1 Timothy 4:7-9 - The Disciple's Path: Disciplined

Introduction

Last summer we took our family vacation down to Deep Creek Lake in Maryland. It was the second year that we went there, and one of the things that we enjoy the most is spending the day out on the lake in a rented pontoon boat. The first time we went, I was “volun-told” by the rest of the family that I would drive. Now, my skill level with watercraft is limited to inner tubes, paddleboats and the occasional canoe. But as it turns out, driving a pontoon boat isn’t especially complicated, is it? It doesn’t really require too much of you--just turn the key, throttle down, and off you go. So that was how most of us spent the day on the water exploring the lake.

I say “most of us” because Levi made his own rental for the day we were out on the lake—he got himself a paddleboard. Now, theoretically Levi could go just as far around that lake on the paddleboard as I could in the pontoon boat, right? But the paddleboard requires a lot more of the one riding it than a pontoon boat does, doesn’t it? If I wanted to get across the lake, just sit back in the cushy seat under the canopy, throttle down and glide across the water (sipping a LaCroix.) But if Levi wanted to get across the lake, he’s going to be limited by how hard and how long he can paddle! (Trust me, he’d get there!)

Now, some people think of discipleship like it’s a pontoon boat—that growing as a disciple requires little more than just “let go and let God”. That He’ll make it all happen, and you can just sit there in your padded chair under the canopy. Other people think of discipleship like that paddleboard, where all the progress is dependent on our own strength and resolve, and if you are going to make any progress, it’s because you’re “gutting it out” at every turn.

But when we understand what the Bible teaches us about discipleship, we see that both of these things are true—there is the miraculous transformation that takes place in us by the power of the Holy Spirit, and there is also the discipline that it takes on our part to embrace that work.

Now there was another kind of boat out on the lake that day—there were lots of people in sailboats. There’s a lot of work to be done on a sailboat, isn’t there? You have to raise the sails, tie the knots, position the boat rightly, and a host of other things. But in the end, all of that disciplined work is only done to put you in a position to catch the wind. It’s the same in your Christian life.

As we discovered last week, transformation can only come from God’s power at work in us as disciples of Christ. And this is where the spiritual disciplines come into play. Through disciplines like like praying, reading and memorizing Scripture, sharing our faith, meditating on God’s Word, even when we don’t feel like it, we are raising the sails of our lives so that we can be in a position to catch the wind of the Spirit.

So what I aim to show you from this passage this morning is that

Our discipline puts us at the disposal of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

Our text this morning is from a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, one of the men he was training as a disciple. Paul met Timothy and brought him to faith in Jesus Christ while he was on his second trip through the Greek region of Lystra (Acts 16:1-3; 1 Tim. 1:2: “My true son in the faith”). Timothy went on to accompany Paul in several of his ministry adventures throughout his lifetime. God had given Timothy great gifts in evangelism (1 Tim. 4:14), and so he would often be dispatched by Paul to various “trouble-spots” in the churches to establish order and combat false teaching.

Paul wrote this letter after he had dispatched Timothy to Ephesus to oppose the false teachers that had begun to trouble the churches there:

1 Timothy 1:3–4 ESV

As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

And as part of his advice on how to deal with the false teachers, Paul also speaks as Timothy’s spiritual mentor, guiding him in his own progress as a disciple. So as we are seeking God’s guidance for our own growth as disciples, let’s take a look at what Paul tells Timothy in these verses about the discipline that we are called to as we seek to catch the wind of the Spirit in our sails.

First, look at verse 7:

1 Timothy 4:7 ESV

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness;

The first thing that we see here is that

I. Discipline makes intentional choices (1 Tim. 4:7)

If you are a disciple of Jesus, you must be intentional about your choices. Paul tells Timothy to “have nothing to do with” some things and instead “train himself” in other things. In Timothy’s context, it was the “irreverent, silly myths” that he was to intentionally choose to stay away from—the false teachers had been swaying the church in Ephesus with pointless arguments about mystical genealogies of Old Testament saints, they were filling people’s heads with old wive’s tales and superstitions under the guise of biblical teaching. So Paul tells Timothy, “Stay away from those things—don’t even entertain them!”

And there is wisdom for us here in this verse as well—Christian, if you are to place yourself at the disposal of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, you will have to make

The choice to “Have nothing to do with” some things.

