The Bride of Christ: The Pillar and Ground of Truth
“These things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly; but, if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
Let’s, too, once again pray.
Our Father, we do ask that You would lead us and guide us into a better understanding, or to remind us afresh, of who and what we are about as Your people; and Father, we do pray that, as we are those servants who most often stand, and aid us in our mission of being the pillar and ground of the truth, Father, that You would draw near to us and help us and strengthen us now and all the days that are before us.
Our Father, we pray that we will not fail to be what You have called us to be, and, Father, that Your churches would accurately reflect our mission and our identity in the world. We pray these things in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
I want to begin with a little bit of an experiment, as it were. I want you to think in your mind for a moment about a house. It’d be your idealized picture of a house.
All right, you got it in your head? If I handed out a piece of paper and a pencil or a pen, do you think you could draw—it may not be very good, but you think you could at least basically draw what’s in your head? Okay?
All right, now, if we did that, and we picked up the pieces of paper and we stuck them along the wall there, we probably would be struck, not so much by the similarities, but by the differences in what you have in your mind about what a house is.
So, is Ronald here? (He had to leave.) If Ronald drew a picture of a house, his house would have a wall around it, because most all the houses in Zambia have walls around them. For a brother from Korea here were to draw a picture of a house, it probably wouldn’t look like a house in northern New Jersey. Your picture would be different.
Some of you would have one story; some of you would have two-story houses; some of you would have colonials. You’d have all different sorts of houses that you would draw; and all of them would be houses, because, though a house does have a certain purpose, it’s design is based upon, in your mind, things like culture and experience. You might’ve drawn a picture of the house you grew up in, or the kind of house you always wanted to live in; and that’s fine.
All right, now, let’s do another experiment; and let’s add some other folks here, because you all have a similar background in theology; but let’s get a group of, oh, say two or three hundred Christians together; and I want you to think about what the church is.
What is the church?
If we were all going to go out and plant a church, or build a church, I want you to write down what it would look like, and what you would do.
Now, do you think we would be struck by similarity or by dissimilarity? Different people have different ideas (don’t they?) about what a church is?
You got five guys together and say, “Hey, let’s go plant a church”: it would be like saying, “Let’s go build a house.”
“Well, that’s a great idea. Yeah, let’s go build a house”; and, so, I’m working on a ranch; but my friend’s working on a Colonial; and this guy has the idea that it’s a duplex.
Well, there’s going to be a disaster (isn’t there?), unless we can all come to a common agreement about what the church is.
Now, what’s the difference about saying that you can have your own idea about a house, but it’s not okay to have your own idea about a church?
Well, here’s the difference. One is defined by culture and experience; and the other is defined already by God and His Word. God has already told us what the church is. One in essence is a matter of opinion (and that’s fine). The other is a matter of revelation.
Isaiah says,
“To the law and to the testimony: if we do not speak according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them”; and so it is not to culture, and it is not to experience, and it is not to opinion that we turn our attention again this morning, to try to determine what the church is, and how it’s to function in the world, but rather again to open our Bibles and ask, where has God told us what the church is?
There are few passages, really, that give us more information in such few words than these words in First Timothy chapter 3 and verse 15.
So, it’s interesting because, in a sense (I don’t know how to describe it), they’re almost, throw-away lines. Paul has said, Now, listen: I’m writing these things so you’ll know how you ought to behave when you go to church, which, by the way, is the house of God and is the church of the living God; and it’s the pillar and the ground of the truth—as though: I didn’t really want to get into what the church is: I was going to get into how you are to behave; but, while I’m telling you how to behave, we will remind you of some things about the church.
Now, having seen the identity of the church as the house of God, and made brief reference to it being the assembly of the living God, I want to focus in this hour on the church as the pillar and ground of the truth.
I don’t have alliteration, so you’ll have to forgive me for this; but I will begin by simply seeking to explain something of its meaning, secondly, its parameters, and then finally highlight its focus.
So, the first question we ask is, what is meant by the fact that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth?
The two words that Paul uses here are interesting in their combination. The term pillar which he uses is found four times in the New Testament Scripture, while the word translated as ground (at least this particular form of it) is found only here in the New Testament.
The word pillar could be translated as post. It’s the word stu/loj (stúlos), from which we get the word, stile, as in, turnstile; and—every translation that I looked at in this context (First Timothy 3:15)—it is translated as pillar.
