of his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois. Just like we heard today in the baptism, we had a daughter and a mother who were baptized today. And the daughter said that "My mom's faith is what influenced me." That's exactly what happened in the life of Timothy, that his mother and his grandmother influenced him to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Now, the interesting thing about Timothy is that he came from a mixed parentage. His mother was from a Jewish background. His father was Greek. And so Timothy, when he came to faith in Jesus Christ, came because of his mother's influence primarily. We don't know a lot about his dad, but when he started traveling with Paul, because he was part Jewish and part Greek, Paul determined, you could read about in Acts 16, if you wanted to. Paul determined that Timothy needed to be circumcised so that it wouldn't be an offense to the Jews when he was bringing Timothy with him to minister to them, not because he felt like it was important for Timothy's actual faith. Circumcision didn't have any value in terms of the relationship to the gospel, but he just wanted to make sure that he wasn't an offense to the Jewish people that he was going to be ministering to. By the way, you can see, Titus also traveled with Paul. And Titus was Greek. And he didn't have to get circumcised. Timothy was half Jewish and therefore Paul wanted him to be circumcised so that he wouldn't be offense. So they were doing everything they could to not bring offense to the people that they were trying to bring the gospel to. But Paul calls him "my true son in the faith." We'll notice what he says in some other places. In 1 Thessalonians 3, he says, "We sent Timothy, who is our brother and coworker in God's service in spreading the gospel of Christ." He called him a brother and a coworker. And if you looked at when Paul wrote to the Philippian church in Philippians 2, he says this, "But you know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel." "As a son with his father," he views Timothy as a true son in the faith. And that's exactly what the text here says. But after that introduction, Paul says this in verse number three. He says, "As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer." It's really interesting because when Paul writes letters, what you find out pretty quickly is that Paul has kind of a... there's a format that Paul uses. He introduces who he is and then who the letter's to. And then he usually has some greetings that he gives or a prayer, maybe, that he opens up with, not here. He gets straight down to business. What you see is you see that there's an urgency in what Paul is actually talking about here, because what was going on in Ephesus was a difficult scenario. It was a bad scenario. There was so much trouble that was going on in Ephesus that Paul was having to address it. Ephesus, in my opinion, was probably the hardest place for Paul's ministry of all of the places and all of the church. I think it's the place that he was most distressed about, that he had the most concern over. Now he wrote more to Corinth because Corinth was just a hot mess. Super gifted, really immature. And Paul had to write a lot of instruction to Corinth, because they were just a hot mess as a church. But Ephesus was like these real deep seated kind of painful deals that were going on. In fact, it's a church that he weeps over constantly. Listen to what he said in Acts 20. He said, "From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. And when they arrived, he said to them: 'You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and with tears and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents." So Paul, even while he was in Ephesus, he was constantly weeping over this place. If you looked back one chapter from Acts 20 into Acts 19, you'd see that Paul was opposed by both Jew and Gentile. He couldn't get away from anybody like he was facing opposition from both. This was a place of major battles for him. Listen to how he describes it when he is talking to the church in Corinth in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, "And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I face death every day. Yes, just surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beast in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained?" He called what he was dealing with in Ephesus, wild beast. He's not talking about having to fight off lions and tigers and bears, oh my! He's actually talking about people and issues that he was dealing with. And he gives them this picture that it was like he was dealing with wild beasts. He was under such pressure when he was in that Macedonian region. Listen to what he said in 2 Corinthians 1. It says, "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself." This would include Ephesus. And then what was so remarkable is that when Paul was meeting with the Ephesian elders, before he left them for the final time, Paul prophesied that all of this was going to happen, that he's now had to send Timothy into all of this. He prophesied that this was actually going to occur. Listen to what he says when he's saying his goodbyes to the Ephesian elders. He says, "I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears." Paul told them. As a word of prophecy, he said, "I know that even after I'm gone, that there's going to be savage wolves that are gonna come in and try and wreck you and take you away from the truth. And some of those are gonna be from within. That's going to be a problem." In other words, he's saying, "Probably some of you that are elders, it's going to be a problem with you." So this was a significant issue. And Paul's concern, here he says, "Timothy, I want you to stay in Ephesus," for