It’s interesting that the word for “training” in this verse is the Greek word where we get our word “gymnasium”. The root meaning of “gumnadzo” literally means naked—Greek athletes in Timothy’s day would train naked so that there was absolutely nothing to hinder them, tangle them up or slow them down.

The writer of Hebrews says much the same thing about the Christian life—

Hebrews 12:1 ESV

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

A disciple is someone who makes intentional choices about their lives—some things that they have to get rid of, put off, separate themselves from—so that they can run this race as a disciple of Jesus.

So how do we do that? How do we know what we need to separate ourselves from? How do we identify the “irreverent, silly” things that will hinder our quest for godliness? The great English preacher of the 19th Century, Charles Spurgeon was fond of saying that “godly” humor was any kind of joke or amusement where you could laugh and and then immediately say, “Let us pray!”

So let’s use that same kind of test to think about what kinds of things we might have to “put off” or “have nothing to do with” in our lives as disciples.

Ask this question:

“Am I more committed to godliness after I spend time with...”

Does this thing in my life leave me in a place where I am more likely or less likely to seek after God? Does it put me in a frame of mind where prayer becomes easier or harder? Does it make me more likely to pick up my Bible and read it, or less likely? Can I be involved in this pastime with a friend and be able to turn at any moment and say, “Let me tell you about what Jesus has been doing in my life”, and it wouldn’t seem embarrassingly out of place? Will this thing make me more eager to be with God’s people on Sunday morning, or less eager?

When you begin looking at your life this way, when you begin evaluating everything in your world according to whether it enables you to be more committed to godliness, you begin to realize that you may have to “put off” some things that are pulling you away from God, His Word and His people.

It might mean having to closing some social media accounts or cancelling Netflix, because you realize that the time you spend consuming that media leaves you drifting further from your desire for godliness than you were when you started.

It might mean having to change your pastimes and hobbies because they always wind up taking you away on Sundays, or they leave you so drained and exhausted that you can’t get out of bed for church.

It might mean having to have a conversation with a friend, telling them that you love them and are still their friend, but you can’t go out bar-hopping on Saturday nights with them anymore, because it pulls you too far away from Christ.

Now, to be clear, these aren’t things you might need to do in order to make you acceptable to God—that was already accomplished once and for all by your faith in Jesus’ Christ’s death, burial and resurrection for the forgiveness of your sins. You can’t make yourself any more acceptable to God by doing anything like this. But the truth is that you are called to make intentional choices about your life so that you will place yourself in the position of receiving the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

But discipleship is not just about quitting or “putting off” some things, is it? Discipleship is about

The choice to begin doing some things

Committing to spending time reading the Bible, praying regularly, making worship on Sunday and time with other Christians a high priority, telling others about your faith. When Paul tells Timothy (and us) to “train ourselves for godliness”, the idea of training is that it is not a one-time thing. In fact, the second thing that we see here in this passage is that

II. Discipline forms consistent habits (1 Tim. 4:8)

Here we are in the first few weeks of the new year, and this is the time when everyone has decided to go on a diet, right? (In fact, Levi said that his manager at work was complaining the other day that everyone is coming in to Subway asking for salads. Levi told her, “Just give it a couple weeks!”) Imagine someone saying “I have decided in 2020 that I am going to start eating salads… on Fridays… when I think of it… and there’s nothing else in the house to eat...” That’s not the best plan for weight loss, is it? In order for a diet to work, you have to be consistent, don’t you?

It’s the same with the Christian life—when you seek a disciplined walk with Jesus, you are not looking for one-time actions, but rather sustainable and repeatable patterns for a lifetime. If you want to put yourself at the disposal of the Holy Spirit’s transforming work in your life, you need to be consistent in your Bible reading, in your prayer life, in your worship, in your telling others about Jesus. And one of the great keys to consistency is to

Find a regular time

Find a time in your day when you have an hour, a half-hour, twenty minutes to spare to read God’s Word and pray. (And if you’re laughing to yourself right now: “Yeah, right! I don’t have any spare time in my day!”, do you really need me to remind you that you always have time for the things that mean the most to you? Nobody on a sailboat is ever too busy to stop what they’re doing and trim a sail… Stop using your busy schedule as an excuse to ignore meeting with God in His Word and prayer. You know better.)

