A Good Servant of Christ

Good morning, everybody. Kind of proud. We had some actual clapping happening that time. I think it was this section over here. You guys were pretty good. It was good, so well done. Take your Bibles with me and turn to 1 Timothy chapter 4 this morning. You know, Beth and I were blessed to be away last week for a few days. Beth turned 60 last Sunday.

So, yeah, I told the first service, I had to tell the second service, there's nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, she's still kicking. I'm proud of her, you know. Still taking good care of me, so I'm thankful for that. But, man, I was blessed to come back, too, because we, you know, we get back and I ask how our upward evaluations went. We had like 250 kids go through, but we had, you know, a whole bunch of people step in to serve, people that hadn't served before. I always loved to hear that. I loved to hear people serving, you know, and stepping out. And we found out. We found out that at our Oasis, we had kind of reopened after a couple of weeks after Ms.

Connie's passing, and found out there was new workers in Oasis. And, you know, just hearing. I love to hear how people are serving. You know, we went out door to door here a couple of weeks ago, and, man, that was fantastic. A bunch of people went out and did that. And, you know, there's really only one way to prove you have faith in Jesus Christ. There's only one way, and that's to serve. That's to work. James tells us that faith without faith, without deeds, is dead. You claim to have faith and have no deeds, your faith is worthless. That's what the Bible says. So when I hear about people stepping in and serving, man, I just rejoice.

So how blessed we were to come back and hear the great reports of people stepping in. So thank you. And for everybody that serves and all the ways that we serve, I'm just really grateful for that. Well, we're going to get back into 1 Timothy 4 this morning. Pastor Aaron did a great Job. We got to hear. Some of it we were traveling home. So between here and Salt Lake City, there's not a lot, if you want to know the truth. So we got parts of it. It'd go for a while, then it'd shut off. Then it'd come back on and shut off. And then when we went to look at it afterwards, when I got home, I was going to listen to it again.

Only part of it got recorded. So I didn't hear it all. But what I did hear was I'm thankful for. Thankful, Aaron, for sharing the word last week. But we're going to go back. He kind of finished by reading verses 6 through 10 and not really addressing them. And I'm going to go back. And we're going to take a look through them because I think they're important verses. So 1 Timothy 4, verse 6. If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you'll be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished by the words of the faith and the good teaching that you have followed. But have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths.

Rather, train yourself in godliness. For the training of the body has limited benefit, but godliness is beneficial in every way since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance. For this reason, we labor and strive because we have put our hope in the living God who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we are grateful today, thankful today for so many things, but primarily for your great love for us and the great sacrifice you made for us that through faith in you we might be saved. What an amazing God you are and you're worthy of our worship today.

We're also thankful, Lord, for what you're doing in our lives. We're thankful for this church. Lord, there's so many in our church that are just faithful to you, that love you, that give and serve and pray and encourage. And I'm so thankful for that, Lord. And I pray that you'll continue to just build and strengthen your church. And Lord, I know there's some folks here this morning that haven't trusted you as their Lord and Savior. And we're thankful for them too, Lord. You love them. them. You care for them. You created them in your image. And my prayer is for them to come to know Christ today as their Savior and to find forgiveness and hope and security in Christ.

And Lord, I just pray that you'd speak through me today your words. Allow them to penetrate our hearts and our minds. Allow us to not only hear them and understand them, but Father, help us respond in obedience to them that you might be worshiped among us. And we love you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

This is a little passage of Scripture this morning. It's kind of a transitional passage in the letter that Paul wrote to Timothy. The first three chapters or so, he's really been teaching Timothy some truths that Timothy needs to be aware of and needs to be dealing with. But from this point forward, he begins to make it really personal to Timothy, really addressing him as this is what you need to do in response to these words. This is how you need to apply the words that I've spoken to you so far. And that's pretty typical of letters that Paul writes. The first part is theological or doctrinal. And the second part is pretty practical and applicable.