what reason? Well, listen to what it says again in verse three and four, "As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God's work, which is by faith." In other words, what Paul is saying here is he's saying, "I want you Timothy to command those who are," and he uses the phrase, "teach false doctrines." That phrase that we translate "teach false doctrines" is one word in the Greek language. And it means straying from the truth. "There are those that are straying from the truth. And, Timothy, I want you to command them that they don't stray from the truth that was found in Jesus Christ." And then he refers to kind of how they're doing that. You can see it right here in your text, as you're looking at your Bibles. And everybody has a Bible that you're looking at. I know I already told you about that. You can see it in the text right there where he talks about myths and endless genealogies. Well, that phrase there "myths and endless genealogies" is basically talking about what was happening in that time as many people from a Jewish background and some from a Greek background were going into the Hebrew narratives, and they were taking them out of context, and they were using them for their own means. In many ways, they did this with the creation narrative. And they also did it with the ancestral genealogies of many people in the Old Testament. And they would build these fanciful interpretations and fanciful things around all of this content that we see in the Hebrew scriptures. What it did is it stirred up controversy, and it stirred up division, and it stirred up speculation. And it did not advance the work of God, which was to be in faith. In other words, there were a lot of people that were way more stirred up about controversial things than they were about the truth of Jesus Christ. And as a result, it became divisive and they were straying away from the truth. But what Paul is doing is he's commanding Timothy to bring them back into a place where they are promoting the truth, because Paul wants to see a different outcome rather than division and confusion. What's the outcome Paul wants to see? Verse number five tells us, the goal of this command, Timothy, is what? Are you looking at it? The goal of this command is what?

- [Congregation] Love.

- Love, "which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." He says, "The command that I'm giving you is because I want to see love." Paul is only parroting what his master, the Lord Jesus, actually said, "A new command I give you, that you love one another." You see the command that Paul is giving is aimed in the direction of love because he knows that what will happen is that love comes from a pure heart, as opposed to a heart that is selfishly inclined. It comes from a good conscience, a conscience that's informed by the word of God, not just informed by speculations and controversies, but is informed by a right understanding of the truth of who God is. And he says it also comes from a sincere faith. That word sincere, by the way, here's something interesting. Maybe you knew this. Maybe you didn't. But the word sincere is actually a compound word, "sine" and "cere" are two different words. And one means without. And the other means wax. The word actually means sincere without wax. You're going, not helpful. I don't know what that means. Well, in the ancient world, oftentimes when they would take porcelain and they would fire the porcelain, it was very difficult for them to shape the vase, or the sculpture that they were making out of porcelain, right? It was very difficult for them to fire and shape this without it having cracks. You would hope that it would not have cracks, but oftentimes it did. And what kind of unscrupulous dealers would do is they would take wax and they would fill in the cracks with wax. To the naked eye, when you saw it, it just looked like a perfectly solid, you know, beautiful porcelain thing and you bought it. But if you held it up to the light, you would then see the black streaks of wax, even though it was clear, but in the light, you could see it as black streaks. And you would know that this was with wax, not without it. An honest dealer would say that "This is something that we're selling to you, but it is with wax, not without wax." And what Paul is talking about here is the idea of sincerity means we're without wax, that there is a wholeness to us, that there is an integrity to us, that there is an honesty to us that we embrace the truth as it is, not in the manner of controversies and speculations that cause all of these divisions and disruptions, but instead without wax, we have a sincere faith, a faith that is of integrity, a faith that is honest, a faith that demonstrates humility, one that is real and authentic. This is important because what was happening there is that people were getting a stray from that. In fact, in verse six and seven, it says that, "Some have departed from these," they've departed from love, and from a pure heart, and from a good conscience, and from a sincere faith, "and they've turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm." It is extraordinary when we read about this, because what was happening is that there were people, maybe even elders in the church of Ephesus, that had departed from the truth and were gathering people but didn't know what they were talking about. They not only were dealing with scripture wrongly, but they were also doing so from self-aggrandizing kinds of ways. They wanted some notoriety and they wanted some power. And so in a cult-like way, they were gathering followers for themselves around what they were talking about instead of around the truth of Jesus Christ. This happens all the time, controversy for the sake of publicity. Boy, the