The Cornerstone

00:01 In your copies of the Scripture this morning, would you turn to 1 Timothy 3? 1 Timothy 3, begin reading at verse 8 through the end of the chapter. "Likewise, deacons must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money. 00:21 Holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience. But let these also be first tested, then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless. Likewise, their wives must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, faithful in all things. 00:41 Let deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. For those who have served well as deacons, obtain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus. These things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly. But if I am delayed, 01:00 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. And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifested in the flesh, 01:20 justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory." 01:42 We've entered the tunnels. We've walked under the Muslim Quarter. And now we're back at the hidden parts of the Western Wall. Looking at the Western Wall, we notice different kinds of construction. These are two different periods in the Western Wall. 02:03 Above us, these upper parts are Muslim renovation from 1,400 years ago. But from here, all the way until the actual bedrock of the valley, this is Jewish construction from 2,000 years ago. Notice at this beautiful frame. 02:24 These stones are aligned one near each other and one on top of the other, perfectly, symmetrically, with no cement in between to glue the stones together. This is what we call dry construction, kind of like Lego. And here, the largest stone found in the Temple Mount. 02:45 Its length is 45 feet long. That is longer than a bus. Its height, 12 feet high. And its depth inside, 14 feet, almost 600 tons. That is equivalent to almost 200 elephants. 03:06 And in a modern scale, 2,747 jumbo jets with the people and the luggage after shopping in Israel. That's heavy. And the big question is, how? How did someone carve a stone like this? How did they roll it here? How did they lift it so high up? 03:26 And how did they place it so neatly? Archaeologists, mathematicians, physicists today do not know how, with the lack of technology, they were able to move something so big. Call it mystery. In the year 70, when Titus destroys the temple, 03:46 his soldiers are standing above our heads and pushing stones down from the Western Wall, stone after stone, row after row, till they get to the biggest stone. They start carving into the stone. Notice you could see the bottom frame of the stone. But where's the upper frame? 04:05 It's gone. It was destroyed by the Romans. Luckily for us, instead of them breaking the stone, eventually, the stone broke them, leaving us a beautiful 2,000-year-old testimony. 04:25 That temple stone, as you heard, is 45 feet long, 12 feet tall, 14 feet wide, which weighs just under 600 tons, which, if you do that in pounds, is 1.2 million pounds. That thing's not going anywhere. 04:45 It is there to stay. And Christ is the cornerstone. He is the cornerstone of our faith. He is the foundation of our faith. "For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ." And then be careful how each one builds upon that cornerstone. And here in this passage of Scripture this morning, 05:05 we are told that the church is the living of the living God, is the pillar and ground of the truth. And so we want to look at that this morning in relationship to the church and its servants, the church and its foundation, and the church and its message. 05:28 Different people have different understandings of the church. This passage here calls it the house of God, the household of God. Other translations translate it, "Lest we think that this is about the building." It's more than just the building. And lest we think it's about the services that we have, it's more than the services. It's the behavior. 05:48 It's the conduct of the people that make up the church. He says that you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God. The Catholic view of the church is that the church is where the sacraments are administered by the priest. 06:06 The Protestant reformed view of the church is that it's where the sacraments are administered and the word of God is preached. The Anabaptist view of the church was all the above, where the ordinances are administered, where the word of God is preached. But they added one other defining feature, 06:26 and that is where Christian discipleship is maintained. You see, the Catholic view and the Protestant view, the reformed view, does not take into consideration that the church, being made up of believers, is responsible to live itself and to walk in the way of Christian discipleship. To be a Christian means to be a disciple. 06:48 That's conducting ourselves and behaving ourselves according to instruction of God, the God of the church in the church. It is to be a disciplined church characterized by sacrificial love under the authority of Jesus Christ. The church, number one, is made up of believers only. 07:08 Now, that is different than the state church in the Middle Ages. That's different than even in many Protestant churches and reformed churches today, where they baptize their babies and their infants and their we, small children, and they are a part of the church even though they've not been born again. 