Training for Godliness - 1 Timothy 4:6-11

My name is Connor and I oversee a couple things here.

Young adults and our Calvary communities, I hope oversee the

leaders of of those communities. And I have the joy of getting to

share from the word this morning.

And I hope that you guys are doing well today and I also hope

that your March Madness brackets are going well.

I know many of you are probably tuning in this afternoon today,

making sure the Sweet 16 is as close as possible to yours.

And I remember the first time that I got to experience March

Madness in my memory in a way that is like the way I

experienced it today. And that was in high school.

District 70 in Colorado had the bright idea one year, I don't

know when, to give every student a MacBook Air.

And it was great. It helped us learn.

It taught us how to use computers, and it was really

great. The first or the last Thursday

before spring break, that was the Thursday that March Madness

started up. And every kid in school, every

student had a MacBook, and every student's MacBook was tuned into

the games. And it was a day of watching all

the games that were on your computer, also the computers of

your classmates in front of you. And if you were lucky enough to

have a teacher who understood the importance of March Madness,

you'd also be watching the game on the whiteboard through his

projector. And March Madness, if you're

familiar with it, is very fun. Mainly, basketball's great

tournaments are great, but it's fun because it's because it is

madness. It's chaos.

It's hard to predict who is going to win and who's going to

do well. And so whether you've watched

every basketball game all year or whether you couldn't even

tell me who Duke is, you can actually do really poorly in the

tournament and picking the teams that you want.

There's no rhyme or reason to who wins most of the time.

And so it's kind of chaotic. It's madness.

And I bring it up this morning because I think that if we were

to be honest with ourselves and with each other, we would say

that out of all sports, out of all tournaments, that might be

the metaphor that some of us would choose to describe the

spiritual journey with. Maybe you felt this before, that

life with God and progressing towards the godliness feels more

like chaotic March Madness with no clear way of deciding who is

good and who is bad and Who Will Win.

Feels more like that than like a clear path to growth and to

godliness and to success. And if you're honest and that

you say that, yeah, that is me. I do feel that.

I have felt that. Thank you for your honesty.

And I'd love for you to know that you're not alone.

I've felt it. And I'm willing to guess that

every one of us in this room who have undertaken the the journey

with God has felt something like that.

Has felt it's chaotic, it's hard.

How do I get from point A to point B all the way to point Z

along with the spiritual journey to the day that I get called

heavenward? And it's a question that I think

is not vague in the in the Scriptures.

It's not vague as you look at the life of the church and the

life of Jesus, but it's vague because we don't always talk

about it. And today we have the joy of

getting to open Paul's words to Timothy and talk about how we

train for godliness, how we can actually find success in the

spiritual life. So if you open with me to First

1 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

Timothy chapter 4, we will pick up Paul's instructions to

Timothy and the church in Ephesus in verse 6.

And this is what Paul says that Timothy says, if you instruct

the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of

Jesus Christ. And so here we have it, Paul

says if you want to be a good minister of Jesus Christ, here

it is. And that word minister, don't be

confused by it. It's not Paul simply saying

Timothy, this is instruction for you as the pastor or elder or

church leader. The word minister does mean that

for Timothy, he is the leader of the community.

He is one of the leaders of the community.

But the word literally is the same word that we've studied for

the last couple weeks as we talked about deacons.

The word here is diakonos. It just means servants.

He says, Timothy, if you want to be a good servant, or in other

words a successful servant, here is how you do it.

He says, First off, instruct the brethren in these things, these

things being that which nourished, he says, in the words

of faith and the good doctrine which you have carefully

followed. So the first thing, the first

way we train for godliness is through our diet, Through our

diet, he says, nourished by the words.

So we have to have the right diet, as any athlete will tell

you, any person trying to get from the couch to the 5K, the

spring will tell you the first thing that needs to be fixed is

the diet. And Paul gives some specific

instructions to Timothy about the diet that him and the church

should have. First off, he says that you must

instruct the brethren in these things, these things being for

Timothy and the church, the things that Paul has previously

written in this letter. So saying Timothy, if you want

to be faithful, you want to be a good minister, read what I've

written to you in this letter and put it into action.