And so it's no surprise that he does that here. But it's interesting to me because the way this passage starts, I mean, verse six starts with, if you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus. I mean, that's a pretty deep statement right there. Obviously, he's talking to a young man who is the pastor of this church in Ephesus. But he's also talking to us today. The Bible was written for every single one of us. And so he's talking to every single believer, right, that has ever trusted Jesus Christ and saying, if you point these things out, and we'll talk about those things in a minute, then you will be a good Now,

That's important. I mean, if you're a follower of Christ, why would you not want to be a good servant of Christ? If you know Jesus and what he's done for you and for me and for the world, then serving him ought to be the greatest joy you have. It ought to be the highest priority of your life. There really shouldn't be anything that is more desirable than pleasing Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, being a good servant. I mean, that's part of what has to happen if we are going to walk with Jesus. We already talked about that, right? You can't claim Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and not serve him.

You can't. People do, but it's empty words. Jesus, or in James chapter, I think it's two. I shouldn't have said that. In the book of James. I'll be more general. The Lord says, faith without deeds is dead. He says, you show me your faith without your deeds, and I'll show you my faith by my deeds. See, faith produces servitude to the Lord Jesus Christ and servitude to other people. And if you don't have it, you don't have him. So when he tells us here, this is one of the ways that you can be a good servant of Christ Jesus. We should serve him. We should sit up and take note, right? And when we talk about Paul talking to Timothy in a more personal way, I hope that as we finish through eventually this book of 1 Timothy, we realize how personal it is.

Like the church is personal. The church is personal to the Apostle Paul because God uses his church to impact the world. Not just individuals. This is something that we've got to figure out. It's something very important for you and I to figure out that the church is important as a whole and how we walk in that church together is more important than how we walk by ourselves with Christ. Because you can't even claim to be a believer and walk by yourself and leave the church out. That's not the way that works. Too many things in Scripture. You go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 where, the Apostle Paul writes through the Holy Spirit, man, I've given them different ministries.

I've given them different effects of gifts to affect those ministries. But I've placed them all in my body as I've seen fit so they can all work together for the glory of God. It's a beautiful picture of the church. And Paul gets very personal. Now I want us to make the truths that we find in Scripture personal.

Truth about, are church personal? I mean, how many of you realize that this church, right, and what it is and how effective she is and the technology that we have is personal? You're a part of it.

Or you're not a part of it. I mean, when you come to church, you should care about, how this church is presenting herself to those that are here maybe for the first time or to what the community is going to see from us when we leave here. It should be personal for you. You should come to church on Sunday mornings going, Lord, how do I then invest in others in our church to help build them up? How do I invest in the ministries of this church to help be used by God? How do I make this church personal to me because you care about it? I should care about her as well. When you do Bible studies, you realize that you're not just learning the Bible for your own personal gain.

It's one of the things that I think we struggle the most with because somehow we've been wired to have information. We're wired to ingest information, to have enough knowledge in our head that we can spew out a few facts and that should make us feel good about ourselves. That's not what Bible study is about. All right, Bible study is about knowing who God is.

How he works in the church. Bible study is about how he wants to use us in this world. And when we do Bible studies, it becomes personal to us. It becomes intimate to us. He speaks to us and then we then are able to invest again in the church. It's important, right? I mean, if you remember, Aaron covered this verse back in chapter 3, but I've been talking about it since the beginning of this study. Verse 15, he says,

This whole letter is centered around that one truth, right? That God wants us to know how to conduct ourselves in the household of God, in the church of the living God, which is the pillar and foundation of truth. Man, when we study the Bible, we want to know who God is so that we can relate to one another and conduct ourselves well in the church because she's the She's

You think the church is inconsequential? The church is not inconsequential. I mean, one of the things that's crazy about us when we think about it sometimes is to us, many times, the church is just a place that we go to get something. Right? It's just, if you will, merchandise at some level. But that's not at all what the church is. The church is a display of God's truth to the world. That has to be then a selfless response to the church and to Christ Jesus and to one another so that we can show that. I mean, the scary part for some of us is that the church has become a selfish thing, not a selfless thing.

