July 30, 2017 PM Service An Unbalanced Message by Pastor Josh Sheldon

1 Timothy 4:6-16 and the Call to an Unbalanced Life for Godliness

Timothy and chapter 4. Lord willing we will finish chapter 4 of 1 Timothy this afternoon. 1 Timothy 4 beginning at verse 6 and reading through to the end of the chapter verse 16. Please stand with me in honor of God's Word.

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

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive because we have our hopes set on the Living God who is the Savior of all people especially of those who believe.

Command and teach these things. Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers as an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I come devote yourself to the public reading of the 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. Devote yourself to them so that all may see your progress.

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. May God bless us as we hear his word. Please be seated. You know there's a sort of a holy grail in the church.

It's something everybody talks about and if we take church goers and church leaders at the word it's something that almost everybody is striving after. Pastors will say that they've succeeded in bringing some measure of it to the ministry and people will stay at churches that they think have this quality.

Oftentimes a church will pride itself for its attainment of this glorious and universally sought-after goal even though with all the striving towards this there's no way at all to measure it. It's what Obi-Wan had hoped Anakin would do.

Remember what he said in that Star Wars, I forget which number it was, he said, you are the chosen one. It was said that you would bring balance to the force not leave it in darkness. What do I speak of?

Balance. Balance. We all admire it from afar. Anyone you talk to will extol the virtues of a balanced life. Most churches you walk into will agree that balance is good. We balance our zeal with love and our doctrines with charity for others who have less theological acumen.

We are a balanced ministry, they will say, and you must have a balanced life. You must balance your zeal and your love together, your firmness and your compassion. We must be balanced. How many of us have expended serious thought on how to balance work and home, church and marriage, kids and career, and then exerted all kinds of discipline to maintain an equilibrium that we think is balanced.

So it's balanced. Everybody wants it. Everybody strives after it. Seems everybody wants to have it. Book after book is written about it, but in the end it's just men's opinions usually salted with some Bible verses.

Oh balance. Balance to be scripturally balanced. Wouldn't that be great? I mean wouldn't it be great if we could say we are the church, we have the pastor, the preacher, the deacons if you will, who give us true and right balance.

So everything on the scales are just right, they're equal to each other. We've achieved that. I cannot tell you how many preachers have looked this passage and I don't deride them, I don't say that I found a better way or anything like that, but how often we hear something like brothers and sisters we must be balanced.

Paul says yes you may exercise, maybe even you should, after all your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and good stewardship would imply that we take good care of it, but dear ones spend two hours in God's gym for every hour you spend in gold's gym.

How many of us have heard something like that? Much of their excitement comes from this one word gymnazo, where we get gymnasium, is used all of four times in the New Testament and so we focus in there and say that you can exercise some but be balanced about it, but let's not forget to study the Scriptures and worship and such.

So be balanced in your physical versus your spiritual training and then go on and on about how to get the best bang for your buck when you work out so that you don't infringe on God's gym when you're at Gold's.

But I'm afraid as I read this passage that ultimately balance is unattainable and I don't think it's really even spoken of here. It's an individual and subjective matter where one man's balance is another man's excess.

The man who believes all alcohol should be totally avoided, thinks himself balanced, and might think that the thimble full of actual wine that we take at the table as we will this afternoon makes another person an unbalanced wine bibber.

Out of balance. And on and on it goes. Paul gives here a nod, no more just a nod, to the value of bodily exercise. It is of some value and immediately contrasts it to training in godliness, gymnazo again.

And he says, Timothy, gymnazo yourself here. You see the minister of God is to be entirely devoted to his service, to Christ, and anything gets in the way of this is to be rejected. We speak of balance.

I think this passage will tell us no. We're not to be balanced. You don't want a pastor who's balanced, who works things out so that he's giving you the Word of God and giving you other opinions of men here so we get it all balanced out.

You don't want that. You want to hear the Word of God. You don't want to live your life partly by the Word of God and then balance that out with some other vehicle, some other way, some other method, so that we keep...

That's not at all what's being said here. Yes, something that is of some value. A nod, no more than a nod, is given. But here is something of value in every way. I intend to preach you a distinctly unbalanced message.

My hope is to lead you to a distinctly unbalanced reverence for faithfulness to and love towards Jesus Christ. An unbalance that way and away from all else. It doesn't mean that I or any one of you are in sin if we have hobbies or activities that we enjoy, even exercise.

