“A Good Servant”
(1 Timothy 4:6-10)
Series: Reality Check: Keeping it Real at FBC
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
First Baptist Church Henderson, KY (11-16-08) (AM)
- Take God’s Word and open to 1 Timothy, chapter 4.
If you’re visiting with us we’ve been making our way verse-by-verse through the little letter of 1 Timothy, a letter written by the Apostle Paul to Timothy who is acting as pastor at the church in Ephesus around AD 64. This letter is full of practical help to us today in 2008. And Paul is very practical this morning as he speaks to Timothy—and through him to us—here in verses 6-10.
- Stand in honor of the reading of the Word.
6 If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed.
7 But reject profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness.
8 For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.
9 This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance.
10 For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.
- Pray.
Introduction:
Many of us enjoyed watching Olympic swimmer, Michael Phelps, back a few months ago during the Olympics. Phelps holds the record for the most gold medals won at a single Olympics with the eight golds he won at the 2008 Olympic Games.
The internet reference source, Wikipedia, indicates that “a few physical attributes particularly suit Phelps to swimming: his long, thin torso offers low drag; his arms span 6 feet 7 inches—disproportionate to his height of 6 feet 4 inches—and act as long, propulsive “paddles”; his relatively short legs lower drag, and perhaps add the speed enhancement of a hydrofoil; his size 14 feet provide the effect of flippers; and his hypermobile ankles he can extend beyond the pointe of a ballet dancer, enabling him to whip his feet as if they were fins for maximum thrust through the water.”
But what really struck me about Phelps was his diet during training. Most doctors recommend something like 2,000 calories a day. In an August 15 article of the Telegraph, an article entitled, “Michael Phelps—a Normal Guy from another Planet,” Phelps revealed his 12,000 calorie diet. Now I won’t give you all his entire diet but here’s what he had just for breakfast: “Three fried egg sandwiches with cheese, tomatoes, fried onions and mayo, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast and to finish off three pancakes with chocolate chips.”
When athletes train they need to continuously replace the calories they burn and because Michael Phelps spent something like six hours a day training in the pool, he needed such a diet. Starting every day at 5 AM, Phelps said, “I eat, sleep and swim. That’s pretty much all I can do.” And when you look at the guy what you see is a lean, fit, athlete without a single ounce of body fat.
The Apostle Paul would have appreciated the rigorous discipline of an athlete such as Michael Phelps. Paul enjoyed using athletic imagery in his letters, frequently using athletic events as a metaphor for the Christian life. He does so here in our text as he tells Timothy how to be a good servant. And what he says to Timothy rightly applies to all of us if we have ears to hear. So let’s listen as Paul teaches us how one can be a good servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. First:
I. We Need the Right Diet (6-7a)
6 If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed.
Paul says that Timothy needs to be continually nourished by the right diet and the right diet is the words of faith. Now before we talk further about this proper nourishment, look at verse 6 and let me just point out a couple of things here. First, the phrase “good minister” there is better translated, “good servant.” Paul is speaking about Timothy’s role as a good servant of Jesus Christ.
The other thing I want to point out is the context here in verse 6. Paul says, “If you instruct the brethren in these things” and “these things” Paul has in mind would be the things immediately preceding in verses 1-5, the things we talked about last week, false teaching creeping into the church, as well as encompassing all of the things Paul has said in chapters 1-3, the things concerning deacons, pastors, the roles of men and women in the church, and so forth.
So Paul says, “Timothy, you need to instruct the brethren in these things if you wish to be a good servant of Jesus.” And that phrase, “instruct the brethren” conveys the idea of “placing under” or “placing before,” as in placing stepping stones over treacherous ground so that those who walked across that dangerous ground had sure footing. Now that is the pastor’s role as spiritual leader of the congregation. He is to safely guide the congregation with love and care over the dangerous territory of false teaching and error. And he is to be about this continually. The word there translated “instruct” is a present participle conveying the idea of continuous action. Paul says, “Keep on doing this, teaching the truth to the brothers and sisters. Keep placing the truth squarely before them so that they only take paths which are right and so that they do not stumble and fall into error.” That’s the pastor’s role. Do it continually. Do it every time you preach.
See, the pastor may be tempted to place “other things” before his congregation. He may be tempted to place entertainment before his congregation. He may be tempted to become a comedian before his congregation and place joke after joke before them, or place before them lengthy reflections of world events or loosely connected videos, because he believes this will better feed them.
