1 Timothy 4

All right, 1st Timothy chapter 4 hear the word of the Lord Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times

Some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars who whose

Consciences are seared who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with Thanksgiving By those who believe and know the truth for everything created by God is good

And nothing is to be rejected if it is received with Thanksgiving for it is made holy by the

Word of God in prayer If you put these things before the brothers You will be a good servant of Christ Jesus being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have

Followed have nothing to do with irreverent 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

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance For to this end we toil and strive because we have our hope set on the

Living God who is the Savior of all people especially of those who believe Command and teach these things let no one despise you for your youth

But set the believers an example in speech and conduct and love and faith in purity

Until I come devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture to exhortation to teaching do not neglect the gift you have

Which was given you by the prophet given you by prophecy when the Council of Elders laid their hands on you

Practice these things immerse yourselves in 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 say both yourself and your hearers

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word Well about a year and a half ago a gym that was in downtown,

Yancey Ville The body dynamics gym or BD gym as we call it for short Moved into a building almost right across the street from our house about 50 yard walk away

Being so convenient myself first myself and then Micah. I got a membership and we go there

Micah more regularly than I do actually And there of course, we meet the other people who are members of the gym

Go there to get to work out Hopefully to get in shape Why do they do that? Of course, they're aspiring to that hope of Being fit and trim being muscular or being ripped as they say today, or maybe they're just trying to lose weight

But there's some goal some hope they have they're trying to achieve there now some Come and go maybe they meet you see him a time or two and then they just disappear and they don't come again

They lose hope and they drop out some are though our regulars working out faithfully and you see them all the time

Striving for that goal. They toil and strive for that goal of total fitness. I like to work out sometimes

But sometimes I get taken over by this goal of being in perfect shape a faster runner or better swimmer stronger ever stronger and this tantalizing hope of running or swimming faster than ever before But then

I know You know as hard as you work Eventually your body will always let you down Well, what about you

If you go to the gym You have that tantalizing hope that you can get stronger and fitter

Maybe even get younger maybe even if you think if you work out hard enough you can live forever.

Oh maybe Yeah, you know what? I'm working out. I wonder though because you know after a while we get to get tired you want to stop

When is that just what is it? Just laziness when it is when is it weakness that I should work through to get better and When is that age that will one day win?

Well the light at the end of the tunnel The light at the end of the tunnel sometimes, you know, it's an oncoming train

Ever felt like that mythological man condemned to an eternity in Hades of rolling up a stone up the hill Just before it gets to the top

Seeing it roll back down over and then having to do that over and over again

Tantalus was his name tantalized By something that he has to work hard for but he can never get perhaps for you, it's physical fitness or perhaps is physical fitness, that's financial prosperity freedom from debt or a sense of Having accomplished something of education or a sense of being loved or a piece or a feeling of security

Particularly for your children. It always seems to be Just out of reach and you're tempted to feel it would all it will always be that way

And it takes over after a while. It becomes despair Perhaps the most excruciating temp tormenting feeling the complete loss of hope

The Nazis understood this I believe it was at Auschwitz where some of the Jewish prisoners warders Move a large pile of dirt with shovels

From one place to another or whatever they had shovels or whatever They had move it from one place to another and then once they moved it

Ordered to move it back and then again and then again and then finally the futility of it

They understand that this labor But labor with no hope of accomplishing anything

It just drove some of them and stay insane made them hysterical They tried to run away and some of them were shot as escapees

In his book one day in the life life of Ivan Danese of itch Alexander Solzhenitsyn describes how the title character

Ivan in a Russian a Russian prisoner and one of their gulags and conditions almost as bad as Auschwitz a prisoner in the

Soviet gulags. He is warmed Warmed in the frigid

Siberian weather by being able to build a wall Now the wall he was building was a wall to keep him in in his own prison

But still it helps Keep him warm because it's it's it means something.

