What is the Church? Part 6, The Pillar and Buttress of the Truth
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 ... 1 Timothy 3:14-16
1 Timothy 3:14–16 – What Is the Church?
Transfiguration Sunday – February 11, 2024 (am)
We continue this morning with our series answering the question, “What is the Church?”
So far, Daryle, Kipp, Lance, Nick, and Wes have successively shown us from Scripture that we are the people of God, the body of Christ, the household of God, a Flock, and the temple of God. Today, we will hear that we are a pillar and buttress of truth.
Let me begin by reading our passage and praying.
Please turn in your Bible to 1 Timothy chapter 3 where we will read verses 14 through 16. You will find that passage on page 992 in your Pew Bible or you can follow on the screen above me.
Here now from God’s holy, inspired, and live-giving word.
14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, 15 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. 16 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 the word of the Lord.
Let’s pray.
Father, we come before you this morning thanking you for calling us into your presence made possible by the sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf when he died on the cross. We thank you that you have called us into this household, this church. We ask you that you would show us this morning how we can live out our calling to be a pillar and buttress of the truth in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, among family members who don’t trust you, and wherever you would lead us. We ask in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Our FLOCKS group is reading a book by Neil Plantinga entitled Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin. And, in case that word “breviary” is new to you as it was to me when I first read this book, it means a brief summary.
Plantinga opens his first chapter with these words:
In the film Grand Canyon, an immigration attorney breaks out of a traffic jam and attempts to bypass it. His route takes him along streets that seem progressively darker and more deserted.
Then the predictable Bonfire of the Vanities nightmare: his expensive car stalls on one of those alarming streets whose teenage guardians favor expensive guns and sneakers.
The attorney does manage to phone for a tow truck, but before it arrives, five young street toughs surround his disabled car and threaten him with considerable bodily harm.
Then, just in time, the tow truck shows up and its driver—an earnest, genial man—begins to hook up to the disabled car. The toughs protest: the truck driver is interrupting their meal.
So, the driver takes the leader of the group aside and attempts a five-sentence introduction to metaphysics: “Man,” he says, “the world ain’t supposed to work like this. Maybe you don’t know that, but this ain’t the way it’s supposed to be. I’m supposed to be able to do my job without askin’ you if I can. And that dude is supposed to be able to wait with his car without you rippin’ him off. Everything’s supposed to be different than what it is here.”
Plantinga lays out in his book the problem that shouldn’t surprise any of us - our world is not the way it is supposed to be. We shouldn’t have wars destroying lives and livelihoods. We shouldn’t have poisonous drugs easily accessible on the streets of our cities. We shouldn’t have people confused as to their true identity. We shouldn’t have people canceled over differences in worldviews.
You don’t have to read too far into the news or on social media to realize that we live in a broken world. And one of the major problems leading us down this path is that people don’t know what is true anymore or even if truth is a meaningful concept any longer.
Andrea and I have been in college ministry for more than 25 years now. As we’ve talked with students over the years, we came to realize early on that there is a crisis of meaning prevalent among young people today and that has only become more evident as time has progressed. What prompted us to move from young professionals ministry to college ministry is the scene on your screen.
I saw these three young guys in Geneva Switzerland while we were on a mission trip. Sorry for the blurriness of the picture, but we didn’t have smartphones with 50-megapixel cameras back in those days. We didn’t even have megapixels!
One guy is smoking, another has a dog collar on (something popular back then) and all of them are the product of the philosophy of Jean Jaques Rousseau under whose statue they’re sitting and who promoted ideas like the inherent goodness of humans and the idea that we should just act on how we feel. He was an early proponent of rugged individualism and, appropriately enough, his statue stands on a man-made island on the Rhone River in Geneva.
We’re seeing how this philosophy is playing out in our day and time and it’s not good.
Paul’s time wasn’t too dissimilar to ours. He wrote to Timothy in the city of Ephesus which was a major metropolitan city with its main attraction being a temple to the false goddess Artemis or Diana.
Timothy was overseeing a church infiltrated by false teachers who were bringing dissension and causing people to depart from the faith. And, on top of that, it seems as if Timothy was a timid man with a weak stomach.
It is into this context that Paul writes this letter and today’s passage is the heart and purpose statement of this letter. I want to approach it a bit out of order today and I’ll explain why toward the end.
Paul spent an extended period of years with this church as he did the church in Corinth. He desired to come back to visit them, but he writes in today’s passage that if he was to be delayed, he wanted them to know how they ought to behave or conduct themselves as the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.
I mentioned that we’ll take this passage out of order, so let’s start with v. 16. Which addresses what this truth is that we’re to uphold. Paul, in this verse connects godliness with a poem or hymn that briefly explains the truth of the gospel. Paul connects godliness to the gospel of Jesus.
Howard Marshall and Philip Towner, in their commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, define godliness as “a strongly Christian concept of the new existence in Christ that combines belief in God and a consequent manner of life.”
The idea is that godliness is the consequent result of becoming a new creation which Paul addresses to the church in Corinth as he writes:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Cor. 5:17
Godliness is the reality of new creation emerging in the life of the believer upon hearing and trusting the gospel.
