Pt.6 The Church Has left The Building
Whose Truth Really Matters?
1 Timothy 3:14-16
Rick Snodgrass3-23-2014
For the church to really be the church we have to understand
that we are the church. We have been looking at images of the
church in the New Testament. It all starts with the confession…
THEN we see that Jesus is the bedrock on which He builds His
church…
THEN we looked at the Bride and several passages that have
wedding talk like we have never heard before because we
didn’t know how the Hebrew wedding worked…
THEN last week we saw the church was a great building made
up of living stones and He is the cornerstone that holds it all
together. Last weekend we looked at the church as a
BODY…the church is the actual body of Christ.
14 Although I hope to come to you soon, Paul is in Macedonia
(Northern Greece), and Timothy is in Ephesus (modern Turkey)
which is the second largest Roman city in the world Like NYC,
London…a leader in all things important to the culture of that
day and sadly Ephesus was a leader in corruption as well.
Tim is a pastor of a very small little church in this huge city. His
competition is the Temple of Diana, and it is soooo magnificent
that it dominated the whole temple mount, and it was
considered one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. (PP of
the pic. Of the Temple of Diana)
Hundreds of thousands of people world pour into this
magnificent temple each year to bathe in her glory and then
there is tiny Tim.
He is timid Timothy with a tiny sense of worth in tiny church for
the cause of Christ and this was in His back yard.
OVERWHELMED…especially every evening when the temple
prostitutes world make their way down the hill to generate a
revenue stream that would constitute the financial base of the
temple.
He was small in his mind and it was just plan tough. It would
take a miracle for Christianity to take hold, so Paul says look at
the nature of the church and see God in it (vs 14).
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14 Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you
these instructions so that, Just in case I don’t make it, here is
plan “B” and we call that 1st Timothy, I am glad he wrote a plan
“B”
It is a very simple letter that gives us practical ways to stay in
the walk, then we get these quick little portraits of the church
that are very important to us
15 if I am delayed, you 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 truth.
1. A picture of the (role) of the Church.
It is important for us to remember that when we come to faith
in Jesus Christ we are adopted into a family…not a perfect one,
in fact a dysfunctional one, BUT we can be good together as
long as we know that we are fitted together… We fit…
Why is it that we are fitted and we don’t think we fit? Because
we speak from beneath the mask, OR we think that those other
masqueraders are fully baked and we aren’t.
(Daniel and the Rainbow people)
The reason we need to know that the role of the church is
family is because we don’t do family well…
I grow in faith because of family, and if I don’t embrace it, I
will be spiritually arrested…
The invitation is to join God’s assembly (church). In Ancient
Athens the governing body was called The Assembly, and every
citizen of that great city was a part of the assembly as they
came together. So an invitation was sent out to collect and
make decisions. NOT everyone would respond.
JUST like that, God has issued an invitation into His Assembly,
the church of the living God, and some will respond, and some
won’t, if you don’t respond then you are on the outside looking
in.
This living God was real, and the temple of Diana where all the
people hung out was built around a magnetic rock. It was a
God rock… it looked like the statue of the goddess Diana and
everyone couldn’t wait to see it.
Paul says, Hey Tim, never forget you have the assembly of the
LIVING God who is at work in your history.
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2. A picture of the (reality) of the Church.
ALL this is built on THE piller, not the 127 pillars in Diana’s
temple that were donated after the building was constructed.
Those Pillars were all donated by a different king and were just
temple candy. They didn’t even hold anything up. They were all
fine marble and some were sheathed in gold, some had
precious stones inlaid in them, just outward beauty that
masked the inner corruption of the meteor goddess Diana.
We are people of the living God who works from the inside out.
My adornment is HIM. He is the pillar.
the pillar and foundation of truth.
The word foundation is really buttress.
(PP Three pictures of a buttresses here in the order I email
them please)
The huge circular currents in the Indian ocean really mask the
hundreds of smaller eddies that bob and swirl and pull and tug
and spin. Make no mistake family; there are spiritual forces
that are in play for our soul that do the same thing. We need a
buttress to keep us steadfast and sure in the distortion. THE
truth of Jesus as revealed in his church and strengthened by
His word. So what’s the plan Tim says…
16 Beyond all question, the mystery from which true godliness
(isn’t spiritual sheep dip that makes us weird. The greek word
means Goodliness, it’s about being transformed from a selfish
a-hole to someone who thinks the best of people first) springs
is great:
Those are the people of Impact that we meet and want to be
like. Paul was one, so completely transfoemrd that people
whose relatives were murdered by him, NOW wanted to be like
him. What a mystery.
Not the wacky magnetic rock mystery like the great temple of
Diana, but a mystery that is revealed. Mystery to us is always
concealed, in the Bible the word is always about truth revealed.
Jesus was the perfect example of the mystery of the truth
revealed…
3. Mystery as truth (concealed) versus Mystery as the truth
(revealed)
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Here he give Tim part of an ancient song that was sung in the
church that tells us about the Truth revealed in Jesus…
He appeared in the flesh,
(incarnation) Meat on God… (ie Mt. of transfiguration) He was
The Divine, taking on the nature of man to finally show us what
God is like. God explains himself to me so I can see what I can
be in response to God.
was vindicated by the Spirit,
(demonstration) The Holy Spirit descended like a Dove and
empowered Him to reveal the heart of the father for three
years. Everything from that point on was about Jesus living on
utter dependence on the Holy Spirit. He didn’t call upon His
divine nature, He set that aside to live like a faithful man who
lives and works in the power of the Holy Spirit.
was seen by angels,
(resurrection) He was sang to, attended to, and “eyeballed” in
a way that is certified as resurrected, on earth and in heaven.
History eyeballed Him as he went to the grave, and through the
grave and came back from the grave. He is the revealed secret
to the life I want to live.
was preached (shared) among the nations,
(declaration) Now people everywhere in every tribe can get on
board, this isn’t proprietary…everbody.
was believed on in the world,
(transformation)
In 33AD a peasant man that no one should
have ever heard about was crucified by the Roman government
in what seemed like, the essence of obscurity. It happened all
the time, no big deal, a single man with a dozen friends who
weren’t picked very well, dead.
Except this man showed us God, and then came out of His
flesh, from the grave and it all happed in such a way that by
70AD everyone in all corners of the world knew who He was.
All over the known world people responded to His transforming
presence and they still are…
was taken up in glory.
(ascension) The angels said to those standing by watching
Jesus ascend, “hey guys He will come back this way too”. Paul
is saying, Hey Tim, it’s ok pal, You have the son of the Living
God who is coming back for YOU and in the meantime He is at
work for US…
Hebrews 7:25 Therefore he is able to save completely those
who come to God through him, because he always lives to
intercede for them.
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4. The Church is the call to continuously (interact with God)
through Jesus Christ.
You CTK people are the heart of the mystery of God revealed to
planet earth. We get to interact with Jesus, be led by the Holy
Spirit, and reveal the heart of the Father. We are the Church.
Small group questions
1. What is my role in the church?
2. How does Jesus demonstrate who He is through me on a
daily basis?
3. What does Jesus think of your Role, Did he die for the love of
it?
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