Now, a pillar can be used in a couple of ways. It can be used as a support, as when you see the roof of a building being upheld by pillars; or it can be used as a pedestal. Sometimes there would be statues that were placed on top of, or poised on top of, a pillar. It is something firm that other things rest upon. That’s why Paul refers to James and Peter, as perceived pillars in the church. Others looked to them, rested upon them, viewed them in this way.
The word translated as ground is derived from a word that means to be—it can be, could mean sedentary, but better, immovable or steadfast, as it is translated in First Corinthians 15:58 (“Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord”).
It’s used in Colossians 1:23, with reference, again, to being grounded or steadfast. I think the idea is that of bedrock: the bedrock and the pillar.
The NIV uses the word foundation to translate it: the church is the pillar and the foundation of the truth.
The ASV translates it as pillar and buttress—that is something that props up another thing and adds stability to it.
The RSV says pillar and bulwark; and yet another combines the two together and speaks of the church as the bastion of the truth.
All right, so that’s a little bit of etymology; but what’s being gotten at when Paul uses these architectural terms to describe the church?
Well, let me suggest at least three things that come into focus when we understand (or try to understand and apply) the church as the pillar and the ground of the truth.
The first thing that we need to understand is that God has entrusted the truth to His people. That’s what the church is. So the church is people, the called out assembly.
“I will build My church.”
How will Jesus build His church? By seeking and saving and then gathering the lost into communities; and He says these people—these people, the assembly of Jesus, called out of the world, inhabited by the Spirit, who gather in local assemblies all over the world—they are the buttress, the pillar and ground, the foundation and post, of the truth—not seminaries.
Seminaries, for all their usefulness, are not the pillar and ground of the truth: local churches are. No parachurch organization (as helpful as they may be) are given this identity by God, but the church, as the church.
The people of God gathered and constituted into local bodies—have been entrusted with the truth, not opinions.
It’s not the pillar and ground of Christian opinion. It’s not the pillar and ground of fairy tales. It’s not the pillar and ground of mythology, certainly not the pillar and ground of lies, certainly not the pillar and ground of feelings, but the truth; and again, brethren, not just truth, but we talk about, sometimes, “capital-T Truth”: the Truth.
The great Truth, the greatest Truth and truths have been entrusted to a people, to their ministers and to their people—the truth about God, the truth about creation, the truth about humanity and sin and salvation and identity and purpose and meaning and eternity and heaven and hell. I’ll have more to say about that in a moment.
You know, God did not bring the Scriptures down out of heaven and deposit them in a vault somewhere, so that you could say, in that vault is the truth; or put it in a museum and house it behind glass where it would be safe, and you could go there and a tour guide could hold it out to you and let you perhaps look at it behind the glass.
The truth was given to the people in whom Jesus had done a work of grace—the people who love Jesus and who love His truth—again, given, not to atheists and to skeptics whose carnal minds could not perceive the truth, but to those liberated by the truth, and to those being sanctified by that truth.
In a very real sense this was, this is true, in the sense of—the New Testament epistles were being written and given to churches. So, if you wanted to read the Scriptures and find the Scriptures, you had to go to church, because that’s where the Bible was. People didn’t have their own Bibles; and they didn’t have their own Bibles, really, for hundreds of years.
It was in churches that God’s Word was deposited and given and read and expounded, which is why it says in the Revelation, “Blessed are those who read and those who hear.” It’s actually a reference to the man who read the Scriptures: He’s blessed, and how blessed you are to hear the words of Revelation which were given to the churches!
So that’s the first idea behind this.
The second idea is that of promotion, or setting forth, or holding up. The church promotes the truth. That’s so much of what we do when we gather together, because we are Word-centered. We’re Bible-centered and Bible-saturated in our assemblies. We teach the truth.
When we sing, we want to make sure that what we sing is true. You ever realize there are certain hymns you can’t sing, even a couple of hymns in our Trinity Hymnal that a lot of us like, but you realize that you can’t sing that, don’t want to sing that, because—Well, I don’t know, is that word—is that true? Is that a good phrase?
Well, we’re committed to the truth. We’re committed to hearing the truth, obeying the truth, living out the truth of God in a dark world. We shine as lights, lights that are produced because of the work of truth that God has given to us.
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So, if you are a sinner in need of this truth, of this kind of truth, where do you go? Where are you gonna go? You gonna turn on the TV and trust that on the TV you’re going to find the truth? The truth?
You go to a ball game? You think somehow in the midst of the ball game you’re going to find the truth?