He's doing something. He's accomplishing something That gives him hope it keeps him alive

That's why the poet Dante in his classic work the Inferno describes a sign above the entrance to hell what makes hell hell

Abandoned hope all you who enter here The lesson of the popular movie the

Shawshank Redemption is that quote hope is a good thing perhaps the best of things

Maybe maybe not It's not good enough just to have hope You better have hope in the right thing people today like to imagine that you know anything that That people believe in whatever it gives them hope for a time

It helps them it is good if it helps them get up in the morning It helps them face another day and be a bit cheerier encourages them to be good citizens and you know work hard stay out of trouble then

What more can you ask? You know tomorrow is another day said Scarlett O 'Hara. She had hope

She made it through all kinds of troubles in the past and surely she could bounce back from having butler leave her she hope

Encouraged her to go forward. But if your hope is not in the right thing one day indeed the light at the end of the tunnel will be an oncoming train and Then there won't be another day

Sorry Scarlett to paraphrase Butler frankly Scarlett. You will be damned

Timothy was in a difficult situation He's leading a church with some difficult people including leaders who were teaching things that they were wrong.

They were destructive Paul says they're even demonic Some of them were leaving the faith, but they weren't leaving

Cleanly that is they weren't leaving consciously. They were staying in the church, but they were leaving the faith They probably thought there were still faithful Christians only that they had gained some new insights

That the key to true spirituality is not eating that or denying your body this they almost certainly stayed in the church right up until the moment the young man

Timothy had to tell them to leave and And when he did that Told them to leave he suffered abuse now.

Why should he stay with these people? They had had years of some of the best teaching from the Apostle Paul himself and yet still they were falling away

Was there any hope? for a group of people like that And Timothy is wondering is any hope for me here

Interestingly if Paul does not tell Timothy some glib line, you know, just keep your chin up Just be encouraged.

Everything's gonna turn around soon. Don't worry about it There there were no rose -colored glasses here indeed

Paul Begins this chapter by telling Timothy You know what Timothy guess what the

Holy Spirit says in specific terms That just this kind of thing would happen and guess what?

It'll keep happening some will depart from the faith Starts out at a future tense some will in times coming after this and then he starts

Soon, he starts talking in present tense. Oh, this is already happening. This is already begun

With in Timothy's condition now We'd love to think that if when someone says they're a Christian once they get baptized

In church faithfully, then they are truly saved and so eternally secure but this scripture tells us that there are people who in every way even to the discerning eyes of the

Inspired Apostle these would be people that Paul knew they appear to be Christians people

They examined people they questioned they taught they baptized and yet they leave the faith

They were religious But not born again, they might have acknowledged some of the theology

They said they believe the doctrine they might have trust but they really might in fact have trusted in their prayers

They trusted their baptism. They trust in something they're doing some religious work. They just never really trusted in the

Lord. So they depart from the faith Such people Paul says in verse 1 go from a semblance of Christianity to a devotion to what he calls deceitful spirits and the doctrines of demons teaching of teachings of demons now

That shows that they're not just duped Innocent victims. There's something much worse here. I noticed

Paul's words in verse 1 They were the words of culpability of blame. It's it's their fault.

It's not they're just lured away and Against their will it says they are departing from the right thing and they are devoting themselves to the wrong thing

Now, yes, it's true. There are deceitful spirits and there are then these deceitful spirits use the what he calls the

Insincerity of liars Paul speaks of blunt terms here and they use the hypocrisy of false teachers.

They use the show The the front that false teachers put up they try to make themselves look like the real thing like they are real believers

There are spirits who lie and then cloud the minds of people. There are religious people who claim to be

Christians And they're probably not liars In the sense that they are intentionally saying things that they know to be false you know like the used car salesman that that knows this car is gonna have a

Will probably not even make it to your home once you buy it and but he just lies to you to tell you it's okay

They're probably not like that. They really believe what they are saying, but they are insincere when they say it comes from God They don't know

God and they don't know his word, but that doesn't stop them They teach people to believe in to put their hope in Something anything other than God and look at what kind of people these insincere liars

Look what kind of people they are They're devoted to deceiving spirits. You think well, they have horns out of their head and they're just just despicable obvious people, but they aren't

Pornographers here. Are they they're not secularists. They're not the atheist professor on campus

That's just railing against, you know Christianity they are religious people formerly church -going people who went from an apparent faith in the gospel of grace to believing in Religion of some kind they are in verse three people who forbid marriage and require abstinence from certain foods

