Gospel Message and Godly Lives

But for this morning, we're going to be in First Timothy chapter four.

And it declares this in verses six through sixteen.

It says, If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

Have nothing to do with the irreverent, silly myths.

Rather, train yourself for godliness.

For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.

For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hopes set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

Command and teach these things.

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct and love and faith and purity, until I come devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

Do not neglect the gift you have which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.

Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.

Persist in this, for by doing so, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So in today's day and time, we kind of have a couple of things happening in the culture and in the climate of Christianity right now.

We kind of have one of them for a while, right?

And it's this kind of statement that I don't believe in Jesus or I don't go to church because it's so full of hypocrites.

How many of you have ever heard that or experienced that?

Yeah, we have, where people say your life does not match your message.

What you say you believe and the things that you say you believe, your life doesn't seem to stack up with it.

Now that's an older kind of thing that we've been dealing with in the church for a long time, but it hasn't faded away.

There still is a reality where people are hurt and burned by the church because they interact with God's people in ways that their lives don't match up to their message.

But there's also a kind of new thing that's happening in the culture.

I think maybe it's new, maybe it's not, but we see it in new and transforming ways in the culture as it continues to progress.

And it's this that Christians are pushing more toward the way that they live and actually less in what they believe.

And so where once there was, you had a strong message and a strong belief system, but yet your lives didn't necessarily match up to it.

Now what we're seeing is that people are radically at least putting focus and intentionality in the way that they live their lives, but yet they're neglecting or even rejecting theology, sound doctrine in the scriptures.

What we're seeing is this where things, people are pushing toward love, people are pushing toward grace, people are pushing toward acceptance, people are pushing toward forgiveness, but because it's not anchored in the Word of God, they push past the bounds of what the Bible calls love, of what the Bible calls grace, of what the Bible calls acceptance, and they're going into dangerous waters or even deadly waters so that their lives might act up to something that's extremely ill-informed.

You see, what we've been missing in the church for quite some time is the fact that both our theology and the way that we live our lives must be equally upheld together.

We cannot live lives of godliness or of obedience or of right Christian living unless those lives are equally informed by the Word of God.

I was talking to somebody the other day and we were talking about uh politics.

If I'm ever on the soccer field or I'm trying to get a dad into a conversation where I'm hopefully gonna throw out some Jesus to him, I just start with either sports or politics.

I know nothing about either very well.

I know how to play sports and I know how to do politics.

I don't even know if that's a thing, but nonetheless, I don't really know.

So I get them going.

They get hyped up, right?

Dad's gonna get super hyped up on one of those topics.

That's what I usually kick off with.

But they were talking about a TV personality, uh news personality who has a high moral code, but who is a Mormon.

And this person, this father who I was talking to, claims to be a Christian, says that he's a believer in Jesus, and he was talking about how this news personality's faith was okay.

He loves Jesus.

And I had to inform him that he doesn't love Jesus.

He belongs to a false gospel cult that has no power to save him.

He might have a strong moral compass, he might do what is good in the eyes of man, but he rejects the Jesus of the Bible.

You see, this was a brother who was continually using language of, you know, we gotta accept, we gotta be loving, we've got to be gracious.

But what happened was this within the church and within our own lives, if we are unable to discern truth from air, if we're unable to discern false gospels from the true gospel, because we have neglected the word in theology, our good works will become works of self-righteousness that condemn others.

You see, if we affirm a brother in a false gospel, if we affirm a sister in the way that they live their lives for the sake of love and obedience, even though we understand and know that their lives don't reflect or are in submission to the true Jesus of the scriptures, are we not affirming them in the very grave they stand in?

And so for us as believers, what we have to do is we have to seek to have both our lives and our message lined up.

They should be in harmony with one another.

We've heard in the church constantly that doctrine is divisive.

Doctrine is divisive.

Let's just act, let's just love, let's just live.

But the problem is our the way that we live our lives is informed by something.

It is either informed by uh pop culture, it's informed by art, it's informed by uh messages that continually beckon for our attention.

Our lives and the conduct of them are informed by something.

I watched a documentary not too long ago called For the Bible Tells Me So.

And the arc of the documentary was uh about the following of the first ordination inside the Episcopal Church of a homosexual bishop.

And it was very interesting to watch this documentary because they also followed five families who were evangelical families who all had a child who came out during the documentary, and they navigated and documented how they progressed through that.

And four out of the five families changed their doctrine to embrace the child.

You see, they changed, they thought true love was abandoning this.

They thought true godliness, true Christianity, true faith, true love, true acceptance was abandoning true life.