Forming those consistent habits of reading the Bible and prayer is what puts you at the Holy Spirit’s disposal for Him to do His transforming work in your life. Maybe it’s a fifteen-minute chunk at the end of your lunch break, maybe it’s a half-hour drive to work every morning and you listen to the Bible online. Whatever it is, find that regular space of time that works for you and use it to put yourself at the Holy Spirit’s disposal!

Find a regular time to meet with God, and also

Make reasonable expectations

This is another place where Paul’s advice to Timothy to “train himself” for godliness is instructive for us. When you walk into a gym to start doing some weight training, you don’t immediately go load up the bench press for 250 pounds! In the same way, when you are starting a training regimen of spiritual disciplines, you don’t start off by reading five chapters of Romans in the original Greek followed by two chapters of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion in the original Latin and then a few Hebrew Psalms for dessert!

Whether it’s because we feel like we have to “keep up” with other Christians around us, or because we are genuinely eager to learn, or because we feel like God is disappointed in us if we don’t, we always have to be careful not to have unreasonable expectations of our time spent in God’s Word and prayer.

Now I want to take a brief moment here and talk about those “Read the Bible in a Year” plans—you don’t have to show hands, but how many of you are following some sort of plan like that? Now, clearly a plan like that can help you establish a regular time to spend in prayer and Bible study—it sets out a passage or two that you can read to help form those consistent habits. But we have to be careful, because a plan like that can also be very frustrating, can’t it? If you miss a day for some reason, then all of a sudden you have to read two day’s worth of chapters, and then if you don’t get that done the whole thing snowballs out of control, and by December you’re trying to read from the end of the Book of Judges through Revelation in three weeks!

If a “Read the Bible in a Year” plan gives you the structure and the convenience and the encouragement to develop consistent habits in your time with God, then by all means, go for it. But ask the question we considered earlier: Does that Bible reading schedule make you more eager to spend time reading, or less? Does it fill you with joy only when you are on track, but guilt when you are behind? And that’s the real issue—you cannot train yourself for godliness out of a sense of guilt or shame for not keeping up, because Jesus died precisely to free you from guilt and shame!

Never forget that the reason that you are spending regular time in God’s Word with reasonable expectations is not so that you can complete a reading assignment—it is so that you can put yourself at the disposal of the Holy Spirit’s transforming work! When you sit down and open your Bible and open your heart and pray with the Psalmist:

Psalm 119:18 ESV

Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

Psalm 86:11 ESV

Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.

When you seek to discipline your life in prayer, reading God’s Word, worshipping together with God’s people in church, He is the One who goes to work to transform you!

You need to hear this, because you know what will happen this week, don’t you? You will leave here today with fresh excitement to set aside the things that entangle you, set aside regular time to read the Bible and pray, with reasonable, manageable expectations. And by Saturday you will look back and realize you only sat down to pursue God in His Word and prayer three days out of six, and two of those days consisted of sitting and staring at the verses you wanted to read, and a mind so full of distractions that you couldn’t even manage to pray for more than fifteen seconds!

In other words, you’re going to get discouraged—you’re going to feel like you’re not accomplishing anything in spiritual discipline, that you’re not doing yourself any good sitting there staring blankly at that chapter in John’s Gospel, so why bother?

But here’s another absolutely indispensable truth about your growth as a Christian—discipleship is a marathon, not a sprint! You see all those infomercials at this time of year promising some physical fitness regimen like “Thirty Days to a Flat Belly in Only Five Minutes a Day!” That’s not how physical fitness works—and that’s not how spiritual maturity in discipleship works, either! God is not calling you “Thirty Days To Spiritual Maturity in Only Five Minutes A Week!” He is calling you to a lifetime of obedience—developing habits and skills over years. And this brings us to the third truth Paul wrote to Timothy about his discipleship:

III. Discipline trusts God’s promises (1 Tim. 4:8-9)

Look again at verses 8-9:

1 Timothy 4:8–9 ESV

for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of 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.

Do you see it, Christian? When you put yourself at the disposal of the Holy Spirit’s power by making intentional choices and forming regular habits—training yourself for godliness, God promises that you will be rewarded!