Bible's not particularly relevant. Is it? Controversy for the sake of publicity. You know, there are some publicists with particular actors and stars that say, "No publicity is bad publicity," because it just attracts more people to you. They know your name. You're in front of them. And who cares if it's controversial or whatever. And they use controversy for publicity. It happens all the times with bloggers. It happens with some journalists, certainly not all. It happens with some podcasters, certainly not all. It happens with some pastors. There are plenty of pastors that are gospel-centered, that are preaching the truth, and I thank God for it. Those are my people, right? This is what I do. These are my people. There's also some, they're not my people. They give us a bad name. You have people in your line of work, right? You do various things, right? And you're like, "Yeah, I'm a journalist. And I've got a bunch of people that make a bad name for us." "Yeah. I'm this. And there's a bunch of people that make..." "I'm an attorney. There's a bunch of people that make bad names for us." You can name whatever, right? And there's always people that you kind of go, "Yeah, I'm not that. That's not, I'm not that." You know what I'm talking about. But, unfortunately, with some that are in the work that we do, and that I do, they're making their name not as gospel-centered preachers, but they are driving up publicity around something that is some kind of perverted version of the gospel. Things like, for instance, pastors who are making their name around Christian nationalism. Some of you're going, "Okay, he's coming today." So he's here. Yeah. I want you to understand what that is, first of all. It's not patriotism. Patriotism is fine. Love of country, perfectly fine. I love the country that I live in. I'm big fan. I watch the Olympics and I cheer for the people on our team because that's just what I do. I'm for everybody. By the way, I've been to 40 countries. I love people all over the world. But I love, you know, I love it. Patriotism is one thing. Christian nationalism is a different thing. It's a perversion. What do I mean when I say that? Well, it's not the easiest thing to define, but what it is is, functionally when people use Jesus as a means to a political end, listen, Jesus is not a means to an end. He is the end.

- [Congregation] Amen.

- He's not a means to an end, but there are people that will leverage Jesus and language around Jesus toward their political ends. And they will view the idea that America is somehow in some special relationship with God, in some covenant relationship with God, as if He's got some special relationship with America that He doesn't have with everyone else. That is not true. People have tried to slide America into the place that Israel was in the ancient world. And by the way, this is a perfect application because what these people were doing is they were misappropriating the Old Testament scripture in relationship to the gospel. And that's what Christian nationalism is. It is a perversion of the truth of the gospel acting as if somehow America has some covenant and special relationship with God. And so we then go back into the Old Testament and try to figure out where is America in all of this. News flash, nowhere. It's nowhere in the Old Testament. Somebody going, "Well, you know, there's this one time He mentions an eagle. And so that stands for America." No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. Stop with the weirdness. Christian nationalists also think that the whole world ought to be set up around their particular political ideology. And it ends up being tyrannical when it runs its course. From a political standpoint, I lean on the conservative side of the ledger. I don't think that there are many things on what we would call the left side of the ledger that are particularly compatible with a worldview in the scripture. I'm not saying everything. I'm just saying, "That's my direction that I have a tendency to lean," but there are people that are on the far stretches of the side that I lean on, that I don't even recognize. I don't know what they're talking about. And please stop bringing Jesus into the conversation. You're weirding the world out. This is what's happening. And there are people who do I do, who are making their name around all of those things. That's not what we need. We need people centered on the truth of Jesus. We need people teaching the truth of Jesus. That's what we need, because there are plenty of people that are mouthing off about all things political. And by the way, I'm for your engagement. You can have opinions. I'm all for that. We all have them. But I'm talking about people who do what I do, who are teaching the word of God. We've gotta make sure that it is clear and is not a perversion. We could talk about other perversions, you know, the prosperity gospel, right? Send me 20 bucks. It'll turn into 2,000 for you. It doesn't work like that. Don't do that. And when people who do what I do tell you to do that, just turn the channel, just say no to drugs, right? It's crazy. And it's wrong. And it's a perversion. And you know what? They're leveraging their platforms to do, to sell you vitamins and stuff, not the gospel. And by the way, I'm for vitamins. I take some. But they're leveraging their platform for other means. This is why I stay off social media people. It's why I'm not... You've looked for me and I'm not there. Right? I wonder if he's on Instagram, he's not. I wanna see if I can get a comment on Facebook. There's not one. You know why? Because the temptation is there, for people that have a platform, the temptation is there to act like you're an authority and that you should comment on everything about everything.

