WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.360 1 Timothy 4 verses 6 to 11. This is the word of the Lord. If you put these things before 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:12.560 the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, Timothy, being trained in the 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:17.359 words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do 00:00:17.359 --> 00:00:23.000 with a reverent, silly mess. Rather, train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:27.879 is of some value, godliness is of value in every way as it holds promise for the present 00:00:27.879 --> 00:00:34.320 life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. 00:00:34.320 --> 00:00:39.119 For to this end, we toil and strive because we have our hope set on the living God, who 00:00:39.119 --> 00:00:44.719 is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. Command and teach these 00:00:44.719 --> 00:00:53.000 things. Well, this is the word of God. So, we're in a series on worship. And most of 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:56.159 the time in this series, we've been talking about the corporate elements of worship, the 00:00:56.159 --> 00:01:01.719 things that we do together on a Sunday. But last week, Callum introduced us to the idea 00:01:01.719 --> 00:01:08.920 of worship Monday to Saturday. So, the Lord's Day, the day that we call Sunday, is fundamental. 00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:14.840 It's necessary. It's foundational. But throughout all of church history, member Christians have 00:01:14.840 --> 00:01:21.000 been thinking about how do you express daily worship? What does that mean? What does it 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:26.439 look like? And to answer that, you have to go back to the basics. What's worship? And 00:01:26.439 --> 00:01:30.400 the way we've defined worship a couple of times in this series is by saying worship 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:38.200 is when you ascribe value to something, ascribing love or value to something that you love or 00:01:38.200 --> 00:01:44.000 adore. The Bible has a pretty particular word for worship of God, ascribing value to 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:51.840 God. And that word is to glorify. It's very peculiar to the Bible. The word glorify means 00:01:51.840 --> 00:02:02.159 to worship. And in 2 Peter chapter 1, Peter says that God has given us gifts for our godliness. 00:02:02.159 --> 00:02:07.599 And those gifts for pursuing godliness, he goes on, are for the glory of God. He says, 00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:15.840 in other words, Peter's getting at this, pursuing godliness, whatever that might mean, is the 00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:22.479 day to day rhythm of worship because it's for God's glory. So what does worship Monday 00:02:22.479 --> 00:02:28.199 to Saturday look like? Callum introduced that to us, that idea to us last week. But this 00:02:28.199 --> 00:02:34.919 week, the answer from 2 Peter and from 1 Timothy is the word godliness. Godliness is the day 00:02:34.919 --> 00:02:41.919 to day rhythm of worship. So the question is, of course, what is godliness? How do you 00:02:41.919 --> 00:02:47.679 get godliness? And 1 Timothy 4 gives us an answer to both of those questions. And the 00:02:47.679 --> 00:02:52.439 answer to those questions, especially how do you get godliness, traditionally, historically, 00:02:52.439 --> 00:02:59.719 has been called something under the category of spiritual formation. Some people call it 00:02:59.719 --> 00:03:04.599 formative practices. Some people call it spiritual disciplines. Some people call it spiritual 00:03:04.599 --> 00:03:11.319 habits, habitual daily acts of worship, all sorts of words that you can use. But spiritual 00:03:11.319 --> 00:03:19.680 formation is concerned with daily acts of worship that are transforming or forming of 00:03:19.680 --> 00:03:25.240 your heart. So we're going to look at three things from this passage about godliness. 00:03:25.240 --> 00:03:32.680 First, godliness is a command. Second, godliness is formed. And third, godliness is hard. So 00:03:32.680 --> 00:03:38.400 first, godliness is a command. Paul is writing to Timothy in this book. So it's not a book 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:44.680 by Timothy, but it's a letter from Paul to Timothy. And Timothy is a very young pastor, 00:03:44.680 --> 00:03:52.640 elder in the church, and he was left in Ephesus after Paul planted the church in Ephesus. 