Building Spiritual Muscle - [1 Timothy 4:6-10]

Well, I have a question for you. What motivates you to grow as a Christian? What motivates you to want to obtain spiritual maturity?

What motivates you to be in kind of spiritual shape? You know, when

I was in the Sheriff's Academy, and it's kind of amazing that they would even have to do this, but they brought in a guy,

Lieutenant Ray McAndrews, to talk to us about officer safety, to motivate us about officer safety.

He talked about the will to win, and the necessary preparation to win, and he told us about a man with great drama, who had,

I guess you don't need to build up the drama, but he had actually murdered two police officers, and the way he had done this was, in both cases, he approached the officers and was unarmed, and because he was unarmed, they never convicted him of murder.

It was just manslaughter. And what he would do, and they videotaped him later in prison, showing other inmates how to do this, is he would take the officer's gun away, and he would kill them.

So he did a couple of stints for manslaughter, but the gist of this man's speech, and we're all just like this, because here we are, rookies, we're sitting in the

Academy, and he says, listen, you don't know, when you stop a car, you don't know who it's going to be.

You could stop Raymond Lewis George, and say, you have to be ready, you have to be prepared.

You can't be the fat guy behind the desk who just eats donuts all day, and then expect to go out there and tussle with Raymond Lewis George, and he would practically be, he didn't have to scream, but he might as well have been screaming at us, because we knew now that there was a burden on us.

There was an expectation that we had to train, we had to be physically ready, we had to be mentally ready.

He would say, and I'll never forget this, he would just look at us and say, you don't know what's going to happen.

You have to be ready, because you can't say, not today, Ray, I'm not ready,

I've got to go prepare. I'll see you next week. He'd say, it's the Super Bowl, the ball's in the air, you've got to go.

Life itself is like that. Not Raymond Lewis George, but there are difficulties everywhere.

You can't ignore the challenges that tomorrow is going to bring, because if you're not prepared for them, they're going to run right over you.

What can you do? Well, you can worry about tomorrow. In fact, I think I spent most of this week just saying, tomorrow has, or today has troubles enough of its own, let's not worry about tomorrow.

I was saying that with regard to the building, I just keep thinking about the building, and I'm like, I don't want to think about the building. You can worry about what's up ahead, that's not going to do any good.

What does it do? What does worry do? What's that?

It does what? It doubts God, yeah. And what it does also, just humanly speaking, is it takes all your time.

You can spend all your time worrying, and it takes your joy, takes everything out of your life except for your worry, and you just become paralyzed.

Or you can, the alternative is, you can prepare yourself for the incidents, for the troubles of life.

If physical training is necessary for police officers in order to defend themselves, then how much more is spiritual training necessary for Christians?

And if you think about it, isn't that what discipleship is? Spiritual training.

And isn't that the heart of what Jesus said? He said, go and make converts. No, go and make disciples, teaching them everything that I commanded you.

Why? Because it is in knowing the truth, on focusing on the truth, that we gain strength, that we become more

Christ -like, that we are able to deal with the troubles and the difficulties of life. Just to quickly kind of set the table for 1

Timothy, and I would invite you to open your Bibles tonight to 1 Timothy chapter 4. As you well know by now,

Paul appointed Timothy as the pastor of the church of Ephesus, and he wrote this letter to Timothy to instruct him on what he needed to do, what

Timothy needed to do, both to run the church and to exemplify godliness to the flock.

Last time we were in 1 Timothy, in verses 1 to 5, Paul gave

Timothy a warning against adding anything to the gospel, about a false asceticism, as it were, about somehow seeking to please

God by denying yourself food, or denying yourself physical pleasure, that somehow that would ingratiate you to God, that he would be more pleased if you would, in my favorite example, give up chocolate for Lent.

Lent. Lent. Lent. I was thinking Lent chocolate, not Lent, you know.

Give up Lent chocolate for Lent. Can you give up Lent for Lent? The whole idea that you can somehow gain extra favor with God by doing something or not doing something is not an activity or a thought that even a

Christian should engage in. And Paul just writes that all food, all of creation, all that we see is a gift from God, and it's all blessed if we view it rightly, if we do the right things with it, if we're thankful for it.

This evening, as we look at our text, I want you to see three spiritually -strengthening commands drawn from this text so that you will be ready for the rigors of this life and the joys of the life to come.

I want you to see three training tips for building up your spiritual muscle mass, and I want to do the

Austrian accent, but I'm not going to. No, absolutely not.