A number of years ago I heard the story of a winter Olympic athlete who went out to train for the biathalon—cross country skiing and sharpshooting. I don’t remember the athlete’s name, but I believe it was a woman. She was so dedicated to winning the gold medal in the biathalon that two years before the Winter Games she sold all her worldly possessions—car, clothes, furniture, everything—took the money, left her family and friends and rented herself a tiny two-room cabin up in the mountains in the Pacific Northwest. She lived off the money from selling her possessions for the next two years, and all she did was eat, sleep and train. Every day, by herself in that little cabin, sacrificing everything she had for a chance at a gold medal. I never heard if she actually won—but the fact is that even with that level of discipline, she was not guaranteed to win a medal, was she?

All the physical training in the world can’t guarantee you a medal, but this is a trustworthy saying, beloved: Training for godliness is valuable in every way! That skier might have missed the gold by one thousandth of a second or one millimeter on a target, but you will never fail to receive the reward of godliness! if you’ve ever trusted anything in your life to be true, you can trust that!

You will see the rewards of godliness

In your present life

As you grow in putting yourself at the disposal of the transforming power of the Holy Spirit--making deliberate choices to pursue godliness and forming consistent habits of prayer, reading the Word, worship and sharing the Gospel, you will see your life change!

You will have more victory over the sin that remains in your life—because when you walk by the Spirit, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh (Galatians 5:16)!

You will be free from fear and anxiety, because

Romans 8:6 ESV

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

You will have more wisdom and insight into your life and the lives of others, because God has given you the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ” (Ephesians 1:17). This is an entirely trustworthy saying, worthy of full acceptance, Christian—when you discipline yourself to be at the disposal of the Holy Spirit’s transforming power, you will see the great reward of it in this life!

Discipline trusts God’s promises for this life, and also

For the life to come

Beloved, are you here this morning and you really feel the strain of that training in godliness that God is calling you to? You feel like you should be so much farther on in your walk with Christ—that you take one step forward and two steps back when it comes to putting off the old entanglements of sin? You wish your prayer life were more robust, you want your Bible reading to be deep and powerful instead of lackluster and boring? You wish you could share the Gospel more freely than you do, and the last time you tried to talk to your cousin about Christ she asked you a question about the Gospel you couldn’t answer and she laughed at you over it? You come to worship here week by week but more often than not you’re so weighed down by anxiety over the difficulties in your life that you feel like you can’t really enter in to worship the way you want to?

if that’s you this morning, look at this promise once again—this is a trustworthy saying and worthy of full acceptance—your training in godliness, no matter how small or insignificant or ineffective you feel it to be is working an eternal weight of glory for you in Heaven!

Your training in godliness—your spiritual disciplines here in this life hold great promise for the life to come! When you awake someday in your Savior’s presence and look back on those stammering prayers, those times when your Bible reading just felt like completing an assignment, those Sundays when you could barely pay attention to the sermon because you were so worried about the mortgage payment, those embarrassing and intimidating attempts to tell your neighbor about Jesus—when you look back on those things that you thought were such pathetic attempts to pursue godliness, you will be shocked to discover just how much spiritual fruit they bore in your life!

Because when you stand with Him in the life to come in Heaven, you will see just how much God was at work through those seemingly ordinary, mundane, uninspired acts of discipline—you will see just how powerfully the wind of the Spirit was filling the sails of your discipline, how He was at work behind and before you, transforming you through those ordinary means of grace—the Word, prayer, worship, the Lord’s Supper—He set all of these things before you so that through them He could work in you a godly discipline and holiness to enrich and bless you throughout this life and the life to come! So toil and strive, Christian—make it your aim to discipline your life so that you may put yourself at the disposal of the Holy Spirit’s transforming power—for this life, and for the life to come in the presence of your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 ESV

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

Hebrews 12:1 tells us to set aside sinful entanglements. But are there times when even lawful pursuits (hobbies, entertainment, relationships) can draw you away from God? How does this passage say you should respond to things (sinful or not) that make it harder for you to pursue godliness?

Take a look at the week ahead. Where do you see a regular time that you could set aside to read the Bible and pray? What time of day is best for you, mentally and physically? Morning? Lunchtime? Evening? Where can you establish a regular time in your day to spend with God?

God promises that when we strive to live a life of godly discipline, He will go to work to make our discipleship valuable “in every way”. How does His trustworthy promise encourage you in your walk with Him?