What to Avoid, What to Pursue

Automatically transcribed — lightly cleaned for readability. Wording is the preacher’s own.

Alright, let's pray for, let's pray for our brother and Pastor Luke here as he comes to bring the word this morning. Heavenly Father, we pray that as your word is proclaimed over us and in our midst, that you, your Holy Spirit, would reveal its truth to our lives. Heavenly Father, we ask that we, that it would do whatever it is that you need it to do in our hearts. Rebuke us, correct us, train us for righteousness, Lord. We pray for a clarity of thought and a clarity of speech for Pastor Luke this morning, that either through him or in spite of him, we might come to faith. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you, Pastor Cameron. Good morning, everybody. My name is Luke. I'm happy to continue on in our sermon series today in the book of 1 Timothy. Last week, Pastor Cameron spent most of the time or pretty much the entire time talking about what eldership is and eldership as Paul describes it in 1 Timothy and what that means in the local church, what those requirements are. Now, the astute of you will notice that I'm not going to continue, I'm not going to pick up right where he left off. I'm going to be starting mostly in chapter

4, but to assuage your fears, we will return to the topic of deacons and elders and all of those things come the new year, so you do not have to wait long for that. But part of the reason for that being is that a lot of the same comments that Pastor Cameron had about elders really kind of carries over to what is, or the list about deacons and the qualifications that they list there, and so it would have been a little bit of a repeat. But we've come to sort of a hinge point, kind of a halfway point in the book of 1 Timothy. You might remember from a handful of weeks ago, I had a brief outline of the book of 1 Timothy, we're going to put it up here on the screen. Timothy is kind of broken up by these moments where Paul kind of goes into a poetic praise, poetic place of doctrinal affirmation. He, at the beginning, he sort of starts out by stating his purpose, encouraging Timothy, ends that with a poem, goes into instructions to Ephesus, how ought they conduct the church. That's what we just went through, chapters 2 and 3, and we're going to read

Here in a moment this poem that Paul kind of ends chapter 3 with, and then today we're going to pick up in that second half where Paul continues in his specific instructions to the church in Ephesus. So let's take a look and let's see that poem that picks up in this story. So we're going to be in 1 Timothy 3 verse 14, and this is how he's kind of reminding Timothy of what he's talking about, and he's emphasizing it again here. He says, "I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know that one, or how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and a buttress of truth. But indeed we confess is the mystery of godliness. He was manifested in this flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among nations, and believed on in the world, and taken up in glory." Amen. So that's Paul's sort of ending of this portion, right? He's restating his purpose. He's like,

"I'm writing this to you so that if I'm delayed, that if I can't get to you guys as fast as I would like to, do you guys have a letter from me? Do you guys have some instructions from me in the in-between before I get there?" He's meaning to encourage Timothy and instruct the church. And this kind of poem, I was thinking about these kind of poetic phrases. These are sort of like moments, that poem part in this verse, in case you can't necessarily tell in your Bible, is verse 16. You can always tell when you're reading in your Bible. Most Bibles have Bible verses, the justification, the way that they're arranged in the Bible. It's not strictly across the page. It kind of breaks it up like it would a poem. That's any time that you're reading a section of scripture that's poetic. It's the way Psalms looks. It's the way a lot of the prophecy books look. But that probably is something like an early church worship song, or an early church creed, something that they would have said and repeated in church gatherings, into one another. I was trying to think of, what's a good example of this today? And the best I could think of is the one that so many of

Us know is that God is good, and all the time. Okay, so that was not very enthusiastic. I really thought, oh, this is just going to boom. But no, you let me down. I'm just kidding. But no, that idea, that's probably like the closest we have in our modern contemporary church is this. And so Paul here is kind of restating his purpose. He's saying we ought to be focusing on Christ and this mystery of godliness, which is something we'll come back to as we go into chapter four. So this is sort of where we, this kind of brings us up and summarizes where we're at. And we're going to read now the rest of chapter four in first Timothy, and then we'll discuss it and see what it has for us today. So Paul in verse one of chapter four, he says, now the spirit expressly says in latter times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars who consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything got created by God is good and

Nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. 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 irreverent and 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 hope 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, conduct, in love, in faith, in 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 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 doing so you will save both yourself and your hearers. Now before we kind of walk through and see what exactly is Paul saying and what does that got to do with me, I want to talk about what I think is one of the most universally embarrassing situations that happens I'm sure to all of us and not just to me. When you come up, the worst thing that I think, the most embarrassing thing I think can happen is when you come up to a door, you place your hand on the handle and you pull only to realize that it's a push door. Does anybody else have that happen to them? Thank goodness. That's like the worst thing to have happen is you come up so confidently, I've used doors my whole life, I'm going to open this one and then you realize you got to push and I don't know what it is about those doors but they always seem to be very like loose in the frame,

Right? They just make tons of noise as if they're mocking you when you pull on them and then we always, I think we always do the same thing. Anytime this happens we immediately do one of these. Who saw me make that mistake, right? Do I need to change my name, leave the country, what do I need to do? And then we shapeishly would push in and we go about our day. Do you know what the best feeling is though? Being the person who just saw that happened? And you walk up to that door and you're just like, I know what to do now, right? And you just like confidently walk, oh look at me, I know how to do that. Now we love, like the world is full of mistakes and we love to know how to avoid the ones that get repeated often, right? If I can learn, if I can look ahead, if I can see an error, if I can see a mistake and if I can find a way to avoid it, I want to do that. And so what Paul here in this passage is he's highlighting a mistake, he's highlighting an error, some false teaching that the church is facing and he's giving Timothy and the church a warning.

He's saying, hey look out for this and pursue this. So today in our message we're going to answer these two questions. What do we need to avoid and what do we need to pursue? What is it that we need to avoid doing? What's the door that we need to avoid pulling on? And what's the door that we need to push into? What is it that we need to avoid? What is it that we need to pursue? This is what Paul is talking about and he begins to talk about what is this false teaching, this false doctrine that he's so concerned about. He begins to describe it in the first five verses. He says this, "Now the Spirit expressly says in later times that some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared and who forbid marriage and require absence from food that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received of thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer." So what is Paul saying here? Well he's saying something

That at least when I was reading this passage struck me as something that doesn't make it into very many pulpits, isn't something we talk about, but he says here, he says these teachings, these false teachings that people will depart to, they're inadvertently devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. That's some pretty harsh language, right? That anything that is a false teaching here that Paul's talking about, these are, they're not just wrong, they're not just a mistake in error. He's saying, oh no, like this is a teaching of Satan. This is not of God. This is something that is a deceitful spirit that is seeking to lead people astray. That's not the type of language that we often use when we think about this, but I think we need to be very clear about this. Any teaching that distorts the gospel and the clear teaching of the Bible is demonic. Any teaching that takes and twists what is clear in the gospel about who Jesus Christ is, about how we are saved is demonic. Anything that takes what is plainly clear in the Bible and then makes

It and twists it all up is demonic. That is the first point of this passage. Now, I'm not talking about sort of theological arguments that are well documented in the history of church, that are unclear, that have reason for discussion and reasonable disagreement. I'm talking about core doctrines. I'm talking about things that lead people to thinking that they're saved by something other than the blood of Jesus Christ and that Jesus is something other than fully God and that we ought to, I don't know, anything that is just not clear. This is so hard for us. This might sound like, man, that's really harsh. That's kind of a harsh thing to say in our culture. I think the reason is that we live in a culture of what I like to call "it seems to me-isms." If you've ever talked with anybody, I've talked to a number of people about their faith, I always know that I'm in for a good time when they start off with saying, "Well, it seems to me, " and I'm like, "Oh, yeah? Tell me. What does it seem to you?" When we get into a place, when we begin to discuss about, "Well, it seems to me that God ought to be like this, " we always come up, whenever we're talking

Like that, we come up with something that sounds agreeable, it sounds logical, it makes sense, and then if we don't agree with whatever it seems to them, we've become the unreasonable one. The question is, where are you getting that? Why does it seem to you? Does it seem that to you because you learned that somewhere? God told you that somehow? Or is that just your own personal perspective that you have on life for the last however many years you've been here? Is that just a "seems to me-ism" that is reasonable and agreeable but ultimately is the type of thing that shipwrecks your faith? At the beginning of the letter, Paul names two people. He says, "These people are shipwrecking their faith because they're devoting themselves to these false teachings." I was thinking about this, and it's rare that these things kind of just pop up, that they just magically appear. These things, they're kind of sneaky. I was thinking about if you've ever been to the beach, you've ever been to the ocean, and you've been out there and the tides are harsh, you'll know that you have to be careful about riptides or just the general current because you'll be out there, you'll