Find godly people to oversee and be elders in the church.

Find godly people to serve as deacons, as servants in the

church. Deal with him and Eeus and

Alexander and others who would come in with false doctrine that

would be threatening to shipwreck their faith and

others. Deal with them the way that I've

told you. And for us, it can be brought

into a bit to not just Paul's letter to Timothy, not just

Paul's letters in general, but to the whole of the Bible, the

whole account of God's Word written for us and to us, and

the word that we read week by week, day by day, the library of

Scripture. If we put these things into

action, if we begin to teach these things, live by these

things. And it must be these things, you

must have some semblance of a, a foundation for truth, which is

the Bible says Timothy. It's not just what you feel

like, It's not just what you want it to be, but you need to

listen to the things that that I am instructing you with.

And Paul would say to us, if you want to be a good minister, you

have to be nourished by the words of the Bible.

And that's the next word. Nourished is very important for

us because if you may come from a background or have experienced

the word of God being used in a way that's not nourishing, maybe

you've gone through a difficult time.

You've been dealing with grief, dealing with pain, dealing with

anxiety, and somebody comes to you well meaning and in love,

but they say, hey, I know you're anxious, but Jesus does say,

don't be anxious. So smile, move on.

It's going to be OK. To which you and your heart

probably respond, I know it's going to be OK.

I know I shouldn't be anxious, but I am.

That doesn't quite help. It doesn't quite nourish me.

It doesn't quite take me from point A to point B in a way that

creates life. And maybe some of us have grown

up in a religious background that used the word, knew the

word, love the Word, use verses like this to say we need to

teach the Word and nothing but the Word.

And it was all about Scripture. It may be a beautiful tradition,

but it also may have been wielded in a way that was

hurtful. Somebody taking scripture out of

context and using it not as a way to nourish you, not as a way

to build you up, but as a tool to hurt you, to bludgeon you, to

tear you away from the faith or from what you feel like God is

calling you too. So we need to teach, we need to

look at, we need to read. We need to be instructed by the

words of Scripture and we have to do so in a way that nourishes

not only ourselves but those who we are sharing with.

And Paul drives his point home by saying and of the good

doctrine, the good doctrine. And we've made note of this a

couple times as we've gone through this letter, that when

Paul says good doctrine, he doesn't just mean right

doctrine. He's not just saying know the

right things about God, although he's is saying that.

He's certainly not saying less, but he is saying more good

doctrine being healthy doctrine. So not only is it correct, but

it actually can be used to bring health and life to people's

bodies and souls and families. So a good check to see if am I

using the word of God right is, are our lives more healthy

because of the things we've believed in?

Are other people's lives more healthy because of the things we

share with them? Or the is the way we're sharing

of the things we we're sharing actually not doctrinally sound

or not being shared in a attritious way?

Because we're doing so not in the manner of which Christ did

or the new Justin authors did, but we're doing so not in

accordance with healthy doctrine, but with accordance to

the doctrine of myself and what I think should be the way that

all people do all things. And Paul begins to drive it home

even more. Not just the good doctrine,

healthy doctrine, not just doctrine, but doctrine which you

have carefully followed. This is an important note for

us, especially after last week. Maybe some of you left hearing

about those who have become lying hypocrites and you

wondered how did they get there and why?

And how do I help myself to not get there?

Why? Why do people go that route?

And Paul's instructions to Timothy, I think, are to help

protect him from becoming a hypocritical liar.

He's saying, Timothy, the sound doctrine which you teach in a

way that nourishes others, must be also lived by you.

You cannot be a teacher, a pastor or a leader who does not

live out what you are preaching. And we can all think of the ways

in which that has been mishandled and miss done in our

time and place and world. And we can all think of broad

examples. But my guess is we can all think

of examples of our own lives where we we have said things to

people. We believe things are right and

true. And yet when we examine our

lives, we know the thing that I taught that person and the thing

that I've believed, I've not actually, not actually lived.

It's a it's a way in which we have to come again and again to

obedience to the good doctrine and to say, you know what, I'm

growing in this. I'm not quite perfect in this.