Discipleship, spiritual training, these are the issues that Paul is discussing with Timothy in this letter tonight.

Our first spiritual muscle mass -building tip is, number one, train yourself in truth.

Train yourself in truth. I would say it this way,

I mean, obviously, in this whole passage, Paul is writing to Timothy, and he is talking apostle to pastor, and he's giving him personal instruction, but I want to apply this to you tonight.

I want you to understand that this has implications for your life. When I say train yourself in truth, how do you do that?

Well, I think the first thing, the first application of this would be to choose your place of training wisely.

If you want to be a gymnast, you go to a place that's known for turning out gymnasts.

If you want to be a super fast track star, you go and you get somebody to train you. Who trains track stars?

If you want to learn how to play the guitar, you talk to Charlie Crane or you talk to some expert on it. If you want to know how to be a strong Christian, you choose a church that focuses on sound doctrine, sound doctrine.

You'll see in a minute here, as I read this passage, that the word church isn't even there, but let's read the passage.

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 hope set on the living

God, who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

You say, well, it's not here. Church isn't here. You know, why should we choose a church?

Well, look what he says in verse six. If you put these things before the brothers, well, obviously, again, thinking of it as Timothy as the pastor and he's bringing this before the brothers, before the other people in the church, if you put these things, well, what are those things?

I would argue, having studied this, that it's everything that he's written up to this point.

Everything in this letter, all the doctrine, all the good contents of it. In fact, what's he taught up to this point,

I'm not going to review all of it, but I mean everything in the gospel is contained in what he's written up to this point.

And every pastor is under this same injunction, the same command to faithfully teach the family of God, the word of God.

And for you, this means that you have the responsibility to choose wisely. You don't want to choose a church for any other reason than it is a church that will teach you sound doctrine.

That should be the heartbeat of the leadership of the church. And I think that's our heartbeat. Your previous church, maybe you liked the dancing ministry.

Maybe you thought they had a great food pantry. Whatever the issue is, that is not the reason that you want to choose a church.

You better find a church that will faithfully proclaim God's word. That's how you're going to grow.

Again, going back to the gymnasium analogy for obvious reasons. You want to be in a place where you can go in knowing nothing except that Jesus loves me, this

I know, and come out a world -class theologian. Again, if you were bent on being a world -class athlete, would you hire a trainer who told you to eat whatever you want and exercise as you please?

Just go ahead and do whatever you want. It's fine. Of course not. Again, look at verse 6.

You, Timothy, 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.

Timothy was to be a good servant by putting these things before the brothers. And by the way, that word, servant, is the same word from which we get deacon.

And he would be a good servant, an inherently good servant, by teaching the same truths that he had been taught, by passing on the truths that he had learned and giving them to the church.

You don't have to turn there, but Paul taught the same thing in 2 Timothy. I mean, these are the kind of things that pastors and Christians need to hear over and over again.

Listen to 2 Timothy 2 too. And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

I had that put on a plaque that we gave Pastor Mike some time ago. Why? Because what does that describe?

That is discipleship. Take what you have learned from me, Timothy, Paul says, and pass it on to faithful men, who will then teach others.

It's the process of inputting the word of God into men and women who will then do the same thing.

As Timothy was trained, he was to train others, to pass along the words of the faith and the good doctrine that he had learned.

Now, when it says trained there, that means the process of educating and training from childhood, to bring up, to rear, to nourish.

So the concept really is of a young child being raised and nurtured by, almost by his mother.

So this is very much that sort of picture. And as Timothy was nourished and raised up by his spiritual father,

Paul, on the words of the faith and good doctrine, so he was to do the same, to nourish and raise up others.

In other words, he was to disciple them or to equip them for the work of the ministry, which is from Ephesians 4.

That's what we do. Commentator Kistemacher says this, a minister who neglects to study his

Bible and the doctrine based upon it atrophies his powers by disuse. Well, what have you?

What if you fail in these areas? What if you fail to study your Bible and to study sound doctrine?

Are you going to grow? It's the old computer analogy, which is G -I -G -O, which is garbage in and garbage out.

How about this? B -I -B -O, Bible in, Bible out. That's what you want.

Sound doctrine in, sound doctrine out. And Timothy was to teach the church sound doctrine, truths that build up, nourish, and strengthen.

The text notes that Timothy had followed, or as it says there, have followed good doctrine, perfect tense.

He had followed good doctrine, meaning there was a point where he determined that he was going to follow sound doctrine.