That's not what we mean. That's not what we're saying here. It does mean that we must with the utmost sternness take stock of all these things and set aside whatever detracts from the goal to which we all must with unbalanced fervor and determination strive.

Godliness. Godliness. Let us be unbalanced towards godliness. That's really my message. We can almost stop here. I don't want the scales balanced. I don't want an hour in the scripture for every five minutes in the gym or anything like that.

There's no such equation. Get some value over here. If it detracts from over here, it's to be rejected. Timothy is given no license from the Apostle to balance his preaching and his teaching. The things he is to proclaim, the things his pulpit is to proclaim are not to be proportioned with other ideas for the sake of fairness.

The sole focus of the message is the gospel, the instruction from God in his scriptures. So we look at this passage that I read in 1st Timothy 4. We can notice first that Paul does give Timothy a goal.

He gives him a goal, and this is gonna be a relief for our hard-charging Silicon Valley types. These type A personalities as we sometimes call them. This will be music to the ears of chart makers who love to check off the incremental tasks so they can see the final goal, the final prize getting ever nearer.

See, Timothy's charge, his goal is plain. Put these things before the brothers, says Paul. Put these things before the brothers. Now how far back in this letter we have to go to grasp what these things are is open to some dispute.

It certainly goes back to chapter 4 verses 1 through 5. The Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teaching of demons and then the rest of that.

It certainly goes back that far. It might swing us all the way back to chapter 2 where Paul wrote about the proper roles in the church. I prefer to think of it as the entirety of God's written revelation.

I get this from verse 13 where the one command applies to three activities. Devote yourself, which is noun continuously, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture and to the exhortation and to the teaching.

The charge is to put these things before the body. Put these things before the body. The Word of God in the reading of Scripture, in exhortation, which is preaching, in teaching, what we would call Sunday school, how we begin our Wednesday night prayer with a Bible study.

The charge is to set them forth, put them before the people. The curriculum, of course, is the Scripture. The goal is to be a good servant of Christ Jesus. You want a goal? Here it is. Be a good servant of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Now we do serve Christ by serving one another, and a minister most especially as Christ's servant as I serve his word to you in preaching and teaching and in counseling. Now none of us don't know this, but all of us do well to be reminded we are Jesus's servants.

We are Jesus's servants. He bought us. We were given to him by the Father. He came to serve, he says in Mark, the Gospel of Mark, and showing us what it is to be a servant, he expects us to be servants, not only of each other, but most primarily of him.

We're chosen by the Father for him, given to him as an inheritance, and this is why we are his. To hear that well-done, good, and faithful servant is a hope that can fuel us through all sorts of trials, and when were the things done that might elicit from Jesus this well-done, good, and faithful?

It was in this life, the deeds done while still in this body. We cannot hold Jesus too high. We cannot think of him too well. Sometimes though I think we forget his humanity and his compassion. We forget that in him God became flesh and dwelt among man as man.

We forget that Christ Jesus, called elsewhere our great God and Savior, can be pleased with our efforts. The possibility is right here, that you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus. Back in the Sermon on the Mount, excuse me, it's not Sermon on the Mount, and because I missed it, I'll forget where it was.

It's in the Olivet Discourse somewhere. Well-done, good, and faithful servant. The possibility is put before us that this can happen. You can recall that the corrections to the seven churches in the book of Revelation, that there is in each one, I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear those who are evil.

That's what he said to the church at Ephesus in the first of those letters. There can be commendations for our Lord. Let us remember that Jesus Christ is human, was human. Let me have that one back a second.

Let us remember that in Christ, God became flesh. They came in the form of sinful flesh. They dwelt among us. They lived as we do. He was tempted as we are. Let's remember the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we don't approach an angry, fiery God who's still against us because of our sin, but a God who is for us because we are in Jesus Christ.

We're all we are all told here that we can be good servants. Good is the word used to describe an overseer in chapter 3 verse 1, where you remember I said it is better translated as noble. He desires a noble task.

There's very little balance that we can find here. Isn't that true? That if we serve the Lord Jesus Christ, He demands what? Our proportioned faithfulness to Him? Does He want us to be balanced with the worldly concerns and concerns for His kingdom?

No. It's all for Him. It's all for Him. Is it balance we're after? I don't think we will find it here. I don't think balance is what is being given to us here. Look at verse 7. He says, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths.