Are you going to go to a kingdom hall, a mormon temple, a mosque, a synagogue, and expect that you’re going to hear the totality of the truth?
If you want to hear the truth….
Yeah, we’re going to go out there; and some of us are going to proclaim it in the streets; and we’re going to
proclaim it in the workplace; but you want to say to someone, Listen, if you want to come, in a climate of reverent belief, and interact with the truth of God—if you want to know Who God is, and what God says, and what God’s revelation is to mankind, then you come to our assembly.
You come, when we expound the truth; and listen as the truth is read, and sung, and prayed, and proclaimed, and demonstrated in baptism and in the Lord’s supper.
You want to find the truth? Go to a Gospel church where the truth is proclaimed and loved and unashamedly imparted to all who hear.
Again, the purpose of the church is not to manifest its consensus or opinions, but to give God’s truth. It is to promote through its life and ministry sound doctrine. It is to see, in the Scriptures which God has breathed out, doctrine to instruct the mind, and truths that challenge and transform the behavior, of those exposed to it—reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness.
It’s interesting, isn’t it: when the warning went out about the early church from unbelievers and from the Jews, it was in regard to the fact that they were filling the city with doctrine—with truth. They were proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead; and they were turning the world upside down by the proclamation of a message. It was doctrine. It was truth.
Now, thirdly, and closely related to this idea, is the idea of defending the truth.
The truth is deposited; it is promoted; and it is defended.
One of the lessons of the early church that we find, in the pastoral epistles, especially, is that this truth will be assailed, by irreligious and religious; by obviously non-Christian and by deceptively cloaked pseudo-Christians. They’re going to come into assemblies; and they will promote error. They will creep in unawares, it says in Jude. They will come, in the words of the apostle Paul in Acts 20, as savage wolves, seeking to bring about the disciples to follow them. There will be, Paul warns, doctrines of demons.
There will be a corruption of the essence of the Gospel, a corruption of the application of the Gospel in some cases—legalism on the one hand, antinomianism on the other; and when those lies were being manifested and brought into the life of the church, the apostle Paul didn’t simply sit back and say, Oh, well, I’ll let them figure it out. Yeah, I know this is going on in Galatia. Yeah, I know this is going on in Colossae.
No, there was a defense of the truth. When the truth was under assault, the truth needed to be defended and it needed to be defined.
It needed to be, in the words of Jude, again, contended earnestly for, that truth once for all given to the saints.
Paul warned Timothy of the coming days when the church would grow weary of sound doctrine, and people would begin to desire novelty, to have their itching ears tickled; and in that context men of God need to be told, Listen! In the light of God’s truth, and in light of the judgment day, you need to preach the truth in season and out of season, and suffer whatever consequences necessary of your convictions; but the one thing you can’t do is cave in.
One of the qualifications of pastors, according to Titus chapter 1, is that they be men holding fast the faithful word as they have been taught, so that they may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort, and to convict those who contradict; for there are many insubordinate, and both idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain; and, so, when we’re aware of that, and when we’re aware of certain things being propagated among God’s people that’s disturbing and upsetting the truth of God, then we need to be men courageously standing in our pulpits and carefully expounding the truth of God.
This is one of the reasons why the church has always embraced in its life creeds and catechisms and confessions, because we are saying that truth is definabl,e and that truth can not only be defined, but that truth is unchangeable, which is why we’re not embarrassed to say that we hold to certain creeds and confessions that were written hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago, because nothing in God’s Word has changed or can change.
So, that’s something of what it means that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth. Secondly, what are the parameters of the church’s identity as the pillar and ground of the truth? What is this truth of which we are the pillar and the ground?
Our confession says this about the Word of God: it says, The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down, or necessarily contained, in the Holy Scriptures.
Now, that’s a focus of the parameters of God’s truth. Part of what we want to say here is that the truth of God is revealed in all of the Scriptures; and everything that the Bible says is true in all its parts, certainly and especially everything related to God and to His glory, to our salvation, to our faith and our life—everything that the Bible touches on.
So, again, what are the parameters of the truth that the church embraces and promotes and defends? Well, it’s everything that God talks about. Everything the Bible says is true and right and righteous altogether.
So why has the church had to speak out about issues like marriage, and perhaps, not speak out on (as a church) universal healthcare? You have your opinions; people in another part of the world have their opinions on that. I wonder how many of you felt compelled to do six messages, or rewrite your church constitution, based upon something like that?