And there's no, there's no great glory to God when we're living our lives selfishly. How many of you actually say it out loud sometimes? I'd serve the Lord, but I don't have time. You ever say that out loud?

Listen, the time you have is the time God has given you. And you have as much time as everybody else has. Everyone has the same time. 24 hours a day. When we begin to see Paul taking Timothy to a personal thing, we have to take it personal to us. And I encourage you to make the church personal, because many of us are pushing the church aside,

Keeping her at arm's length, saying it doesn't really matter how we respond to the church or whether we respond in the church or any of that. We keep her aside. And quite honestly, then, that then undermines what God wants for the church. And so we have to do some adjustments. So he begins with, he begins by pointing something out that maybe we don't want to see him point out. In verse six he says, if you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you'll be a good servant of Christ Jesus.

Well, what things? Well, you could go back to the few verses in front of this, and we'll talk a little bit about that in a minute. But you can go back to the beginning of this letter, because Paul's pointed out some pretty important things. Back in chapter one, he told Timothy to instruct certain men not to teach false doctrine. And so he's telling Timothy, if you point out false doctrine and false teachers, you'll be a good servant of Christ Jesus. He pointed out to Timothy that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings were to be made for everyone, for Kings and for all those in authority. So when you point out to the church, that we need to be people of prayer, of prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings, and petitions,

For everyone, and for our leaders, and those that serve in our nation, then you're being a good servant of Christ Jesus. And he's not just talking about pastors. I know he's a pastor. I know he's writing to a pastor. You could say, well, that's just for you, Pastor Mike, or Pastor Max, or Pastor Aaron. But no, the word of God is living and active, man. It's for all of us. It's to speak to all of us. So being a good servant is when we are then able to point out things to one another as followers of Christ that encourage us to take stances against false teachings and against false teachers and to encourage us to pray.

I mean, sometimes, you know, you go, it's not that much fun to talk about false teachers, but in church, man, prayer, prayer's one of those things that's hard to even encourage one another to do. We have group prayers. We have prayer times during Sunday school once a quarter at college heights. And we have a decent amount of people come, but not compared to the rest of the people that come. Right, we could have a full auditorium of people praying, but you know, we don't encourage one another to pray because prayer's scary.

Anybody get scared of prayer? You get scared of prayer? I'm not teasing. Anna raised her hand. Thank you, Anna. One really honest person in the whole place. Two with John. Don't raise your hands now. We've now manipulated you to do this, but we get it sometimes, like, I don't want to pray in front of somebody. I don't know how to pray.

Fair enough. Who really knows how to pray? But man, right, if you knew what the Word of God says, that the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf in prayers with groanings too deep for words. So what it means is that even though sometimes we stumble through prayer, not really knowing everything about prayer, when God knows our hearts, He's interceding. He's making prayers on our behalf. Isn't that amazing? But we've got to pray. So we're to encourage one another to pray. He goes on. He talks about how men everywhere should pray, lifting up holy hands, and women should focus on the inner beauty rather than the external beauty, and talking about things that men struggle with and things that women struggle with.

Sometimes we need to point those out to one another. Man, Paul even taught Timothy that women weren't to teach and have authority over men. Things that are not so difficult are not so easy sometimes to point out. He went in to talk about the qualifications of overseers and then deacons so that the church would know how to conduct themselves together with the leadership that God calls out as pastors as leaders, deacons as servants. He told Timothy he wanted him to know how to conduct himself in the household of God and teach others, and about the mystery of godliness. Then he deals with some, right before this verse six, where he says

That some would depart from the faith. We should point that out. That some would follow deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons.

Do these things through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared. Those are hard things, aren't they? I know sometimes we think that being Christians is supposed to be this cheap thing, this easy thing. Really, most of us would love it if we had an easy button, not just for our faith in Jesus Christ, but for life where if we could hit that thing and there'd be no stretching us, there'd be no difficult things, there'd be no call to step into stuff that we don't feel comfortable stepping into, but that is not the call of Christ in our life.