Paul summarizes the gospel in this six-line poem.
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.
John opens his gospel with these words:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He continues later in the chapter:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
God, was manifested, he took on human flesh and tabernacled or templed among us revealing the glory of God, full of grace and truth.
Don Carson, in his commentary on John’s Gospel, connects this to God’s appearing to Moses in Exodus 34, when he revealed himself as, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…
Carson makes the connection between God’s steadfast love and faithfulness and Jesus’ coming in grace and truth. Grace is the demonstration of steadfast love and faithfulness is the revelation of God’s truth. The gospel is revealed in Christ’s incarnation.
Paul continues: he is vindicated by the Spirit. He writes of this in Romans 1 regarding Jesus that he:
was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Jesus’ resurrection was the vindication. As Paul writes later in 2 Corinthians 5
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus, the sinless God-man, took our sins upon him and gave us his righteousness in this act of redemption, the great exchange.
Paul continues that he was seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.
That is the hope that we have as followers of Jesus, that we too, though presently justified and in the process of being sanctified or made holy, will be taken up with Christ in glory.
So, that is the gospel in a short poetic, but richly packed verse. This is the truth for which we as the church are to be a pillar and buttress. So, why the imagery of a pillar and a buttress?
As I mentioned earlier, Paul was writing to Timothy in Ephesus, the home of the temple to Artemis. A temple that had 127 pillars within it holding up its roof. Pillars were a common site in the first century.
The church was and is to be a pillar of the truth in a world of competing ideas with their competing temples.
Our small group recently finished studying Genesis chapters 1-11 and the last account of the people’s descent from the garden just before Abraham comes on the scene is another pillar, the Tower of Babel. A tower, that the serpent would have been proud of as the people attempted to be like God, making a name for themselves. Very Rousseouian.
As Wes reminded us last week, God created man in his own image and likeness and commissioned Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, to spread the borders of that garden temple throughout the earth. They were to rule and have dominion over creation.
Instead, as we were reminded, the serpent introduced chaos back into God’s orderly world and the descent of man began. Rather than spreading God’s name and image, humans are bent on making a name for themselves. We are skilled tower builders.
Paul here reminds the church that we are to be a pillar, upholding the truth of the gospel in a world of opposing ideals and idols.
The other word Paul uses is that we are to be a “buttress” (ESV), “support” (NASB), “bulwark” (NET), “foundation” (NIV), or “ground” (KJV). This is the only place that this word is used in the New Testament and comes from a root word that means firm, immovable, and steadfast.
We’re called to be immovable, firm, and steadfast in our upholding of the truth of the gospel. Another way to look at what could be in view here is related to two particular pillars in the temple.
There were two pillars in the temple in Jerusalem that were unlike all the others in that they were symbolic rather than structural. They didn’t support the roof. They were the only two that were named. They were Jachin and Boaz. Jachin means “he will establish” and Boaz means “in his strength.” Jewish scholars called them pillars of witness as they stood at the entrance of God’s sanctuary with 100 pomegranates each and garden imagery - reminding us from where we have come and the garden that awaits us in his kingdom.
Given their names, they were both pillars and buttresses, established by God in his strength. The church has been established by God and strengthened by his Holy Spirit and we are called to be witnesses to the lost people around us, upholding, supporting, proclaiming, and defending the truth of the gospel.
Now, I have no evidence that Paul was thinking of these pillars when he wrote to Timothy but I also wouldn’t be surprised, given his understanding of the Old Testament, if he was.
I mentioned at the beginning that I was handling this passage out of order and here’s why.
In Kerdos, we like to remind ourselves when studying scripture, the indicative always precedes the imperative. Now, if that isn’t a compelling reason to check out what else we’re doing in Kerdos, I really don’t know what more could entice you!
Let me explain what is meant by this, indicatives are truths in the Bible that God reveals about his people. Who he has made us to be.
We don’t have time to go through it this morning but in Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 to 14 Paul writes one long run-on sentence describing who we are in Christ, three times saying that all of it is to the praise of God’s glory or his glorious grace. It is one long indicative sentence, and it is amazing! It is worth committing to memory.
The indicative always precedes the imperative. So, what’s an imperative? Think about it this way, “It is imperative that you …” (you can fill in the blank). You get the idea. It’s a command. A necessary and important thing that you must do. So, to sum up this idea, who we are or who God has made us to be informs how we should behave or conduct ourselves.
What’s the point? Paul writes this letter so that if he’s delayed in coming to them, they would know how they ought to behave or conduct themselves in the household of God, the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. God has made us new creation and we’re called to conduct ourselves accordingly.
Paul uses two additional descriptions that help us to understand how we ought to behave: that of his household and the church of the living God.
First, the household imagery. Most of us grew up in households that had a certain rhythm and pattern to them. You may have heard your parents say to you when you were younger, “That’s not how we behave in this household!” There were, and for many of you today, there are certain expectations you have for your household.
Andrea and I have had the opportunity to be in different households. We have Kerdos meetings in the Hinkle household. FLOCKS meetings in Brooks and Emily Walker’s home. We’ve had elder dinners at the Karstens. We’ve had dinner with the Weyers.