And Timothy being instructed by Paul to live out, to grow, to

get better at living out the things in which he's instructing

the church. And so we had that first

metaphor of a diet as people who want to be successful

Christians, people who want to grow in our faith, we need to be

people who have a good diet, a healthy diet.

Then Paul goes on to give the other obvious thing that every

athlete will tell you. Not only do you need a good

diet, but he says you also need to exercise.

He says an exercise in yourself toward godliness for bodily

exercise. In verse 8, he says profits a

little, but godliness is profitable for all things,

having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to

come. So he starts off by telling

Timothy that the bottle of the exercise that he may pursue may

be healthy. And it's been interesting as

I've prepared for today and read up on some different

commentaries. One thing that often gets noted

is that in Ephesus there were actually gyms.

There are gymnasiums that people would go and work out at.

And so in my mind, I'm imagining maybe Paul dropped off Timothy

and said, Timothy, please pastor this church.

And maybe they spent some time in their in their week there

hanging out at the axiom of Ephesus and taking some laps in

the pool, doing some bench press, maybe ending in the

sauna. And so when Paul is telling

Timothy, hey, bodily exercise is good, Timothy may be

participating in bodily exercise.

And it's true. Taking care of our bodies is

profitable, is meaningful. Last week we talked about how

all things that are created are good.

So the human body in and of itself is not evil.

God created it, it's good, we should take care of it.

Is it corrupted by sin? Yes.

Will we receive new ones and eternity?

Yes. But the human body is not in and

of itself bad. So taking care of it is of some

value. But Timothy, Paul says godliness

is of more training for godliness is of even more value

unless we be vague and we we breeze through this and say,

well, guys, the goal, the way that you become godly is simply

by training. And you're left with a vague

idea that I should train for godliness.

I want to share with the six ways in which I think that kind

of encompass a lot of the ways we train, but are in no ways

exhausted, but six ways that we can train and practice our

godliness to grow and become more and more like Jesus.

So the first thing now all of us who are believers have probably

participated in. So we start with an easy one.

It's one of the easiest ones, but also one of the most

powerful ones is being able to communicate your story and get

baptized. Now baptism, all these, all

these practices that I'll share with you are after two simple

goals. They're not giving you

salvation, but they are creating space for God and they're

helping us rid our lives of sin. And so when we get baptized,

when we baptize others, when we have people stand in the horse

through out in the West lobby, we say, please Share your story.

Why are you here? It's the moment where their life

is now intersecting with God's life, where their story is

intersecting with God's story. And we all, as followers of

Jesus, should have some semblance of that in our lives,

should be able to communicate when we came to faith in Christ

and why we did and what God has done since we gave our lives to

him. We should be able to have a day

where we publicly declared our commitment to Jesus and his ways

before the Church, before the world, before the rulers and

powers, seen and unseen. We should be able to be able to

look back on that day and say that was the day I was baptized,

that I went into the water and died to myself and came out of

the water risen to new life in Christ.

The second thing, which if you were baptized and you have

someone walking you through that process, they probably LED you

to understand these two simple principles.

Principles that are simple, yet they are the two main things

that help us in the spiritual life.

That is prayer in the Bible. So if you were baptized by

somebody, maybe they said to you, now that you've been

baptized, I want to just instruct you.

Read some of first read some of John and then read some of the

songs. Start with the book of John.

It's a great intro to Christianity.

Read some of the Psalms and these beautiful songs written by

David and other people and help you begin to understand exactly

what you now believe as a follower of Jesus.

But prayer and Bible, or they're simple, yet they take many

shapes and forms. Maybe prayer for you has been

intercession or Thanksgiving. Maybe you're growing in new

types of prayer. I know I've been challenged by

Pastor Noah in the way that he's LED our church to cultivate

Sabbath and taking a whole day to rest and delight and stop and

to slow down, to be with God and to spend time in prayer.

Maybe prayer for you takes this form of going away to the

mountains to pray by a river, or takes the form of praying in a

group of people for a specific need.

Whatever it is, prayer is important and should encompass

probably lots of those categories and then read in the

Bible. And there's lots of different

ways in the same way to read the Bible.

