Sermon Tone Analysis

I Timothy 4:1-8

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I.     Introduction

            There is a huge amount of energy expended, these days, on improvement.

Television is bombarding us with one show after another dedicated to improvement.

“What Not To Wear,” “Home Makeover,” “While You Were Out” and a multitude of other shows dealing with cars, diets, exercise and whatever else people can think of.

Sometimes the improvement is desperately needed.

On “Extreme Makeover Home Edition,” I recently, watched one show in which a family of 8 lived in a house which was too small for them.

There were problems with mould and it desperately needed repair and paint.

The crew totally demolished the house and a mansion was put in its place.

What a great change and what a blessing for the family whose house it was!

Somehow I suspect that we aren’t going to see a show any time soon called “Soul Makeover,” but what is desperately needed more than to have our fashion reorganized or our homes repaired is the renewal of our souls.

Of course, church each week is a place for “Soul Makeover” and so this morning, we want to talk about what it means to strive for godliness.

I Timothy 4:1-8 talks about training ourselves to be godly.

Let us read the passage.

The passage begins by telling us that in the “later times” something is going to happen.

Since the “later times” the text is speaking of are described as happening at the time of writing, we understand that from that time and to the present we are in those “later times.”

So what is spoken of here, is for us today.

What is it that is going to happen?

Verse 1 says that some will “abandon the faith” and also that there will be false teachers.

In Timothy, these warnings are a major theme.

In this passage alone, we notice how much attention is paid to this warning.

Verse 1 speaks about those who abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

Verse 2 warns that such teachings come through hypocritical liars whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.

Then in verse 7 there is a warning about godless myths and old wives’ tales.

How can people wander away?

How can they deceive others?

The text says that their “consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.”

We have usually understood that to mean that they are so calloused to the truth that they no longer hear it.

That would explain why they teach these things and deceive others and wander away.

There is another interpretation, however, which gives us a different perspective.

The other day we were at a public event and we noticed how many people are wearing tattoos these days.

They mark their bodies, for reasons of fashion, with a tattoo.

Then a few days later, I learned that some people are even marking their bodies by branding them – all as a fashion statement.

One of the interpretations of “consciences seared,” in verse 2, is that it indicates a brand.

At the time when this was written, slaves were branded to show that they were owned by someone.

In a similar way, this text can be translated “their consciences are branded,” meaning that these people are branded as belonging to Satan.

As such, they follow the dictates of the one who owns them.

They are human teachers who are under the influence of Satan.

No wonder Paul warns us of the terrible danger we are in.

The potential of destruction, the danger of losing what we have in Christ raises the desperate need to make sure that we are not deceived by such false teachers and that we are not among those who abandon the faith.

The critical question then becomes, “How will we make sure?”

How can we avoid the danger?

The answer to this question is found in verse 7 where we are told that it is important to “train ourselves to be godly.”

But how do we do that?

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II.

False Discipline of Asceticism 4:1-5

One answer which has often been given to this question is to be rigorous in establishing a set of rules which must then be followed.

!! A.  Living By Rules

There is a very strong temptation for us as Christians to make ours a religion of “don’t.”

What is interesting is that Paul identifies such a practice with something that the false teachers were promoting.

Verse 3 says, “they forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods.”

It is not exactly clear what the reason for such actions was.

It is possible that they were following principles they had learned from a strict sect of the Jews.

We know that there were Jewish Christians who wanted to follow all the laws of the Old Testament and who insisted that even Gentiles follow these laws before they became Christians.

Another source of this false teaching was something which arose some time later called “gnosticism.”

It is possible that the roots of that teaching were already present at this time.

The word “gnosticism” comes from the Greek word for knowledge.

One writer says, “The “knowledge” they offered had to do only with spells, celestial passwords, and disciplines of mysticism and detachment.”

They had “a strong prejudice against physical matter as the cause of evil.”

What gnosticism taught was that matter, the physical, including the body, was evil and so in order to be spiritual, they taught that a person should avoid all contact with physical things.

Thus they forbade marriage and eating certain kinds of food.

As Christians today, it is still possible for us to fall into the same kind of errors.

When our faith life becomes a life of rules and we judge ourselves and our faithfulness to God by whether or not we obey those rules, we have fallen into the same trap, which Paul identifies as a false teaching.

When we identify a Christian as someone who wears certain clothing, or doesn’t have a radio in their car or rubber tires on their tractor, we fall into the same kind of legalism.

When we judge whether another person is a Christian or not by whether they attend an evangelical church or not, we fall into the same trap.

When we think that someone can’t be a Christian because they go to a bar or dance or any other rule we want to judge them by, we are doing the same thing as Paul identifies in verse 3. When we chastise ourselves for failing to have devotions one day and wonder if God still loves us if we forget to pray, we are in the same kind of danger.

There was a group of people at one time in church history who were called ascetics.

Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines asceticism as “practicing strict self-denial as a measure of personal and especially spiritual discipline…” These people would abstain from food, sit on poles, not bath for months on end because they thought that by such works they could be made pleasing to God.

Paul tells us quite clearly that asceticism and legalism are false teaching and are not what is meant by training ourselves to be godly.

!! B.  Why It Doesn’t Work

Why does such a rigorous approach to spirituality not work?

Paul begins to answer that question in verses 3-5.

!!! 1.    Goes against the creative order

First of all, such a practice of forbidding goes against the creative order.

If the reason you are forbidding things is because you think that they were created evil, then you are denying what God says about creation.

Here in Timothy, Paul says that God has created these things.

In Genesis 1, after God created everything, he pronounced it good.

Whatever God has created is not spiritually harmful to us.

There are of course substances that are physically harmful to us, but that is not the issue here.

The issue is that these things should be avoided because they are spiritually harmful to us.

Food and marriage are good gifts of God and avoiding them as if they are bad and harm us spiritually is denying what God said when he declared His creation good.

!!! 2.    Goes against the blessing intention of God.

A second reason why such ascetic perspectives do not work is because they go against what God intends them for.

God has given us the things He has created as  a blessing from His hand.

Marriage and food and so on were given to us, by God.

They are to be received as something that comes from His hand, as a blessing to us.

We sometimes look at the physical relationship in marriage as something dirty.

Outside of marriage and publicly displayed it is not appropriate, but within the marriage relationship, it is a blessing, a gift of God.

We sometimes chastise ourselves for what we eat and, of course we need to live healthy lives, but food itself is not a bad thing, it is a blessing from God that He has given us for our benefit.

!!! 3.    Robs us of an opportunity to thank God and recognize His blessings.

The third reason that asceticism does not work is that it causes us to curse what God has declared good instead of blessing Him for His good gifts.

When we receive the gifts of God with thanksgiving, it allows us an opportunity to worship God and to thank Him for what He has given.

If we are restrictive and ascetic, then we rob ourselves of an opportunity to bring blessing and honour to God.

An interesting aside is to note that when we receive these blessings from God and we ask God’s blessing on them based on the promise in the Word that they are from God, then they are consecrated to us.

We are familiar with this concept because it is what we do when we say grace before meals, but what about asking God’s blessing and consecrating our activities, our recreation, our vacation, our work.

Our family once went on a day canoe trip with a friend and his family.

When we were ready to go, he suggested that we pray.

At first, I thought that this was a little strange, but then as I thought about it, I realized that he was consecrating a pleasurable activity and setting it in the context of our relationship with God and giving thanks to God for the blessing of water and pleasure and family.

So as we contemplate what it means to “train ourselves to be godly” we can quickly dismiss asceticism and legalism as the means to do that.

It is not what God intends and is, in fact, part of the false teaching that leads away from God.