Dear friends, we have been considering from the Word of God the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ, the reason being because of the blessing of God in addition to our numbers as members and also various folk coming in from different backgrounds. And we have felt, the elders felt, that it is important that we would go back, study what the Scripture teaches about the Church, And the last two times I sought to explain what happens in our gatherings. I spoke about the gathered church and tried to deal with some very, very practical matters that normally we wouldn't deal with in this kind of a context. Sometimes such things would be more helpful to be spoken of in a midweek Bible study. But as there are larger number on the Lord's Day, I felt that we needed to discuss these things. But today we want us this evening to think about not just the gathering of the church, but descriptions that the Word of God teaches us and shows us of the New Testament church, the descriptions of the church. That's what we want to think about, which I want to expound for you certain passages from the Word of God, explain the words to you, and then hopefully by God's grace to apply that. But one thing must be clear in our minds that God has given us a blueprint, a pattern for the church of Christ. It's not just haphazardly thinking, well, this works in the business world, this works in the political world, then we will apply these things to the church as well. That is always disastrous when we apply business ideas to the church because we have to remember the church of Jesus Christ is governed by Him and He sends the Holy Spirit to apply His word to us and He guides us. He is the one who empowers us. But the design of the church is by God Himself. And this pattern, I must say, is not found in simply looking up church history. It's not found in the church fathers. It's not found amongst the Waldenses or the Lollards or the Anabaptists or the Lutherans or the Anglicans or the Presbyterians or the Genevans or the Brethren or the Pentecostals or the Charismatics or the Baptists or whatever. We have to go to the scriptures. for all of these things. We have to say, what does the Scripture say about these things? We can learn much from history, and yet we must, in all of the things we do in the government of the church, we have to say, what says the Scripture? The church of Jesus Christ is called in the passages that we read together from 1 Timothy 3 and 1 Peter 2, it is called the house of God, the pillar and the ground of the truth. And Peter says it is called a spiritual house. Those are the things we want to think about this evening in the time that we have. The apostle says in first Timothy three and verse 15 again, but if I tarry long that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth. That's what I want to deal with first of all, and then go to the first Peter passage. So first we want to think about those words of the apostle that And it's a functional passage, overarching passage of our series of studies. So the church is here described first of all as the house of God, the house of God. Under the Mosaic law, the law of Moses, the house of God was the tabernacle. The tabernacle is referred to as the house of God. For example, in 1 Chronicles 6, verse 48, we have these words, the Levites were appointed unto all manner of service. And then it says of the tabernacle or the tent of the house of God. Later on, the temple is referred to the temple in Jerusalem. It was referred to as the house of God as well. The Lord Jesus Christ referred to it as the house of prayer, that his father's house, God's house has been made a den of thieves. What is the house of God now? The house of God is the church of the living God. It's the people of God. And in the context of 1 Timothy 3, verse 15, the house of God clearly refers to the assembly with elders and deacons, the well-ordered church. This is not a reference to the universal church, the universal body of Jesus Christ. Nor does it refer to merely a gathering of a people, maybe a gathering of a people for a Bible study or a prayer meeting. That's not what is referred to here. And sometimes it is, people in their thinking, they think, well, since there are two or three gathered together here, then we have a church. That's not it, that's not it. Sometimes it was, in my foolishness, in my university days, gathering together with the student union group, we thought, well, we are a church. We can have the Lord's Supper and all sorts of other things. What a nonsense, how foolish we were. And yet the Lord has said, this is how a church, a local church, an assembly of the saints, it has to be ordered. It is called the church of God. It is called the house of God. That means the church belongs to the Lord. That's a wonderful thing. It's a freeing thing. It's not my church. It's not your church. It's the Lord's church. That means He will take care of us. He will lead us. He will guide us. And this is repeated again and again to emphasize to the Lord's people, the Lord is in control. The Lord is sovereign over all of these things. The church is God's house means that the church is the most, we could say, the famous and important house on earth. It's the most important house on earth is the church of the living God. The most famous, the most renowned are not the famous people in this world, the entertainers, the politicians and so on, but the Lord's people. They're precious to Him. They are the apple of His eye, the Lord says. And again, that the church is God's house, it means that the church is only for God's children. It is only for God's children. It is necessary to be born again, to be qualified, to be a member of the church of Jesus