Those two things in particular are what they're they're they're teaching in Paul's day And we have now we have this picture of the devil see it sometimes on TV or movies appearing on people's shoulder

You're telling them to indulge in their flesh the grafts some pleasure Even if it's just eating butter instead instead of a lower cholesterol margarine, you know

Something like that and and it is certainly true that sometimes the devil may try to deceive us and to entrap us into some kind Of indulgence, but here

Paul clearly shows that the devil can also happily tell us to deny ourselves

You never think of the devil doing that. Do you devil trying to tell you to be severe be religious?

to be austere Do you know the devil does that? That's what he's doing here

The devil will happily tell us to be or do anything as long as it will keep us from trusting the

Living God He might try sure He might try to get us to have an affair or to be a glutton or to be a drunkard any of that to put our hope and the pleasure that we can get from those things trap us in indulgence or That's here

He might tell us that if we will but abstain from sex or that is for marriage or if we will never touch that food

That meat that's a clean or that drink will never take any of that drink

Then once we do that We could be sure God is pleased with us

Do you know the devil teaches that? What's what did Paul is saying here? We could have our hope in our righteousness

Will only do these Severe things deny ourselves some created thing. Satan will just as gleefully make us a legalist as He will make us a hedonist

Anything other than setting our hope on the Living God? Now the kind of people who do this

Paul says at the end of verse 2 are those whose Consciences are seared and the

Greek word there for seared is the word word we get our English word cauterized from except maybe a warped or something as our

Tumor can be cauterized and these people who fall away from the faith in the gospel of God's grace who devote themselves to the doctrines

Of demons now, they didn't do it overnight They once had a conscience But now it's seared.

They can't feel it anymore They once could feel if something was wrong something was amiss

With this religion that they began to lie to them or or with the life that they're now living something was

Not quite right, but they can't feel that anymore because now they've

Their consciences is seared They've turned away from their conscience that inner witness within that voice that made them uneasy and they did it one small decision at a time

With every bad book they read every every time they chose not to read their Bibles every time they chose not to attend

Church every time they chose to spend time with people who were leading them away Or maybe dating a boy or a girl

They should not dwelling on the thoughts about someone other than your spouse listening to talk that they know at first is wrong

It's misleading but This time I'll let it go by I'll get near the edge

But I won't go over I'll be faithful in worship. Well, maybe starting next week.

You know this morning. I'll sleep in I'll watch somebody on TV Or I'll date him or her You know, okay there whatever there's some other religion but I'll never marry unless they get saved first, okay now

I'll cut it off Well, maybe just one more date. I'll give him or her another chance and soon

What's the big deal? Maybe this is the one that God has for me and maybe his or her religion is not so bad after all

Is it worth sacrificing my happiness for some minor theological dispute and after all their religion claims to believe in Jesus, too

Really aren't as bad as I was led to believe The conscious has been cauterized And when skin or a nerve or a tumor is cauterized is destroyed by burning

Although sometimes now we do it by freezing It's like a cow being branded it it leaves the area completely insensitive that the nerves the the feeling of the senses

There are destroyed just so a cauterized conscience has been deadened

By constantly arguing with conscience saying no to it stifling its warnings muffling its bell putting on a mute like a cell phone its voice is smothered and eventually silenced

Now that can happen sure it can happen with some lead -up to him in immorality To an affair to the appeal of pornography or drunkenness some kind of indulgence the falling away from worship

Sure, or it can happen as here as Paul describes here in verse 3 is

People are drawn into some false Legalistic religion, maybe I can be more pleasing to God if I stop

Eating whatever pork if I won't drink whatever the devil may tell us to deny ourselves

If that will keep us from trusting God if we set our hope on our religious works on the fact Maybe you know one day when

I was a teenager We went forward and I went forward in an altar call. I got baptized and I've tried to be good.

