Living as Good Servants of Christ

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca. You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y-E-G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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Well, brothers and sisters, I invited you to turn to 1 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 6. We're going to look today at verses 6 through 10. But as I introduce the theme to us, I want to take you into history for a moment.

In the middle of the 1600s, almost smack dab in the middle of the 17th century, the Lord saved a young baron, a Dutch man named Justinian van Welts. And what's particularly notable about this baron, about van Welts' story, is that he grew up with tremendous wealth and privilege.

He really had it all. As a young baron, he was the walking, talking definition of what it means to have a silver spoon in one's mouth. And for the first 40 years of his life, he lived accordingly. He lived a carefree existence.

He possessed all the wealth that he would ever need. He enjoyed the respect and admiration of his peers. He did what so many people do, that have an endless supply or seemingly endless supply of money and time.

He threw himself into a life of sensuality and indulgence. But in the early 1600s, or the early 1660s actually, at the age of 40, he experienced something that was going to change his life forever. Against all odds, this middle aged man, van Welts, came to a saving knowledge of the Lord.

He heard the gospel, and he was powerfully saved by the sovereign hand of our God. And it was not long after his conversion, this man became intensely invested in the advance of the gospel among all of the nations.

He would, where he had previously spent his life in vanity and pride, now van Welts wanted to spend his life seeking the lost at the farthest corners of the world. And so he gave much of his time to pleading with the state church, the Lutheran state church at the time, that they might take an interest in preaching Christ and him crucified to all of the nations.

But instead of taking him seriously, the leaders of the state church responded in ways that at least to us in our day would seem very foreign. They wrote him off as a dreamer. They encouraged him to stay put and to serve those who were before him in the Netherlands.

They used the parable of the good Samaritan to do that. They said, he found a man before him, so go and find a man before you in Netherlands. They said that the great commission was given to the apostles and not to the church.

And they went as far as to say that it was even satanic to leave the land that God had placed him, even though his desire was to make Christ known. I don't know about you, I'd probably be discouraged if I were in Von Welts shoes.

But he wasn't discouraged. Instead, he did what few expected him to do. He renounced his title as baron. He renounced his estate and all of his possessions. He gave up all of his worldly comforts and he went to the lost on his own.

At his own expense, he caught a ship that went to Dutch New Guinea. If you don't know where that is, that's in modern-day Suriname, which along the South American coast is somewhere between Venezuela and Brazil.

And there he preached Christ and him crucified amongst the slaves and amongst the indentured servants that lived there for the three years that the Lord gave him in this world. And in those three years, as he preached the gospel, we read that at the end of his life, he was in the jungle seeking to make Christ known amongst those people.

And he was attacked by wild animals and he was buried in a missionary grave on the other side of the world from his homeland. But before his death, when someone asked Justinian Von Welts, why he was prepared to renounce everything.

Why he had given it all up to go to a distant land amongst a distant tongue, a foreign tongue to make Christ known. He gave this simple answer. It's a stunning answer. He said, what is it to me, the title well-born, when I am one born again in Christ?

What is it to me to be called your grace when I am in need of God's grace? What is it to me, this title Lord, when I desire to be a servant of Christ? And he added to those words, he said, all these vanities I do away with and besides and everything besides, I will lay at the feet of Jesus, my dearest Lord, that I may have no hindrance in serving him right.

This afternoon, that is the theme that I want to speak to you about. This theme of serving Christ or to be more specific still, what it means to live as a servant of Christ. This is not something that comes naturally to our flesh.

Sadly, it is not something that has been modeled well. I would venture to say in most Western churches where we are just all too enamored with comfort and the affluence and the opulence that we enjoy.

And yet in the five verses that are put before us today in the book of first Timothy, I want to show you that as a Christian, you brother, you sister, that you are called to nothing other than to this, to live your whole lives as servants of Christ, to serve him, to be entangled fully into the affairs of your master, to devote all that is within you, all that you are to all that is his.

And I want to show you not only that he calls you to be a good servant of Christ, but he calls us to a lifestyle of discipline and of training that we might be constantly improving in our service to him.

You could say it another way. Today, as Paul writes to Timothy, as he's amongst the Ephesian church, he is showing us that we must be. In fact, we all are some good, some not so good servants of Christ.