Have nothing to do. He doesn't say, you know, enter into conversation with the people. Find out where they're coming from. Let it kind of become a part with you, and see if you can use it as a hinge to get them to the gospel or something like that.

He says, no, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths. Someone came here once with an odd teaching, a sort of a strange fire, if you will, and at one point I told him that this isn't what we believed here, and he answered.

He told me I had to show him where he was wrong, and he proceeded to show me all his wonderful exegesis, his recovery of the teaching of some obscure second-century church father, and I told him, no, I don't need to prove anything.

I only need to tell you that that's not for us here. We'll stick with the gospel. We'll have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths. We will not be balanced that way, but we will be completely on the side of the gospel as it's presented to us in Scripture.

One man that I had much respect for, I should say have, but he surprised me some time back when he said that Adam and Eve weren't necessarily literal historic figures, that they might have been an allegory of some kind for mankind.

But then again, you have to think, if they weren't historical literal figures who brought the ruined Genesis 3 records, what then does Paul mean in Romans 5 about Adam bringing sin, and with sin he brought death?

You see, that's just the kind of irreverent and silly myth I think Paul means here, one that recasts the scriptural record with little regard for how far into our core doctrines it reaches. So with all this in mind, look again at verse 8, a marvelously out-of-balance verse.

Chapter 4, verse 8 in 1st Timothy, while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way. Now you all know I used to climb rocks, I used to backpack, activities I enjoyed very much and they required good physical conditioning, and truth be known, if not for multiple sclerosis I'd probably still, except for age, be at it.

Bodily training can get you through a long hike or up a rock. It can make you feel and sleep better. There is some value. The value of godliness, though, this unbalanced value of godliness, Paul says it benefits us in every way.

He leaves nothing out. It's beneficial in all things, in every way, in every way you can imagine. It is a benefit to you. Now your mind's right now thinking, well, is godliness going to get nutrition in me?

Is godliness going to make me stronger, give me a longer life, or a more healthful life, or anything like that? I believe this works out like this. Godliness is of value in every way, if godliness is your goal.

If you're unbalanced towards wanting to be like Christ, then godliness is of value in everything you do, if He is your sole goal. If. In every way you can think of then, striving, gymnazo, for godliness is of benefit.

What is it that makes godliness a more valuable, a more rewarding pursuit than any other? Look again at verse 8. Look at the last part there. Godliness is of value in all things. Why? Here it is. It holds promise for the present life, and also for the life to come.

Now think about it this way. I don't really mean to keep hitting the exercise note, but Paul seemed to feel the need to speak of it, and in our day it's been a long-lasting craze. I mean, I read books on how to lift weights that would help me to carry a heavy pack more comfortably, and all the like.

I did that sort of thing. Most of us have. Diet, exercise, general health books can be helpful. But ask yourself, why do you trust that book? If you use a book like that, not just in the physical side, not just the exercise realm, if you use a book like that, why do you trust it?

Do you trust it because your neighbor did? Do you trust it because the author was Mr. Universe, or someone lost so much weight, or was able to run so far or so fast? Ask yourself this. Whose word are you trusting?

Well, it's a man, obviously, and that doesn't make it wicked or anything like that. God's Word has little to say about these things beyond that we must not be overtaken by them. But thinking along those lines, the obvious question then, it's rhetorical, who wrote the Bible?

Why do we trust the Bible? Who certifies what the Scriptures say? I mean, today's fad is tomorrow's oddity, but the Word of the Lord endures forever. In Sleeper, there's a man who wakes up after being serogenically frozen for a very, very long time, and as he's thawing out, he's trying to get himself, you know, back to being ambulatory again.

These scientists come and they give him a cup of coffee and a cigarette. He says, no, no, no, that's terrible for you. And they say, what are you talking about? We found out this is the best thing in the world for you.

Nothing will make you healthier. That's irreverent. That's silly. That was a comedy. But it makes a point. These things come and go. Now, everybody knows, kids, listen carefully, cigarettes are horrible for you.

I'm not advocating that. I'm talking about how fads come and go, how things change in the world. But the Word of the Lord, the thing that presents to us godliness, the manual we have for that, this Word endures forever.

It never changes. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Verses 9 and 10 are pretty convicting. He says, the saying is trustworthy and worthy 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.

God being the Savior of all, but especially the Savior of some, that causes a lot of problems just in how to interpret that. Just what is Paul saying? And I don't want to give you a long survey of all the the right or wrong answers because that would take too long.

