Sermon: Training in Godliness

This evening we're gonna talk about our indispensable pursuit of holiness as followers of Jesus Christ, both as pastors and non pastors, as lay people in the church. Robert Murray McShane said, the greatest need of my people is my personal holiness. It's not taking the place of Jesus, of course, but McShane understood that he needed to be holy in order to be of any use to his people. JC Riel in his classic book, holiness says, we must

be holy because this is the one grand end and purpose for which Christ came into the world. In our passage this evening, Paul is writing a word of encouragement to his son in the faith. Timothy. Timothy is a, a, a, a new pastor in Ephesus, and he has become discouraged through challenges facing him in the church. And Paul addresses what would make Timothy A. Good servant of Christ Jesus. And at the heart of what it be means, being a good servant

of Jesus Christ is a diligent pursuit of holiness. It is essential for the pastor. It is essential for any follower of Jesus Christ. So I wanna invite you to turn in your Bibles with me to one Timothy chapter four. Our text will be verses six through 10. You can find it on page 992 of the Pew Bible here. Now the word of the Lord, one Timothy four, six through 10. 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 silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness for a 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 the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. Pray with me, our Father in heaven. It is our great joy to gather this evening, and we look to you. Our eyes are on you, and we listen to your word and we praise you. And thank you that your word is sufficient for us. It is sufficient that we would come to a knowledge of, of

salvation in Jesus Christ. It is sufficient for growing in holiness in this life. And so, Lord, we thank you that your word is enough, and we come to you now looking for you to feed and direct and provide for your sheep through your word. We ask in the precious name of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

A good servant of Christ will be known by his diligence in training for godliness, which is the only way we make progress in the Lord. A good servant of Christ will be known by his diligence in training for godliness, which is the only way we make progress in the Lord. Our passage teaches four elements of training in godliness. We will talk about the means of training. We'll talk about distractions from training. We'll talk about the benefit of training,

and finally, our motivation in training. Before we get to those four elements, Paul begins with the word to pastors, which makes this text fitting this evening. He begins in verse six, if you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus. Paul defines a good servant here as one who puts these things before the brothers. In other words that he preaches, he teaches, he instructs the people of God.

What are these things that Paul is referring to? Well, Paul uses this phrase, these things three times in this short section. We see it here in verse six. We see it again in verse 11 when he says, command and teach these things. And finally we see it again in verse 15. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them. So what are these things? Paul is referring to what he just wrote in verses one through five of chapter four.

But more broadly, he's referring to everything that he has already instructed Timothy in this letter. Thus, the command to Timothy is that he would teach all that Paul has taught him to the church that he is pastoring in Ephesus. That means that that pastors as Christ's servants must put the gospel as contained in all the scriptures before God's people. Now Paul is only briefly mentioning the need for Timothy to teach in this verse,

but he's gonna pick up that theme again in verses 11 to 14. He instead moves on to a different theme for the rest of our passage, Paul pivots from the preaching and teaching role of the servant's commitment to his growth in godliness. This Paul says, is necessary for you Timothy, as a pastor, it is necessary for Dave. It is necessary for all the pastors, it's necessary for all followers of Jesus Christ. So that leads to our first element. The means of training.

The means of training will look at the second half of verse six. We understand that anyone who wants to make progress in some skill think of a a physical skill that, that we need to take appropriate measures to achieve the goal that we are hoping for. You can Google online how to do a hundred pushups or, or how to run a mile in less than six minutes, and you can get a little training program going for yourself, right?

The musician will lock himself in the practice room for hours a day to improve his technique so that he can master Rachmaninoff. An athlete will hit the gym every morning with different routines each day of the week to focus on different muscle groups. The runner is going to do all she can to increase or decrease her time rather and increase her distance. Training requires effort. The word being trained in verse six is from a, a different root word than the word train in

verse seven. In verse six, the word being trained means to bring up or to educate. And it suggests, uh, not simply how Timothy was raised by his mother, but his day to day habits. The Greek word in verse seven for train give not so you can hear the word gim or gym means to train in gymnastic discipline to exercise. And then in verse 10, we get this phrase that to this end, we toil and strive. So all these various terms suggest

that it takes significant effort for the training that Paul is admonishing us to undertake. Well, Paul gives us two means in verse six. He says, you are to be trained in the words of faith. So we're to be trained through the words of faith or in the words of faith. The words of faith here refer to the, the, the, the, the gospel message that Jesus died for sinners. Uh, uh, and, and we must not only repent once, but we must live a life of repentance,

putting the old man to death and living unto Christ. This is the message that we need to hear and believe. If we are to be saved, the Christian life will be one of continual growth in the scriptures. But we never move beyond this basic foundation needing the gospel every day. So we are trained in godliness through our daily repentance, our daily turning unto Christ, turning away from our sin and receiving and resting upon Christ alone for salvation.