And he shows us how we must be good servants of Christ. So I'm going to put three truths before us. We'll look beginning in verse six, and we'll start by reading this first verse and we'll consider what I'm calling the first means by which we live as good servants of Christ.

In verse six, we read this. 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.

Here's Paul lays out this idea of being a servant in Christ. The very first thing that he tells us about being a servant in Christ or how we are to be a good servant of Christ is this, that we must be trained in the word and doctrine.

There's something else there. I'll get to it. Maybe you've noticed already, but we're going to look at that first. As Paul writes this letter to Timothy, it's very interesting. Something that we should observe is that up until this point, considering it is a very personal letter, it's between Paul and his young apprentice, Timothy, you'd expect that he would address Timothy at great length, but he simply is not.

In fact, in the first three chapters of first Timothy, we find that Paul uses that second person singular verb, speaking of you, you, Timothy, he uses that you only three times in the whole of those three chapters.

But in the second, half of those three chapters, we see a remarkable shift. It begins here in verse six with these words, if you. At this point, what Paul does is he begins to escalate his references to Timothy as you, you, Timothy.

So whereas we had three references in the first three chapters, we now have 23 references in the remaining three chapters. I think this is probably the most appropriate time to place an important qualifier here.

If you are maybe an astute student of scripture, maybe you've looked at this already and you've said, well, how can you apply being a good servant of Christ Jesus to us when the apostle Paul is writing not specifically to the church in general, but to Timothy in particular.

Here we see this letter. It is to you, Timothy, if you do these things. And I really want to silence if there's anyone here that would have that doubt in their mind that this is for Timothy and not for us.

I want to ask you a few questions to show you that that would be a fatal flaw on our account. Would God, I ask, would God preserve these words to Timothy, not only for him, but for all of the churches in that region and for all of the churches in the first century, and then for every succeeding church in every succeeding century, if it were not intended to profit us, would he do that?

Are there principles, do you think, written here to Timothy that are so uniquely directed to him that the average Christian couldn't possibly apply them to his or her life? Does scripture encourage us or forbid us from imitating other faithful saints?

I think when we begin to ask those questions, we begin to see it's crystal clear that these words are for Timothy, but they're also intended for us. You might say they're for Timothy first and for us second.

In the words of one Bible scholar, the description in this passage provides a positive example for all believers in contrast to the negative depiction of the false teachers that we've heard so much about in the last number of weeks.

And so as Paul writes to Timothy, and to all of us by extension, in verse six he writes, if you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus. Here what Paul has in mind is that Timothy would instruct the church in everything that he has written up to this letter.

We did this review last week. What we'll do just a quick flyover again, that he would instruct the church in Ephesus where he had been left to instruct them in the warnings that he had provided in chapter one, in the instructions that he had given regarding worship and the role of the women in the church in chapter two, in the God-ordained qualifications of the leaders of that church in chapter three, in the role of the church at the end of that chapter.

And then as we dealt with last week, the warnings concerning asceticism and the harsh treatment of the body and the focus, frankly, on the wrong things. And so Paul tells Timothy to do these exact things.

And he uses that word, if. That Paul's or that Timothy's status as a good servant is contingent upon him teaching these things to the church. It's really interesting that as you look at that, what Paul is doing, it's implied here, is that one of the best things that Timothy can be doing is to be a good servant of Christ Jesus.

If you do the right thing, then you will have this status being a good servant of Christ. And as he encourages him, it's really interesting that in Paul's mind, to be a servant of Christ Jesus is a desirable thing.

It is something that one should aspire to. That if one fulfills their life and their ministry in the service of God, then they are a good servant of Christ Jesus. Now here, what Paul uses, that word for servant is the Greek word diakonos.

I use that word because you'll recognize it. It's the word that we get our word deacon from. But he's speaking about more than just deacons. He's speaking about what it means to be given fully in the service of Christ, to be his, to have his priorities be our priorities.

And I want to ask you, brothers and sisters, as we begin, do you desire to be a good servant of Christ Jesus? As you pray and as you go about your day, as you read God's word, as you come to be in the corporate assembly of the saints, when you go to church or sorry, to work, excuse me, on Monday morning, do you say in your mind, I want to be a good servant of Christ Jesus?