But I can quote a man named Warren Purdy who I think gets this right. God is the Savior of all men in that on a temporal basis He gives them life and strength, awakens within them high ideals, provides for their pleasure and sustenance, and graciously allows them to live for a time in the light of His countenance.

God is especially the Savior of believers in that He has a special call for them, answers their prayers, and provides for their well-being not only in this life but also in the life which is to come.

There is no Savior but Christ. God alone can save. And so there's a Savior for the world. It is God and what He has done in His Son Jesus Christ. Does that mean, is Paul saying here, that that's for everyone?

No. No, there is a particular redemption. There is a limited atonement. There is God having placed a chosen people, chosen before the foundation of the world, Ephesians 1 3, in Christ to be the beneficiaries of that atoning death.

But every time an unbeliever exhales might be his last. Every heartbeat of the believer might be his last as well. But you who is without Christ, your final breath will usher you infinitely and eternally far from the presence of God, to a place of constant suffering that we call hell.

You who are in Christ though, you in Christ Jesus will, as soon as that last breath is given up, you will find yourself in the presence of the Lord. That He is the Savior of all men means only that there is one Savior, God our Father, and what He has done in Christ Jesus our Lord.

You don't get to pick and choose until you find a religion or a God or a philosophy that suits you. The prophet Isaiah says, I, I am the Lord and besides me there is no Savior. Paul speaks of a trustworthy saying, a trustworthy saying.

That's verse 8. 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. What you have, you have some value versus value in everything.

You have benefit now and in this life only or promise both here and now and the life to come. One lasts as long as we do, which isn't too long according to the biblical witness. The other lasts as long as will exist, which according to the biblical witness is quite a long time.

To what end did Paul and his companions toil and strive? He says to this end we toil, we strive, expend all effort, hold nothing back to this end. What was worth the hard labor and the agonies? For Paul especially, 2nd Corinthians 11 28, and apart from all of these things there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for the churches.

What's worth all that? What's worth this unbalanced life? What's worth living with your scales completely tipped over to Jesus Christ and his honor and God's glory? It's just this. It's very simple. Faith in the living God, the only Savior.

We toil and we labor because we want to be good servants of Christ Jesus. We toil and we labor that men might believe because there is only one God to be believed in. We, I, us together, we toil and we labor that you might be confirmed more and more and more in your faith, that you will know and love Christ more and more and more, and so your daily goal will be to become like him.

That you'll exercise, you will gymnazo yourself towards this in a completely unbalanced way. Christian life is not meant to be balanced. It's all tipped over towards the image of Jesus Christ. Are you an energetic and organized person who sets goals, makes plans, gets things done?

The Apostle Paul, our author here, he was that as well. His goals had everything to do with the living God and him alone. And all his energy, everything he suffered gladly, was for that and that alone.

It is my message that we must give up everything that is without eternal value? No, that's not my message. I don't think it's Paul's point. We said last week, God gave us good things in this world so that we would enjoy them, and more important, when we enjoy them, give him thanks for them.

So what do we say this week? We say, borrowing from 2nd Timothy, that godliness with contentment is great gain. Let godliness be your goal. Let the image of Christ be that which we strive for. I don't preach balance because that term is sort of like awesome these days.

It's so overused that it's almost lost all its meaning. I think that Paul would have us, as we enjoy and thank God for his innumerable blessings in this life, that we keep it in a right perspective. That we view all things in terms of the duration of their relative values, whether it is some value now or if it is a value in every way in this life that we live now and the life yet to come.

No, I don't preach balance to you because I don't think the scripture allows us for balance. Jesus Christ, when he dwelt amongst men as man, when God became flesh in him and he lived as we do, I don't think he led a balanced life.

He did all for the glory of God. When he gave thanks for a breakfast meal before him, he did that for the glory of God. And when he utilized the energy that that food gave his physical body, that was all for the glory of God.

He wasn't balanced. I will end this afternoon with just a few verses from our unbalanced author, the Apostle Paul, 1st Corinthians chapter 9 starting at verse 24. Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize?

So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we unimperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Everything the Apostle Paul did had to do with his proclamation and his living out of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we become that people who strives for what Paul would have us strive for, what God through the Apostle tells us to strive for in a distinctly unbalanced way.

Godliness, the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as it's revealed to us in the scripture as we proceed to be conformed to his image by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.