And from that moment forward, he just continued following it with an unswerving devotion.

So if this is true of Timothy, why would any believer think these things are not important? Why would any believer, why would you sacrifice good

Bible teaching, maybe so your children can go to church with their friends because there's a better youth program somewhere else?

In light of Paul's statement that Timothy would be a good servant of Christ Jesus if he taught these things, why would any believer give up studying and being taught sound doctrine?

The answer is no one should. Every Christian is called to make disciples. Therefore, we should all be involved in that ongoing propagation of biblical truth and biblical doctrine.

If you're going to see spiritual maturity, spiritual growth, spiritual strength, you've got to work with the material that God prescribes and prescribes for you.

He says he commands these things. He tells us they're good for them or for us.

And some people don't do it. Anybody here belong to a gym?

I've been going to the same gym for years. And it's funny to me because you see people, it's kind of a seasonal thing, you know, where people really get involved in the gym.

But I see people that just come in and I mean, they literally come in for, I don't know, half an hour or 45 minutes.

They do a couple of little exercises on a couple of machines. They check their emails a lot.

They're on the phone and then they leave. And you know what happens? Absolutely nothing.

They just spend 30 or 45 minutes at the gym. But there are no results.

Can I just say tonight that I think many Christians fall into that exact same rut? Not going to the gym, spiritually.

They read their Bible. Maybe they'll spend 30, 45 minutes reading it. Then they're done.

They don't study it. They don't think it through. They don't contemplate the implication for their own lives.

How do you study good doctrine? How do you study sound doctrine? How do you do that?

You study the writings of men who God has blessed and who have devoted their lives to teaching the

Bible. Some people might say, well, I don't need to do that. I just show up on Sunday morning. I'm here promptly at 1035.

I miss all that worship music. I might even come in a little bit later if I know Pradeep's going to be praying.

Skip all that. I could show up at 5 minutes to 11. Pastor Mike will give me 50 minutes of Bible teaching, and I'm good to go for the week.

May I say, with all due respect to Pastor Mike, that you might as well say

I want to be tossed around by false teachers. I want to be thrown from pillar to post by false teachers.

Turn your Bibles to Ephesians 4 for a moment. Ephesians chapter 4, verses 11 to 14.

This passage is going to be somewhat familiar. Talking about Jesus and descending.

And what does it mean that if he ascended unless he first descended? And anyway, beginning in verse 11.

And he, talking about Jesus, gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

That's you. For building up the body of Christ. Listen, verse 13.

Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Verse 14. Here's the purpose. So that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

What's Paul saying? Let me summarize it. The Lord has provided gifted men throughout the ages to the church.

So that we might be mature. So we might listen to them, read them, comprehend their insights.

So that we might no longer be children. That we might be spiritually mature, muscular.

Look at what else he says there in verse 14. Mature, no longer be children, but also strong in the faith.

He says we should no longer be tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.

Not some kind of spiritual Muppet in that first Muppet movie where they get into this bar fight with the bikers and they just get thrown around.

You're not to be that way. You're to have some heft, some spiritual weight to you. Some strength.

And also girded against false teachers. Again, look at verse 14.

Not to be falling for every wind of doctrine by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

We know that there are false teachers out there. So what do we do? How does God equip us to deal with that?

He's given us these men throughout the ages who faithfully teach the word. They are our coaches as it were.

They are the men who will lead us through the exercises, the spiritual exercises that we need to put on spiritual mass.

It's not only getting sound doctrine that matters. It's also avoiding unsound doctrine.

Going back to 1st Timothy. Paul moves to the polar opposite of the good teaching and the sound doctrine.

He says in verse 7, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths.

Irreverent just means something that's pointless, meaningless. And here it's modifying old wives tales.

In other words, if Paul were here today, if we can kind of summarize those two ideas together, he'd say feed on the words of Spurgeon, Calvin, Lloyd -Jones,

Sproul, Machen, MacArthur and other sound theologians. And not on those who write fluff.

Not even talking necessarily about false teachers, but he'd say get some meat. Get the good stuff.

The word for myths implies a willingness to go beyond the bounds of scripture, to add to it even as we saw in verses 1 to 5.

Look, if you were training for an athletic competition, you wouldn't go, you know,

I've got to get myself set to go do that triathlon.

So here's what I'm going to do to prepare for it. I'm going to spend the next two weeks eating cotton candy.

You wouldn't do that. And sugary nonsense, no matter how good it tastes going down when you're reading it, will never build spiritual muscle.