There's the long drawn out reading of a whole book at one

time. There's slowing down and reading

short portions. Maybe you subscribe to our

prayer emails every day and you read one of those devotions and

you read it devotionally. Maybe you love you love reading

the Bible and you love the ancient languages.

And so you get your Greek manuscripts out and you open it

and you read it and you study and you try to get down to the

the bare bones of it all that is good.

In whatever way the Spirit may be leading you at your place in

your discipleship journey, prayer and the Bible are

paramount. Next to that, number 3 is being

involved in a diverse discipleship community.

Here at Calvary, we call those Calvary communities and all they

are is our attempt to create what the New Testament church

had and what Jesus had a group of disciples living on mission

together as a family. Jesus had his 12 and within that

he had three to four who he was really close with.

Beyond that, he had the the multitude that he was with.

We see this in the early church where there were people meeting

in homes, but then they'd also gather in the Lord's Day and

they would worship together in places like the Solomon's

colonnade. And we do that as a church.

We gather on Sundays and we worship in in a sanctuary with a

few 100 people. And then we we gather in homes

throughout the valley. And in those homes, friendships

began to form and people that you're close to and three or

four people that you're sharing the deepest and the hardest,

sometimes the darkest parts of life with the best parts of life

with begin to be formed. And this is important for us.

It's not just a not just a family, although we all have

those. It's not just discipleship.

It's not just a group that is from diverse backgrounds, but

it's a diverse discipleship community that's living on the

mission of God. And it's helping all of us who

are in those become more and more like God becoming godly #4

on the list. And as we go, first three are

maybe the most obvious and maybe the most talked about.

And in some ways, they, they work best with the culture that

we live in. And as we go, it gets a little

bit harder. So I'll just warn you.

The next couple get a little bit more pointed.

But living a life of service, we see that Jesus came, he says in

his own words, not to be served, but to serve.

And so as people are trying to become godly, trying to become

the type of person who is a godly person, one of the

characteristics of a godly person is service.

And this can take many different forms in the same way that

prayer in Bible can take many different forms.

Serving may look like serving in the church on a ministry team

that you feel so passionate about.

Maybe the ministry to the youth in our church with the kids may

ministry to those who walk in the doors, making them feel

welcome, worship ministry, the list goes on.

Maybe it's ministry outside the four walls of our church.

It's ministry and other organizations that you're

serving with local, the Boise Rescue Mission, maybe serving in

Twilight Hope or in the prison ministries.

But every one of our lives is a life of a disciple should be

characterized in some way as a person who is serving, person

whose life is marked by service. And then getting a little more

pointed. We see that in Scripture, those

who follow Jesus and those who were a part of the early church

served, but they also lived lives that were generous.

They were generous with their time, with their talent, with

their resources. So how are we as followers of

Jesus being generous? The early church was generous

and in three main ways, which I think is helpful for us because

I think sometimes we shy away from talking about generosity,

especially in the church because it can get uncomfy.

The three ways of the early church was generous #1 you see

them give to the poor. In fact, Paul talking in Second

Corinthians, writing in Second Corinthians, I believe it is he

he, he's talking about being people who do not neglect the

poor. He says I got sent out to the

Greek speaking believers and I got told to live on the the

mission of God. And while I was out they said

you can do this as long as you don't forget the poor.

To which he says I've always remembered the poor and I've

always cared for them. So that should be no problem.

And I wonder if the same is true of my life, of our lives.

Do we care for the poor in the same way that the early church

did? The same way that the life we

see in the life of Jesus, they cared for the poor.

They also cared for those who were on the on the mission of

God taking the gospel to new places and new people.

The book of third John is all about supporting missionaries

who are coming through the area. Jesus is supported by a group of

of wealthy patrons as he's living on the mission to bring

the Kingdom to earth. Paul himself talks about being

supported as he went to new places and and tongues.

And so how are we supporting the gospel mission globally and also

locally? And lastly you see the the local

believers that often give to the the local person.

Local people, the local families, local widows and they

would care for needs that weren't just beyond their scope,

but that were right around them and they would take care of the

local church with their with their resources.

I think that helps gives us a full orb idea.

Are we being generous in some way within one of those 3

categories or all three of those categories?