But Paul says, “instruct the brethren” in the truth. Do this and you will be nourished by the truth and the people will be nourished through you. That’s the idea here. Some translations don’t have this word “nourish” which is unfortunate because the word refers to the diet of one being trained. He is to be nourished specifically by the diet of “the words of faith,” literally in the Greek, “the words of the faith,” and, “of the good doctrine (or teaching)” which Timothy had been following. So the right diet consists of the truths of Christianity.
And there is a connection here between that which nourishes Timothy and that which nourishes his congregation. Timothy must be feeding upon the things he is encouraging his congregation to feed upon. He can’t expect his hearers to be nourished by the truths of Christianity if he himself is not regularly consuming those truths through prayerful study and meditation of the Scriptures.
I tell you about a particular restaurant, how good the food is and how wonderful all of it tastes. And you ask me, “Well, when did you eat there?” And I say, “Oh, I’ve never eaten there.” My statements about how good the food is lose their force and fall on deaf ears. Teachers of the Bible cannot expect their hearers to be nourished by what they themselves have not taken in through personal study and experience.
We need the right diet. What are you feeding upon? What do you regularly take in during the average week? There’s nothing inherently wrong with most TV, newspapers, magazines, and internet surfing. There’s nothing wrong with spending time before an X-Box or a Wii or watching movies or sports. But how much of that constitutes your daily spiritually diet? The truth is it affects us and changes us.
Some years ago the BBC reported the story of a 4-year-old girl in Wales who drank so much “Sunny Delight” that it literally changed the color of her skin. The child’s pediatrician determined that because the child was drinking too much of the product, the beta carotene in the drink had turned the child’s hands and face bright orange and yellow. When she stopped drinking so much Sunny Delight, her skin color returned to normal.
What is true about physical nourishment is true about spiritual nourishment. We are what we eat. Some things we feed upon are not good for us if we take in too much of them. And then some spiritual foods we feed upon are outright bad for us. Look at the first part of verse 7:
7 But reject profane and old wives’ fables,
Paul refers here to false teaching. A better translation is “ungodly and silly myths,” the sort of silly tales we might expect older ladies to tell a child. It’s Paul’s way of referring to the kind of silly teaching that creeps into the church and draws Christians away from the truths of Scripture.
Speaking of ungodly and silly myths, I have been asked more than once about my thoughts concerning a very popular book that has become a best-seller. I haven’t addressed this book before because I don’t like drawing attention to bad books and I feel that the majority of you know error when you see it but, in keeping with my role as the shepherd who places stepping stones before the congregation to avoid our slipping on treacherous ground, let me briefly address this book entitled, The Shack. How many of you have heard of this book? I liked what one preacher said to his congregation, “If you haven’t read The Shack, don’t!” I appreciated a reader columnist opinion in Monday’s Courier Press, the Evansville Newspaper in which he pointed out a number of biblical inaccuracies and errors in the book. But my favorite review is from a reviewer at Amazon.com. His dry wit and cynical assessment is as follows:
The Shack IS recommended reading IF…
♦ You want to recreate God in your own image;
♦ You find Isaiah’s portrayal of a holy God seated upon His throne to be a disturbing image;
♦ You would prefer to metaphorically cast God the Father as a loving and large black woman named “Papa,” Jesus as a laid back and friendly Middle Eastern man, and the Holy Spirit as a calm and cool Asian woman;
♦ You want a God so small that you and she/he/she can just hang out together as best buddies;
♦ You regard the Bible as an extremely biased, narrow-minded, and insufficient revelation of God in leather binding with “guilt edges” (p. 65);
♦ You believe that God is never to be feared (p. 90);
♦ You believe that Jesus’ miracles do not affirm Him as God, but prove only “that Jesus is truly human” (p.99);
♦ You want a God who does not hold people accountable for, nor punishes sin (p. 119);
♦ You want a God who does not demand that you submit to him or her, but one who submits to YOU (p. 145);
♦ You want a God who accepts everyone — “Buddhists…Muslims, bankers and bookies” — as his or her children no matter what their beliefs or behavior, and that Jesus has “no desire to make them Christian” (p. 223);
♦ You believe that Jesus lied when He warned, “Broad is the road that leads to destruction” (Matthew 7:13), because in The Shack, Jesus says, “Most roads don’t lead anywhere.”