There is no progress in this life. There is no holiness there, there is no growth in sanctification if we are not regularly, daily, hourly, turning to the grace of Jesus to forgive our remaining sin. So we are trained through the words of faith. The second means that Paul gives, he says, we are to be trained, um, through the good doctrine that you have followed. So good doctrine comes closely, uh, at the heels of, of these words of faith,

but it expands upon the words of faith. If the basic gospel message is that Jesus died for sinners and commands us to repent and receive him by faith alone, then the good doctrine which flows from that is the summary of all that the scriptures teach as contained in the Westminster confession of faith as contained in, in the doctrines of our church that have been handed down to us from our, our fathers that have gone before us.

So we can have a knowledge of the Bible, but without a doctrinal framework for how all of that teaching fits together. We are still susceptible to falling into many different kinds of error. That's why university reform church is a confessional church that we want to train ourselves in. What it means that the church has confessed over the ages as a summary of the whole council of God. So whether you are new to URC or whether you've been here for many, many years,

we would commend to you the study and the improvement of your theological training that we would all know this is what we believe, this is what we hold. Yes, we believe the Bible, and we have a, a system of doctrine that that helps make sense of all the different pieces of the scripture. And we would, we would hold that in the Westminster standards and the confession of faith and the shorter and larger catechism. So our training, the means by which God has given us

to train for godliness is a regular, dedicated commitment to the gospel and to the doctrines that flow from the gospel. This means that, that we are to be in God's word every day, right? We're to be basking in drinking from soaking in what God has said. And at the same time, we need to grow in our theology so that our biblical worldview is reinforced by a, a doctrinal structure that helps us understand the big picture of the Bible and how it fits together.

This is gonna come through time and study. Now, if you've been in church for any length of time, you've certainly heard this kind of message before. And, and the, the key that I would make right now is that if you want to grow in holiness and you've heard, yes, I know I need to have time with the Lord every day, I know I need time in his word. I know I need to be reading, uh, more broadly so that I would be growing my mind

to understand the things of the Lord. It is always the right time to start that habit again. If you have stopped for any reason or if you've never started that habit, it is always the right time to start the habit of reading his word every day. Uh, perhaps you did it years ago, but now it's been a length of time and for any number of reasons you have stopped going to his word. Today would be a wonderful day to start training for godliness.

How through the word of faith, by turning to Jesus, looking for Jesus, reading about him in his word. So the first element of what we're looking at this morning are the means or this evening are the means of training. JC Riel writes, I should as soon expect, expect a farmer to prosper in business, who contented himself with sowing his fields and never looking at them till harvest, as expect a believer to attain much holiness

who was not diligent about his Bible reading his prayers and his use of Sundays. Our God is a God who works by means, and he will never bless the soul of the man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them. Paul gives us the means of training. Second, he talks about distractions from training, distractions from training. In verse seven, there are all sorts of distractions that can keep us from training, whether it's music or,

or athletics or some skill that we want to grow in. Sickness is a big one, right? You get sick and you're thrown off your routine. Busyness can pull us away from, uh, keeping that regimen that we tried so hard to set up. It might be a lack of discipline, uh, about when we go to bed at night or what kinds of food we eat, um, or anything new that might come into your life. It might be a new semester or a new school year

or a new job just throws off our rhythm. Well, in verse seven, Paul gives a clear command to Timothy. He says, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness. These irreverent, silly myths which Timothy must avoid are the opponents understanding of the gospel, which is sub biblical or un-Christian. The word silly is probably Paul's harshest description of this faulty theology. William Mounts says, it shows that the theology is vacuous

no better than prattle. It also explains why Paul does not spend more time arguing against the heresy itself. A person cannot argue against prattle. So we don't know what the silly myths are, but, but Paul is waving the warning flag. Timothy, do not be distracted by the silly myths. What are some of the irreverent, silly myths that we need to avoid today in our lives? Well, people can churn out so much false teaching, teaching

that's contrary to what the scriptures teach, that we need to be on our guard as men and women of the word, who are, who are being trained according to the scriptures we need to be looking for what are the myths that are taking hold in our culture today? Many of those myths are related to anthropology today. Uh, author Rosaria Butterfield, uh, came out with a, a book, uh, two years ago called Five Lies of Our post-Christian Age.