Here, this is what Paul is holding up as the ideal. I like what John Stott says about this. He says, I cannot imagine a nobler ambition than to be a good servant of Christ. Another John, John Calvin says this, he says, it is the highest honor of a godly pastor.

And I'll just add here, a godly Christian to be reckoned a good servant of Christ. So he ought to aim at nothing else during his whole ministry. When you think about your life, is it your highest aim to be a good servant of Christ?

Or is it to obtain as much comfort as possible? As much money as possible? As much acclaim or achievement or success or whatever it might be? I ask you soberly, as you live your life day by day, is it so that you will hear on that last day, well done my good and faithful servant with whom I am well pleased.

There really is no higher thing for us to aspire to. Without a doubt, there is no higher calling than to be a servant of our Lord. And I want to show you this. If we go to Romans chapter one, it's interesting.

J. I. Packer says of Romans that all roads lead to Romans. If some people were to say that there is one book in the midst of all of the epistles that stands out as being head and shoulders above the rest, I would venture to say that most people are going to say Romans.

And so you'd think that, you know, if this is the pinnacle of the apostle Paul's life's work, you'd think that he would choose a title for himself that would be of high esteem. That he would come as Paul with great authority, with great dignity, with pomp.

But what do we read in Romans one in verse one? How does the apostle Paul introduce himself? Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. When you think about introducing yourself, are you more interested in giving your title and your long list of accomplishments, of giving your CV, of all of your experience and your education and whatever it is that you hold on to?

Or do you think of yourself primarily as blank, a servant of Christ Jesus? What's really interesting here is that that word servant, and not to comment too much on Bible translations, but it isn't even necessarily the best word.

It's the Greek word doulos from which we get the word slave. That Paul is saying that I am Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus. Is that our mindset? In Luke chapter 17, the Lord tells us how we should consider our lives when he says, you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, you must say we are unworthy servants.

We have only done what is our duty. When we look at the life of Justinian von Welz for a moment, I want to ask you, do you have the same impulse to say that I am a servant of Christ? And then to go a little bit further, if you are in fact a servant of Christ, are you a good servant of Christ?

And how does one become a good servant? As Paul writes to Timothy, if we go back to 1 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 6, he says, if you put these things before the brothers, certainly that is a condition that he must put the things before the brothers.

And it's said in that way because what Paul is telling him when he says put these things before is that it implies a certain gentleness. That he's preaching the word, but as Paul would later say to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4, he's preaching the word with complete patience and teaching.

He's putting it before them. And if he does these, he is a good servant of Christ. But then he goes on to describe what characterizes a good servant of Christ. He says, you will be a good servant of Christ, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

One of the ways brothers and sisters, one of the best ways that we can be a good servant of Christ is to do the will of the Lord, just as Timothy, as Paul would have Timothy to do. But it is also to be, to be well instructed, to be trained in the words of the faith and to be in possession of the good doctrine that we have followed.

Characteristic of a good servant of Christ is that one is trained in these things. John MacArthur comments on this. He says, only by reading the word and studying it and meditating on it and mastering its contents can a pastor fulfill his mandate or can a Christian fulfill his or her mandate.

Timothy, he says, had been doing this since childhood and Paul urged him to continue. It seems like it's a fitting instruction at the beginning of a new year. And I want to challenge you in this respect.

If you were to evaluate your own life, your own relationship with the word of God, would you say, I am well trained in the word of God? That I know God's word, that I've come to understand it, that I've come to not only have a basic, perhaps a distant acquaintance with it, acquaintanceship with it, but I know God's word.

I'm convinced that most Christians are under the faulty assumption that the best and that the most that they can do or should do is simply to read their Bibles every day. Now, don't get me wrong. It is good.

It's important to read your Bible every day. But is this what it means to be trained in the word? I would suggest to you that it is a very one-dimensional view of the Christian's relationship with scripture.

We should not view the act of reading our Bibles a chapter a day or five minutes a day or whatever the case might be, but reading it as a basic act, as the height of training in the word, but as the bare minimum of what it means to be trained in the word.