07:28 And then hopefully, someday, those children become grown up and take on the faith and are confirmed into the church. The Anabaptist view of the church and the biblical view of the church is that it is made up of believers, that an unbeliever dare not be taken into the message or into the membership of the church. And not that we can see the heart of every person. 07:49 And so we do possibly take in unbelievers, even though they give a good profession and bear the marks of a Christian. They do a good job of covering up the fact that they're unregenerate. But that is the exception, not the rule, that the church is made up of believers only, those who are accountable to walk with Christ. 08:12 The church is a, number two, the church is a discerning brotherhood, emphasis on discerning and on brotherhood, that we discern the word of God together, that we interpret the word of God in community, no private interpretation, 08:25 that we don't just sit in our ivory towers and just study the Scripture absent and apart from relationships in the body of Christ. We are a brotherhood. 08:39 We are, as Scripture says in the book of Ephesians, we are a temple built up of living stones upon the chief cornerstone and upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets and upon the foundation of the church. 08:57 We are then living stones planted and placed in the church of Jesus Christ to fill our part in that church. Number three, the church is a place for godly admonition, where there's a brotherhood. We admonish one another. We exhort one another. We encourage one another. We rebuke one another. 09:15 We share God's word with one another and expect a response to God's word as it is shared. Number four, the church is a place of forgiveness. These were all Anabaptist concepts. The church is a place for forgiveness, a place of rebuke and a place of repentance and a place of forgiveness, 09:35 that no matter where a person has come from, who they are, what they are, what they've been, when there's repentance and faith in Christ, there is forgiveness extended. And that is a place and part of the church, the church's responsibility to be a forgiving body, a forgiving family. But then fifth, 09:56 and this may be somewhat controversial, but the Anabaptists believe that the church must be an excluding community as well as an inclusive community. What do we mean by that? That it should be an excluding community is that those who are not disciples and who do not give evidence of living faith are to be excluded from the community. 10:18 And only those who give evidence of living faith in Jesus Christ are included. In our constitution, we say it like this: membership in this believers' church is limited to born-again persons of any race or color. You see, 10:36 race, color, nationality, social status, social standing. The church is to be inclusive of those who have named the name of Christ and give evidence of living, saving faith. But it is then also has a door that shuts out the world as best as we can and as best as we know how, 10:58 letting them come in through the door of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. So we ought to conduct ourselves, to behave ourselves in a certain way. And that word behave there or conduct, conduct ourselves, yourselves, means to move about in place. It has to be about our behavior, 11:19 about how we move in and out of each other's lives and how we live our life in the context of community, not just in relation to how we enter the church on a Sunday morning or whether or not we have balls or basketball hoops going on Sunday morning. By the way, we as a church, as a leadership, 11:38 have asked that on Sunday mornings, this be a church and not an athletic center. And so we don't like to see the balls out when there's people around that are fellowshipping and sharing God's word together. So we try to keep that to a minimum or nonexistent at all. But that's not exactly what he's talking about here, about behaving in church. 12:01 We don't like to see people sleeping in church, even though I've been guilty. I've been guilty of that, trying to struggle to stay awake. Not that the preaching is bad or that the singing is hard, too hard, but that the weariness of the flesh sometimes, and with different medical conditions, we struggle. It's not talking just about that. 12:21 What it is talking about is about behavior and conduct in the household of God and holding one another accountable for not just the services but our lifestyle and life commitments. 12:38 You see, we cannot expect God to be pleased with His household if we are not behaving properly in His household. And so he's telling Timothy that, "I want to teach you how to behave in church, in the body of Christ." And we see that as a key phrase here, 12:58 not only in this passage, in this chapter, but in the book of how we are to behave as believers. And so with the time that remains this morning, we want to look at these three sections in this passage that speak of the servants of the household, the foundation of the household, and the message of the household. 