You may have strong opinions; but you’re asking yourself, is that what the Bible talks about? What text would I open up?
But marriage? Now, is marriage the burden of the Scriptures?
No—correct answer is No, it’s not. In fact, the Bible has relatively little to say about marriage.
Is homosexuality the one great sin in the Bible that the Bible’s always talking about—it’s in every book in the Bible; it’s almost on every page in the Bible, going after homosexuality?
No, homosexuality is not the one great sin.
Again, the Bible actually has relatively little to say about these things; but it does address them; and, hence, when those things are being assaulted in our society, and, when our people are tempted to believe lies and act according to those lies, and when it affects the Gospel, then we must promote and defend the truth of God, not because we’re obsessed with such things, or because we’re hateful, or because we’re bigoted, but because God has spoken, or addressed the issue.
In regard to the idea of the issue of who we are as human beings, are we the byproduct of millions of years, or billions of years, of evolution? Are we simply becoming more and more competent animals, or are we creatures made in the image of God?
Well, does the Bible say anything about creation? Is that ever been spoken against, and have the lies of society ever been such that we feel—now, is that our main message?
Is human identity the main message of the Bible? No—but is it addressed in the Bible? Does it have application and implication, Who made the world and hence owns the world, and His right to govern it?
No! We’re going to say, All right, anything the Bible teaches, as I come and I preach the whole counsel of God, and I’m committed to verse-by-verse or passage-by-passage exposition of God’s Word, making our way through large portions of the Bible—anything and everything that’s addressed.
So, sometimes you’re going to get into matters of history, morality, family, labor, the church, science, sin and righteousness, heaven and hell. Whatever the Bible addresses, we need to understand it in its context; we must accurately exegete it; and where it speaks, or where it is being under assault, we must stand as the people of God.
All right, thirdly, and more fully now, what is the focus of the church’s identity as the pillar and ground of the truth?
Now it’s not my intention this morning to give a full exposition of the words here in context, but rather to comment on their placement at this point in Paul’s letter, and their connection with the church’s identity as the pillar and ground of the truth.
So, Paul says the church is “the pillar and ground of the truth; and without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.”
One question I want to ask is, why is that passage there, and is there any connection between the church’s identity in verse 15 and the proclamation of this truth in verse 16?
Is it that Paul’s thinking, Well, I wanted to throw it in somewhere; and, uh, this seemed as good of a place as any to have it?
He says, We’re the pillar and the ground: there is a truth deposited to us that we promote and that we defend; and great is its mystery. That’s what he’s saying.
Brethren, the truth that we promote—though, again, we are going to read our Bibles and preach our Bibles; and we’re going to touch upon all kinds of things; and it may be that the next ten weeks we’re going to talk a lot about what it means for husbands to love their wives, or about children being brought up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord; and it may be that we’re going to—say, now, for the next several weeks, we’re going to be talking about the Christian in the workplace, or the Christian’s place in society, and how are we to think about God and government and those who are magistrates over us; but, brethren, as we are the pillar and the ground of the truth, there is one great truth that has been deposited to us, and that we promote and that we defend; and the church, as it puts itself in society and say, well, what are we?
Well, among other things, we are a society of the truth; and that is not preeminently the truth of history or math or science, or even ethics or morality; and it is possible for the church to contend so earnestly for certain truths, because of the assault of the Enemy on this front and on that front, that we can forget what we’re really about; and one of the great dangers of the so-called “culture war,” and where we need grace to be wise, as we defend the truth on this level and that, as it’s being attacked, that we not get sidetracked from our primary message, so that, while we are committed to all that the Bible says about all things, there is a main thing that we are about.
Consider a restaurant. Y’all like to eat out? Well, you all like to eat. Y’all like to eat out? Well, I like to eat out. So, a number of things have to happen, in order for that restaurant experience to be pleasant.
You probably want to have it clean. I read something Dr. Mohler wrote the other day, when he said he doesn’t trust a barbecue restaurant when its floors are clean. I’m not sure what he meant by that; but in some of these places they have peanuts and other things they give you to come in and you throw them on the floor; and it may be that’s part of what he’s getting at. I personally would kind of like clean floors.
You probably want there to be a table that you can sit in, and that the chair is somewhat comfortable: it’s not in danger of falling apart or falling over; it’s not so wobbly, and the table’s not so wobbly, that you’re afraid to put a drink on it—that it’s going to fall over. You’d like that.
You’d like to have a friendly and competent staff.