So she picks out five lies. I'll just mention two of them. And two of them are that homosexuality is normal and that transgenderism is normal. Obviously those are, those are ideas that have taken hold in our culture. But the scriptures teach no. The, the, the Lord has given us a design in, in who he has made each person to be and, and, and the beauty of one man and one woman in a marriage relationship for life. So these teachings, I think Paul would call silly,

not because they're inconsequential or laughable, but because there, there is no substance to them in the scripture. He would call them myth. They're not to take hold, uh, in our hearts or minds. They have instead redefined gender and sexuality and they've twisted God's design for marriage. A second silly myth, perhaps one that we became very acquainted with in Philadelphia where we lived for a number of years. There is, uh, um, uh,

a website called Bio Logos. It's the primary organization that promotes theistic evolution. So there are myths in the church over creation, and BioLogos claims that, that there is good news and this is how they, how they understand the good news. He said that the website says that we can believe the authority of the Bible and the scientific evidence for evolution. So they think it is good news to believe that we started from a, a tiny speck of potential.

I think Paul would say this is a silly myth, not based on what the scriptures teach at all. It, it, it is, it is giving the weight of so-called secular science with the same authority or more authority than scripture. So there are all sorts of myths that are in the world that are taking root, certainly in our culture, but even in the church, which means as God's people, we need to read Christian books. We need to engage with teaching with our Bibles open.

So if you hear something that sounds new or not quite right, we should ask a pastor. We should ask a trusted friend or teacher if this seems like a faithful interpretation, we should look carefully to see if what we're hearing or reading is consistent what the scriptures teach. If it is not, then we ought to avoid it. It will only impede or distract our training in godliness. Paul says, have nothing to do with silly irreverent myths.

That's the second element. The third element talked about the means and the distractions from training. The third element is the benefit of training. We'll look at verses eight and nine. Verse nine is a reference to a, a trustworthy, uh, saying that deserves full acceptance. Paul has already referred to two sayings previous to this in chapters one and chapter three. And the question here, which exactly is the trustworthy saying that Paul wants

to underscore for us? And most scholars would say that probably it is verse eight, which we read earlier, that bodily training is of some value. Godliness is of value in every way. So physical training gives all sorts of benefits for the one exerting the effort to be fit, right? We have health, we have strength, stamina, longer life, often greater focus, greater energy, improved self-confidence and, and on and on. There are lots of benefits to our physical training.

Well, Paul says that physical training is of some value, but its value is limited to us.

Why? Because our physical bodies are mortal. They're, they're fleeting in this life. And even the bodies of the best athlete, the most disciplined trainer, will eventually wear out. Wayne Gretzky's goal's record will eventually fall to Ovechkin. Eventually Michael Jordan will be surpassed by LeBron James who will be surpassed by others in the future. All the goats will eventually be out goated in time. Paul probably refers to physical training here

because of the false teaching that he is refuting. In the earlier paragraph, Paul's opponents had taught that marriage and sex and certain foods must be avoided. So there was the nature of the false teaching was that the physical element of life is to be avoided. And so Paul is saying here that much like physical training, uh, it is not going to lead to godliness. Paul says a wonderful thing that should be a great encouragement to us.

In the second half of verse eight, he says that godliness and our training toward that end has benefit both now and for the life to come. So godliness benefits us in our life now. We receive every benefit for living under the rule of God in this life. Now, that doesn't mean that things will be easy for us. We have, we have seen, we know the stories of Joseph and David and Job and Daniel, who were faithful to the Lord and yet suffered immensely at

different periods of their life. They were persecuted and we will be persecuted for following Jesus. We will be harmed for our choosing the Lord. So what are the benefits to us in this life of our training in godliness, our peace of conscience. We are not plagued, riddled with the guilt of ongoing sin. We, we have unbroken fellowship with Christ, not, not, not, not ruined or marred by our ongoing struggles. We have joy in the Holy Ghost.