And this is a lot of the charge that Paul is giving to Timothy.

He's worked really hard in this letter to make sure that Timothy's fighting for sound doctrine.

He's fighting for the good faith, he's fighting for the message of the gospel.

And here Paul is saying, okay, Timothy, now your life has to match your message.

Verse 6 if you put these things before the brothers, you'll be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

What's Paul talking about?

These things.

What should we put before the brothers?

Well, it's the it's the message of the gospel, it's the message of its freedoms, and it's the message of our obedience to it.

To be a good brother, a good servant of Jesus means not only to train yourself in the word of faith and sound doctrine, but to also train others in it as well.

And so Paul's commanding Timothy, these things that you have learned, these things you've trained yourself in, now bring them before the brothers.

Verse 7, have nothing to do with the irreverent, silly myths.

Rather, train yourself for godliness.

For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

Verse 9, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.

Now, that verse 9 is directly anchored to what Paul says before it.

You see, our lives must reflect the message that we declare.

While doctrine informs our minds, without the transformation of our hearts and the reflection of it in our conduct, our doctrine is dead and it is useless.

You see, we cannot be content with declaring that Jesus is king and not living as if that's true as well.

Many of us want to declare, God is Lord.

Jesus is Lord, Jesus is king, yet we submit constantly, not to his throne, but to the throne of self, to the throne of culture, to the throne of our circumstances.

We continually find ourselves bowing at false idols.

But you see, when we declare, which Jesus is king, that's a doctrinal statement, that's a theological statement.

You're saying that Jesus is Lord over all creation, that he is the sovereign ruler over all, then how would that shape the way that you live your life?

How would that shape the way that you work?

How would that shape the way that you uh pursue marriage in your spouse?

How would that shape the way you father your children?

How would that shape the way that we engage in culture?

If Jesus is truly king and that message is something we are willing to declare, then how would it radically transform and affect the way that we live?

You see, our lives are on a progressive transformation toward reflecting the image of Jesus in our lives.

When we sinned, when we fell short of God's glory, when we rebelled against his kingship, what happened was that the image that we bore in the garden was marred, it was perverted.

And see, that image though is still intact.

It wasn't destroyed, it wasn't removed from you, it was just marred, it was skewed.

And the work of the Holy Spirit, through both doctrine and practice, is to see that image fully restored in us.

You see, in glory, we will perfectly represent Christ, whom we were created to represent in the first place, who we were created to fill the earth and subdue it with his image intact.

But here and now, in the already, not yet, we don't just wait for perfection, we work toward it.

Because God receives glory as godliness is developed in us.

See, we need to work in tandem with the Spirit to this end.

Our physical accomplishments, Paul says, in this world, is of only partial gain because honestly, what we work for in this world will die with us.

Anything that we strive to accomplish in this life, it'll die with us.

Whether it might be your health, whether it might be your wealth, whether it might be any of these things that we strive to build and establish in our lives, it will die with you.

And most of it, if not all of it, you will see even begin decay before you hit the grave.

But godliness, godliness, on the other hand, will never fade, and it will go on to us in glory.

And Paul emphasizes this statement.

He emphasizes this statement.

Timothy, I'm telling you, don't waste your time with foolish myths.

Don't waste your time with false doctrine.

Don't waste your time with false teachings, and don't waste your time in building into the physical self.

Put your energy and your effort into that which will never fade.

A holistic picture of godliness, sound doctrine, and sound living in perfect harmony in the believer.

Verse 10, he says, For to this end we toil and strive because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

What end?

What end is Paul talking like about that he's toiling and striving toward?

What's the end of godliness, the end of the consummation and fullness of godliness being developed in the Christian?

Why will not be seen the fullness in this life does not mean it's absent of striving toward it?

And how do we as a church, how do we as a body of believers reconcile this gospel of grace with the toil and striving of godliness?

You see, the gospel doesn't dismiss our sin.

If we think that forgiveness means dismissing what we've done wrong, that it means putting under some cosmic rug our rebellion and sin, then we don't understand the gospel.

The gospel never dismisses our sin.

No, the gospel deals with it in holy, righteous confrontation.

The gospel is extremely confrontational.

When we celebrate Good Friday coming up, we're gonna see and reflect on the confrontation of the cross.

But Jesus doesn't come wielding a bow or a sword, he comes carrying a cross on his back.

That's the confrontation that Jesus brings to our lives.

He wages war in his own sacrifice against our sin, against our rebellion.

And so our lives should reflect that.

We need to confront our sin.