Instead of a one-dimensional view, I want to put before you what I think is a biblical approach, which would be more of a five-dimensional view of what it means to be trained in the word. But when we talk about being trained in the word, we certainly would include reading the Bible.

And brothers and sisters, we must do this. If you haven't already, we're reading a Bible plan as a church. We invite you. We'll make photocopies. We'll get you on the plan. Within a few weeks, you'll be caught up, but it's absolutely essential, brothers and sisters, that we be in the word and that we be in the word every day.

I think of the words of our Lord Jesus when he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. And he said, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And how many Christians today go about their day fasting from the word for days on end?

A feast on a Saturday or a Sunday does not make up for a famine the other six days of the week. And dear friends, I ask you, are you reading God's word? Does the sermon find you every day eating from the meal that the Lord has prepared for you?

But it's more than that. The second dimension might be this, to study our Bibles. We read about Ezra in the book of Ezra that he gave himself to reading or to studying, to doing, and to teaching all that was written in God's word.

And I'm convinced that probably many Christians today do not study God's word because they do not know how to study God's word. But I would encourage you, this is why the Lord has given other more mature brothers and sisters in your life, faithful shepherds in the church, that you might know what it means not just to go to a book of the Bible, to plop open a commentary and say, I read the Bible, I read the commentary, and that's it.

But to come and to mine the depths of God's word for all that it is. To really and truly seek not just to read it, but to study it, to know it, to know its contents. Another thing that we see in Scripture is this, Bible memorization.

That it was King David that said, I've written your word on my heart that I might not sin against you. We see it in the life of our Lord when he was tempted by Satan. When Satan sought to misquote Scripture, he would quote Scripture back to him.

That he had it at the ready. And we do have it, I don't have, do we have one? I do. We have our, it's somewhere back there. We have our bulletin. Every week we're seeking to memorize Scripture together as a church.

Would you consider doing that? To meditate on Scripture. To chew on God's word like the cow chews the cud. So that we would sit there, even if it's taking a post-it note, writing a verse that you're seeking to memorize, put it in your pocket, pull it out from time to time, and meditate upon it.

And none of these four things are good if we do not seek to be appliers of God's word. That we would not only be hearers, but doers of the word also. I think of a story, for those of you who know me well, you know that I love the Puritans.

There's a story about Thomas Goodwin, who is probably one of my favorite Puritans, who went to hear another brother, a man named John Rogers, who was preaching in his weekly lectures. And as Rogers was teaching, at this time he was dealing with the subject of the Scriptures.

And he wanted to admonish his hearers. And so Thomas Goodwin, sitting there in the audience, is listening in. And John Rogers, acting the part of God for a moment, he says this. And I want you to think about it.

Does this apply to you? I have trusted you so long with my Bible. You have slighted it. It lies in your houses, covered with dust and cobwebs. You care not to look into it. Do you use my Bible so? Well, you shall have my Bible no longer.

Imagine what that would be if the Lord should bring a persecution like we saw at the beginning of the third century, where they sought to burn every Bible. You shall have my Bible no longer. And then acting the part of the people.

Well, he removed the Bible from the cushion that he had, and he fell before his knees, and he pleaded, O Lord, whatever thou dost to us, do not take our Bible from us. Kill our children, burn our houses, destroy our goods.

Only spare us the Bible. Then he addressed the people as from God. Say you so. Well, I will try you a little longer. Here is my Bible for you. I will yet see how you will use it, whether you will love it more, whether you will observe it more, whether you will practice it more and live more according to it.

And what was interesting is that as Thomas Goodwin was sitting there in the congregation, listening to John Rogers preach these words, he noticed that all of the people around him began deluged with tears.

And at the end of the service, Goodwin got on his horse and he recounts that as he went there, he thought about these things. That what are we doing with the Bible? That God has spoken to his people. That we have the complete knowledge of his special revelation to us in this book.

And we have slighted it. And there on his horse, he wept on the neck of his horse and said, Oh Lord, help me. Help me to know, to treat your Bible aright. Brothers and sisters, what are we doing with God's word?

Are you trained in God's word? Or are you a perpetual novice? Always drinking milk, never ready to move on to solid foods. He says as well that it's characteristic of a good servant, that they be trained in good doctrine.