Be playing out in the ocean, and then you'll look up and you'll see, "Whoa, I've moved down the beach. My stuff used to be strict in front of me, but now it's all the way over there. We drift slowly bit by bit over time." C. S. Lewis, he wrote and said this in Mere Christianity, he said, "As a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by an honest argument. Do not most people simply drift away?" I think that's what all too often happens in the church and in believers. Rarely is it a moment of just saying, "Haha, I'm done. I've been convinced, " or "God's not that important, " or something. Usually it's small compromises, it's small moments of just drifting in faith, beginning to accept more of what the world says to us rather than what Scripture says to us. And slowly over time, we've drifted from where we once were. And like Paul says, we end up shipwrecking our faith. So I think that's important for us

To understand is that this is not just some sort of like, this is demonic. It's something that is, that we need to call out, that we need to be clear about. And we can't afford to just be like, "Oh whatever, that's just fine. You have your own personal truth." That's something that I hear all too often. So what specifically is the false teaching that Paul's addressing here? He's talking about, he's describing, he's like, "There will be these people who get up and they say they forbid marriage and they're requiring abstinence from food." What is he talking about? What kind of false teaching is that? The false teaching he's talking about is a type of what's called asceticism. Don't worry, I've got a definition up on the screen. Asceticism is a word that's derived from the word meaning exercise or training. And it refers to the act of abstaining from pleasure and comforts sometimes to the extreme. This idea, this came mostly from the Greek philosophers, and they thought, "You know what? We could build better character by abstaining from things, by living a harsher life, by denying ourselves comforts." It's the classic, what we say,

It doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? If we endure this difficulty, we will make ourselves better. And this was kind of leaking into the church. Kind of imagine sort of this, this is what maybe I imagine was something like what was happening in the church of Ephesus at the time. Let's imagine a modern day church small group, you're all gathered around, it's a group. And two of the members who have been dating for a while have decided to get married, they're engaged, and they're breaking the news to the small group. The small group's so happy, they're excited, "Oh, congratulations, we're glad for you guys, you guys are gonna get married." And then there's this one guy, I imagine him sitting in a chair, leaning back, arms crossed, very not happy, not smiling. And he's just like, "Oh, I guess you guys weren't holy enough to not get married." I mean, I get it, a lot of people get married, but if you really wanted to follow Jesus, you guys really wanted to reach that next level of Christianity, you'd be able to not get married. You guys would be able to sustain, live a life of celibacy and never marry. That would be the true way to follow Jesus, but

I guess you guys just aren't up for that. That's kind of, that feels kind of strange to us. We're kind of like, "What in the world?" But that's not, I mean, does anybody know who the Shakers are? Ever heard of that denomination? Well, yeah, yeah, so I think I looked on the internet, there's three of them left. For obvious reasons, for reasons that will become obvious, the Shakers were a denomination, and one of the big things that made them unique was that they felt like it was most honorable to not get married, to be single, to abstain from marriage for all of life because that's how we will be in heaven, and that was their big thing. I think they started in the late 1800s, or no, early 1800s, don't remember the exact date, but there's still at least one community that's active, and I think there's only three of them according to this CNN report I watched. So yes, it seems strange and silly to us because we live in a culture of excess, but it's not all too strange, and so something similar is also happening here, perhaps not just with marriage but with certain foods. There were perhaps these teachers going around saying, "Well, you can't eat that, you shouldn't eat that, and you can't eat that, and if you

Do, you're less of a Christian, or you're not saved, or you can't be part of the body of Christ if you don't abstain from certain foods." This was the type of teaching that was going around. Paul here, he counters that and he gives alternate instructions, verses three through five, he says what ought to be done. He says, that's the wrong passage, he says, "Forbid marriage, require absence from foods, and God created that these things were created by God to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth, for everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and by prayer." If there is a Bible verse that is sort of the justification for praying before you have a meal, this is it. This is about as close as you're going to get to that, because Paul's saying, says all things that God created, God is the creator of all things, he made them good if we receive them with a heart of praise, with a heart of thanksgiving, if we bless that, if we're turning our eyes towards