Is that to be a good servant of Jesus Christ. Man, we point things out to people that they need. We don't point them out to people to make them feel bad. Man, I don't know where in the world somebody decided that speaking truth to people and calling them to a deeper relationship with Jesus, was mean. But people think that. I mean, people think that you're overbearing if you teach the truth.

Call them to repentance. People think you're mean-spirited. I mean, I've heard it all. You're just proud, Pastor. You're just mean. You just stomp on people. I've heard those things verbatim. Well, listen, a good servant of Jesus Christ wants the very, very best for the people that we know and love. And pointing things out that we need to be aware of and called back to Jesus is grace, even if they don't like it. Right? I mean,

Do you think false teachers like to be told they're false teachers? They do not. They don't like it. But they need to hear it.

Women typically don't like to hear that they're not to have authority and teach men. Not all women, but many women But that's God's way. It's God's design. Many people man, there are people who's had their consciences seared. They're in the church, but their consciences are seared. And because they then become liars and don't see it, they're then following deceitful spirits and teaching doctrines of demons. I'd say at least some of you don't even believe in demons and don't even believe in a devil, let alone want to stand up and point out, right, that these false teachings, they don't come from some man or some woman. They come from these doctrines of demons and deceitful spirits.

But if we don't point those things out, if we don't have some strength to us that comes from Jesus Christ, it doesn't come from you, it doesn't come from me, then we're just, we're passing over things that destroy. Do you understand that?

Break people and hurt people and that takes away their hope, it takes away their security, and it takes away Christ. And so this passage is powerful in that Paul says to us, personally, the Holy Spirit says to us personally, if you point out these good things, these sound things, these truths, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. We ought to pray, Lord help us point these things out to one another so that we can continue to walk with you. But then he says, and something I think is amazing, it's beautiful, he says if you point these things out, you will be nourished by the words of faith and the good teaching that you have followed.

I love that. I mean not only are we then blessing other people and really encouraging them in their walk with Christ and in the hope that we have in Christ Jesus by sharing hard things with them in love, but when we share these truths with other people, these truths nourish us, they feed us, these words of faith, that he's talking about here, these good teachings

They they grow us. You see the problem sometimes is that we don't spend enough time in the word of God or in prayer or in service for that matter to even know the things that we need to point out. And many times, in the midst of this, in the midst of difficult times or struggles in people's lives, what we point out to them is our opinion.

Our opinions are not sufficient for anybody else. They're just not. You might have insight in your opinion, but you might not And what people need is God's word and God's truth, the things that Paul has pointed out so far in these first few chapters. But man, when we do know those things and we do stand on truth and we even share those truths, then man, that truth comes right back to us and nourishes us, right? Nourishes us. It builds us up. These words of faith that we trust in God, these teachings that God has given us, we trust in God. And man, those things then nourish us. And I don't know about you, but I need that.

I need to be nourished by God's word. But listen, if I'm not even capable or willing to share God's word, with other people, even if they don't want to hear it, then I'm not willing to hear God's word for me either. You understand? Listen, you don't get to compromise. So often we want to compromise. We want to say, this is really good for me, but I'm too scared to share it with somebody else. If you're it's probably not that good for you either. It's probably not making that much impact in your life either. And so you and I, when we are willing to point these things out to people, then those truths are personal again to us.

They mean something to us, and they nourish us, they feed us, they enable us to go on a walk with Jesus Christ. I know, I know, some of you are going, man, it's just not who I am. I'm never going to be that person. Listen, all you're doing is saying no to God, and you're refusing to give him the opportunity to do a powerful work in your life, and you and I need that. And the people around us need that. So before you kind of fix yourself and say no to these things, say, man, Lord, please don't let me miss the good that you have for me. Will you do that? Don't shut God out.

Because you are afraid or even unwilling to see if God will be faithful, if you'll point truth out to one another. Well, he goes on, he says, but have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths. Rather, train yourself in godliness, for the training of the body has limited benefit, but godliness is beneficial in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. You know, he gets to this place where he says, so I have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths, old wives' tales, basically. And so he said, okay, now,

It's personal for us to be pointing things out, these truths that God has given, it's personal for us, and if we do that, we'll be good servants and God will nourish us on these truths that we know and understand. And so he says, then, but you have to be careful.

