1 Timothy 4:1-16 - "Command and Teach These Things" v11
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· 10 viewsRejoice Gratefully for God's Good Gifts Discipline Yourself for Godliness
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Rejoice Gratefully for God’s Good Gifts - 1 Timothy 4:1-5
Rejoice Gratefully for God’s Good Gifts - 1 Timothy 4:1-5
You’re going to see that largely what Paul is doing here in this chapter is saying - these people are being harmful teachers, you teach what is good and true.
Chief things in mind that the false teachers were saying were sinful are marriage and sex in marriage and eating meat. This was fairly common in the first century, a view called asceticism that says physical pleasures are wrong in themselves, here focused on eating and marital intimacy. They believed the body itself, as physical, was almost evil, and the only way to be holy was abstinence from physical pleasures.
Paul responds saying this is absurd, God created marriage, sex is GOOD and God-glorifying when it is inside of the fence that God places around it, eating good food (they’d say you could eat vegetables to survive but not food you’d enjoy), Paul says eating Good food, Good meals are GOOD when it isn’t gluttonous inside of God’s fences. What do you think God did? I heard one man say If God didn’t want us to eat meat, it sure was cruel to make it so delicious. Do you think God looked at his angels after creation and said, “uh oh . . . I need them to reproduce . . . but the only way I can make that happen . . . they’d enjoy! and we cant have that!
NO! Do you want to know why God created food delicious! BECAUSE HE WANTS YOU TO TASTE IT! And then go “Woah, what a God!” And we flinch at the reality but the same thing is true of sexual intimacy.
1 Timothy 6:17 (ESV)
(Set your hope) on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.
Do you know why I give my kids a present? BECAUSE I WANT THEM TO ENJOY IT! Yes I am greatly and deeply and MOSTLY concerned with my kids being HOLY, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t also want to make them Happy, that makes ME happy! Many days the MAIN thing that makes me happy is seeing my kids happy! Is God a lesser father than me?? OF COURSE NOT!
God is chiefly concerned with your holiness, and there will be lots of times in your life where His better desire for your holiness will trump his desire for your happiness, there’s lots of times in your life when he will cry with you far more than he laughs with you, but we can’t lose sight of the truth that God wants you to enjoy what He has created.
A problem that Paul addresses here is often we enjoy the created things without enjoying the Creator in them, forgetting to see all things as God’s gift, forgetting to look up in gratitude.
This is why Paul 1 Tim 4:3-4
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,
THANKSGIVING! Crucial element.
This would have been natural with adam and eve, imagine right after they were created, they’re walking the garden, and they see a bush that God has made and some berries on it, and they taste the berries. What will they do when they are delicious? Worship! What a God! Well done Abba!
The only difference in them and our daily lives is that they were sharply aware that these gifts were put there by God - that is no less true in your life.
Well Rene we don’t have that asceticism problem today. . . of course we do, we have the same underlying philosophical problem - we separate the spiritual things from our regular things. This is a holdover from this first century problem. We separate Singing In Christ Alone from Studying Chemistry, We separate studying Romans from Playing with our Children, we separate small group from getting together to watch a game, we separate prayer from doing the dishes, we separate Sunday morning from Monday morning. . .
We look forward to an ethereal heaven, forgetting that God has promised us a new EARTH. Heaven isn’t just clouds and harps and singing and white, its a lot like it is now just without sin! Know why? Because God is GOOD at Creation and he didn’t screw it up the first time, we just screwed the wonderful creation up with sin.
We REJOICE in Redemption! We should also REJOICE in Creation, in nature and art.
G.K. Chesterton said it well, “You say grace before meals, Good. But I say grace before the play and the opera, and grace before the concert and the show, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching or painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dipped this pen in the ink.