Recently, we stopped by the Wynsmas, who had just moved into our neighborhood and the boys promptly invited me to play something called shinny hockey. Thankfully, the boys were gracious enough to let me be a spectator rather than a participant as it involves hockey on your knees on a carpet.
As we sat and talked with Mark and Liz and Andrea held Jonathan, Timmy, while walking by, patted me on the shoulder, much to Mark’s shock. As much as Mark and Liz did to make us feel welcome before that, Timmy’s gesture cemented it. He welcomed me like his best bud.
I’m thankful for this household of God. Last week I spotted a new family sitting a few rows in front of us but before I could get to them to introduce myself, they were already surrounded by people. And that is as it should be in God’s household. Well done, Grace Church.
Paul also calls us the church of the living God. Remember that down the road from where Timothy was, was a temple to a not-so-living goddess.
We live in a world with a lot of competing truth claims. There are more than 4,000 different religions with roughly 85% of the world’s population identifying with one religious group or another. People want to know that there is a truth and, if so, what that truth is.
For many years I along with a few others from Grace Church met with an interfaith group at College of DuPage that included Muslims, pantheists, Baha’is, Catholics, Hindus, and others. One of the founders of the group, Nate, a philosophy student with no particular religious affiliation, said to me one evening that he was searching for meaning. We had that same conversation many more times and I always pointed him to Jesus and the gospel. Before he moved away to study for his Master’s degree, I gave him a Bible and asked him to read and think about Ecclesiastes.
Nate is representative of lots of people around us on that same search and we as the church are called to be a pillar and buttress of the truth - the gospel to those people.
As I engaged people on the college campus in gospel conversations, the questions I would always start off with were:
From where do people derive meaning for their lives? How about you?
And then, do you believe that truth is meaningful in our days? Do you believe there are some things that are right and others wrong for all people at all times?
Why these questions? They came from many conversations over the years that led me to believe that many are like those young guys under Rousseau’s statue. Trying to make their own name in life and finding that it leads to despair. If there is no, as Francis Schaeffer called it, true truth, then as Paul, citing the prophet Isaiah, wrote to the Corinthians:
If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
If this life is all there is and we have to figure it out for ourselves, then as Paul said earlier in 1 Corinthians 15, we are most to be pitied. Yet, as Paul concludes in that chapter:
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
So, what was Paul’s bottom line to Timothy, the church in Ephesus in the midst of false teachers promoting controversy leading to envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicion, and constant friction? What is his word to us this morning living in the midst of cancel culture, wars, economic turmoil, family division, and even church strife?
Paul writes to Timothy, to the church in Ephesus, and to us this morning at Grace Church of DuPage:
But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, 14 to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
Paul is urging Timothy, the church in Ephesus, and us today, this morning to live out new creation life as a witness and a defense of the gospel, the good news that made this life possible for us and can make it possible for those whom God brings into our lives. As Paul urges Timothy and us: Guard the good deposit entrusted to you.
Brothers and sisters, we have a high calling and serve a great God. He has called us to this church to be a pillar and buttress to the truth in a lost and dying world. We do that every Sunday as we gather as the household of God, the church of the living God. What we participate in here week after week reflects the order of creation in a disordered world. We proclaim the truth of the gospel amidst a world of conflicting claims. We fulfill the greatest commandment to love one another as Christ has loved us.
We are called into his presence each Sunday and we respond with rejoicing, acknowledging God for who he is, and thanking him for what he has done.
We come confessing our sins, knowing that we are still part of this fallen world and are affected by its allurements.
We receive the word of pardon graciously extended by our Father through his Son and by his Spirit.
Again, we respond with joy at pardoned sin and restored relationship.
We gather under his word to us, hearing from his appointed servant with anticipation for what God will say to us.
We gather at the table of the Lord, remembering the great sacrifice that has allowed us there and anticipating the consummation of all that God has planned as he takes us to glory. We gather as a church in communion with one another and with our gracious God. We gather as a pillar and buttress of the truth, proclaiming Christ’s death until he comes again.
Finally, we are sent from here as pillars and buttresses of truth into a world that remains in darkness, shining our light just as God did guiding his people through their exile until we gather again either here or in glory.
Grace Church of DuPage, we have a great calling and a great God who has called us, may we rejoice and be glad in it.
As I mentioned we gather at the table of the Lord in this part of our service, remembering Jesus’ death and resurrection and looking forward to his return.
Let me invite the Elders serving and the musicians back up to the platform as I pray for us.
Father, we thank you again for calling us into your presence as your household, your church, a pillar and buttress of the truth in a lost and dying world. We are thankful that Jesus, to whom all authority has been given in heaven and on earth, restored the commission established first in the garden to make disciples (image-bearers) of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that he commanded us and reminding us that through it all he will be with us always, to the end of the age. We gather now at your table in remembrance of and to proclaim these truths until you come again. In Jesus’ name. Amen
NEXT SUNDAY: What Is the Church? Part 7: Citizens of Heaven, Todd Walker, Elder