I tin -chirped some I Can trust in that because of that I'm okay, but then you're not hoping in God We're hoping it's something that will surely eventually

Disappoint us That false assurance that focuses on what we did that keeps us from setting our hope on the living

God can be just as much a lie from Satan as the temptation to Sex out of marriage or whatever

Indulgence that may try to tempt you The Puritan writer caught caught

Mather told a story about an Indian chief in New England It's Indian chief had a dream

He said in which he saw the by then deceased missionary Puritan missionary

John Eliot Telling him in the dream to stop committing adultery stop stealing and start obeying the

Sabbath You figure this is from God This is God speaking to him through this missionary in his dream and when he went and told the

Puritan missionaries Ministers about the dream they immediately concluded That it was of the devil

Cotton Mather said that the great missionary John Eliot would never tell someone to obey the law

Without also telling them how it pointed to Christ. That is from Christ It needs to set his hope not.

I'm just reforming his life And the Puritans were right. It's the doctrine of demons that tells us to keep the law to set our hopes on our

Morality on our obedience the gospel tells us the law shows that we are sinners and there are only hope

Is in the living God? The reality is a saint might actually prefer We'd be lost in religion then we'd be lost in immorality and Indulgence, you know at least the immoral the self -indulgent man

At least he's enjoying something that ultimately comes from God He may be enjoying in the wrong way

But at least he's enjoying some gift of God the person is trapped in a false religion

He'll so proud of himself that he never eats pork or whatever never drinks alcohol He's Rejecting something that God created and rejecting the grace of God to save him

They think holiness is gained by not eating or not drinking certain things. Perhaps maybe perhaps just a certain times

You can make it 40 days before. What is it during Lent? Up till the up to 40 days before Easter and then you're

Your spiritual you please God you've done something the really holy people They might be told and this is true for the church from over a thousand years and still isn't some places

They're really holy people are not supposed to get married But all these are ways of getting people to set their hope on religion not in God and what we've done for God Not in what he's done for us

The fact is is to see here You know everything created by God is good. He says there are no taboo foods or drinks

There are no things that you think you can't take because they are sinful they are polluted

Now there may be some things you shouldn't take Because you have a weakness for them and you can't stop yourself from having too much

Sure, that may be the case for you But even those cases the problem is not in the food or the drink

Problem is in us and be you it would be in you and others who do not share our weaknesses are not bound by them

Because he says in verse 4 Everything Created by God is good

Everything and everything that's created is created by God. Everything is created by God and nothing is nothing

Notice this sweeping words. Everything created is good. Nothing is to be rejected if it is received with Thanksgiving For it is made holy by the

Word of God and prayer Got it everything Even general

Charles chicken Created by good you can receive it Now we are bound though to give.

Thanks. God gave us everything. That is the one thing we are bound by We're not bound not to eat pork. We're not bound it and under eat shrimp

We are bound though to give thanks and we ought to enjoy them to do anything else is to be ungrateful

It is to doubt the goodness of God who made everything all of creation

And so Paul is telling Timothy in verse 6 sure, okay in your church there some things look rough there are false teachers

They're dedicated to demons There are people falling away, but Timothy born a petite

You want to be a good servant of Christ in a time like this put these things before the brothers

Teach them to trust in God The Creator to keep a sensitive conscience unlike the false teachers following doctrines of demons teaching of irreverent

But he calls the irreverent silly myths frivolous Fables, but Paul literally calls it

Greek. It's old wives tales Which we could be in our culture called urban legends Maybe something immature adolescent boys chat about while sitting around playing video games nonsense talk

Maybe about aliens or conspiracy theories drivel empty Silly things that's had to say many people today trust in you know

They trust in aliens or in myths or the New Age movement are ancient stories about how Saints Did this or that miracle and they can still help you if you pray to these

Saints or basis? Speculations on what the end times will be like other there's four blood quote blood moons and that means something

Let's talk all about that When will be the date of Christ's return anything other than to trust in God and rather than that Paul says that's the thing people are distracted by rather than that be nourished

It's the term he uses nourished in the words of the faith false teachers are falling away from the faith

Timothy you the faithful be nourished in the faith and it's an idea of verse 6 there being being raised being reared

What we often use it raising our children you cultivate them. How do you do that?

What do you nourish them with? What do you raise them on? Here Paul is telling

Timothy that he needs to he needs to be nourished to be brought up in the sound the healthy words of the faith and that he needs to nourish the church on those words and This is what we strive to do in church.