And then God calls different people at different times to

give more time, talent and resources to one or three of

those. And then lastly, this may sound

like the most obvious of them all, but when the boots hit the

ground, I think it's one of the hardest, is we have to be people

who are not just disciples ourselves, but who are making

disciples. So are we the type of church?

Are you the type of family? Are we the type of church family

that actually makes more disciples?

Are there people in our lives that we are praying for, that

we're intentionally talking with to have a good conversation that

hopefully leads to a gospel conversation because they don't

yet know Jesus? And so we're hoping and praying

that that person will come to church with us and we'll meet

the real and living God and that we get to have some real

conversations about the real stuff of life.

Do we have people maybe that are believers that are just a little

bit, not as far along in the journey as us that we're helping

take those next steps? Maybe they've been baptized, but

they don't know how to read the Bible, and you're teaching them

to read the Bible and to pray. We have to be people who make

disciples that have become disciples.

And the best way to deepen our discipleship journey is to make

more disciples. Most of us know that when you

teach something, it actually becomes even more real to you

and you can understand it more. You have to know it better.

You have to actually, as Paul instructs Timothy, you actually

have to do it so you're not just a hypocritical liar.

So making disciples is paramount to the Christian growth and the

growth towards godliness. Now all this brings me to

another favorite sport that I love that happens in March, and

that's the sport of baseball. Growing up, I played a lot of

baseball and I played in high school and I had this coach

freshman year of high school. His name was Coach Al and Coach

Al was his awesome guy. He played college baseball at

the local college. And one day during practice, he

calls us all over and he says, hey guys, I just want to tell

you a quick story because I'm noticing the way that you're

practicing. I want to help you out.

He says, I want to tell you the story of the second string bench

warmer catcher that I played with this guy.

He says this catcher was really weird.

He's really weird for one reason.

It's because he should have been the best player on the team.

Coach Al said this guy should have been the best.

And the reason because he worked the hardest.

He was the hardest worker on the team.

In fact, he probably should have been one of the best in the

league. He took the most extra at bats.

He was in the weight room. He ate healthy.

He watched film, he's always out in the bullpen with the pitchers

taking care of their needs. And by all accounts, this guy

should have been the best player on the team, at least should

have been on the on the starting nine.

But he's not. In fact, what's really weird is

that over the course of the four years of college, he actually

got worse. And Coach Al made the point to

say that training doesn't matter If you're training for the wrong

reasons. If you're training the wrong

things, as my dad would say, practice does not make perfect.

Perfect practice makes perfect. Practicing the right things for

the right reasons, that makes perfect.

Or as Tucker soccer coach says, practice makes permanent.

You drill in on the things that you do over and over again.

If they're good habits, that's great.

If they're bad habits, that's bad.

And so as we think about training, when you think about

the six things I just shared with us, if we just do the six,

if we just pray and read our Bible, go to church, involved in

a diverse discipleship community, we just do those

things because we feel like we should do them, then we're not

going to get any closer to becoming godly.

We're not going to have any more success in the Christian life.

But if we have godliness in mind, then we will.

This is the way Paul says it in verse 9.

He says this is a faithful sane. This is where we get our our

series title. This word faithful could also be

translated trustworthy. So he says this is trustworthy.

And if you look above, what's the trustworthy saying?

The trustworthy saying is that godliness is profitable for all

things. That's the trustworthy saying,

not that training is helpful, not that training is going to

make you more profitable. Now that training is going to

help, but that godliness will, he says it's profitable for all

things in this life. For every sphere of your life,

godliness is profitable. It's profitable for your

relationship with God, for your relationship with your family.

It's profitable in the workplace, it's profitable with

your neighbors. It's profitable in your church

family to be a godly person. And he says not only that

profitable in this life, but it's also profitable in the life

which is to come. Couple weeks ago I had a student

asked me he was struggling through just feelings of not

being able to break free of a sin.

And he had gone to a community and he had talked to some older

Christians and realized the painful truth that there were

older Christians who were still struggling with sin.

And he asked me, is it really worth it to struggle with sin my

entire life for the next 60 years, say, to not actually find

a victory in this life fully and to simply go to heaven and have

it all fixed. Like why?