We need to confront those things of which Jesus has paid the price to die for, to redeem us from, to set us free from.

We should work to see sin eradicated in our life, to see the beauty of the fruit of the gospel cultivated in its place.

You see, Paul is stressing the fact that the way in which we live our lives is so important.

It's because he understands that it's so tightly anchored to the message that we declare.

The way in which we live our lives is so important because the message we're called to declare is vitally important.

Jesus is our only hope in salvation.

He's the world's only hope in salvation.

And we must not allow our lives to get in the way of his message.

You see, that's what Paul's saying here.

He's saying, Timothy, instruct yourself, train yourself in godliness, present these things before the brothers.

And he says, because Jesus is our only hope, because he is the only savior.

This is a matter of eternal consequence.

This is not a matter of temporal things that fade.

This is a matter of eternity.

And Paul's stressing this to Timothy: work toward this end.

Train yourself toward this end.

Verse 11, he says, Command and teach these things.

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct and love and faith and purity.

Paul gives Timothy a strong charge.

Command and teach these things.

But I love what Paul is doing.

Anybody ever remember the Andy Griffith show?

Right?

Some of you do, right?

I've watched it a few times.

I'm just gonna give my age.

This is more of like I'm using this as a story.

I didn't really watch it that much.

But let me help you understand something.

There's two main characters.

There's Barney and there's Andy.

They're both police officers, correct?

Anytime that Barney tries to handle a situation, what does he do?

Flails his arms, yells, gets out of control.

He tries to demand that these people respect and listen to him.

What does Andy do?

He comes in calm, cool, collective, and they listen.

They give him respect.

You see, Paul's not telling Timothy to go in like some Barney Fife and command these things.

Paul says, they will respect and honor you if you lead them an example of the way you conduct your life.

Conduct in love, in faith, in purity.

You see, there's a lot of times where I'm sure Timid Timothy and even myself, and even us in these seats, we find ourselves in a place where we know that we're really not cut out for the job that's in front of us.

We know that we don't look good as good on paper as we should.

We know that this should be for someone else.

Maybe we're not here to be able to, uh, we're not gonna be able to accomplish the task at hand.

There's all these fears and insecurities and timidness that comes.

And Paul says to Timothy, look, there's already going to judge you.

There's already gonna be things in your way of which that they're going to have these fears or they're gonna have struggles in respecting you.

And he comes in, he says, Command and teach these things to your church, to the church of which I've made you an overseer.

But how?

Not by demanding it, not by forcing it, but by leading it in the way that he lives his life.

For who would not desire to hear the words out of his mouth when they have seen and observed the conduct of his character?

Timothy's compelling factor for his congregation to embrace both his position and his message is the way that he lives his life.

Verse 13, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

Well, how was Timothy supposed to train himself and his congregation in godliness?

Well, it's through God's word.

How was he supposed to train himself and his congregation in godliness?

Through this, through the Bible.

Paul says, commit yourself until I come to the public reading of the scriptures, to exhortation, to preaching and teaching.

You see, this is the manual, this is the instruction, this is what we have to seek to deeply understand and ingrain within our hearts that we might be able to live a life of obedience, because obedience to God and living the Christian way, it cannot be severed from a deep intimacy with his word of which he's given us.

It cannot be.

If we live ill-informed lives, they will express themselves in ill-informed character.

There are tons and tons of people who have great intentions, but who are leading people off the path of the cross toward their own destruction, to their own death, because they're not anchored in God's word.

This is life.

This is life, and this for us is what helps us to train ourselves in godliness.

Without God's word, we cannot develop godliness.

Verse 14 do not neglect the gift you have, which was given to you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.

Practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress.

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.

Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

You see, we do not Pursue right doctrine alone.

We must couple the pursuit of right living along with it.

The lives that we live have a direct impact on the salvation of others.

Often our lives preach louder than our words, and often our lives even detract from our message.

And this isn't where we want to go.

We don't want to go to some place.

There's a famous uh phrase from uh what is accredited to St.

Francis of Assisi, but it is unknown if he said it or not.

But he says this: he says, preach the gospel at all times, if necessary, use words.

You see, I will work to try to understand his intent in that statement, but people have grasped that to say that the speaking of the gospel or that the proclamation of God's word is unnecessary, that we can simply just live our lives.

And we don't see that.

In fact, in Romans, we see that it is with the preaching of the gospel that people are saved.

For how will they be saved if they do not hear?

And how will they hear if we do not speak?

And how will we not speak if we are not yet sent?