Christ. And we have example after example in the Word of God that those who professed faith and showed the marks of being a child of God, they were added to the church. You see this on the day of Pentecost in Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2, you see that. And you see this is where haste and carelessness in this is the most fundamental cause of apostasy and compromise. If you rush into simply accepting someone, oh, so-and-so has been saved. I read something yesterday morning, somebody online putting, some open-air preacher put, today we had three people saved. How do they know? We could say, it would be better to say, three people made profession of faith. That's a better way to say it. But if we hasten these things, We can fall into all kinds of things and give false assurances to people as well. You see, dear friends, the church is always one generation away from spiritual destruction if the door is not guarded by the principles of a regenerate church membership. And so we don't have this two-tier membership that these are, as some would have it, but these are people under a sort of a covenant, they are respectful, they are law-abiding people, God-fearing people. And so we make them, give them that tier of membership within the church, and then there are these who are born-again believers. But there are churches who have this kind of two-tier membership. They would often say, well, these are covenant children, And these are the believing and born again parents. No, the church's membership is made up of those who are true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and whose lives show it. You see, the church is the restoration of man's relationship with God through redemption. It is better than Eden. And the Lord Jesus Christ is not going to lose his true people. The sheep of the Lord Jesus Christ will not be lost, being gathered in. And something else I must move on is that the fact that it is called God's house, it means that the church is a family. It is God's house. It's a family of the Lord. The church is where the people of God are loved. Loved by Him and loved by one another. That's how it should be. They're protected by the Lord. They're protected by the Lord's people. They're nurtured. They're educated. They're developed. They're disciplined. They're discipled. It is where they learn to know the Father through the Son, by the work of the Holy Spirit. It is where they learn the will of the Father. It is the nursery for spiritual infants and the training school for spiritual warriors. That's what the house is of the Lord's people and this family who are being trained and educated and being armed to go out into this world to be faithful and to make an impact for Jesus Christ, the head of the church. It is the house of God. And it says it's God's house. It means that the church is where We could say God's business is conducted. God's work is conducted. It's not the world's work. It's the headquarter, we could say, of world evangelism. The church should be at the center of every believer's life. Is this congregation, is our gatherings, is the cause of the Lord the center of your life? How can I say that I love and honor God if I don't love His people, His house, in the sense of being committed and engaged and faithful to it. That the church is God's house, it means the church also is to operate by God's laws, not by man's laws. We must, it is like us in your own home. You're not governed by your neighbor's laws, what time they get up, when they have their breakfast, what do they do, the way they train up their children. No, you have your own laws. And the church of the living God has God's laws to govern it. And we must, that's why the apostle, he says about behaving themselves. in verse 15, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God. We must behave ourselves by His rules. You see, man has never had the authority to make a different kind of church than the church that is revealed in Scripture. And so in the church, nothing is insignificant. In the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, everything has been designed by the Lord. And you have to say, why has God said this? Why has God said that about this? Everything must be considered carefully and prayerfully and weighed by God's word. So, and to operate the church by human thinking and by tradition is a great evil. It is a great evil and it is no small thing. So we don't want just to have this sort of say, well, this is how we do it here in this church. This is what we like to do. No, that has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with you. It's not the fact that, well, this is what the British do. This is what the Americans do. This is what the Australians do. This is what the Africans do. These people do it like this because they are their constitution. This is what the Middle Easterns do. Well, yes, of course, there are certain things that affects us in some ways, but in terms of the structure and the order of things, dear friends, we want a biblical church. And then this is written here that we must learn. And this is first of all written to the church leaders, to the church elders. This is written to Timothy, who was the pastor of that church. The elders are responsible to make sure that God's will is done in the church. And they will give an account. Myself and our brother John Hope will have to give an account one day. And that really causes me to have great fear in my bones and in my heart. We have to give an account to God for how things are done, how things are conducted. It's the church of the living God. It's not just the church of God, but it's the church of the living God. The Lord is the true and the living God, as opposed