The Lord and glorifying the Lord with that, we ought to receive it with thanksgiving. So Paul here is not, he's arguing against this extremism of saying, well no, you have to be single to honor God, and you have to abstain from certain things to honor God. Paul's saying, no, it's not Christianity, because what was essentially happening here is that they were adding things to Jesus. Okay, yeah, you're saved by Jesus, but then you have to abstain from marriage, or you're saved by Jesus, but then you have to abstain from certain foods. They were adding something to the gospel. They were saying that grace isn't fully free, you can't be saved unless you also behave, act, and do things in a certain way. And I think this is antithetical to the way that we ought to be living our lives. G.K. Chesterton had this quote, he says this, he says, "You say grace before meals, alright, but I say grace before the play and the opera, and grace before the concert and the pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing,

Boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink." What he's saying there is, is like, let us take, yes, let's praise, pray grace, let's pray thanksgiving over our food, over our meals, but let's also say thanksgiving for all good things that God has given us. Because all the things, all the good moments in our life are just, are just echoes of God's goodness to us, are just invitations to us to see God as a good creator and to praise Him. C.S. Lewis talks about them as signposts that talk about, that point us to the city, when we see a beautiful sunset or a beautiful sunrise, when we enjoy good fellowship with one another, when we enjoy a good meal, when we feel the strength of our body after a good exercise, when we receive a good gift from anyone. These things are all meant to make us look at the creator who gave these things to us. They're signposts that point the way towards God. And we shouldn't get, like, it would be silly if you were walking down the path, and you got to the destination you were going. We had been going all this

Way, coming to the city, and then you saw the sign that was pointing to the city, and then you stopped there, and you just spent all your time staring at the sign. Isn't this sign great? It's such a marvelous sign, we should worship the sign. But that's, a reasonable person would say, "But turn to your left, there's the city, there's where you've been going to." That's what the sign points to. And this is what we essentially do when we begin to worship created things, is we begin to worship the signpost. We begin to worship the thing that's supposed to point us to God, and we need to not lose sight of that. And I think the Christian life should be filled with full of moments of worship, full of moments of joy when we begin to receive all good things as a gift from God. Let that be an encouragement for us. When we recognize God as the author of all things, living becomes worshipful. I think this is something that we've, I hope we haven't lost, because sometimes people have an idea of Christians as being very austere, very serious, very not much fun, when like, we worship the God who made fun, right? We worship a God who created all

Things. We should enjoy those things, but always with the understanding that they point us to God, that God is the creator, the giver of those things. And so this is the heart of worship that we can all experience. This is what it means to be worshiping always. So this is kind of the specific false teaching that Paul is dealing with, is he's dealing with this asceticism, this teaching where these people are saying you need to abstain from certain things in order to be a holier Christian. And in Paul's combating that. Now today we don't deal with that as much, or at least in our particular circles. There are still, trust me, plenty of Christian circles that take this kind of stance, that say, well, you're not a real Christian if you're not, you're not as serious if you don't abstain from these things and this thing and that. And I want us to be clear of that. But I want us to see maybe even the bigger picture here. Because I think that there's a pattern that happens here with all false teaching. And here's the secret of every false teaching,

I think. False teachings twist the truth, making what is good seem bad and what is bad seem good. All false teachings, what they do is they take something, something good, and then they twist it. It's kind of like the enemy likes to take a good gift that you've gotten and then put it in a funhouse mirror, make it all distorted. Or he likes to take something that's bad, something that's evil in this world, stick it in another funhouse mirror that straightens it all up and makes it look pretty. False teaching loves to do this. And we live in a world full of these paradoxes. I actually, I had a moment the other week, I was, I was at a bookstore. And there was a woman who was having a rather loud conversation, a couple bookshelves over from me, who I think was probably her boyfriend or something like that. And she was talking and she was like, you know, I really, I don't think the porn industry is that bad. Actually, I think that there's, and she names a specific app and she says, you know, I really think that this app has helped women achieve more freedom and have helped them take back the porn industry. I was like, what? Excuse me?