The Shack is NOT recommended for… any Christian who loves the Bible and wants to know God as He wants to be known — as He has revealed Himself to mankind in the Scriptures.
It is true that Federal Agents are trained to spot counterfeit currency not by studying the counterfeits, but by studying the real thing so that they’ll recognize error as soon as they see it. They are trained to touch the paper currency and feel it, and tilt it and look carefully for the hologram, or watermark. They get so familiar with the truth that they spot the counterfeit immediately. And that’s exactly how we will be best prepared to recognize error, not by studying all of the intricacies and inaccuracies of this cult or that cult, but to be so familiar with the theological truths of Scripture that when we pick up a book like The Shack, we say, “Wait a minute. This doesn’t look right. It doesn’t feel right. There’s something funny here.”
Feed upon Scripture. Read the Bible every day. Read good theological books like so many in our church library. If you are regularly nourished by the Bible, you’ll never hunger for anything else. We need the right diet. Secondly,
II. We Need the Right Exercise (7b-9)
Exercise causes most of us to wince, doesn’t it? We may feel like the guy who said, “I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.” Paul compares and contrasts physical exercise with spiritual exercise. Look at the second part of verse 7:
and exercise yourself toward godliness.
The word “exercise” there is the word, “Gumnasia,” from which we get gymnasium. Paul intentionally uses that word so that we’ll ask ourselves whether we spend as much time in the Word as we do in the gym. Verses 8-9:
8 For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.
9 This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance.
That phrase, “this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance” seems to point back to the preceding verse. What is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance? Answer: “Bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things.”
Well, bodily exercise does profit us, doesn’t it? Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 that our body is the temple or dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. And so we need to take care of our bodies. Bodily exercise helps to that end. It profits. It profits a little. “But,” says Paul, “godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.” That is, bodily exercise has a temporary benefit while spiritual exercise, namely godliness, has eternal benefits.
Most of you know I like to run. I run 5 miles a day every day but Sunday. Why do I run? Two reasons: 1) to relieve stress and 2) so the pants continue to fit. That’s it. Those are temporary benefits. Running does not necessary lead to a longer earthly life, especially if you get hit by a car. Bodily exercise has temporary benefits. It profits a little.
Now Paul says, “Okay, Todd. Compare the six hours a week you do in bodily exercise to the time you spend weekly in spiritual exercises. When was the last time you spent six hours a week reading the Word and praying and growing in your faith?” See, we call these things “spiritual disciplines,” because they are work: reading the Bible takes time. Studying Scripture and memorizing Bible verses doesn’t always come easy.” Sometimes someone will say, “Well, I just struggle in reading the Bible!” as though I’m going to recommend they do something else. Hey, reading the Bible is work. It takes effort. It takes time. Just do it.
Imagine if every Christian were as devoted to the spiritual training of godliness as Michael Phelps was devoted to winning those 8 gold medals. We need the right diet. We need the right exercise. Thirdly:
III. We Need the Right Motivation (10)
What drives us to a life of godliness? What motivates us to rearrange our schedules this week so that we spend less time watching TV, texting our friends, playing sports or playing video games and more time reading the Bible, more time reading good theological books and more time in prayer? The motivation comes from verse 10:
10 For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.
Our love for God motivates us. It is our trust in the living God that drives us to spend time in His Word. This is why, Paul says, we “both labor” and “suffer reproach.” The manuscript evidence suggests that a better translation would be “labor and strive.” This is why we are committed to spiritual exercise this week. Why? Because of our trust in the living God. What about that God? Well, He is the Savior of all men and especially of those who believe. That is, Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men universally, and of those who believe particularly.
He is Lord and Savior whether we acknowledge Him or not. He is Lord universally. The lost person may refuse Christ and her or she will die and go to hell, but Jesus Christ is still Lord. Your refusal of Him does not alter His nature as Lord. But you see He becomes our personal Lord and Savior when we receive Him into our lives.
And when we receive Him into our lives, and receive the full forgiveness of our sin and enter into a love relationship like no other, that love motivates us to get the right spiritual diet and the right spiritual exercise. It’s a two-way love—our love for Him and His love for us. God loves us in spite of our failures and our sins!
“Amazing love, how can it be,
That you my King would die for me?”
- Stand for prayer.
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