13:19 So first, we look at the servants of the household. We see verses one through about verse 13, speaking of the various servants of the household, the elders, the bishops, the elders, the deacons, and so on. 13:35 And so last time I preached, we look at verse one through seven as the qualifications for bishops and elders. And we talked about that word. The bishops and elders are those who had charge of the spiritual life of the congregation. Now, he refers to the deacons. Those are the servants who wait on tables. 13:55 By the way, in early Christianity, the word deacon meant to those who wait on tables. They are the ushers. 14:05 They are those who have charge of the mercy ministries of the church and of the material affairs of the church. And so one of the deacon's responsibility here is to be a servant responsible for caregiving for the physical needs of a congregation. 14:27 The word deacon and the office of deacon has been used in various ways at various times, not all of which have been helpful. In some settings, the deacons are the disciplinarians, where the bishop and the church sick the deacons on the errant and wayward. And if you see a deacon show up, that's big, big, big trouble, big trouble. 14:49 That's not the biblical role of a deacon. A deacon is in charge of the mercy ministries of the church. Neither is he make up the board, the entire board of deacons. Some churches have the board of deacons that are the administrative rulers of the church and authorities in the church that rule over the church. 15:08 That's not the role of a deacon, a deacon board. Neither is it primarily the role of the deacon to be a preacher, even though there are at least two illustrations in Scripture where the deacons became preachers almost by default. Stephen was used as a preacher and Philip was used as a preacher as an evangelist. 15:30 And we'll talk about that just briefly further on in the message. But their call was to care for widows and orphans, for the poor, for the needy, to handle the finances, sometimes great amounts of finances that were given in the church, especially in Acts chapter two and chapter four, where they had all things common. 15:49 They had a common purse. And it was a glorified, enlarged benevolence fund, which we have here at Living Water, which is to help meet the needs. But people would give large estates and sell their property and donate that to the deacon fund. And so they needed to be reverent, 16:10 not double-tongued, be consistent, not given to wine, not greedy for money. And so that was a specific call for deacons. So here we have the qualifications of these deacon servants. They are to be grave or reverent or worthy of respect. This speaks of the character of stability, 16:30 that a deacon is to be a stable man of God, not double-tongued, which has the idea of speaking out of both sides of one's mouth. It's to be double-tongued, to say one thing to one person, another thing to another person, one thing to one group, another thing to another group. No, this deacon is to be sincere. 16:51 It may also refer to loyalty, loyal to the church, loyal to the team, loyal to the things of God, the heart of God, being not double-minded or double-tongued. And then it says he's to be self-controlled, not given to much wine. We dealt with that issue in chapter three, 17:10 verses one through seven, when it came to the ministry, to the elders and bishops, self-control in relation to wine or any addictive substances, 17:22 either substances or thoughts or ideas or activities that would become addictive. And then not greedy for money would have the idea of not pursuing filthy lucre, 17:41 not being greedy, not being dishonest in their pursuit of work and working with money, that they would not be greedy or mistreating people to get dishonest gain, but that they would be faithful in their managerial abilities of finances. 18:03 They would be above reproach. Many has been the church that has been destroyed or nearly destroyed because of mismanagement and lack of proper handling of church funds. 18:16 And that's why we here at Living Water have some checks and balances, that there's not just one person overseeing the finances, but we have a committee of deacons as well as a treasurer, as well as the ministerial council, which does not get involved in the day-to-day operations and does not handle money themselves. 18:38 And so what he goes on to say here that they're to hold the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience, holding the deep hidden truths, not only good managers, but able to teach the truths of God with no hindrance, no hindrance of conscience, 18:55 no inconsistencies or a minimum of inconsistencies in our lives, not hypocritical or saying one thing, doing another, but that they would hold the mystery of the faith, the teachings, the revelation of the faith with a pure conscience, 19:14 knowing that they are right with God and with their fellow man. But let these also first be tested, then let them serve as deacons, being found blameless. So he says, when you're looking for a deacon, you look for those that are already deaconing. That's probably not the proper word for it or deaconing. 