- [Congregation] That's right.

- I haven't been given that latitude. I comment on what God says. That's what my job is. It's not to comment on every single thing in the world. I'm not an expert on those things. Don't write to me and say, "What do you think about ivermectin?" I don't know. Ask your doctor. But some people, whether they're a podcaster, whether they're a politician who doesn't know anything about medicine, whatever, everybody's commenting on it. That's fine. Do what you want. Not what I'm gonna do, because I owe you the discipline of staying true to the truth of Jesus. That's my responsibility to you. And I can't water that down by every other thing. It doesn't mean I can't speak to issues of the day, as long as I'm applying the reality of the gospel to them. But what it does mean is that I'm not just gonna start hammering out lots of opinions all over the place, because the temptation is just as real for me as it was for them. That's why I need you. Listen, I need you to pray for me. The temptations are real for me like they are for anybody else. I'm a human being that could fall to the temptation of using my platform for other things, except the promotion of Jesus and the gospel and the truth of who he is. And I don't want to do that. And I'm asking you to pray for me.

- You've been listening to a message from The Chapel. Our Lead Pastor Jerry Gillis is preaching today out of the book of 1 Timothy. And we're gonna get back to that message in just a brief moment. But I wanted to take time here to let you know a little bit of who we are and why we're on this channel at this time, because you might be thinking, why would a church have a spot on a TV channel like this right now? What's the purpose? Well, as I said at the outset of our broadcast, we are so committed to this mission of giving every man, woman, and child repeated opportunities to hear and see the gospel. And we see this television broadcast as one of those repeated opportunities for many of you. It's not just one opportunity. It's not just an impersonal opportunity, but that repeated opportunity to hear the gospel in words, and also to see the gospel in action. And so this broadcast definitely fits into that hearing the gospel in words' aspect of our mission. And so we want to get the gospel, the good news of Jesus, into the hands of as many people as possible, because here's what we recognize. Although many maybe have some familiarity with Jesus and some highlights from His life, and maybe have heard a little bit of a cross and a resurrection, maybe a general idea about Christmas and Easter, really knowing about Jesus and actually knowing Him are two very different things. And so we want to give repeated opportunities for people to hear the full explanation of the gospel message. What does it mean to really know Jesus, to follow Him, and to be a disciple? So we hope that these broadcasts actually serve as an encouragement to you and help to answer some questions on your journey of faith, wherever you're starting from. Now, many of you maybe watch this program and you're already connected to a local church. And we're super glad about that. Keep doing that. Keep staying connected and plugged in where you are, because this isn't like an ad for The Chapel. This isn't a promo for "you come to our church instead of that one." That's not really who we are. And if you listen to us for any length of time, you'll catch that pretty quickly. But we also wanna make sure that everyone hears clearly and often that if you don't already have a church to call home, you don't have a place, a family of faith where you belong and are known, then we want you to know that you're always welcome here at The Chapel. If you don't know where else to turn, you at least know one place you can turn, and that's here. So we would love to see you on a Sunday morning. So I'll say more about that at the conclusion of our broadcast, but that's a bit about who we are and why we exist as a church, and even why we're on this channel at this time. So with all that being said, let's get back to 1 Timothy. Let's dive back into our message with Pastor Jerry.

