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Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to invite you to
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Welcome to day five of our look through 1st Timothy 3 verses 14 to 16.

Today I love the way, I love the way that this chapter ends. It ends, as we've
talked about, integrity in our lives with where the focus has to be for
integrity to happen. It ends with a focus on the church and a focus on Jesus.

First, the focus on the church. Paul writes in verses 14 and 15, "Although I
hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that if I am
delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's
household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of
the truth. " Now, focus on that word foundation.

It is the foundation of the truth. What happens when a building has no
foundation? It collapses.

And God says you cannot make it in the Christian life without a foundation. And
that foundation is the church of the living God. It is God's household.

The idea there is God's family. A Christian without a church family is an
orphan. Now what is the church?

The church is a body. It's not a business. It's a body.

It's an organism, not an organization. It's a family, not an institution. And we
are part of that family.

And that family is also a foundation. It's a foundation for God's truth and
God's integrity in your daily life. Truth is not discovered out of thin air.

And truth is not discovered all by yourself. Truth is discovered out of God's
word. He's given it to us to show us His truth.

And truth is discovered in relationship. It is revealed in a faith community
called the church. If you think I'm just going to go sit up on a hill somewhere,
read the Bible, and I'm going to get all of God's truth that I need, you haven't
read the Bible yet.

Because the Bible says it is the church of the living God that's the pillar and
foundation of the church. It is God's household. It is the family of God.

Whenever I hear someone say they're going to try to live their faith out apart
from the church, I realize two things. I realize first of all they've probably
been hurt. They've probably been hurt by someone in a church, maybe a leader of
a church who has disappointed them, or a member of a church who has in some way
humiliated them, or in some way hurt them deeply.

We do that to each other as human beings. The church is filled with imperfect
human beings. I'm one of them.

So I realize that person has been hurt. But I also realize that that person has
allowed that hurt to go so deeply into their hearts that they're missing out on
God's greatest blessings. And they've cut themselves off from the foundation
that they need to live out God's truth.

And you wonder why you can't get rid of that bitterness. You wonder why you
can't get untracked in your Christian life. It's because you've allowed the hurt
to cut you off from the foundation, the foundation that you need.

You're never going to find a perfect church, never going to find one. Every
church that you find there are people who will hurt you, but you'll also find
people who will love you. You'll find people who are following Christ.

So you find that family that God has put you in and then you live the life
together, not looking to the other people in that church as perfect models, but
as fellow strugglers in this life of faith. That's the church. That's the pillar
and foundation of the church, of the truth.

Now, that's part of the focus. But then Paul says, let's amp it up a little bit.
Let's also focus on Jesus Christ, who is the head of the church.

And in verse 16, he says this, "Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is
great. He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, and was taken up
in glory. " That is a picture of Jesus Christ.

He talks about six things here, appeared in a body, vindicated by the Spirit.
Six things that give us a picture of who Jesus really is. Now, what do these six
things mean?

What's he talking about here? Let's walk through them very quickly. Appeared in
a body.

Well, we know that one. That happened in Bethlehem. Jesus Christ appeared in a
body.

He became a man at Bethlehem. And great is that mystery of godliness, Paul
starts by saying. The fact that God could become a man, is that a mystery to
you?

It certainly is to me. How could that happen? Only in the greatness of God.

But God can do anything. And so Jesus became a man. Now, by the way, Jesus was
sent by God into the world.

He became a man in the world. He's the only one that that's happened to. You and
I, when we're born, it's not like we came from heaven and we came down to earth
and we're born into a body.

When we are born, that's when our existence begins at the moment of conception.
But Jesus, he's always existed. He's always existed.

But there came a moment in time at Bethlehem where he became a baby. He became a
human being and he did that for you. He humbled himself to the point that he
became a man.

He did that for you because he loves you. And that birth, the fact that he
appeared in a body, that means that God is with me. He came to let us know that
he is with us.

He appeared in a body. The second thing of these six, Paul says he was
vindicated by the Spirit. Now, some people think that that refers to Jesus'
baptism where the Spirit came down and in coming down showed that Jesus was the
Son of God.

Many others think that this has to do with the resurrection of Christ, that by
God's Spirit, the power of God, Jesus was resurrected. And that's because the
word vindicated is so strongly used here. Jesus was put on a cross.

Jesus was killed, but he'd said that he would rise in three days. He had said
that he could not be killed. And he was vindicated in that resurrection.

He was shown to be who he really is. The Spirit showed it at his baptism by
coming down like a dove. And God also showed it at his resurrection by Jesus
being raised from the dead, vindicated by the Spirit.