19:35 But you don't want to find a person, put him in a position, and then find out later that he is not gifted in that position. He doesn't have the qualifications, and he doesn't have the call for that specific, specified ministry. I thank God for our deacons. I think they deacon well. 19:54 And they are very much appreciated in the congregation here. And as they are tested, and then they serve as deacons, being found blameless. You see, the gospel is too important for any one individual to get in the way of its proclamation and its perpetuation. 20:15 The gospel is too important to be tampered with or to be maligned or evil spoken of because of a deacon or an elder or a bishop or their wives. And so we come to verse 11, and we find the wives of the servant leaders, the wives of the servant leaders. 20:34 Now, last time when we preached on the qualifications in verses one through seven, we did not get to the part about the wives. And so when you're looking for in two weeks to give a name for a minister, you want to pay attention to some qualifications for the sisters. Number one, 20:53 that they are worthy of respect or reverent. Same word here would have been used for their husbands. Worthy of respect, reverent, not malicious talkers. This is the negative and the positive. You have what they should be and what they should not be. They're worthy of respect. 21:11 They're reverent in the things of God and and and prudent in the in the things of handling the details of people's lives and of church life that that we, as in leadership, are oftentimes privy to, that if that information were misused, could be devastating in people's lives. They are not to be malicious talkers or gossips. 21:33 They are not slanderers. That means malicious gossips. They're to be self-controlled and trustworthy in all things, faithful, faithful in all things. That means you can trust them to make good decisions. You can trust them with information. You can trust them with wisdom. 21:53 You can trust them with being discreet and being 21:59 kind and benevolent and generous and trustworthy. You can also look at Titus chapter two, verses three through five. Now, this isn't specifically stated here in First Timothy, but it is over in Titus chapter two. 22:14 And if you want to look over there, you'll see some qualifications that should be found in the elder or bishop or deacon's wives. And these, again, are qualities that should be characteristic of every sister in the congregation, just like the men's qualifications should be characteristic of every man in the congregation. 22:34 That's what we strive for. That's what we're growing maturity for. Even so, this should be the qualifications of every woman, exemplifying the faith, personifying a biblical, godly womanhood and femininity. So in chapter two of Titus, verse three, 22:54 the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or, again, malicious gossips, not given to much wine, teachers of good things. And so there should be teachers of good things, whether teaching in a class or teaching in a mentoring session. 23:14 They need to be able to take the word of God and apply it to those situations as they deal with other sisters in the church. They need to be discreet. They need to be discreet. And verse five, that they be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, 23:35 that the word of God may not be blasphemed, teaching others to love their husbands and their children. Verse four, that they admonish the young women to love their husbands and to love their children and to be faithful, loyal, biblically prudent, 23:55 and embracing the characteristic of godly femininity. This is a great asset to a church leader and a great detriment when that is missing and absent. Back to our text in First Timothy, chapter three, we find the benefits. 24:14 The benefits of this in the deacons is that let the deacons be the husband of one wife. That's repeated there from a ministry standpoint, ruling their children and their own houses well. And so this is another qualification. 24:31 And the benefits of this is for those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith, which is in Christ Jesus. The benefits are that greater opportunities arise to minister the word of God, just like Philip and just like Stephen. 24:52 You also have greater opportunities to die for Christ like Stephen. You have greater opportunities to win the lost like Philip. As you faithfully use your gifts as the deacon faithfully uses their gifts, there are more opportunities developed to build the kingdom. It is not a step up in position, 25:11 but a step up in opportunities. And so these are the servants of the household, the bishops, the elders, the deacons, which, as we have noted before, are plural in the New Testament church, not just one, but several. 25:30 Then we look here in our passage this morning on the foundation of the household. And that's hence we come to our little video clip this morning on the foundation stone of the temple. He talks about us as being a temple in other passages, a temple built up of living stones to be a dwelling place of God by the Spirit. 