to the dead gods of the heathen. Living, we could say, encompasses all that God is. God is alive. His people are to be alive. The church is the possession of this living God who is the source and the sustainer of all life. He's omnipotent. He's omniscient. He's omnipresent. He's eternal, unchanging. He is unconquerable. He is utterly trustworthy. And God's great work, we could say God's big work on earth is now the church. He's building his people. He's causing them to be ready. The church is called the pillar pillar and the ground of the truth. Truth is the church's chief business. That's so important my friends. We have to make sure what is preached from the pulpit is the truth. It's not half truth. It's not something that is borrowed from the world. It's not something that is done to manipulate people and make people to think Nothing is more important and more valuable than truth in this dark world of lies. And the world is lying in wickedness, the scripture says. Anything that you listen to, let God be true, the scripture says, and every man a liar. And so the information that you get on my phone on a daily basis, it pings. The latest news. that comes and you have to always ask yourself, is this true? Is this true? Can I wholeheartedly believe what I am reading here? There's always a question mark over the things that we read, that we are pumped every day by the media. If you listen to the BBC, you have to underline everything and put a question mark at the end of every sentence they give. Is it really true? But, because they already have said on their website, they say what they are about, what they are trying to influence us with. But my friends, you don't do that with the Word of God. Everything you read, every sentence, every expression, it is true. That's why people don't like it. People love to hear lies. People love to hear things that would make them feel better. But it's the truth of God that frees men and women. The truth is God's word. The Lord Jesus Christ says, thy word is truth. That's it. It's definite. It's as if he's saying nothing else is true in comparison to thy word. Thy word is truth. And then the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, he is the truth. I am the truth, he says. And it says here that in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the ground of the truth. Let me explain those words. And I begin with the word ground. It refers to the foundation. And the pillar refers to the proclamation. Being the pillar is the chief work of the church. So it's mentioned first in this verse. But what good is it? for the church to be the foundation of the truth if it is not also the pillar of the truth to broadcast the truth to the needy sinners. You see, Bible study and more Bible study, reading, hearing sermons, and all of these kinds of things, without evangelism and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is not God's will. But since in practice, the ground must precede the pillar. You don't make a pillar and then make the ground underneath it afterwards, the foundations afterwards. So since the ground must come first, I'll discuss it first. The church is the ground of the truth. How is that? By possessing the truth. By possessing the truth. That's what the ground means. The apostles and the prophets delivered the truth to the churches, and the churches received the truth. Again and again, in the word of God, you see that, you hear that they received it. They received the word of God. All of that is telling you that the foundation of the church is being built. God is laying a deep foundation of the church. This is what we read, for example, in 1 Thessalonians 2 and verse 13. The apostle says, ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe. So you received it. This is the ground of everything else that we do is a reception of the word of God. Christ promised that he would send the Holy Spirit, which would guide the apostles into all truth. That's what the Lord Jesus said in John 16. And we see these things happening. The way the apostle Paul, for example, says in 1 Corinthians 15, in 1 Corinthians 11, He says that he received the gospel from Christ. He received this word about the Lord's Supper and the instructions of it from Christ himself. It wasn't from me. It was from the Lord. So he's laying down the foundation, the groundwork. And so the New Testament church is where every person must come who wants to find the truth. People, when they come in, they would know that they're not hearing some stories, they're not going to come and be entertained with jokes and such things, or weak spineless kind of preaching. No, no, they're coming to hear the truth. It's a matter of life and death to them. They're not going to hear it outside, they must hear it in here. And dear friends, not to the great religions, the great universities, the great philosophers, the great scientists, and the United Nations that people come for truth, but when they come in here, they must hear the truth. And that's why we are responsible to hold the truth, preach the truth. The church is the ground of truth by preserving the truth. That's another thing, by preserving the truth. The church is tasked with preserving the Bible, the Word of God. The complete canon of scripture has been placed into the hands of the churches to be kept, to be modified, not to be changed. Not to be paraphrased and thought, well, if we like this way, we will paraphrase it in this way. And if we say, well, it says here something that is really, we don't like it. It says women have to keep silent. Or it says men are to do this, and it says women are to do that. Well, why not just change it to people? People. And so there are Bibles who do that. Yet it is