He is seen by angels. Now, in one sense here, this means not just that angels
ministered to him, although that could be the meaning. I believe it has a deeper
meaning in that all of creation, both heaven and earth, both what was on earth
and also all the way into the heavens, saw what Jesus did.

Him coming to this earth, giving his life for us, being resurrected from the
grave, that was seen, that was noticed by all of creation because it affected
all of creation. That is the power of what Jesus did. Jesus was preached among
the nations.

That is the minister of the apostles to tell everybody the good news of who
Jesus really is. He is believed on in the world as the fifth of these six
things. That is the result of the preaching.

When somebody tells the good news, somebody believes the good news, and it
changes their life. And then he is taken up in glory. That's what happened in
Acts chapter 1 when Jesus was taken up before the disciples' eyes into the
heavens.

And now he's sitting at the right hand of God in glory. Now, I want you just to
notice here, if you're really thinking this through, that the order is
theological, not chronological. If you take a look, Jesus is taken up in glory
in Acts chapter 1, but then he's proclaimed and believed throughout the rest of
the book of Acts.

So what's last here actually comes first in the book of Acts. Whether it's first
in the book of Acts or last here, in both cases it's because it's the most
prominent, most preeminent thing to take note of. Taken up in glory.

I believe that's why it's last here. That's what you need to hang on to. You
want to live a motivated life of faith?

You want to live a life of integrity for the rest of your life? Don't try to do
it on your own power. Realize that Jesus Christ is sitting at God's right hand
in glory right now.

You want to live a motivated life of faith? Jesus is at the center. If you want
to live a life of faith the rest of your life, you've got to realize that the
church is at the center of your spiritual life.

The body of Christ. You're not living this life on your own. And you have to
realize that it is the body of Christ that is at the center.

And so when we talk about the church being at the center, we're saying Jesus is
at the center of the church. He's at the center of it all. When you want to live
a motivated life of faith, the number one question, strip away all the confusion
about this quality of life and what does this mean and how am I going to do
that?

Instead of drowning yourself with a lot of questions, focus on this one. Who is
at the center of my life right now? Is my desire for more money at the center?

Is this relationship that I'm hoping is going to give me happiness at the
center? And maybe it's a relationship you're hoping toward marriage. You should
have a lot of focus on that relationship.

But is it at the center of your life or is Jesus or maybe it's a relationship
that you know is wrong. But somehow later in life you think that's your only
excitement in life. And so you're starting to make that relationship, that
adulterous relationship, the center of your life.

Jesus is at the center. You see, whether it's good or whether it's evil, if you
put anything besides Jesus Christ at the center of your life, you're going to
miss this motivated life of faith. Now I don't know about you, but I got to work
every day to keep Jesus at the center.

It doesn't happen automatically. It happens through connection with him. So
let's talk to him right now.

And Jesus says we pray, we just ask that today, this day, we walk through moment
by moment, He helped me. He helped us to keep you at the center of our lives, of
our decisions, of our relationships, the center of our lives, the way we conduct
ourselves in our families, in our business, at our school, the center of our
lives. Jesus, we want you to be at the center.

We choose to trust you as the center of our lives and we choose to trust you in
your name, in your name, Jesus, amen. And next week we're going to be talking
together about 1 Timothy chapter 4, we're going to be focusing on the danger of
a lie and the importance of the truth. And for those of you who are walking
through life's healing choices right now, I just want to point out to you, I
hope you've seen as we walk through 1 Timothy 3, how it fits hand and glove with
everything that we're learning, all the choices that we're learning.

The commitment choice, I've got to be committed to Christ, I've got to keep
Christ at the center. We just talked about that today. Earlier this week we
talked about living with a clear conscience.

The choice to clear my conscience before God and before men, that's an important
part of living life's healing choices. It's all here in this life of integrity
that Paul talks about to his son in the faith, Timothy. And I hope you hear in
those words something that can motivate your life of faith in a new way.

If there is something in this chapter that will help you to get it, how I can
live the commitment choice, how I can live the hope choice, how I can live the
consecration before God's choice, how I can live out life's healing choices, if
there's something that helps you to get it, then go back and begin to live it.
Don't just say, "Well, I already went through that and I didn't really get it. "
Now God's got your attention, so you go back and you say, "All right, I'm going
to make that choice now.

" Because I don't know about you, I'm having to make life's healing choice for
the rest of my life. I have to go over it again and again and again. So when God
tells you, "Oh, here's something you should have done, here's something you
could do," go and do that now and watch what he does to change your life.