As Paul speaks about good doctrine, he's referring to the ability of one to possess a sound knowledge of what the Bible teaches on various matters. To help explain this, I will use contrast for the sake of clarity.

I have an acquaintance. Unfortunately, you hear quite often about this acquaintance. It's just the nature of the relationship and the individual. But in his mind, it is almost always wrong to seek to systematize the teachings of scripture.

He would be fully against it. So that a church, for instance, having a statement of faith, that would be wrong. To have a confession of faith or a historic confession of faith, that would be wrong. Perhaps even sinful.

Instead, what his approach is, that he will pick up the Bible and he will read it. And whatever it says on that given day, on that given topic, that that is true. So he will read, for instance, a passage of warning.

Warning Christians not to fall away or to be careful lest we fall away. And he will say, on that given day, it is possible to fall away. And then as he comes to another passage that speaks about the eternal security of a Christian, he will say, well, that there is security as well.

But if you ask him, well, why don't we put those two verses together and see what the whole Bible teaches on the whole subject? He will say, no, that is wrong. We cannot do that. We must take God at his word.

Well, not only is that a contradiction, but it makes the Bible itself contradict itself. That everything in the Bible that the Lord has given us fits together. And therefore we should not object to this idea of systematizing theology.

Because some people get it wrong. But we should seek to know, we should know that the Bible does have its own system. That it is in perfect harmony with itself. That there are no contradictions and that we should seek to discern and submit to the Bible's own system.

How many of you brothers and sisters are studying theology? Even just at a basic level. It does not require expensive systematic theology texts. It doesn't require that you have a PhD in theology. But when was the last time perhaps you took your Bible, you opened it to the beginning, you took a notepad, you took a pen and said, I'm going to look up every passage that speaks about the character of God.

Or that speaks about one of the attributes of God. Whether it is the love of God, or the grace of God, or the wrath of God, or whatever it might be. And I'm going to seek to understand this aspect of God.

Again, to go back to our one-dimensional view. I think that we've become so focused. I have my Bible reading plan. I need to read my Bible today. But are we going beyond that so that we are trained in the word, that we might be good profitable servants?

I think that for many Christians, especially in the church that I am familiar with here in the West, that they are completely clueless in so many areas of doctrine, of sound doctrine. And are sometimes even heretics unaware, because they've never taken the time to understand what the Bible teaches about any particular subject.

It does not take long. One can say, what does the Bible, I have 45 minutes, what does the Bible teach about baptism? And with a concordance in your hands and a Bible to look up all the references to baptism and say, this is what scripture teaches about baptism.

Brothers and sisters, we must love God's word. We must seek to understand it. We must seek to understand the doctrines that his word teaches. You've heard me quote from John Wesley before, probably one of my favorite quotes from John Wesley.

We don't have some things in common. And if he were alive, he might let me know that. But I still appreciate his work. And one of the things that he has said is this, he said, I want to know one thing, the way to heaven, how to land safe on that happy shore.

God himself has condescended to teach the way for this. And he came from heaven. He has written it down in a book. Give me that book. Oh, give me that book of God at any price. Give me that book. Is that our heart towards God's word?

The next thing that we see in verse seven, we read this, have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths, rather train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is a value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life, and also for the life to come.

We should not only be trained in the word and in doctrine, but that we must train for godliness. It's not enough to have sound doctrine, but that this doctrine must translate into sound living. In contrast to the good teaching that Paul has in mind in verse six, we see that in verse seven, believers in Ephesus were giving themselves over to irreverent, silly myths, as we read it there.

In 1 Timothy four, we saw a little bit about those irreverent, silly myths. If you look there with me, that they were myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God, that he is by faith.

And we see from Paul's vocabulary, just how foolish these myths were. The words that Paul uses for irreverent could be translated as worthless, or even godless and profane. It speaks to the kind of pursuit that rather than pleasing God, brings disrepute or dishonor to God.

Whereas the word silly myths, literally it means, and some of you, if you have a King James version or an NASB, you'll see this, myths characteristic of an old woman. Rather, I think you have old wives fables, would be the way the King James translates it.