It might entertain you, it might make you feel better about yourself, but it will not strengthen you. I looked this week at CBD on the online.

Half of the books in the top 50 are novels. It kind of tells you something about the state of Christianity.

I can't really recommend too many of the other books. Novels, that's what we spend our time as Christians reading.

And when tough times come, when difficulties arise in life, those novels will enable you to do what?

How are they going to build you up? How are they going to give you some spiritual muscle? Paul writes, refuse to pay attention, have nothing to do with that fluff, that stuff that does nothing for you.

Is it sinful to read a novel? No. But this is a classic good, better, best situation.

And in the best possible situation, what you want to do is read books that will build your spiritual strength.

You want to, our first tip was train yourself in truth. Second spiritual tip, train yourself in godliness.

Instead of that kind of fluff that leads to spiritual weakness, I'll tell you exactly what's going to happen if you engage in cotton candy

Christianity. Anybody ever done any serious bike riding?

If you have, you'll understand, you know this word. What is a bonk? What does it mean when you bonk? Anybody ever done that?

No, bonking is not falling. Bonking is when you go out and you have not eaten sufficiently and have not kept your energy level up there, your sugar levels up there, and all of a sudden you just kind of, you're disoriented.

You have no more energy. You're just like, can somebody please come pick me up? And it just comes out of nowhere and there's no escape from it.

And if you feast regularly on spiritual cotton candy, that's what's going to happen to you. You are going to bonk.

You're going to be spiritually weak. Paul writes in verse 7 that instead of that, you should rather train yourself for godliness.

This verb train, it's the same word from which we get gymnasium.

It's gumnadzo. Same word, gymnast, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And it literally pictures this verb, an athlete removing every hindrance from giving him 100 % effort.

In other words, whatever would stop him, whatever would get in his way, he just moves everything out of the way and he's fully focused on giving it his all.

You might be sitting there thinking, well, I'd expect no less of a pastor. After all, that's what he's supposed to do. But again,

I ask you, what would separate you? What would keep you from doing this? Are you supposed to just grow vicariously as you, you know, listen to Pastor Mike talk about what he's been reading?

As he does all the spiritual heavy lifting, you just go, well, I really, I just kind of feed off the overflow from what

Pastor Mike does. If truth and sound doctrine are the spiritual food that we are to take in, then godliness is the spiritual exercise in which we are to engage in.

Think of all the time that people spend physically training, training physically, all the effort they put into it.

I know some guys who do triathlons and they spend countless hours training for that.

It's not something where you just wake up and I certainly wouldn't do this. Wake up tomorrow morning and go, I think I'm going to do a triathlon.

First of all, it would kill me, but you have to prepare for it.

And this here where he says, rather train yourself for godliness. This is a call to complete devotion to the

Lord Jesus Christ in all aspects of life. Godliness is to be the focus of your life from the day of salvation until the day the

Lord calls you home. I'd invite you to turn over to Luke 14. Verses 25 to 27.

Luke 14 verses 25 to 27 as so often happen in the ministry of Jesus.

He's got a vast following and he doesn't really give them what they want.

He doesn't really please them in this passage. Luke 14 verses 25 to 27.

Now great crowds accompanied him and he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

It's not setting the bar too low. What did he demand there? Absolute willingness to do anything.

He didn't literally mean that we needed to hate our mother, father, wife, sister, brother.

What he meant is in comparison, the way you love me will make everything else seem like hate.

Jesus Christ needs to be your all in all. Commentator Leon Morris said this about that passage.

He said, Jesus meaning is surely that the love the disciple has for him must be so great that the best of earthly loves, in other words, the best love for a mother, for a father, for a brother, for a sister, for a wife, seems like hatred.

The listing of the nearest and dearest spells this out with solemnity. Devotion to Christ cannot be less than wholehearted.

And I like what this man said, R .J. Karras. He said, discipleship is not periodic volunteer work on one's own terms and at one's convenience.

And yet I think sometimes that's the way we live the Christian life. When does it work for me? When can

I fit it in my schedule? And if we think about this idea, you can turn back to First Timothy about Gumnadzo, about exercising, about moving everything out of our way and just focusing on godliness, focusing on your relationship with Christ, your discipleship with Christ.

What hinders you from spiritual training? What are you keeping that is stopping you from pursuing

Christ wholeheartedly? If there's anything, get rid of it.

Hate it. Dump it. Up to this point in your

Christian walk, have you been sort of training? You know what reveals that?