25:52 And so he says, "I want you to know that the church expects a certain manner and level of behavior of its members, 26:01 and it also expects a representation of of stability and godliness and holiness as it represents the living God." We see in Ephesians chapter two, verse 20, that we are, as a church, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, 26:23 Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, by whom the whole temple fitly joins together and the rock of the temple. Here is what we could use as an illustration. This immovable rock, the teaching of the apostles and prophets, 26:44 the Lordship of Jesus Christ being built up on that teaching, on that immovable foundation of Christ. As I mentioned, that stone, almost 600 tons, 1.2 million pounds. I think it'd be safe to say that that stone, 27:04 apart from a miracle and a move of God, is not going anywhere. It hasn't gone anywhere for 2000 years, a 1.0 million pound stone. It's not going anywhere. It's an example of the church of Jesus Christ. Yes, it's an example of Christ. 27:23 Yes, it's an example of of the prophets and apostles and prophets and and of the word of God. And yes, it is an example of the stability and steadfastness of the church of Jesus Christ. We are the pillar and the ground of the truth. 27:44 Today, when we think of the Christian faith, we see it wavering. It's wavering. 27:50 The Catholic Church, although we would not consider the Catholic Church a faithful church theologically or even in practice, having various unbiblical things about it, like a pope and a hierarchy of leadership and a false view of salvation and of the sacraments and so on. 28:11 But one thing that can be said for the Catholic Church, it has been a stable force. It has been a stabilizing force in American culture and in many cultures around the world. But even now, you see the Catholic Church wavering. If you pay any attention to what the pope comes out with every so often, 28:31 the pope is the leader of the church of Rome and is the vicar of Christ, sits in the seat of Christ, as they believe. And that is wavering. It's wavering. 28:45 The pope is issuing things gradually to try to implement change in doctrine and in practice to make the church more inclusive and to get rid of some of the foundational things of marriage and family and morality and so on in the Catholic Church. 29:05 The evangelical church is wavering. You have men like Andy Stanley who are wavering. You have other men, younger pastors, who are wavering in their belief in the scriptures. 29:17 Andy Stanley said a number of years ago that we need to detach the New Testament from the Old Testament, that there's very little value in the Old Testament. It's a bunch of stories that are nice stories, but they really have nothing to do with our lives. Well, you can't understand the New Testament without understanding the Old Testament. 29:37 So he wants to divorce the New Testament and the Old Testament to say part of God's word is not helpful, is not beneficial. But that's not all. He came through recently with a a conference on gay and lesbian relationships and on LGBTQ+ relationships and sexual identity. 29:58 And on his program, he had two practicing men who were in a same-sex "marriage." We don't consider that marriage, but in a relationship. 30:12 And they were part of the program to help parents know how to relate to their LGBTQ children and so on. And so we see the wavering of the evangelical movement. Many people are questioning the doctrine of hell. They're questioning the doctrine of the Trinity. 30:32 They're questioning this and questioning that. Deconstruction is the name of the game, is the order of the day with many young ministers and pastors and churchmen and Christians. Deconstruct. Take a... Don't... 30:47 In other words, this this this immovable foundation is being chipped away so that it's more easily moved. It's a chipping away. It's a constant chipping away. There's almost every doctrine known to the Christian church historically and biblically are being challenged, 31:07 are being threatened, are being chipped away at today in the name of evangelicalism. The evangelical church is in trouble. And may I say the Mennonite church is in trouble. Not just the liberal Mennonite church, which we often think about here being here in a liberal Mecca of Mennonitism in Goshen, Indiana. 31:27 We're in trouble. The Mennonite church... I remember when the Mennonite church was going to divide between... Well, they were going to unite between the General Conference Mennonites and what was called the Old Mennonites or the Mennonite church. And they were going to take two denominations and merge them into one. 31:47 And I remember some who were in the know at that time said that there could easily be three churches develop instead of two. There would be the General Conference. There would be the Mennonite church. They would divide or they would join into one. And then the groups that didn't like that from both original groups would form their own groups. 32:06 And so instead of two, you'd have three. What no one anticipated, that instead of three, the Mennonite church has splintered every which direction you can imagine. They're in trouble. They're in trouble. But lest we cast stones at them, our own conservative Anabaptist churches are in trouble. 