You can't spend time on, you can't focus on, you can't let these things in your minds that are pointless, silly myths. And I'm not gonna try to spend a lot of time on what those things actually are, because I think you know what they are. I mean, there's myths out there, you know, Roman and Greek mythology, it even calls itself a myth, and yet some people are more enthralled with Roman and Greek mythology than they are with the Bible.

But in the day and age that we live in, chances are some of you spend hours a day looking at pointless things. Don't raise your hands, but do you? Pointless things. The other day, Beth says, I gotta show you this video. And so she just gave me the look like, oh, you did. It's just a good example, babe. And she it's people running around in those suits that have, they're blown up suits, you know, little dinosaurs and different animals, I don't know what they were.

But somebody's taking smelly stuff and spraying it into their system, right? So that they're trapped inside this inflatable thing, and it stinks. And it's pretty funny because they're trying, they're like, they're dancing, they're making all these moves, it's really laugh out loud funny.

But there's not a lot of depth to it, right? And Beth wasn't trying to be deep with it. I don't mean that, don't pick on my wife, but it's a great example of spending time watching pointless things. But you know, pointless things are easier to focus on than godly things. You don't get to come into God's presence and be mindless. You don't get to focus on the depth of God's truth and not respond either obediently or disobediently. That's not how that works. Right? So, so it takes effort. It takes effort to focus on God. It takes effort to learn from

Serve God. It takes commitment. It takes sacrifice. It takes perseverance. It takes a willingness to be changed. If you're gonna get in the presence of God, you're gonna be changed. You're not gonna ever stop being changed. There's always something that God wants to do to help you grow and know Him. You're never gonna arrive until He calls you out of this world and into His presence. And so here we have this dilemma. The dilemma is, what are we gonna focus on? If we focus on the pointless and the myths, silly myths, then what are we gonna point each other to? I mean, really, when we come together, are we gonna be able and ready to point each other to the good things of God, to call each other to obedience in God and grace and faith and love in God?

Are we gonna be showing each other videos? And we do. We do. We spend time on videos. And we go, oh, that's a cool video, isn't it? How many times do you go, hey, man, I was reading the Word of God the other day and there's a really cool verse in there. I know we do sometimes.

But man, you get too serious about God and people start to kind of roll their eyes at you. What kind of weirdo are you? Right? I mean, what kind of, what kind of guy are you? Why would you be so serious?

Passionate? Why would it be so personal? Well, because he saved us. He saved us. We should be personal. We should be passionate. We should be serious. Amen? So he says, don't. He says, as a matter of fact, this has nothing to do with these things. But instead, train yourself in godliness. Train yourself in godliness. Now, I've kind of talked about this already. What does it look like to train yourself in godliness? Well, I believe there's three pretty simple major ways

One, you have to spend time in the Word of God. You cannot attempt to be godly and not know what godly means. And the way we know what godly means is through God giving us the description of godliness in His Word. You open the Bible and you find God. The Bible is a book about God. So you read it and you hear about God. Yes, there's some tough things in the Bible. Does the Bible teach that God is God of judgment and justice? It sure does. And you're gonna see it in the Word of God.

A God of grace and mercy and love and patience and perseverance? Absolutely. So then what are you gonna see in there? You're gonna see who God is and you're gonna know what godliness looks like. sounds like. And so if you're gonna train yourself in godliness or discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, which is what the NASB says, you gotta spend time in the Word of God. But I know it's difficult. Again, I know. Man, I had a detective that he actually said to me, I stopped by his office and was talking to him. He says, well, my wife and I have started going back to church. And I'm like, that's fantastic. Where are you going?