Like she was, she was in a place where she was beginning to celebrate and she was beginning to say, Oh, porn's not so bad. Porn's a good thing. It's given women freedom and it's done this and it's done that. I hope I don't have to tell you that's categorically untrue. It takes advantage of victims. It perpetuates trauma. It ruins lives and marriages. It is not a good thing. You know what is a good thing? Sexuality, sex. It's a good thing. But what Satan has loved to do and what he has done particularly well in our moment of time is he's taken this good gift and he's distorted it. He's turned it all upside down. He's got everybody confused about it and he's got people like that young woman who is so utterly confused about what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is healthy. False teaching is demonic because it twists what is good into what is bad and twists what is bad to make it seem good. I think we live in a world that's typified by this parable.

Are you familiar? It's not a parable of Jesus but a different fable or parable. Are you familiar with the story of the emperor's new clothes? It's this emperor. He loved to have fanciful clothes. He loved to be dressed so beautifully and these two con men come to town and they say, "Oh, emperor, we're going to make you these beautifully fine clothes out of such great and fine fabric that it's so awesome and this fabric is so beautiful and fine that only people who are smart and intelligent and well-versed people can see this fabric. If you can't see it, it means you're an idiot. It means that you're dumb." And so they began and they show up and the emperor's like, "Fine, dress me in this magical wonderful fine clothes." And they show up and they begin to dress him and the emperor's looking around and he's like, "I don't see this clothes. I don't see it but I don't want to be dumb so I'm going to keep my mouth shut." And the con men hold up the fabric and they're like, "Can't you see it, emperor? Isn't this just so beautiful? It's so good

On your complexion." And he's just like, "Oh, yes, absolutely. It's great. It's such a fine fabric." And the same scenario happens when the advisors to the emperor walk in and the emperor says, "Don't you love my new clothes?" And they're just like, "Well, we don't see anything but we don't want to be idiots so we're going to say, 'Oh, of course. It looks great, emperor.'" And then eventually the emperor decides and he's like, "You know what? I'm going to throw a parade. I'm going to walk down Main Street in my village and I'm going to show my fine clothes off to all of my people." And he goes and he walks out in his night shirt. All the while everybody's clapping and saying, "Oh, that's wonderful. That's beautiful." Until a small child just looks out and just says, "He doesn't have any clothes on." Like it took the innocence of a child who wasn't afraid of being ridiculed to speak the truth. And I think too much we live in a culture defined by that parable where we have come to accept certain truths, certain lies that ought to be evidently untrue,

That ought to be clearly spoken about in scripture, that ought to make us repulsed, but for some reason the crowds are clapping for fear of calling out the truth. And I think that this is what false teaching ultimately does. It distorts and it binds us into a place where we neglect to hold up what is true, what is right. Because that's what Paul ultimately encourages here. Paul says to Timothy, he holds this up in the next couple of verses. So if this is what we ought to avoid is this false teaching that twists the truth of God, what we ought we pursue. He says this in verse 6. He says, "If you put these things before your brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of faith and of good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent and silly myths, rather train yourself for godliness." Paul's just like, "Ignore the silly myths. Ignore the irreverent truths. Focus on good doctrine. Focus on the word of faith. Focus on the gospel. Keep these things front and center. This ought to be

What we strive after and we ought to be striving after godliness." He mentions here again these kind of ideas of silly myths. I think silly myths and irreverent, how does he say it? Verse 7, "Have nothing to do with irreverent and silly myths, rather train yourself for godliness." I cannot tell you, it's probably just, I'll just take it. It's a sign that I need to be off my phone because I just see way too many things that purport to be Christian but are ultimately just silly myths. There's too many things out there. Cameron and I, we were just talking this week, we were lamenting the state of theology on TikTok. It is not that good. If you're like, if you run across something and you're just like, "Wow!" and you're like, "I've never heard that before." There's probably a reason. I went down a whole like, okay. The TV show, The Chosen, it's a good show, I've not watched a ton of it, but it is good for what it is, an imagining of the Gospels, a telling of the Gospel, as faithfully as they kind of can, with imagination kind of filling in the gaps. If you understand