32:27 Because one of the things that has happened is that we have emphasized orthopraxy, which is the practice of Christian living, discipleship. But we have not known much about orthodoxy, which is the practice of Christian doctrine, biblical doctrine. And in many Anabaptist circles, 32:47 orthopraxy, right living, moral living, Christian living has trumped orthodoxy, which is biblical belief. Well, when you have biblical practice without biblical belief, what happens over time? The practice erodes. 33:08 It changes. It becomes formalized or it becomes formalized and without good foundation, without good apologetics. And so the next generation or two come along and say, "Well, that doesn't have a good apologetic. That doesn't make any sense." And they change the practice of Christianity and or it just becomes just a moral code, 33:30 which has happened in many of our conservative Anabaptist churches. What I argue for and plead for, not argue, but plead, but I plead for and beseech is that orthopraxy and orthodoxy come together and build on each other and complement each other so that neither one is ever discarded. 33:51 But even in our conservative Anabaptist circles, there are people that are questioning this, questioning that. They're chipping away, chipping away, chipping away, chipping away at this foundation stone. 34:05 And the larger church, who we can have a lot to say about that, there was a Pacific Presbyterian Church USA pastor. Her name was Rebecca Todd Peters. In her bio, she is considered an active Presbyterian Church USA pastor for over 25 years. 34:27 She represents the denomination as a member of the Faith and Order Standing Commission of the World Council of Churches. That ought to give some indication of where she's at theologically. She's also listed as a member of Planned Parenthood's Clergy Advocacy Board. 34:42 That should tell the rest of the story, which supports access to safe legal abortions and other sexual and reproductive healthcare according to their own statements. She recently made this statement condemning the pro-life movement in evangelicalism. She said, 35:02 "I too feel that I am known by God in these ways. As a woman who has born two children, I can affirm that I felt something sacred happening in my gestating body during those pregnancies. 35:17 I can also attest that I felt God's presence with me as I made the decision to end two pregnancies, and I felt no guilt, no shame, no sin." What a shame. Foundations shaking, chipping away, chipping away, chipping away. 35:40 And yet 35:43 this says that the household of God is firm. It's stable. It does not shift according to the times. It maintains the gospel message, as we'll see in just a few moments. There are foundational teachings that if the church loses those teachings, 36:04 they are lost forever because nobody else is defending them. Biblical creation, seven-day creation, it's the church that's defending that. LGBTQ identities, helping people find their identity as men and women, not third, fourth, 36:25 tenth, twentieth gender identity, but helping cut through the confusion. It's the church that's defending that. And if the church caves to no longer defend what is moral and what is needed and necessary for human flourishing, there's nobody else left to do it. The government's not doing it. 36:46 The conservative movement of the government won't do it if it gets too much in trouble, if it gets too heated. It's the church. It's those who believe in the word of God that hold these truths timeless and without controversy and without compromise. 37:09 The true church of Jesus Christ cannot be toppled or destroyed. It is a pillar to hold up sound, to hold up the kingdom of God, to hold up the household of faith, and not just to hold it up, but to display it, which is the point of all of this, 37:28 is to display the glory of Christ. With precision, accuracy, and great care, that stone that we saw this morning was put in place. How in the world it ever got put there baffles all of the experts' minds. But it's there. 37:49 God enabled them to put it there. And so is his word. It's here. How it got here, but it's here. And it is non-negotiable. And then finally, we look at verse 16 this morning, the message of the household. 38:10 This is the exciting part. We looked at the servants of the household. We looked at the foundation of the household. Now we look at the message of the household. And what is the message of the household? Is it morality? Well, it includes that. Is it sound doctrine? It includes that. 38:29 Is it good church administration? Well, that might be important to the household of God. But what is the overall foundational and overarching message of the church is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Christ of the gospel. 38:49 Jesus is the message. Jesus is the point. We do not just give information about the person of Christ. We give Christ. We have been given the revelation of Christ. He calls this a great mystery, a great mystery. 39:09 The mystery is something that was hidden in the past that is now revealed. You've heard me say that in the past. It is something that was hidden in the past and is now revealed. 39:19 Colossians 2:2 says, "To reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ." Who is he talking about here? God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, 39:38 seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up in glory. He's talking about Christ. Some of the translations will use the term God was manifest in the flesh. 