Why try so hard? Why?

Why burden myself with all that? I think Paul's answer would be

because every step towards godliness that you make in this

life is profitable for this life, but also every step that

you make in this life is profitable in the life to come.

Now, we don't fully know what that exactly means, but we do

know that rewards in heaven are promised for those who are

faithful to God and those who follow God.

The least shall be the greatest, and the greatest shall be least,

and so in some way we are every step of godliness we take

becoming more equipped for heaven. 1 author puts it this

way that every way in which we train on earth, we are training

to reign with Christ for eternity, whatever that looks

like. We're somehow as make strides

towards godliness, becoming more equipped to reign with Christ

and eternity four, he says in verse 10.

To this end, we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust

in the living God who is the Savior of all men, especially of

those who believe it's for godliness that they suffer, says

Timothy. You've suffered a lot and you

haven't suffered just to get some discipline out there in the

world. You didn't suffer just to get

people to serve or to give money.

You suffered because you believed that godliness was

important. You wanted to see the real and

living God. You trusted that he would move.

That's the same way. That same reason that you and I

practice the things we practice, the same reason we do the things

that we do because we want to be godly and as we close, want to

give just a quick definition of godliness.

Godliness is loving God, it's living like a Jesus, and it's

letting the Spirit lead. So a good question to ask and

everything we do is it is it is whatever I'm doing creating in

me a heart that loves God. Paul says in Second Corinthians

that if you can't be a joyful giver, just don't give.

I think the reason he says that is because the reason we give is

to grow in our love for God. So if it doesn't cause you to

love God more, don't worry about it until it does.

Practicing should cause us to love God more.

Should also cause us to live like Jesus.

Jesus goes away to the mountains to pray often.

Maybe you'd a great prayer habit like that.

But if our prayer habits don't produce in us the compassion of

Christ, where he can be interrupted at a moment, even

when he's heartbroken and care for people, and instead our

prayer habits create pride or seclusion in our lives, maybe we

need to rethink our prayer lives.

And you have to let the Spirit lead.

Jesus consistently went and prayed and was led by the

Spirit. The way that he lived his life

showed us what it meant to be reliant on God.

And so do our practices pop us up in our own strength or do

they make us more reliant and more humble towards God?

And so as we close, the question that I want you to ponder as we

sing this last song is what might God be asking you

individually or us as a community to to shift or to

change? Maybe it's something from the

list that you need to add in or do differently.

Maybe it's something in your life that is just not profiting

you that you need to take out. For me, several years ago, I was

confronted with the fact that I'd read through the Bible

numerous times. I was homeschooled and as a lot

of homeschooled kids do, I had a lot of time in my hands.

So I began to read through the Bible and I became a habit that

I'd read through the Bible most years, every year.

And I got to college and I'd read through it several times,

and I got to this point where I felt like God was putting on my

heart this idea that although I could read through the Bible

fairly consistently, it wasn't causing me to love God more.

It wasn't getting into my life and causing me to live like

Jesus. And it certainly was not making

me reliant on the Spirit. It's just making me more reliant

on my biblical, biblical knowledge as I felt God asked me

just to slow down and to read Scripture slower, smaller chunks

at a time. Don't try to read through the

whole thing in one year and get nothing out of it, but read

through it slowly and prayerfully.

Read through it with me. Allow me to instruct you and

help you and to teach you and, and don't worry about your

performance of reading through it in a year.

And so I'm sure all of us have something like that.

The God just is asking us right now, even just to change, to

twist, to turn, maybe something really small.

It might be something really big, but as we close in this

last song before we take communion, just ask that you

would ponder that. God, we bring ourselves to you

and we ask that you would. You would speak to us and You

would show us how we personally and corporately can grow in

godliness. Lord, we want to be people who

are godly. We want to be people who who

know you and trust you and our lives are marked by being with

you and being reliant on your truth.

So I ask that you would help us. I pray that you'd move the

needle in our hearts and in our church towards godliness and

that we be people who are known for our love.

We're known for looking like you, Jesus.

We're known for being Spirit LED.

Amen.