- Paul goes on to say this in verse number eight, "We know that the law is good if one uses it properly." So he's saying there's people that have ventured away from understanding of the truth of Jesus. And they've got into all kinds of speculations and wrong interpret of the scripture. But Paul says now, "I know the law's good if you use it properly." Do you know what the law is for? Listen carefully. The law, the 10 Commandments, what's that all for? It is for restraining evil and exposing sin. Do you know what it's not for? Saving you. It can't. That's why we're told in the New Testament that it's like a tutor that is just counseling us, that we can't save ourselves, we've been exposed as sinners. We all know that now. We've all failed in regards to the law. So what does that mean for us? It means that we're in huge trouble. What do we do? Can the law save us? Nope, but Jesus can. He's the fulfillment of the law. And now by faith in Him, the spirit can live inside of us and we no longer need the law to be our tutor because the spirit of God leads us in the way of godliness. This is what it was for. He goes on to say in verse 9-11, "We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for the lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and the sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave trade and liars and perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me." He said, "This is the usefulness of the law." And do you know how Paul is so smart? Man, I'd be, ugh! He's so smart. What he does in that, when he's talking about all of these things that you just read about, for those who kill, you know, murder, and those who are involved in sexual immorality, and slave traders, and liars, and perjurers, do you know what he's doing? He's walking through the 10 Commandments. Do you see that? He's walking through the 10 Commandments. He's talking about commission of adultery, not honoring father and mother. He's talking of about stealing, lying, coveting. He's talking about bearing false witness. All of those are right there. He's just walking through the 10 Commandments there. And he's saying this is to expose sinfulness of people. It's not something that can save us. So these false teachers were engaging in things that we're not going to save, that we're leading people away from the truth of the gospel. This is why Paul has an urgency because they're departing from the truth of Jesus. And they're embracing lesser things that cannot save controversies, and divisions, and speculations about stuff that cannot save. And Paul wants to come to Timothy. He wants to come. He wants to come to Ephesus and be with Timothy, but he actually never does. There is no record in the scripture or outside the scripture that Paul ever makes it back after he finally leaves Ephesus. There's no record that he actually ever makes it back. And that's why he's writing. In fact, he tells us exactly why he's writing in the third chapter. When you read it, it's why he's writing 1 Timothy. It says this in 1 Timothy 3:14-15, Paul says, "Although I hope to come to you soon, I'm writing you these instructions so that, if I'm delayed," now pause right there. That word delayed could also mean detained. I don't know if Paul knew this was about to happen, but Paul was gonna go to Jerusalem. He was gonna get arrested. And then he was ultimately gonna be shipped off to Rome where he was going to be imprisoned and he was ultimately going to die. So, yeah, Paul's never getting back to Ephesus. And he says, "I'm writing all this stuff so that, if I'm detained or delayed, you, Timothy, will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." This is why he is writing. He's writing to say this is how you're supposed to conduct yourself in the church. Now he's not saying this is how you're supposed to conduct yourself when you come to church. He's not saying this is behavior for when you show up together. No, no, no. He's saying that, "Those of you who are in God's family, who are in God's household, I'm writing all of this instruction so that you know how you're supposed to live," because what he's writing is he's writing about how the church is supposed to live. He's writing about how the church is supposed to worship. He's writing about how leaders are to be chosen and how they're supposed to lead. He's writing about how the church should be organized. He's writing about how the church should care for one another. He's writing about what the church should teach. This is what you find in 1 Timothy that we're going to be discovering week after week. And he says, "You're the church of the living God. You're different." The reason you're different is because this church, this ecclesia, this gathering of people, this isn't like all the other gatherings you're a part of. Some of you are involved in social clubs and Ephesus, and you gather together. It's an ecclesia. You gather together. Some of you're involved in other things that you gather together with people, maybe you're part of, you know, the equestrian league there in Ephesus, or whatever. And you gather together and you get together. He said, "Here's the difference." The difference is that when we gather together as the church of Jesus Christ, the living God is in our midst, the living God is in our midst. And because he's in our midst, this is how you're supposed to conduct yourself as the people of God living for God in these difficult times. This is what this book is about. And he says, "Because the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth." Now Ephesus was expanding. It was growing. It was a big city by the way. And it was growing. So you were seeing construction all over the place. You know what you would find in that construction? Foundations and pillars. What did the pillars do? The pillars stood on the foundation and held up the roof that everybody saw. You could look around and go, "Wow, that's a cool building." And