the responsibility of the churches to make sure that the Bible is preserved. It is to be passed on from generation to generation by being committed to faithful men, the Apostle says. In 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 2, Paul says to Timothy this, and the things that thou hast heard of me, so there are words that he heard. It's the word of God. The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also." So what did he hear? The things that he has written. And he passes it on. And the churches were to read the scriptures, read these epistles to the other churches and pass it on. Each generation is to be taught to observe all things that Christ has commanded. Everything is important. There is this view that, well, this is a primary importance. This is a secondary importance. Really, the Bible doesn't talk about that. The Bible doesn't say, well, this is really important for you to keep. But these other things, really, you don't have to. It's up to you. You decide. That's not the way the Bible speaks. Yes, the way I see it is that there are certain things in relation to salvation. We must not have any doubt about it. It must be firmly in our hearts. We must believe it firmly. But then there are other things that are not in relation to salvation. And Christians throughout history have struggled to understand those things. But in terms of salvation, God has made it very, very clear, absolutely clear. And so we get this, all of the commands of Christ that we are to teach and preach and live according and disciple people by, it's all in the scriptures. The whole canon, the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. The Old Testament of course was the oracles of God preserved by Israel. mainly by the Levites. And you know how the Jewish Mazarites, the group, the scribes who were called the Mazarites, they kept every jot and tittle. They counted every letter on a page as they were writing it by hand. And if they made a mistake, they destroyed the whole page or the whole book. The churches should care about God's Word like that. We don't want any part of it to be missed. We want all of it to be preached. Let's move on. The church is the ground of the truth by understanding the truth. By understanding the truth. It's not enough. We all have Bibles, don't we? To my shame, I have some Bibles that have dust in them. I don't refer to them. It's there. Extra ones. My problem is every time I find one in some bookshop, I say, oh, this is a good one. It's a good price. I'll buy it for someone else. And so it piles up. So we need to give them away. But we have Bible 7, ample Bibles. But it's not enough for them to be piled up in our bookshelves. They must be taken hold of and they must be understood So the ground of truth is referenced to the understanding of the truth. So it's not enough for us to possess the Word of God. It must be understood by us. And the Lord has promised that He will lead us. He will teach us His ways. So the church should not merely support, we could say, a Bible college or to be an institute, but by itself it is like a Bible school, learning and being taught. the things of God. We are interested to understand what the scripture teaches. We should be all the students of the word of God because we need to understand it. As a church, we need to understand it. Sometimes it is that you might need to listen to a sermon again and again. Sometimes it is on a certain subject, you must come and ask, well, I don't really understand this matter. We have a library full of helpful commentaries and so on. We need to understand the truth. So make use of all the things that we have. Let me move on. The church is the ground of the truth by defending the truth, by defending the truth. You read the whole epistle of Jude. In Jude verse 3, we read this, earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. We must do that. Earnestly content. It's a serious matter. It's a matter of life and death for us. Is it? Really? Or we would say, well, really, I don't really need to earnestly content for that. That was something that happened in the Reformation time. That was something that John Wycliffe and William Tyndale did, that kind of a thing. We've moved on now. We don't need to do that. Don't leave it for someone else to earnestly content. As a people, we need to do that. Because there are many enemies of the truth. No position can be maintained without constant indoctrination and an aggressive defense. You are being indoctrinated right now by the word of God. The church is an indoctrination center, we could say. That is oftentimes thought of as a negative thing, but it's a positive thing. You're receiving doctrine. The world has its own indoctrination centers, but the church is that school of Christ being taught the doctrines that are true and right, and we must defend it, dear friends, and it must be maintained. You see, because there are so many enemies we must aggressively defend it. It is said that, and I quote, no position can be maintained without a campaign. It's like a castle being attacked from every side. If the defenders do not watch out, watch one of the walls as it were, or towers, it will be taken from that side. So the full Bible faith is the church's castle, and each doctrine of the faith is assailed and attacked by the doctrines of the devils, the Bible says, in 1 Timothy 4 and verse 1. It says this, Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits. We're listening to these things. and doctrines of devils. And next week, on Saturday, we are having the Bible League Trust meeting here at three o'clock. But why was that formed? And our brother will come and speak about it. It was formed for the defense of the Word of God and