That's why we're here for I hope I am. I'm trying to nourish you. I hope I'm I'm trying to nourish you in the words of the faith the good teaching of the

Word of God now Sometimes it may be sweet and delicious Sometimes it may taste like a kale smoothie.

Okay, I understand. I'm trying I'm not that good a chef physically I don't know about spiritually but his purpose is to nourish you

To rear you up and we all need to be in the second analogy He uses a verse at the end of verse 7, you know be trained for godliness and the word there for train

Is in Greek as give nausea you could pronounce it gym nausea. You'd be mispronouncing it But that's that may how we won't pronounce a gym nausea is where we get our word gym for There it is gym

Work out. Otherwise go to the gym for godliness We are to we are trained for godliness like the people at the beady gym are training themselves

To get in shape Are you going to the gym? You go to the gym

Why? How would you go to the gym to get better shape some go to socialize, you know some go for a while but then they lose hope and And they quit

Why do you? Go to the gym come to church. I mean it helps when you go to the gym to have a goal

You want to lose so much weight? You want to be able to lift so many pounds you want to be able to run so fast specific goal

We have a goal here in verse 15 Paul places before him a goal progress

Right, you can you check the scales your few pounds lighter than you were a few days before you can lift more pounds than you did last week

Progress. It's what we're here for to learn and to grow Practice these things immerse yourself in the

Word of God to exercise go to the gym For God for a reverence toward God in which the conscience is still sensitive

To his slightest move in which our spiritual ears are tuned to his whispers trained to be reverent

That is mingling of fear and love that dare not turn away from his leading

They're not just kind of tinker with his word to sort of get it to fit what you want it to say

That didn't dare not toy with sin that keeps drawing you back and keeps setting your hope on the

Lord it begins with a revolution of Christian conversion being born again from self -centeredness

You're converted from a self -centered life as people are all people are born into to a God -centered life and that continues in a life of contrite submission to him you read your

Bible you pray you attend worship and Sunday school because you are building up a Record you're training yourself.

You're nourishing yourself, but not because Build some record that you think you hope you can use look look

God. Look what I have did Look at all these many years of faithful church attendance Look at all how many times

I read the Bible through aren't you impressed the Lord with what I've done for you? No, it's because you really want to be trained

To be godly you want to make progress You want to grow?

Why don't you go to church For the same reason you might go to the gym except Here you can get eternal rewards

That is what the church is for we see that in the last paragraph from verses 8 verses 11 to 16

There are at least 8 commands there coming in a rapid succession Quick like bullets from a machine gun or maybe like list the machines that you need to work out on at the gym you know,

I got to do the abs and the dips and the laps and the rowing and the curls

Ask Alan for more information about all that these tell Timothy that he needs to be doing what he needs to be doing to make the church into what it was supposed to be a

Gymnasium of godliness a place where people go to be trained to be reverent

Before God to be made like the Lord and worship him sincerely to glorify

God I take some training If you want to come and just chat and have everyone accept you as you are, you know

It's like the old TV show. What was that? Cheers? Just everyone knows your name and you sit at the bar and chat without challenge without accountability

You've come to the wrong place Sorry, it's not what we're here for it Sometimes annoys me and it gives some gyms people just sit on a machine and just talk.

I like to use that You don't want to just sit No, go somewhere else You come to the wrong place if that's what you think the church is for you might try one of the bars in town

That's what that's for That isn't the church we're a gymnasium of godliness when you come here you come to work out

Okay, you come to exercise to be challenged Maybe sometimes even exhausted to be pushed

Particularly sometimes where you're weak So that you'll become strong there Is that what you go to the gym this gym?

I mean for There are two elements to this gymnasium of godliness that are necessary to make it effective need two things

Going on here. Just like a good trip to the physical gym a good workout. You need at least two things you the aerobic

And the anaerobic you need the cardio get your pulse going and the weights Push push some build some muscles here the gymnasium of godliness.

We need here. Well, we need we need the word and Second we need the witness.

We need the Word of God preached and taught. That's what I'm doing That's why I'm doing what I'm doing right now first in verse 11

Paul tells Timothy command and teach these things The word in verse 13.

We are to devote ourselves to the public reading of Scripture. That's why we read it That's why why we don't just say you can read it on your own.