You’d like to have a kitchen that passes inspection (you know, hopefully in the high 90’s); but, what if you had a clean restaurant, with a friendly staff and beautiful tables and the most comfortable chairs and the nicest, sweetest people serving you ever, but they had no food?
You’d say, Well, that’s a nice place, but it’s not really a restaurant.
Stephen and I were over in Zambia, back in April. Remember this one place we went to go eat at; and Stephen’s looking at the menu; and he says, “I’ll have the hot and spicy chicken.”
“We don’t have that.”
“Okay, I’ll do the chicken pita then.”
“We don’t have that.”
“Uh, then, I’ll…”; and you find….”
Well, we laughed, because, as nice as they were (they were very nice about it), they just didn’t have food.
Change the analogy. All right, so it’s baseball playoffs today—beautiful baseball stadiums, nice uniforms; they’re going to sing the Star-Spangled Banner or O Canada today; and they’ll have peanuts; and they’ll have Cracker Jack; but what if they had all of that; and they had the umpires and the players; and they had their gloves?
The time came for the pitcher to throw the first pitch; and you realize there’s no ball in his hand; and the batter had no bat. He’s standing there, the batter’s box; and he’s doing this [swings]; but there’s no bat; and you say, Well, whatever this is, it’s not baseball.
There’s uniforms and Star-Spangled Banner and peanuts and Cracker Jack and umpires and uniforms and gloves and the baseball diamond; but you can’t have baseball without the bat and the ball; and, brethren, you can’t have the church be the church without the Gospel; and we can preach and teach about so many things; and they’re all in the Bible; and they’re all good; and they’re all right; and they all have their place; but, if people come, and all they hear every week is, There’s the homosexuals out there; and Hollywood’s after your mind; and You gotta be careful; and You need to be diligent; and Young people, you need to be pure; and Guys, you gotta get rid of your porn; but you never proclaim, God was manifested in the flesh; and they recognize and realize, You know what? There’s lots of organizations that can teach you how to be good and moral and pure; but their message and their heartbeat is not the incredible matter of incarnation and redemption and exaltation and ascension.
So, what if we went to church week after week after week, and you found out how to manage your money, and how to fix your marriage, and how to raise wonderful, happy, successful kids, and how to protect your family online (and again, fine, fine, if that’s what the passage is about); but it was never wrapped up in, it was never predicated and founded on and empowered by, the truth of the Gospel; and you never heard—you go week after week after week; and you’re not hearing about Jesus and the cross and the empty tomb and justification alone by faith in Christ alone; and that’s not the heartbeat, that’s not the stuff that’s woven through everything else that you say, and everything else that you do, because you figure, Well, they all know it anyway?
What if you went and, again, learned how to live your most successful, pure life imaginable, but, again, never heard God was manifested in the flesh?
And, brethren, I want to be careful: it is our job to expound the whole counsel of God; and family life and work life and all of that relates to the Gospel. It all relates to His glory and our salvation and our life of faith; and, so, yes, again, we will preach on marriage and children and discipline and work ethic and cultural issues; but they are not our obsession. The preaching of all of those things—again, it’s our joy and our duty to wrap them up in the person and work of Christ, so that nothing is ever divorced from Him.
He’s the hub; and all the other truths of the Word are the spokes that flow from Him or flow to Him.
You ever play the game tetherball? You know what tetherball is? You got a post; and (you used to have one in your backyard, Jeremy, when Jeremy was a young lad) you have a string, maybe about four feet long; and it’s attached to something that kind of looks like a volleyball, if you’ve ever played. It’s attached to that, sometimes screwed in. Sometimes the ball is molded plastic and it’s on there; but the idea of, of tetherball is, you begin: you stand on one side of the pole; another person stands on the other; and you hit it; and one person’s trying to wrap it around the pole this way; and the other’s trying to wrap it around the pole the other way; and you win, when you get it all wrapped around, it’s all tightly wound around the way you want it to go.
I’m going to use an illustration about our preaching that’s like that. If that post is the person and work of Christ, that string, no matter how hard you hit that ball, it rotates around that post; and it never travels far from that post; and the closer you wrap the string around that post, the more you’re doing your job; and you’ve won, when all of that rope is wrapped around it. That’s what we’re trying to do.
So, I preach on Husbands, you love your wife…; but you know what that’s tacked to? …as Christ has loved the church.
Talk about people getting along, and divisions in the church, and you need to not have divisions; you need to love each other. Why? Because He loved us and He forgave us.