You see, it demands for regeneration and life to come into dead bones and stone hearts.

It demands that we open our mouths and proclaim the truth of God's word.

What is going to impact that to some measure is going to be the way that our lives back it up.

Yes, preach the gospel at all times.

And it is outrageously necessary to use words.

We have to preach.

We are, church, and it's this however you want to cornify it or dissect it or whatever it is, we are the Bible that most people will read.

The way that we live our lives is going to create in people either disdain against the Christian faith or a righteous jealousy to be a part of it.

You see, that's when when we look at the way that God's people were called to live their lives in obedience to his law and in obedience to his command, it in its very nature was missional.

When we talk about missional, it's that we are going to reach those who are not believing people and bring them into the family of faith.

You see, the obedience to God's word is missional intrinsically because what was supposed to happen is that as the church, as God's family, lived their lives in obedience to his word, in radical, reckless love to one another, in the sharing of all things, and the way that we conducted ourselves amongst the body, the world was supposed to gaze in from the outside and be jealous that they weren't a part of it.

You see, godliness cultivates mission.

It cannot simply be in our message, it must be in the way that we live.

Here's the main idea for this morning.

Without sound living, our sound doctrine will be absent of power.

Without sound living, our sound doctrine will be absent of power.

And you you know these people.

You know the dudes who are on all kinds of forums online just blasting people over these little minute things.

And they can't even live their own lives well.

They're like 28 and still, I don't even know what they're doing with their lives, right?

They but they can't cultivate godliness in their life.

We see the men who are very informed.

I have come across in my time of preaching and pastoring men who have read more books already in their life than I will ever read.

Could outquote me, can out uh uh uh think me, they can dissect an argument and beat me in a debate, but they cannot fight for godliness in their life worth nothing.

And you know who takes them seriously?

No one.

They are full of useless and powerless information because no one wants to hear what they have to say.

You see, without sound living, our sound doctrine will be absent of power.

And we reflect this in our lives, right?

Some of us, some of us strive after theology without striving after transformation.

Some of us strive after theology without striving after transformation.

Look, if your theology doesn't transform your life, you don't believe what you say you believe.

Because good theology informs and creates good practice.

And think about that for us.

Wrestle with this church.

Not not just in some of these ways that you see disobedience and you see shortcoming and struggle in your life.

Think about it in the way that we that we live our lives amongst unbelievers.

Do you believe in a thing called hell?

Do you believe in that Jesus is the only Savior for all people?

Do you believe that his message must be declared for people to be saved and redeemed and brought out of destruction that they might have life and joy eternally?

Do we believe it?

Because if we really believed it, if we really believed it, oh how our lives would change.

If we really believed Jesus is King, oh, how our lives would change.

If we really believed that the Father is standing there saying, come and have all of me, we would stop saying no, just give me your stuff.

I don't want you.

You see, we can look at our theology very clearly, simply in the way that we conduct our lives.

Not that we don't strive for both, or not that we don't strive for theology, but that we must strive for transformation as well.

And some of us, we strive after transformation and we neglect theology.

Some of us strive after transformation and neglect theology.

These are people who strive to be better.

They just want to be better, they want to be a good person, they want to be better now, and they are absent of theology.

And here's what's happening is our world is becoming more and more complex.

And if we don't have theology to be able to discern the culture, to be able to discern the false gospels of this world, to be able to discern what is truly good from what is truly wicked, then our works-based righteousness and striving for transformation will lead ourselves and many others toward the path of destruction.

You cannot have godly transformation without having God's word.

You can't do it.

You can strive for worldly transformation, and that that's the problem, right?

Like the church's message and the culture's message have become so synonymous that they're indistinguishable anymore.

Love and be nice.

Who's gonna be mad about doing like there's dudes like that are angry about that?

I don't know what their problem is, but by and large, nobody's gonna be mad at that, right?

Let's feed hungry people.

Okay, yeah, I'll do I'll do that.

Let's dig a well in Africa, I'll do that.

Let's adopt children, I'll do that.

Let's do all these good things.

And guess what?

The world will jump on and jump on because they see that this transformation of goodness, this pursuit of what is good is something that they can be in part of.

And but they're not being confronted with there is no good unless it is anchored to faith and that Jesus is the Son of God, the only Messiah, whose finished work creates the only path for us to be reconciled to God that our sin and rebellion cause separation from.

See, they're not engaged or confronted with that.

And so the church and the world have such similar messages that they're indistinguishable anymore.

We don't do good for the sake of doing good.

We do good because we have repented and believed and submitted ourselves to the good news of Jesus Christ.