I'm just gonna preach it No, we we we read it then we encourage each other to obey it to teaching to exposition

Explaining the meaning of Scripture the word nourishes us it trains us We cannot be a gymnasium of godliness without it.

And the second thing we need is the witness. We need the example of Godly lives other people or other

Christians around us witnessing to us about how to live in verse 12 He tells

Timothy not to be intimidated by the older people who don't want to be trained but instead simply to keep up the good example in every area of life and words and Actions in love in trustworthiness in purity.

He says Christian self -control he Timothy needs to be example before all these people so they have a witness from his life if we don't have the example

If we don't have the witness in actual practice, we didn't pull down with our lives while we try to lift up with our words

I mean don't tell me that to seek first the kingdom of God if You're not doing it in your life

Right is your life shows the kingdom of God is first We eventually become not a training room for reverent worshipful lives

If we have no witness we just climb a lounge for indifferent cool religion

So we must keep a close watch to what Paul says in verse 16 over both ourselves our lives our teaching and our doctrine right our lives and our

Doctrine must mind our consistency in both areas. It's not good enough to have either doctrine or lives

I got my doctrine, right? But I can you know, I'm a little sloppy with my living

Or some of those people are the other way who cares about doctrine doctrine divides, but my life is fine

You can't leave either neglected both are intertwined They're inseparable and only by getting both right

Can we be a place where people are trained for godliness where where we will be saved and we will bring to salvation

Those who see and hear us and now it is not that we can build a religion of theology and practice

Orthodoxy and orthopraxy that will save and gain merit for others salvation always originates not in us

But in the grace of God nevertheless the reality of our salvation has to be demonstrated in in good works

Of love that's why Paul tells us to continue to work out Notice that continue to work out our salvation

Actually says that somewhere else continue to work but work out our salvation with fear and trembling continue to do it in a present tense

Ongoing work out your salvation with fear and trembling and we come to church so that we can work out spiritually and then

Work out our salvation outside in the world at home at work

We can continue to work because toil and strive he says because we have hope

You know, unlike those poor prisoners of Auschwitz. We know our toil and our striving is not it's not for nothing

It has a purpose Paul tells us in that key verse verse 10 the goal

Gives energy to the perp to the practice. It inspires us with hope. It doesn't just tantalize us with a goal.

We'll never reach You know, I used to train for the hope of running faster and races now I jog for the hope of keeping the weight off Physical exercises is of some value.

He says in this life as long as it lasts But after that it's not gonna do you much good but godliness reverence before God is a value in every way

It's valuable now Helps you live better in this life and it will be valuable for the eternal life to come.

So it is for that That that hope of something beyond this world that we labor and we exert ourselves toil and strive he says

That's why we study our Bibles It's what we pray at home when we prepare Sunday school lessons we come for them or we give to the offering or prepare music and we sing and we

Listen and we repent We deny ourselves some things that we would sometimes like to have

It's a lifetime of repentance that we keep our consciousness tender to the Lord we have hope that all this labor

Is worth it because we have set our hope on the Living God. He's the only one to hope in he is the only

Savior That's why he's called the Savior of all people. Not that all people are saved

They are not of course only those who have been given the gift of faith Only those who have set their hope with the

Living God in the end will be saved But he is the Savior of all people and that he is the only way for all people

To be saved only way any person can be saved. There's no other way out He's the only hope for all people that in the end

Will not disappoint That's why he's called the Living God. They're all of the things that try to be our gods our bodies maybe

I Get the feeling sometimes you go see Jim people working out that their their body is there is their

God or for others romances relationships money career Maybe even religion our own vaunted self -righteousness

I Keep myself from this all of that will die only the

Living God will remain and in that You can set your hope

If your hope is set on God It gives energy to your action

You will continue to train yourself Like like the athlete who continues to believe that he could be the champion.

So because of that hope he continues to train and so you

You have hope in the Living God you'll continue to come To train yourself come to the gym to church for progress because you have not lost hope

Your hope isn't in people Because sometimes they'll disappoint. It's not even in yourself

You will continue to have something worth working for If your hope is set on God, you will continue to work out

Spiritually because you know in the end It will work out