No More Playing Church

1 Timothy 3:14-15

Introduction:

I love the church, I love everything about the church

I grew up in a church in Conway

-Getha Lee Floyd

-Deacon George Parker

We used to play church…and I wouldn’t play if I couldn’t be the preacher. I would get my grandmama’s big bible and try to find the parts in it that my Pastor was reading.

But i’ve been walking with the Lord almost 30 years and I don’t have to play church anymore.

I’ve got my own testimony

I’ve had enough sickness that God has brought me through, that I don’t have to tell nobody else story

I’ve had enough tears that God has had to dry up that I don’t have

I’ve stopped by this evening to suggest, that a lot of us, are still playing church.

In the text Paul is writing to young Timothy and the leaders of the early church as to how they must conduct themselves moving forward.

I. We Ought to Reverence God 1 Tim. 3:14-15

1 Timothy 3:14–15 ESV

I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.

a. God ought to be reverenced because there is nobody like him. Paul refers to Gods house as the “house of the Living God”. Yet, many of us conduct church and church business as if God is dead.

He’s the beginning and the end

He’s the center and the circumference

He’s the nucleus and the crust

He’s the kernel and the pop

He’s the finite and the infinite

GOD

He’s Lowly and He’s majestic

He’s ordinary and He’s Extraordinary

He’s the context and the content

He’s the subject and the verb

And when we come into His house, we come not as one who is in charge but one who has been invited. When you are invited to someone’s house, whatever you do and say is at the call of the one whose hosting. You don’t get up and go to someones bathroom without asking for permission.

*** and in the church we have got to be better at just doing stuff without asking for permission of the host. Lord- is it your will that I do, this and do that?

b. We don’t reverence Gods house anymore…because we have gotten so comfortable that we now think it’s our house...

c. Reverence for God helps you to differentiate between that which is holy and that which is unholy.

II. Respect for Gods People

They don’t do that over here at Mt. Zion and at Mt. Vernon but in some churches I know, it’s hard to get folks to love one another.

Won’t let folk join the ministry

if you let them join they can’t lead it

Got clicks in the church, some get the message about the meetings and the ones you don’t want to know, nobody tells them, then asks them where was you when we had the meeting?

OOH and will Gossip

act funny with folks that come to church who don’t act like us and look like us…I know you got on your white…but you ain’t always had on white on the first Sunday, and I know that we are educated and sophicated and we have our college degrees from Morris College and SC State, Allen and Benedict but get your nose out the air Christ died not only for you, with your saved self, but he died for the...

Crackhead

drug addict

All have sinned and have come short of the glory of God.

III. Responsibility Towards the Word of God 1 Timothy 3:14-15

1 Timothy 3:14–15 (ESV)

I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.