And so, what's our hope, church?

Ultimately, our hope is not in toil and striving.

That's not our hope, but our hope is in Jesus, who strive toward Calvary to make us godly.

Paul calls us to toil and strive.

You see, our Christian life isn't without fighting.

I love going back to the Old Testament and some of the wars, and God looks at his people and he says, the battle is won.

The enemy is defeated, but guess what?

You still got to pick up a sword and swing it.

It did not mean that at times the Jewish people did not have to step out onto the field and fight.

It did not negate the fact that God had already won the war on their behalf.

So we do toil, we do strive, but our hope is not in that.

No, our hope is in the one who perfectly scraped and clawed the earth of Calvary to make us godly because we couldn't.

In all our toils and all of our strivings, we could not do it.

We had to have one do it for us.

And when we are brought in to Christ, when we are made new with him, all of our wrongdoing and sin is no longer counted against us.

All of our sins we had committed, we are committing, and we will commit, have been forgiven and forgotten through the blood of Jesus Christ.

You see, when God looks at us as his children, us who have put our faith in Jesus, he sees us godly.

And that's our hope.

That's where we have to find our identity.

That's the position of which we have to stand in.

We have to stand not in a shaky ground of our own works and our own toil and strivings, but we have to stand on the rock that is Christ, whose perfection is granted to us as if it was our own.

So, how do we walk this out, church?

I've got three ways in closing.

Number one is that we should inform our minds with great theology.

We should.

We should radically inform our minds with great theology.

Look, read about God, read his word, read old dead men who wrote about God.

I would highly recommend not going to the Christian bookstore today and trying to find a book to pick up.

Just start with your Bible and then email me, maybe who you should start with.

But read great theology.

Read about uh the authority of the scriptures alone, read about the saving power of Christ alone, read about grace that saves us alone.

Read about these things.

Immerse yourself in great, robust theology.

We should inform our mind because the gospel message, this Christian faith, all that we operate in started in the mind.

It was a message we heard and we processed through our brain, and the power of the Spirit came in and allowed that to make us alive again.

We are not absent or beyond continuing to inform our mind with the word of God.

So inform your mind with great theology.

Uh, we hope to be adding uh classes and different things here as we start to engage in more robust and deep theology.

We want to be a church that is known for their theology, known for uh the the standing on the authority of scriptures.

And and we we say it all the time for our young women, we want them to be so uh stable and solid in their theology that they make weak men timid.

That's what we say.

I want my three daughters to be uh going through the scriptures and seeing and knowing God, to have theology that they can discern the culture and discern truth from Aaron.

We want to equip people with God's word.

And so we're gonna pursue that, that informing of the mind.

And we're gonna have that be an anchor of who we are as a church.

Number two, we should seek the transformation of our hearts.

Yes, we should seek.

We should seek to be in line and working in tandem with the Spirit of God to see transformation happen in our hearts.

You see, if this word doesn't go from the mind to the heart, then we've wasted our time.

And sometimes that's a process, right?

Sometimes you gotta read and read and read the same thing over and over and over again and work to get that information to come down into the transformation of the heart.

But that is the natural progression of God's word and his revealing of himself to us in the scriptures.

That as we read and as we engage and as we inform our mind, it continues to transform our hearts.

We need to put into practice spiritual disciplines.

We need to pray more.

And this sounds so repetitive or so redundant.

Look, church, don't ever expect me to throw out something new to you.

We stand in a place where if it's new, it's probably not true.

What is going to work in your life?

The same thing that's always worked for all people for all time, because that's how God has ordained it to work.

Read his word, study his word, pray to him, worship him, be in communion with him, be in communion with his people.

These are the things that God has established and ordained for us to produce salvation and godliness in our lives.

So we should seek to be ingrained and immersed and active in those things, that transformation of the heart might happen.

And then thirdly, we should reflect the truth in our lives.

The truth that comes out of our mouths should be reflected in the way that we live our lives, in our character and our conduct, everything about us, we should seek to be able to reflect the things that we say we believe in the way that we live our lives on a daily basis.

Does your life match your message?

Are you training yourself in godliness?

Are you working to not be a stumbling block to the already stumbling block of the gospel?

You see, the Bible says that the gospel is a stumbling block to them.

It's something that we trip over, it's something that's hard to get over, it's a roadblock that we have to work to get across to the other side.

You see, the gospel is that inherently.

Let's not add offense to it in the way that we live our lives.

Why create more stumbling, more barriers, more roadblocks to the path of grace in the way that we conduct ourselves?