the things that they published was to do with that. It came about after Charles Haddon Spurgeon After his passing, his friends gathered together and said, we must continue the work of the defense of the word of God and to encourage others to study it and to hold on to it. So it must be defended. It must be taken to our hearts. The truth must be so well-educated or the church must be so well-educated. In Bible truth, that it can maintain the truth against every error. We need discernment. We need to pray for discernment. But also the church is the ground of the truth by serious Christian living, by serious Christian living. You see, we can have all of the right things. We can have all of the right doctrines and say, well, we are reformed, and so on. But we need the life as well. We need the actual life, a vibrant life, a winsome life, a genuine life. That follows the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, doctrinal orthodoxy is not enough. The truth must be demonstrated. Think about some of the verses that I want you to consider. That living blameless lives is necessary as lights in the world. For example, in Philippians chapter two and verse 14, we read this. Do all things without murmurings and disputings, that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world. And in verse 14, it describes the church as the ground of the truth. And in verse 15, it describes the church as the pillar of the truth. And the same kind of a theme runs through other passages of the word of God. You take Titus, you read through Titus, you will find the same kind of thing. Godly living is emphasized as well as right doctrine. It speaks about living in a way that becomes sound doctrine. It's agreeable to sound doctrine in Titus 2 and verse 1. Every category of Christian is named. It talks about aged men, aged women, young men, young women, and servants. All are given their instruction about good Christian living that would proclaim the gospel, that would demonstrate the truth and the doctrine of the Bible. You have to take those things to heart and think, am I living like this? The church is also the ground of the truth by discipline, which keeps the light of the gospel pure. We see that in 1 Corinthians 5 and verses 6 through to 8. The church that pleases God is likened to a sort of a pure loaf of unleavened bread. And that requires discipline. If the church members live wicked lives and inconsistent lives and they aren't disciplined, the church's light becomes very corrupt. Isn't that what we see in the mainline denominations, the Church of England and so on? People see wickedness goes on and nothing is done about these things. So the light of it becomes dim and corrupt. The world can't see the pure truth about Christ in that situation. You think of people who claim a lot of things and yet they don't pay their rent, they don't pay their debts, they are cutting corners and all of these kinds of things at workplace. People can't trust them. They come in late, they go home early. And all of these things we are telling people. The scripture says that we are epistles read of all men. And our time has passed now. I think I will stop here because we haven't even started on the pillar of the truth, let alone first Peter. So come back next week. But may God help us. There is a lot to chew on, as it were. There are a lot to think about here. What kind of a people are we? What a wonderful word God has given to us. What a savior we have that who owns us, who's taking control of us, who says, I will be your head. I will guide you. I will lead you. I will send you a book that is all true. And I will teach you my own ways. I will protect you. I will lead you safely. I will be the captain of your salvation and I'll lead you safely to the end. May the Lord help us to be faithful to such a Savior and to live for Him joyfully. Are you a joyful Christian? I think all of these things, we can be oftentimes very miserable Christians. And the doctrines that we hold to, we hold it begrudgingly. We think, oh, I believe in the sovereignty of God. Look at what God has done to me. Look at what kind of a family I've been brought up in. Look at this and look at that and so on. And as Englishmen, we would say, look at the weather and the cloud and so on. But if we believe in the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, then let us give thanks to God for every benefit that He has given. The troubles that we see, we say, I have a sovereign God. I can bring this matter to Him in prayer. I can seek Him. And so he hears me, and if this is happening to me and it is painful, this cancer is growing. And as I heard a brother, a Christian minister said, my wife's tumor has come back again. It is growing rapidly. And yet he says, but all of these things are there so that we might glorify God. That's the response, a joyful response. We are not happy about these things in one sense, but we can still glorify God in them. So dear friends, I trust that these things will encourage you and help you to see what a privileged people we are. We are not like the world who, and I feel so sad, I think of family members. All they have is the things of this world. They don't have the Bible. They don't read it. They're not interested in it. All they're hearing are lies and and watered down truth and all kinds of things that is not helping them. And you think, but we have the Word of God, we have a Heavenly Father, we have a Savior, the Holy Spirit, a God who hears us. But what do they do? They're praying to nothing. They're praying to wood, hay and stubble of this world. Just doing their best. But my friends, we have a savior then. To him we give all the praise and glory. Let us humble ourselves then in prayer.