He said, well, we're watching online. I said, okay. All right. We'll take it, you know. And he says, my wife's kinda got some social anxiety and I don't wanna push her too fast. And okay, okay. But I'm like, you know, are you spending time in the Word? And he goes, I don't really know where to start. give. And I said, well, do you have the YouVersion Bible app on your phone? He's like, no. What is it? So I show him

And I said, man, my wife and I use this every day. There's reading programs on there. And Beth and I, we started in January. And so, we're gonna read through the Bible in a year. December 31st, Beth and I are gonna finish up reading the Bible through in a year. We've done that many times. But I love it because then I know where I'm gonna be. I get done reading. I check my box. It's done. Now that sounds a little bit rote, but the roteness of it means I'm in the day. And by the way, I don't get done reading my Bible and think, well, good. I don't have to do any more of that today.

I'm like, I'll probably read some more later. But you know, I'm making sure that every day I am in the Word of God so that there's some discipline in my life. I don't know about you, but I need discipline. Anybody else need some discipline to get some things done? If I don't have discipline, whoo, I'm just floating around. That's a bad idea. And you gotta be

But you gotta, you also gotta pray. You know, prayer is also as difficult as reading the Word of God is because prayer is a submission. I mean, you, I would urge you guys to take postures in prayer. I would urge you to pray sometimes standing up with your hands raised. I would urge you sometimes getting down and kneeling on a chair and praying.

To lay down flat on the floor and pray because, man, there's different, there's different responses to God as you work through some things sometimes in prayer and sometimes in just abject need, right? Prayer is submitting ourselves to God, admitting that we need God and conversing with God, speaking to God, pouring our hearts out to God because we need Him. And this last week was a, was a powerful week for me.

It's just been, there's just been some tough things I've been working through and I actually, I actually said to the Lord earlier this week, I said, Lord, I need you to heal my heart.

I, I don't know that I actually said that to Him. I'd just been dealing with stuff and walking through stuff and praying for stuff but I realized, man, I, I needed God to heal me as I was hurting and I, I did. I got down on my knees and I said, Lord, I, I don't know what to do other than just have you heal my heart. Would you be gracious? Well, the great thing about prayer, if you want to learn about godliness, is that when you pray by faith, like James says, not doubting, he said, no one can expect to receive anything from God if you doubt but if you pray by faith, God hears and God answers your prayers

And God did. I mean, just praying for one thing is this powerful gift to us and God moves but then God sent things into my life in one day, one day, to just bring healing in such powerful ways. I can't even really describe it. Two men called me that were blessings and spoke to me and encouraged me like we've talked about here. You know, I had an answer to prayer in a situation a situation that I had probably caused. I did cause and it hurt and I found grace and forgiveness and that and just some deep powerful healing that took place and then that enabled me then to serve in a really stinking hard situation the next day with grace and peace from what God was doing in

My life and through other people. This is an amazing thing when we pray. How do you expect to be godly if you're not crying out to God, giving your life to God, asking God to move, praying that He'd lead us, praying that He'd protect us, praying that He'd guide?

And part of training for godliness is actual prayer that I know sometimes we go while we're busy and so we'll pray while we're doing the dishes. We'll pray while we're going down the road and I encourage you to do that. The Bible says pray without ceasing so okay man when you're doing the dishes or whatever you're doing pray.

But I also I also want you to know that there's no substitute for actually stopping.

Focusing on God is more important than anything else you're gonna do on any given day and you should never be ashamed to stop all the nonsense and go I just need you. The third thing that's so powerful about training for godliness is service. We've talked about that quite a lot. There are some people that I think they're just afraid. I don't know what they are. They're either afraid or they're rebellious at some level or they're unconcerned. I don't know what it is sometimes but serving the Lord right when you are seeking Him and He's leading you whether that's to help at upward evaluations

At Oasis or teach a Sunday school class or help with Awana or witnessing to your neighbors or ministering to your wife or your children. I don't care what service looks like. Now when you begin to serve the Lord God He begins to mold you and craft you into the image of Jesus Christ. You have to have faith to serve. You have to have courage