39:51 Others, building off the term godliness, the mystery of godliness, will use the term who was manifest in the flesh or which was manifest in the flesh. But what he's talking about here is the second person of the Trinity who is revealed in the man, Jesus Christ. 40:08 It should not surprise us that Jesus Christ did not 40:16 begin to exist in Bethlehem. We know that. He did not begin to exist in Bethlehem. He began, or even in Mary's womb, he began to exist as a man, but from eternity past, he was one with the Father, coexistent with the Father and the Spirit, 40:37 the Holy Spirit, as the eternal Son of God, Son of the Most High. And it was him that was manifested in the flesh. He appeared in the flesh. He was vindicated by the Spirit, justified in the Spirit. He was raised from the dead by the power of the Spirit as a proof of his identity. 40:58 Everything that he said was true, and it was proven true when God raised him from the dead and established as true all of the truth claims of Jesus Christ. He was seen by angels. I think this could speak of his pre-existence. He was seen in the heavenly realms by the angels. 41:20 He was seen on the earth by the angels. He was seen in the nether regions of the earth, the inner part of the earth when he took captivity captive. He made a display of the demons and of the unholy angels, the devils. 41:40 They saw him. They recognized him. They knew who he was, and they identified him. He was preached and proclaimed and announced among the nations. We could talk about this morning, which we won't take time to, about the nature of preaching and the part of preaching in the proclamation of the gospel. 42:02 There's a point for a place for discussion. There's a place for interaction in the Sunday school class. But all the sermons in the book of Acts were at their best and at their biblical interpretation when they were proclaiming the message of Christ. And he was believed on in the world, 42:22 throughout the world, around the world. He was declared the creator, the creature, the criminal, the cross, and the crown. And he was taken up to glory. This covers his whole incarnation, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension. 42:43 And this is the Jesus we preach. And the man of God, the servant of God, the church of God, the message of God must be about Christ and him alone in the midst of all of the other things that pertain. Christ is the central feature of our message. 43:07 And our lives must reflect that as a testimony to the unchanging truth of the word of God. 43:16 Our lives must reflect this unchanging truth to consistently hold to it and to model the beauty of Christ in our experience, that we would grow and become Christ-like so that those who look at this stone, who look at this house, 43:33 who look at this household may see the glory of Jesus Christ shining through our experience of Christ and calling them to experience Christ as well. As I pondered on this message this morning, was praying about it, I wanted to ask the question, 43:53 what is the point of this whole thing this morning, these last 45 minutes? What is the point? The point is the unchanging stability of the church, its servants, and its message to proclaim Christ and model the gospel. 44:15 That's the point. Do we change? Yes, we change methods at times. There was a time when we would just come to church and no one would speak. There'd be no testimonies. There'd be no Sunday school. There'd be nothing. There'd be no not much singing. It was just what it was. We change methods at times. 44:34 There was a time when we had no musical instruments in church. There was a time when we did things a specific way that are ways of application and process, but not of message. So the applications, the process, the administration may change, 44:54 but the message dare not change ever. Are you with me this morning? You don't sound very convinced. Are you with me this morning? Great is the mystery of godliness. 45:08 Without controversy, would you stand this morning as we read this verse together? Profess it, confess it, believe it, receive it, let it change you. God was manifest in the flesh. Say it. 45:27 God was manifest in the flesh. 45:30 Justified in the Spirit. 45:32 Justified in the Spirit. 45:34 Seen by angels. 45:36 Seen by angels. 45:37 Preached among the Gentiles. 45:40 Preached among the Gentiles. 45:41 Believed on in the world. 45:44 Believed on in the world. 45:46 Received up in glory. 45:48 Received up in glory. 45:51 You just recited one of the most early hymns of the early church. This was a hymn in the early church. You just professed it as that immovable truth of God and the incarnation and of Christ. Father, thank you for this time together this morning. 46:13 Let us be faithful. Let us not waver. Let us not be fearful. Let us not be apprehensive. Let us not be intimidated by the noise of the world. Let us stand firm in Christ and Christ alone. 46:34 And may all that we believe and teach and practice, may it be flowing from Christ and never replacing Christ. And so, Lord, would you dismiss us this morning with your blessing, with your anointing, and with great joy. In Jesus' name, amen.