All of that and you understand that it doesn't replace your Bible, all good and fine. But there was this like part in one of, I don't know the episode or season or anything, because like I said, I've not watched it. But there was this part where they talk about, I can't remember, I could not find it, but everybody says that it's there somewhere in the episode. I didn't have the time to watch the whole episode. Or it was an interview and they said that they used to anoint sheep's feet with oil before they would sacrifice the sheep. And that was what Mary was doing when she was anointing Jesus's feet with oil. It sounds really nice, but that is not anywhere in the Bible. And from what I searched and from what other people searched and the quick research I did online, cannot find a single mention of anybody anointing a feet's sheep before sacrificing it before the year 2010. So what that means is that it was made up by somebody or somebody well intentioned or misunderstood something. And it's gotten repeated. It's gotten said in sermons. It's gotten said enough so that the people who made the show, the chosen had heard it and they thought it was

True that they then put it in the show. And here I am explaining to you something that's not real. Jesus absolutely is the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. But the Jews just never anointed the sheep's feet. I'm sorry. And these are the type of things that we need to avoid. We need to avoid silly myths. We need to avoid irreverent things. We need to not listen to people on the internet who say that the rapture is happening on Tuesday. We don't need to listen to that. Anyways, all right, I'm going to stop down that rabbit trail. Paul continues and he says these interesting things here. He says in verse 8, "For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and for the life to come." So he's saying there is some value in working out. Paul was not opposed to getting swole. He was just like, all right, go to the gym, work out. He's using here the language, the Greek here is gymnassio. He's talking literally

About like this idea of exercising and training like the early Olympics would have done in ancient Greece. So he's saying physical training is of good, taking care of your body, being healthy. It's of some value in life, right? It does you good. But what is of greater value? He would say soul training is of better value. Or to put it here, we should be striving to become more and more like Jesus. Should I be training my body to look more and more like Arnold Schwarzenegger? Or should I be training my soul and my heart and my spirit and my character to be more and more like Jesus? We have so many goals in this life. So many things that we can strive after. We can strive after financial stability. We want, you know what, I want to have a goal of earning this much. Or I want to have a goal of owning this type of house. Or I want to have a goal of having this type of job and this type of recognition. I want people to say this type of thing about me. Or perhaps I have a goal, I have a relationship goal or perhaps I have a physical fitness goal or I have a goal to

Read so many books. We are a people of goals. We have every single calendar year at New Year's we set a whole bunch of them we're not going to keep. We're all about goals. And I got to confess a little bit here to you. I'm like a self-help junkie. I love reading all the self-help stuff, the productivity stuff, the podcasts. I've read a lot of it and I've benefited from some of it. But is it the most important goal? There was a quote I ran across here and I thought it was a fantastic quote. It's an old proverb. I think it's an Italian proverb that's what the internet told me. And it said that at the end of the game the king and the pawn go into the same box. At the end of the game of chess all the pieces no matter how important they were in the game all go into the same box. You and us, no matter what goals we pursue, no matter what we achieve, we all go into the same boxes. We all die. We all. And at the end of that was your physical training and those goals of some value? Yeah.

But they didn't last into eternity. Paul says in verse 8 here that this pursuit of godliness is of good in this life and the next. He says for a while bodily training is of some value. Promise is of value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It's of value, pursuing and trying to what we say around here live like Jesus, love like Jesus, serve like Jesus. Trying to live our life like Jesus is of value in every way. It is the goal we ought to fix our lives on. When I'm reading all of those self I was reading this yesterday and I was like you know out of all the self help podcasts and books I've read the book that I most desperately need to read is this one. The person that I most desperately need to be listening to is Christ is the Holy Spirit is to his words into my life because at the end of the day yes is the productivity stuff that I've learned of some value. Yeah. Will it compel in its preciousness to the character of Christ formed

In me over the course of lifetime by pursuing Christ likeness a hundred percent. Pursuing Christ becoming more and more like Jesus is of great in fathomable value and we need to keep that fixed in our minds. So how then do we do this or no before I even do that before I even say how I have to ask the question is do we want to do that. Do we want to pursue godliness above all things. It's a it's a question of the heart as have we become so fixed our eyes so enticed by other things that the idea of becoming more like Jesus sounds kind of like an afterthought. It sounds like something that has that really all that important is that really something that gets me excited. Should I really spend any of my time towards it because I'd much rather level up on my video game or whatever it happens to be. This is a question I think we have to wrestle with is do we actually want to be transformed. Do we actually want to become more like Jesus. And I think I think that in the in your heart of hearts there's a part of you that says yes but I think we're too