Obedience. Do you understand that if you are not obedient to God's call in your life you are not godly? Do you understand that? God obedience is the epitome of godliness. It's the epitome of godliness. Disobedience is unrighteousness. And so when we're talking about training ourselves or disciplining ourselves for the purpose of godliness man, you've got to be in the Word

To serve where God calls you. And He calls us to serve all over the place. Home, work, neighborhood and our recreation at church all over the place. Man, He wants us to be 24-7 His. We're always His. Can't get away from being His. So He says rather than focusing on the things that don't matter focus on the things that do and train yourself for godliness. Then He says He goes on with this thought He says for the training of the body has limited benefit but godliness is beneficial in every way. So now He's making this comparison right? Training physically is of little benefit He says. Now that doesn't mean that we shouldn't train. Right? Doesn't mean we shouldn't work out.

If I don't work out I get fatter. I don't get fat I got fat a while ago. I get fatter. But I also don't feel as good. Right? I also am not as mentally sharp. I mean working out using your muscles you know expending some energy that's a that's a really good thing it can potentially keep us healthier blah blah blah it's it's not bad. I mean quite honestly I hadn't been working out for a while didn't make me feel good I started this last Monday hadn't lifted weights since June. I started lifting weights Monday and then Wednesday and then Friday and sore. I don't know I don't know how you guys do it but I'm just sore.

Moved my leg I'm sore. Moved my arm I'm sore. And I'm better than I was Friday. I can barely move Friday. But it's good for me. Right? I know that if I keep doing that it's good for me. I swam Tuesday and Thursday or Tuesday and Thursday swam a mile each day that's good for me but I realized that working out is connected.

When I was doing reverse flies on Monday and swimming and that hurt. Right? Why do I say all that? I say all that because it's not all bad to put a lot of effort in working out your body and being healthy. It's not all bad. But it's not worth the effort that we should put into training for godliness.

Right? Do you understand? We're working out a physical body that's going to die. I was telling Beth the other day I was putting some lotion on my foot and I looked at my leg while I was putting my lotion on and I'm like what is that?

My skin was wavy. You think I'm kidding. I'm like are you what is that?

The Lord is like well you're dying. Fair enough. I'm dying because that wasn't there. I don't know when that came there. But anyway our bodily discipline is going to be to be it's just temporary. It's not discouraging for me to do it but what he's saying is your focus the thing you need to labor at harder

Put more effort into the thing that needs to be a priority to you is training this person for godliness because it has benefit both for today the present life and for the life to come. Now how does godliness have benefit for today? Listen, if you want to be a good husband or wife godliness enables you to do that at a level you cannot do without Christ. Godliness says I'm going to love my wife or my husband sacrificially. It won't be about me.

Respond humbly in forgiveness and I'm going to be committed and on and on and on and that impacts our children that impacts our grandchildren. Godliness impacts the way you work. respond in your neighborhood. Godliness is beneficial in this life in every single thing that we do and when we reject godliness we hurt ourselves in this life and we hurt others and anybody want to say amen to that? Come on man do you really believe that sin at some level is good in our life and good for our community? No. No. Godliness is beneficial in this life and also in the next and I you know you think about that for a second and you go what is godliness?

How is godliness beneficial for the life to come? Well heaven is all godly. There is no ungodliness in heaven and so if heaven and the goodness of heaven and the presence of the good and holy God is all godliness then don't you think it's good for us to learn godliness now and have godliness then? Matter of fact in 2 Timothy 4 8 it says this now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will award me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing in other words what that verse says is that when Christ comes for us he's gonna give us a crown of righteousness

He might substitute righteousness with godliness it's the same thing that's what we receive as the gift of Christ in the fullness when we are called out of this world and into God's presence so godliness is beneficial today in this life godliness is beneficial then because godliness is the absolute absence of sin and destruction and devastation how sweet that is to train ourselves for godliness well it goes on verse 9 says this saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance it's a simple verse that basically says pay attention pay attention what I've been talking about and what I'm going to talk about is trustworthy and I hope we hear that right the word of God is trustworthy when God calls us to these things which training and righteousness pointing out these things to the brothers and sisters all the things that we've talked about this morning God's word says this is trustworthy it's worthy of full acceptance