Anything and everything—and some truths wrap more closely than the other; but brethren, the idea is, that line is never detached; and it never goes so far away from the center that you forget what the goal is.
So, yeah, our message is not How to live a better life now, How to have your best life now. Our major message is to extol the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life; and, brethren, that has to be evident, not just confessionally, but really and truly.
I want to be very careful in what I say in this, but I’m going to say it; and I’m not going to—I don’t want to apologize or really qualify it. If some of our best and most sensitive people say to us that these elements are missing from our ministry, don’t be so quick to defend yourself. The people who best know what food tastes like are those who are eating it; and if fifty people in a restaurant get sick because of what’s being produced, the chef’s job is not to Well, I did not do that! You know, It wasn’t me!
Well, it probably was you; and there was some carelessness in what you produced; and, if people aren’t growing and thriving under what we’re preparing, there’s something wrong with how we’re preparing it, or something wrong with what we’re preparing.
Well, there’s nothing wrong with the Bible. When we say to ourselves, Well, why is—Well, I’m giving the Bible! I’m traipsing my way around the Bible to say the things I want to say every week to my people; but, as I do that, yeah, it’s all in the Bible; it’s all accurate; it’s all true; but it’s divorced from the heart and the soul and the center of what the Word of God is teaching and preaching.
That’s what I’m saying; and, brethren, I think, again, I recognize—you don’t have to apologize, if you say, Listen, this text is preaching about how men are to love their wives; and so a lot of that sermon was about how men love their wives.
That’s the intent; and, yeah, sometimes, we’re to—you know, Jesus said, Remember Lot’s wife; and there’s sometimes as we preach in the Scriptures that we’re gonna say, You know what the point of this is, in First Corinthians chapter 10?
The point of understanding the wilderness wanderings is this: that you can have a great experience of the power of God and still live an immoral life, and still want to have your heart go after idols; and, if you do that, God will judge you. Don’t be like them; and, sometimes, in the preaching of God’s Word, we’re going to give the warning, You think you stand, you better take heed, lest you fall; but all of that is in the context of a letter that begins with, I desire to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified; and Paul didn’t say that, and then push it aside.
No, he weaves in to everything else that he discusses, and he gets back to, and everything else; and you realize he is doing what he said he was going to do; and, brethren, may it be that, as people come and listen to us and our teaching and preaching, and, whether we’re preaching through (as I just got through) the Book of Ecclesiastes, or we’re preaching through the Book of Job, or (I’m just now starting off, with great fear and trembling) the Book of Deuteronomy—and the Book of Deuteronomy is preeminently a book of law; and it was one of Jesus’ favorite books; and it’s a book He used; and it was His great armory when He went to fight the devil: that’s where He got His weapons from; and we can preach that in such a way that it could have been preached in a Jewish synagogue, or we can preach it in such a way that recognizes that the great end of all of the Scriptures is the person and work of Christ, without doing any damage to the reality that we’re going to preach duty, and we’re going to reprove, and we’re going to correct, and we’re going to instruct in righteousness; but the ball’s never far from the post; and, the closer we get to know our Savior, and the more we prayerfully interact with the Word, the more we want it wrapping and wrapping around; and there are going to be certain texts we’re going to preach—the ball’s going to be wrapped all the way around the post, bless God!
Other times, it’s going to be a few inches further away; but it’s never going to be more than that string allows, because nothing in the Bible is ultimately divorced from the great, great, great truth that God was manifested in the flesh; and, brethren, that’s the truth that’s deposited to us uniquely as the church of God.
There are places, institutions around the world that you can go to and you can learn a lot of things that are true. There are philosophy classes you can learn about; and you can discern good philosophy from bad philosophy. There are places where you can, again, learn life lessons, and learn how to be manly and learn how to be a good husband, and how to raise good kids in a corrupt world; but, brethren, our message is a God Who became flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory; and may it be that hungry sinners and needy saints will find that truth is the bread and butter of our life together.
Well, let’s pray and ask God’s blessing.
Our Father, we thank You for the truth of Your Word; and we pray, Father, that none of us would be well-ordered restaurants devoid of food; but, Father, as we strive to order our lives according to Your Word, as we reverently study Your truth, so that our worship and our church government and everything else that we need is in accordance with Your truth, as we defend the truth against the lies of our society, may we not lose sight of the greatest of all truths, of that One Who is Himself truth; and we ask these things in His matchless Name. Amen.
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