We will know blessing and favor of God as we pursue righteousness diligently. We also have benefit in the life to come. So not only does godliness benefit in this life, it benefits in the life to come. Hebrews 1214 exhorts us to strive for the holiness without which we will not see God. The surest evidence of a person truly born again by the Spirit is that we will begin to grow in holiness. Our godliness now prepares us for the glory to come.

Our godliness now shows us where our true home is. So our training in godliness has value at all times, both now and in the life to come. Finally, the fourth element is our motivation in training. Our motivation in training. We'll look at verse 10. One of the biggest dangers when we talk about training and discipline is the prospect of veering off into legalism. We are born legalists and our old nature thrills at any opportunity

to take some credit for ourselves. So what are we to make of these strong verbs that Paul uses to exhort us to pursue godliness? He says, we're to strive, we're to toil, we're to beat our bodies. We're to run the race, we're to train. So how do we obey these commands without becoming legalists?

Ken Hughes says, the difference is one of motivation. Legalism is self-centered. Discipline is God-centered. The legalistic heart says, I will do this thing to gain God's merit. The disciplined heart says, I will do this thing because I love God and want to please him. If we confuse legalism and discipline, we do so at our own peril. Our motivation to strive for holiness is because we love God and we want to please him.

We delight in spending time with him and we do so in his word and in prayer. Our striving does not earn God's favor. We have God's favor because of what Christ has done for us. Our motivation is hope in the living God, that all the promises of the gospel are true for those who believe our motivation is the outcome of our faith. That our faith will one day be sight and our sanctification will be complete. Now, Paul says something

that might raise our eyebrows a little bit. In verse 10, he says, we have our hope set on the living God who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe. Now, what does Paul mean by that? Well, in what sense is God a savior of all people? Well, we can rule out what we know Paul does not mean. Paul is not a universalist. He teaches verily very clearly that there will be wrath and judgment for those who do not rest in Christ alone.

He warns of a, an impending day of the Lord when God will come to judge like a thief in the night, and sudden destruction will come upon all those who are not ready for Christ. So Paul is not teaching that everyone will be saved. Calvin sees God's role as Savior, as his common grace to all humanity. A savior in Greco-Roman culture referred to a human benefactor. And in that sense, God is the only savior and benefactor to all people.

So on the one hand, when we think about his common grace, God is the only savior of the world, but in a much, much more profound way, he eternally saves only the elect who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul's point here is to commend to Timothy a hope in the living God who is the Savior, especially of those who believe. And it is our hope in this God of grace that serves as our motivation. It is the work of Christ on our behalf.

It is the fact that God will be faithful to all his promises in Christ. Our motivation is not legalism, but belief in those promises.

In Romans chapter 16 verse 19, Paul says, of the believers in Rome, your obedience is known to all.

Can that be said of you?

Are you known for your obedience to Jesus Christ In your workplace, in your extended family? Can that be said of university reformed church? I think it can be said of our brother Dave. It is his reputation among us. Paul urges Timothy and he urges us to keep training for godliness. This is not a one and done. It is a keep on at it. We will never regret the time that we spend with the Lord. We may regret staying up too late watching a dumb movie

or playing video games or eating too much dessert, but we will never think, I wish I hadn't gotten up as early as I did so I could read my Bible and pray the good servant of Jesus Christ. Whether we are preachers or lay men, women, boys and girls, the good servant is the one who pursues the Lord and his ways with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength. Training will take effort. It will take all of us. Ken Hughes writes Spiritual discipline,

freeze us from the gravity of this present age and allows us to soar with the saints and angels, brothers and sisters. Let's soar with the saints and angels together as we pursue the Lord. Dig diligently that we would look more and more like Jesus. Pray with me. Our Father in heaven. We thank you for this word of encouragement from the Apostle Paul. It is a word that is familiar to many of us. And yet, Lord, I confess how easy it is to just subtly take

my eyes off the prize and to find, ah, I have been coasting for some time now and I'm not pursuing you diligently in the same way. Oh Lord, we pray upon the ordination of our dear friend Dave Hinkley, that you would help all of us to refocus our attention, redouble our efforts to pursue Jesus Christ, to pursue our own holiness so that we would be fit for glory when it is our time to go home. Lord, we thank you for this description of a good servant.

We thank you that this describes our brother Dave, and we pray your blessing and protection over him as he continues to pursue you. And Lord, we pray that you would bear that fruit in each of us, that we would each pursue Jesus, resting in him, pressing in, that we might look more and more like your son. We pray this all in the precious name of Jesus Christ. Amen.