what you were looking at is mostly not here. You were looking at here. And so what Paul is saying, in the same way that pillars hold up the roof of a building, the church is to hold up the truth of Jesus and to live by it and to believe it and to communicate it to the world around them. This is what the church is supposed to do. This is how you're supposed to conduct yourself when you live in God's family, is that you are a part of joining together with others and holding up the truth of Jesus, not all of the controversies and not all of the speculations, but we're holding up the truth of Jesus. And in fact, Paul, to elaborate on that point, he calls out a hymn that was actually an ancient hymn during the early church. And here's what he says in verse 16. He says, "Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness springs is great." And then here's him quoting this hymn. "He appeared in the flesh, was vindicated by the spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, and was taken up in glory." You know what Paul does? He brings Timothy back to the reminder that it's the gospel, the gospel, the good news of Jesus. This is what he is to build his life on. Because when you look at that hymn, it talks about the incarnation, Jesus taking on flesh, God the Son putting flesh on and coming to be among us. It talks about his death and resurrection. It talks about the fact that heaven and earth were able to observe God the Son in the flesh, that this good news of what He did through His death and resurrection has been preached in the nations. And there are many who have believed and that this same Jesus who came from heaven, who came to us on earth, has now through His death and resurrection, and ultimately his ascension back to the Father has been glorified in the world. This is the heartbeat of the gospel. And this is where we need to live. This is what leads to godliness, endless speculations, endless controversies about things that are misappropriations of the truth of Jesus will not lead to godliness. It will take people away from the truth. But in Ephesus, what he was concerned about is he wanted to make sure that people didn't care so much about controversies and speculations, and self-indulgence, but instead concentrated on the truth of Jesus. You might jot this down. "Only when the church holds up, believes, and proclaims the truth of Jesus will we conduct ourselves with true godliness" This is what Paul's saying. "Only when the church holds up, believes and proclaims the truth of Jesus will we conduct ourselves with true godliness." That said, what I want you you to do is I want you to take a moment to reflect and to pray. And wherever you are, here, one of our other campuses watching online, I want you just to put yourself in a posture right now of prayer, wherever you are. And to begin, I would ask that maybe you would pray along this line. Would you ask the Lord, the living God, the one who is among us right now, would you ask him if you're a heart has been more excited about controversies and speculations than it has been about the truth of Jesus? Just ask him right where you are. And if he says yes, if he shows you that's true, then repent, seek His forgiveness, His cleansing, His renewal. Maybe you would ask the Lord this. Father, have I allowed the true story of Jesus to shape the purity of my heart, to shape me into having a good conscience informed by the word, and to forming in me a sincere faith that demonstrates the love of Jesus to people around me. Then as you're praying church, may I kindly ask you to pray for me, to pray for pastors and staff that make up this local body, our board of directors, to pray that we would be committed to the truth of Jesus above all things. Now, if you'd permit me, I'd love to just take a moment and pray over us all. Father in heaven, we thank You for the grace, the mercy, and the peace that You've shown us in Jesus. We wanna be the kind of church, kind of people, who are submissive to your word, rooted in Your truth. So today we ask that You would use Your word to teach us that You would use Your truth to sanctify us. We want to be more than hearers of Your word. We want to be doers of Your work. Would You graciously reveal where our conduct is not aligned with the godliness that You desire for us? Would You give us an insatiable appetite for the truth and a distaste for all falsehood? Would You ignite a passion within each of us to share Christ love and to extinguish our propensity towards controversy? Would You build strong muscles of faith within us to trust You in any difficulty, in any season, in any illness, in any valley? Would You make us more aware of Your activity among us? Father, please shape us and mold us more into the image of Your Son Jesus. We want to be pliable and malleable in Your hands. Not resistant, not hardhearted. You are the potter and we are the clay. So we confess our belief that you know what's best for us, have your way among us, Lord, in my life, in our lives, and in the life of our church. Purify and cleanse our hearts and our minds and our hands, and bring out of us a sincerity of faith in each one of us that gives a compelling witness to the world around us. God, we pray that you would do this for those of us who are leading under your leadership here. We pray for every pastor, every leader in this region, to have an unwavering, uncompromising commitment to Jesus. You've been so good to us. You've been good to us here locally. You've led this local body for 61 years through high peaks, low valleys, great milestones, tremendous heartache, but it's You, our good shepherd, who've walked beside us every step of the way. You know how to lead Your people. And we pray that You would do that. This is Your church. We are Your people. You are our God. And we love You, Father. Thank you for loving us. I pray this in the matchless name of Jesus, our Savior, All God's people said.Amen.