Listen dear Christian, determine in your life to recognize, acknowledge, appreciate and CELEBRATE all the gifts of the Creator the glory of the heavens and of the earth, of mountain, river and sea, of forest and flowers, of birds, beasts and butterflies, of the intricate balance of the natural environment; the unique privileges of our humanness (rational, moral, social and spiritual), as we were created in God’s image and appointed his stewards; the joys of marriage, sex, children, parenthood and family life, and of our extended family and friends; the rhythm of work and rest, of daily work as a means to cooperate with God and serve the common good, and of the Lord’s day when we exchange work for worship; the blessings of peace, freedom, justice and government, and of food and drink, clothing and shelter; and our human creativity expressed in music, literature, painting, story, and in the skills and strengths displayed in sport. To reject these things is to abandon the faith, since it insults the Creator. To receive them thankfully and celebrate them joyfully is to glorify God
Acts 14:17 (ESV)
For He did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”
If you’re a parent, have you ever thought about how pivotal to you is whether your child is grateful or not, they’re gratitude lifts your heart, you think “they get it,” and nothing is more frustrating and difficult than when they are ungrateful. One of the great personal evidences of this principle from 1 Tim 5 for me is how much whining bothers me - whining, ingratitude, is more than just annoying, it feels WRONG, against what is GOOD, I think it bothers us so much because something very deep in us says that we are creatures who have been given absolutely everything by the grace of God and we were made to respond in gratitude and with rejoicing.
This is seen chiefly in the call to salvation, and the responses of the saved and the lost being largely different in that one is a response of gratitude and one is a response of ingratitude for the offer of the gift.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!
Rejoice Gratefully for God’s Good Gifts
Rejoice Gratefully for God’s Good Gifts
Train Yourself for Godliness - 1 Timothy 4:6-16
Train Yourself for Godliness - 1 Timothy 4:6-16
(6 - another way of saying Command and Teach these things, repeats)
Consistent Biblical Teaching to Christians —> Discipline Yourself for Godliness
ENJOY GOD’S CREATION, but this isn’t Retirement and Shell Collecting - DISCIPLINE YOURSELF - I love the beautiful duality here
Biblically this means mainly a few things
Self-Control
Self-Control
training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
Endurance
Endurance
The Disciplined arent those that are perfect, disciplined or trained doesn’t mean you don’t make mistakes, it means you keep going.
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
GOSPEL HERE - SO THAT Jesus will make me his own? NO! Because He has!
So what? I respond in Gratitude and Praise! And I know I CAN endure because He is with me, I know there’s nothing I can’t face with him.
Justin Martyr writes to the Emperor of Rome in the 2nd century and argues that you can see Christianity is true because of how differently the Christians handle suffering than anyone else on the face of the earth.
I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown.
Dear Christian, I know it is hard, just keep going, Christ is In you and though you will slip, you will not fall. Press on toward the goal. You can endure through Christ.
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Prayer
Prayer
Discipline yourself to Prayer
In Genesis we see every one of the patriarchs praying.
In Exodus prayer was how Moses secured the liberation of Israel from Egypt.
Daniel thrown in a lions den because of his insistence to pray
“Jesus Christ taught his disciples to pray, healed people with prayers, denounced the corruption of the temple worship which he called a house of prayer, and insisted that some demons could be cast out only through prayer. He prayed often and regularly with fervent cries and tears, and sometimes all night. The Holy Spirit came upon him and anointed him as he was praying, and he was transfigured with the divine glory as he prayed. When he faced his greatest crisis, he did so with prayer. We hear him praying for his disciples and the church on the night before he died and then petitioning God in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Finally, he died praying.”
What did the disciples do after Christ’s death?
All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
“All Christians are expected to have a regular, faithful, devoted, fervent prayer life. Prayer is one of the main signs that the Spirit has come into the heart through faith in Christ.”
I said a few weeks ago that prayer is the Bible’s answer to most of the issues we have - anxiety? Are you praying? Fear? Are you praying? Decision to be made? Are you praying?
Discipline yourself to prayer. - Puritans “From Duty to Delight”
WORD and the CHURCH
WORD and the CHURCH
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU THINK - Devote yourself to that - Is 55 never returns void
Underneath everything said here, the larger context of chapter 4 is Paul talking to a minister and telling him to stay connected to the Word of God and don’t wander off from it like these false teachers have.
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.
Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.
Practice these things, immerse yourself 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 save both yourself and your hearers.
And yes devoting yourself to the Word means personal bible study at home, BUT, here he is talking about this way - prioritizing the word . . .
(Sunday, Wednesday, LIFE Group, Christian Friends)
BY DOING THIS YOU WILL SAVE BOTH YOURSELF AND YOUR HEARERS! Was Timothy already saved when he read this? Of course! SANCTIFIED, GLORIFIED, WORK OUT SALVATION THROUGH THE WORD AND THE CHURCH
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.
Not so that God will save us, but because he has.