Often distracted. I think too often it takes the back seat. I think you do actually want to become more like Jesus because imagine what the world would be like if we were all just a little bit more like Jesus when we woke up tomorrow. If we just carried and embodied his love for this world for our neighbor if we loved other people around us we loved our family members with a sacrificial love. If we held out the truth of the gospel and of God's word without fear. If we were able to come into a world that we don't need acceptance from but we can offer and point the way to Jesus and to salvation without fear of rejection. If we could embody that a little bit more I think our world would begin to change. So how do we go about do this. Anyone who does any sort of physical training or growth or habit or anything will tell you that training is about consistency. It's not about doing anything like if you go to the gym once and you lift all the weight you can and you're

Like that's good I'm good for the year. You're not going to see much results but if you show up and you do a little bit and you do that consistently you're going to see much more results. So I'm not here I'm not saying that you need to suddenly abstain from all things and just be like be reading this all of the time although that's not a bad idea but like 24/7 I'm saying here I'm not saying that we can't enjoy the good things in life because that's what Paul was saying but I'm saying can we find a way to more consistently train ourselves in godliness. To do what Paul was instructing Timothy here devote themselves watch keep close watch on yourself and on your teaching persist in this so by doing so you save both yourself and your heroes. What does it mean for us to strive and constantly put in front of us the word and good doctrine and good teaching. How do we do this. So I'm going to have some instructions for you what I would like you to do today and you can all do this if you have a smartphone if you don't have a dumb phone I guess this application is not for you but if you have a smartphone like

Most people your phone keeps track of how much time you spend on it keeps track of how much time you spend on it each day what apps you're using and how much time is spent on each of those and what I would encourage you to do today is to open your phone and look at your phone see how much time you use on it and say can I allocate five ten however many minutes you find from doing this thing on my phone to prayer or to the reading of scripture or descending and encouraging text message for someone or praying for someone can I steal a couple of minutes away from my instagram addiction to spend focusing on training myself towards God can I do that daily now up here on the screen behind me are all seeing instructions on how to do this if you have an iPhone so you can pull out your phone right now if you're like I'm not techie and I want to know how to do this so pull out your iPhone if you have an iPhone you can take a picture of the screen and it's got the instructions you're going to go to the settings app you're going to type in the

Search bar you're a type in screen time and then when you get to the screen time app on the next screen you're going to click on your little see what apps and website activity and it's going to pull up and you can see how much time I spent on my phone yesterday and including if you can maybe see you can see how much time I spent on instagram and the question is that say how many of those minutes could I have stolen away from that and put towards training myself in godliness okay now all you iPhone people I've put Android stuff up here too so that you don't feel left out so the next slide is how you would do this on an Android so go ahead take a picture of that if you're an Android user and that's how you would do the same thing but I put this up here not because I'm just a tech nerd but because I genuinely actually want you to try and do this I would love to hear from you at the end of the week what you got from looking at your phone's time spent on it

And if you were able to steal some time back from it and put that towards pursuing godliness training in righteousness because what would happen if we took all this seriously what if we took seriously Paul's encouragement that this is the most important thing we could put our time towards that this is the most important thing that's going to bear fruit in our lives both now and in the future and in eternity to come I think this whole city I think this whole county I think this whole area in region would begin to change if we began to take even more seriously our call to godliness and to be like Christ let's pray Heavenly Father pray that you would capture our hearts this morning Lord that you would help us to see the invitation to your mission and to change the world but I pray that you would help us to see that there are so many lies so many distractions

And Lord you have called us to something so much better but I pray that you would give us a heart and a life that lays aside anything that so easily entangles and run the race of faith Lord I pray that you would give us a passion that you would make us into a community that supports one another in that goal and Lord I pray that you would help us to lay aside false teachings things about things that are not true things that are not helpful truths that have been twisted and distorted by the enemy Lord pray that you would help us to lay those aside call them for what they are there are lies Lord help us to lay that aside and to fix our eyes on you in Jesus name we pray amen yes Lord please make that our prayer bring new wine out of us make us your vessel help us to be your love to this world conduit as you go from this place I know and I pray that the Lord would be with you and that he would capture your heart

And help you pursue and live after him conduit go in peace we're loved