Old wives tales. We must not devote ourselves, if we're to be profitable servants, to silly myths, to old wives tales. And some people will say, well, who would give attention to those things? And if you can believe it or not, probably some of you are familiar with these things.

Maybe you've heard me talk about them on a Thursday evening, but they're actually a growing number of Christian media channels that devote themselves almost entirely to catering to people's interests in these things.

Myths and old wives tales. I think of one podcast in particular, where in this ministry, quote-unquote, these pastors embrace accounts of Bigfoot, and aliens, and mermaids, and mothmen, and other ghouls.

And they shoehorn these concepts into their biblical worldview, and into the biblical worldview of their listeners, so that eventually they say, at the end of every episode, it seems, well, Bigfoot is real.

And Bigfoot is a demon. And that is the closing line in every one of these podcasts. Now, surely you'd think that, but this is on the fringes, right? This is on the far reaches of maybe the Christian ethos.

And I wish that were true. But in fact, these channels have millions of views, and tens of thousands of subscribers. And they aren't Christians from the hyper charismatic wing, either. But probably most of the Christians, if you were to ask them to identify themselves, would call themselves conservative, evangelical, and even reformed Christians.

Because these are reformed pastors that are teaching this. Now, what is so bad about that? Well, I'll tell you what they're doing. They're disseminating the same errors the false teachers were disseminating in first century Ephesus.

They were promoting, certainly for the interest of the people, for the intrigue of the people, myths and old wives tales. And we know what happens. That these myths and these old wives tales, they go from being interesting, and then sometimes there's infatuation with it.

And soon they dispel or they remove Christ from his rightful place at the center of our theology, and we become interested solely in the tangential things. And I think that in the lives of those podcasters, I've seen that.

Irenaeus once said about this, speaking about this devotion to myths. He said, this devotion to myths is worthy of being mourned over. These people perversely pull to pieces the greatness of the truly unspeakable power of God.

They separate themselves from the church. They give heed to old wives fables. They are truly self-condemned. When we try to import these worthless myths into our Christian worldview, we treat God and his word with contempt.

And so we ought to, as often as we can, put away all things that truly before the Lord we would deem worthless. In Psalm 101 verse 3, the psalmist says, I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.

I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me. Now, one of the things that I think about, and I think of those of you who are familiar with biblical counseling, is you would never tell someone to, for instance, if they're struggling with something that they're seeing online, don't do that.

Just don't do it. Don't think about it. Don't go there. Just nothing. Put it off. As soon as we tell someone to put something off, we know it creates a vacuum that invariably will just put on something else that is unhealthy, that is unprofitable.

And it's interesting, Paul does this. He says, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths to put off. But then he gives something for Timothy and for all of us to put on. He says, rather train yourself for godliness.

When you think about worthless things and then training yourself for godliness, I want you to think, what is the number one thing in your life that at this very moment is distracting you, that is keeping you from training for godliness?

Do you not see that it's very likely something that is worthless? It's very likely something that it may be in and of itself is not a bad thing, but it becomes a profane thing when it takes the place of a much better thing, of a good thing.

That some of us, the best thing that we could do, I know I spoke on this a few weeks ago, this is not a theme in my mind necessarily, but some of the best things that probably some of us could do is go to the Kudo kiosk at the mall and say, here's my phone, I want that dumb phone, give me the dumbest phone you have, that will be mine.

And I'm going to love that phone and I'm going to live with that phone. To blow up your television, bring it to the farm and we'll shoot it with a shotgun. I don't know, right? He says, rather train yourself for godliness.

And he uses a Greek word, the Greek word gymnazo, which informs our English word gymnasium. So what Paul is telling Christians to do then is to cast off that which is worthless, that which is pointless, that which is profane and old wives tale and go to the gym as it were.

Discipline yourself and discipline yourself for this purpose, for godliness. Paul loves this language, these illustrations of the gym and of athletics and of sports. So if you think, for instance, that I use too many historic illustrations, maybe Paul used too many athletic illustrations.

But in second Timothy two and verse five, he tells us that an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. In second Timothy four seven, at the end of his earthly life, Paul tells Timothy, I have fought the good fight.

I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. In first Corinthians chapter nine and verse 24, he says, do you not know that all run, that sorry, 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 and 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.