If I ask someone if they've been training for a marathon, you know, they tell me months ago, they're going to run a marathon and I say, well, have you been training for it?

And they go, well, sort of. How's that going to go? Ask them later, how did it go?

Well, you know, I made the first three miles pretty well. Good job. Decided to cut it down to 10k.

All right. You are to exercise yourself in godliness.

Do you think godliness is important, especially in ministry? You know, in this letter alone, in First Timothy alone, the word for godliness appears eight times.

Five chapters, five, six. Six chapters, eight times.

Only seven times in the rest of the New Testament. More than half of the times it's in the

New Testament, right there in that book. Paul, again, emphasizing this in another book.

First Corinthians nine. Don't, you don't have to turn there, just listen. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, 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 an imperishable. 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. The picture, though, of running with purpose, of boxing with purpose, he's applying that to a spiritual analogy.

And he's saying, listen, in that same way, you have to have the spiritual discipline to just pour yourself into this relationship with Christ, to move every distraction out of the way and just pursue him.

Do you have that kind of mindset with regard to your spiritual fitness? Are you a spiritual fitness fanatic?

I mean, I see people and you see this, I'm sure, you know, we know the cold weather's coming. But there'll still be people out there.

I'm driving to church in the morning on Sunday morning. It's 10, it's 12 degrees. And there are people out there running, and I just want to roll down my window, and I would if it wasn't so cold.

And just go, you're sick, you're crazy. But they are devoted.

They are focused. They are going to get their exercise in no matter what. Because why? Because they have decided that physical fitness is their number one goal.

And we say, you know, with everything that's going on, I just don't feel like reading my

Bible today. I just don't feel like listening to a sermon. I just don't feel like fill in the blank.

Godliness, a life filled, saturated by the Holy Spirit, the

Word, prayer, a thankful heart, service to others within the church body, devoted to putting off sin and putting on Christ.

One man wrote this, Godliness is not passive, but active. As physical training develops the body, and as aerobic exercises improve the function of the heart, so a godly walk has its beneficial effect on one's character.

You don't get godliness by osmosis. And look also that godliness now, at this time in life, impacts you forever.

Look at 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 also for the life to come.

It's okay to be concerned with your physical body. It's okay. Paul says it has what?

Some value, not no value. It's not a complete waste of time. I mean, personally,

I could tell you that if I do nothing, I will begin to ache because of all the issues

I have with my shoulders and my knees. But what value does it have, all this physical training, when you die?

Do you really want to make sure that everybody comes up and goes, that's a nice looking corpse? Is it going to change what happens in the life to come?

Absolutely not. Let me ask you this. What do you spend your time, or what do you spend more time worrying about?

Your body, your physical body, or your walk with Christ? If you can bench press 500 pounds, but you are a spiritual 98 pound weakling, you're focused on the wrong life.

And this whole concept here in verse 8, verse 7, was just countercultural to the ancient

Greek way of thinking. Athletic prowess, physical strength, endurance. I mean, where do we get the marathon from?

From those guys who ran the 26 miles, 385 yards, you know, at the Battle of Marathon. They were glorified even though they died.

They were glorified in death because of this physical accomplishment. Those were the pursuits in life that they valued.

And it's in that context, in that culture that Paul writes verse 9. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.

That concept that spiritual godliness is something to strive for because it has permanent results and physical training.

Well, that's of some value too. It's no more acceptable today than it was 2 ,000 years ago.

I mean, do people... Imagine an exercise or a commercial where they just focused on spiritual disciplines or godliness.

Everybody go, what is all that about? Who cares about that? You know, let's talk about how we can get in better shape.

Let's see what kind of medication we can take to lose weight. Let's see, you know, whatever. But the church 2 ,000 years ago, nearly 2 ,000 years ago, had the wisdom to accept it.

That's what he means when he says that this saying, that bodily training was of some value, but that godliness was of value in this life and the life to come.

He said that's what they accepted back then. Does the church today view godliness in that same exalted way?

And if it does, why do we even have to talk about books like Your Best Life Now? How about, you know, here's a title for him.

His next book could be Your Best Godliness Now. That would be good. I'd like that one.

I'm not going to wait for it. Okay, so we've seen two tips so far. First, train yourself in truth.

Second, train yourself in godliness. Third, train yourself in hope.

It's often been said that we can tell what a person values if we look at their checkbook and their calendar.

How they spend their money and their time. Now, it's true, but here the focus is on our time.

How we use it and what effort we're putting into whatever we're doing. Again, look at the language

Paul uses in verse 10. For to this end we toil and strive.