Let this into your life let this into your heart let this into your mind it's trustworthy man I don't know about you but there's not that many things that I trust in the world you find it hard to trust things in the world got some politician up there and he's waxing eloquently and I'm looking at him and going I don't believe you I don't believe you I think you're making empty promises because you've made empty promises before I don't believe you

Even people that are sometimes sincere with me they tell me things that I'm like ah you might mean that but I don't think you're going to be able to follow through I'm kind of skeptical I won't lie but not God's word you can trust it and I pray that I pray that we will and he he transitions to this last verse which is beautiful he says for this reason we labor and strive because we have put our hope in the living God who is the Savior of all people especially of those who believe

For what reason do we labor and strive this reason is back to if you point out these things you'll be a good servant of Christ Jesus for this reason we strive this reason to we want we want to do the things God calls us to do we labor and we strive for these things training ourselves in godliness

This isn't some casual thing remember I talked about things being personal this is personal this is personal this is for us as followers of Christ for those of you that have never trusted Christ this is personal there has to be some effort in this I mean the days of all these false teachers that have told us that if you follow Jesus there will be no commitment there will be no sacrifice there will be no suffering that's a lie

That's a lie we should point those things out to them when they tell us that's not true what our walk with Christ is is a walk of daily faith a daily commitment a daily sacrifice taking up our cross and dying to ourselves and following Jesus Christ that's what this is about right we labor and we strive we put effort into it if you're gonna be in good physical health you're gonna have to work at it but spiritual if you're gonna make a difference in this world

You're gonna have to submit to Christ and follow him if we as a church are gonna be impactful in this society that we live in we're we're gonna have to labor and we're gonna have to strive why would we wanna do that it says because we've put our hope in the living God who is the Savior of all man if you and I have Lord Jesus Christ then laboring and striving for him for his glory should be easy we put our hope in him it's not hard for us to do that why would we not labor to be more godly point things out to people who need to hear them

We want to I want to I put my hope in Jesus Christ my hope is unshakable I want people to know that hope I want them to have a relationship with Jesus Christ I want to labor and strive for the things that God has called us to I want our church

Us to be about it it's the only way this lazy Christianity that we all would love to have half-hearted

Uncommitted part-time when it's expedient for us that's not what God calls us to it's full-time it's personal because we have put our hope in the living God who is Savior of all who saved us what a great God he saved us he saved me that's crazy to me no one's ever loved me like that before why would we want to labor and strive because he's been so good to us he's the Savior of all people especially of those who believe and all he's saying there is that Jesus Christ died to save every single person every single one but he is specifically the Savior of those who have believed he's saved he's he's not Savior to those guys yet he died for those that are lost but if you haven't believed in him he's not your Savior

He's believed there is no universal salvation so those of us who have believed should be pointing these things out right to brothers and sisters we should be laboring striving for our faith in the church and in the world in our homes because man there's so many people out there that need Jesus and there's some in here they need Jesus

For you man if you are a follower of Christ for me and you I pray that our hearts are to be good servants of Jesus Christ why wouldn't we want to be if you're here this morning and you haven't trusted Christ Jesus as your Lord and Savior know this he's Savior of all he died for you

In eternal life that's to believe in Jesus Christ who died as a sacrifice for your sins and mine and who rose again on the third day if you'll trust him he'll give you life forgive you of your sins make you his child and call you to some pretty cool personal things let's pray Lord we love you we're grateful for your goodness we're grateful for your word Lord let it let it penetrate deep into our hearts let us be men and women followers of Christ that are good servants of Christ that are willing to speak truth take stances humble ourselves and trust your word Lord God

Accept it fully help us to be men and women that train ourselves for godliness and spend less time on the pointless and silly myths that are all around us we ask Lord God that you'd work in the hearts of those that have never trusted you here this morning that even today they believe they believe they just believe and when they believe in Christ they'll be saved so Lord have your way in our hearts in our lives and we'll pray all this in Jesus name Amen