We'll get to what that end is here in a minute. But toil means to exert oneself physically, mentally, or spiritually.

To work hard, to strive, to struggle. Think of all the language we've seen here. The gymnazo, you know, the pushing everything else aside to train ourselves.

Toiling here. To work hard, to strive, to struggle. And then the word strive here really means to suffer reproach.

And the idea is that we suffer the slings and arrow of an ungodly world because they hate what we represent.

As Christians. So Paul's saying, listen, you and me, Timothy, we have to struggle.

We have to work hard. We have to work on our spiritual aspects of a life. And we have to be willing to suffer reproach, the world's hatred.

So what is the end? What is the purpose for which he says that they have to do this? Again, look at verse 10.

Because we have our hope set on the living God. Their motivation was

Christ. Their hope set or hope fixed. Again, perfect tense of the verb to hope.

So Christians have their hope fixed completely on Christ at one point with ongoing permanent results.

Paul's saying, listen, as a Christian, you've given up hope in anything or anyone other than Christ.

Money. No hope there. Government. No hope there.

Physical strength. No hope there. Your family. No hope there. None of those things are bad.

Necessarily anyway. But they cannot provide. Hope.

Certainly not in the life to come. Only knowing the sovereign

Lord of the universe, the giver and sustainer of all life. The one who judges will judge and yet forgives all sin.

Only he. Can give hope and the end of this verse, verse 10 causes some confusion.

Says who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

People like to point to this and go, well, look at that. He's the savior of all people. All people must get saved.

Well, that's wrong. We'd know that just by knowing that Paul never teaches universalism.

And there's no reason to think that he would teach it here. What does it mean? Well, in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the old

Testament. The Greek word for savior is often refers to just physical preservation.

Physical preservation of life. For example, in Judges 3, 9.

A man, Othniel, one of the judges is called a savior. Listen to this.

But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel who saved them.

Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. That word deliverer is the same word that's used here in the

Septuagint. It's the same word that's used in 1 Timothy 4, 10. It means.

In that case, he physically saved the lives of the people of Israel.

And in the same way, God is the savior of the entire world. He physically preserves the lives of every single person.

As soon as God or as soon as someone sins, God could immediately judge them and send them to hell.

But the picture here is that God saves or preserves all men from that judgment. He gives them life.

He sustains them in life. But he saves believers in a special way.

And that way is to eternal life. When your hope is fixed on the one who has provided you eternal life, your perspective changes.

What are your worries worth in light of eternity with Christ? What do your arguments with your family matter in light of eternity with Christ?

What do elections, inflation, the housing market, fashion trends, entertainment, the latest gadgets?

What do any of those things matter in light of eternity with Christ? And again,

I'm not saying any of those things are necessarily bad. I am saying that when your hope is entirely fixed on Christ, the troubles of the world seem insignificant by comparison.

We are to have our hope fixed completely on Christ. The difficulties of life come.

We deal with them. Why? Because we're not fixated on having our best life now.

We know our best life is to come. So we've seen train yourself in truth, train yourself in godliness, train yourself in hope.

You know, in 1967, a man named Jim Fick started running.

He was 35 years old. He weighed 240 pounds and he smoked two packs of cigarettes per day.

He quit smoking, lost a lot of weight. In fact, 10 years later, when his book,

The Complete Book of Running, which spent 11 weeks at number one, was published, he weighed 60 pounds less.

The book inspired millions of people. In his books and on television shows, he extolled the benefits of physical exercise and showed how it considerably increased the average human being's life expectancy.

The cover of his book showed his muscular legs on a red cover and it sold over a million copies.

In 1980, he wrote a follow -up book entitled Jim Fick's Second Book of Running, the companion volume to The Complete Book of Running.

Four years later, at the age of 52, he died. Spent all that time running, training his physical body, so much exertion, so much worry for something that would have only a limited benefit for a limited amount of time.

What about you? Are you consumed with anything other than pursuing

Christ, pushing everything else aside, and pursuing him fully?

Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for this reminder of the priorities that we ought to have.

Those who say that we love you, those who say that we have been saved by the work of your son,

Lord, let us not bear his name in vain. Let us strive.

Let us work. Let us train ourselves.

Good doctrine for godliness. Set our hope entirely on the one who came from heaven, took on a body of flesh, lived a perfect life, died in our place, was raised on the third day that we might be raised up with him.

Let nothing stop us from pursuing our relationship, our discipleship with Christ.