00:03:52.640 --> 00:03:57.120 And the context of the passage we read, and basically the whole letter, is that there are 00:03:57.120 --> 00:04:04.039 people in Ephesus that are basically adding prescriptions or certain ethical codes to 00:04:04.039 --> 00:04:11.599 the gospel to define what it means to be a Christian. So some of those were that people 00:04:11.599 --> 00:04:16.680 were saying, if you wanted to be a Christian, you can't be married. In other words, what 00:04:16.680 --> 00:04:21.680 they're suggesting is that you can't enter into any type of sexual activity if you want 00:04:21.680 --> 00:04:26.639 to be a Christian. The other thing that they were talking about was that you have to eat 00:04:26.639 --> 00:04:30.120 certain things if you want to be a Christian and not eat certain things if you want to 00:04:30.120 --> 00:04:34.719 be a Christian. And Paul is writing this letter and basically right before we enter 00:04:34.719 --> 00:04:42.959 our text, he says, no, all that stuff is good, by the way. God created it and it's good. 00:04:42.959 --> 00:04:48.560 It's good for you to do it, to enter into anything that God created in this world because 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:54.199 what he created is good to eat, to drink, all that. So he says, look, be thankful and 00:04:54.199 --> 00:04:59.360 pray and all of those things will be made holy for you. In other words, it's appropriate 00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:04.159 for a Christian to engage in the goods of this world as long as you're thankful for 00:05:04.159 --> 00:05:10.519 them and praying over them. That's his basic idea. Now that's the context, that's the background. 00:05:10.519 --> 00:05:19.480 The logic of our passage then is basically this. He's saying, don't be like those guys 00:05:19.480 --> 00:05:23.039 because the guys that are teaching that kind of stuff who are going around the local church 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:27.040 and saying, if you want to be a real Christian, you got to do this and this and this. Those 00:05:27.040 --> 00:05:32.240 guys don't have godliness. That's basically what he's saying in our passage. So the contrast, 00:05:32.240 --> 00:05:38.600 you can see it in verse seven. He says, don't listen or don't teach these silly irreverent 00:05:38.600 --> 00:05:47.680 myths. He says, instead, in the next, train yourself in godliness or in other words, have 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:55.079 a good relationship with God. He's talking about doctrinal discernment, the ability to 00:05:55.079 --> 00:06:01.480 know what's true and what's false, and the ability to do good, to know how to act versus 00:06:01.480 --> 00:06:06.879 how to not act. He's saying, that's a basic sense of what it means to have godliness. 00:06:06.879 --> 00:06:13.720 So he's contrasting the two things. But he says in verse six, tell everyone at Ephesus, 00:06:13.720 --> 00:06:17.760 what their teaching and what godliness is. Tell everybody the difference in those two 00:06:17.760 --> 00:06:24.800 things. Then he ups the ante a little bit and he says, in fact, in verse seven, train 00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:31.960 yourself in godliness. That's a singular, by the way. It's saying, Timothy, you train 00:06:31.960 --> 00:06:38.880 yourself singular in godliness, not plural. But then even more, verse 11, in case you 00:06:38.880 --> 00:06:41.680 think you were out of the woods and didn't have to train yourself in godliness because 00:06:41.680 --> 00:06:48.400 you're not a pastor or elder, like Timothy, he says in verse 11, Timothy, command and 00:06:48.400 --> 00:06:55.639 teach this to everyone. So three times he goes through that he ups the ante every time. 00:06:55.639 --> 00:07:00.199 Look, in other words, what does this mean? What it means is this, Paul has just given 00:07:00.199 --> 00:07:08.120 a command to the church. Everyone is expected to train themselves in godliness. That's the 00:07:08.120 --> 00:07:15.560 command. He's saying it's for everybody. He's saying it's not a choice. 00:07:15.560 --> 00:07:21.360 So the question is, what's godliness? Most basically, godliness is another word for 00:07:21.360 --> 00:07:26.840 holiness. It's the little Greek word here, usibia. It means something like reverence 00:07:26.840 --> 00:07:36.079 or awe in devotion, deep devotion to God. Holiness. Hebrews 12, 14 says, without holiness, 00:07:36.079 --> 00:07:42.319 no one will see the Lord, which means that the New Testament takes holiness really seriously. 00:07:42.319 --> 00:07:47.159 Really seriously. And basically, from this passage alone, you can discern the idea of 00:07:47.159 --> 00:07:52.120 what he means by godliness. The first thing we've already seen is that what he means is 00:07:52.120 --> 00:07:59.240 godliness is the ability to discern sound doctrine, as he puts it, which means godliness 00:07:59.240 --> 00:08:05.199 is at least in part an ability to know the difference in truth, what's true and false, 00:08:05.199 --> 00:08:11.319 about Jesus, about Christianity. It's a theological education of sorts, it's an ability to know 00:08:11.319 --> 00:08:17.719 things, to know truth from falsehood. But the second thing that is really clear about 00:08:17.719 --> 00:08:23.240 godliness throughout all of Paul's letters, you can get from Philippians 2 and other parts 00:08:23.240 --> 00:08:28.279 of this letter. He connects godliness and Philippians 2 with this command, work out 00:08:28.279 --> 00:08:34.480 your salvation with fear and trembling, for this pleases the Lord. 00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:39.480 So the second thing we see is godliness is directly connected to good works, which is 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:44.440 in the negative sense, avoiding sin and in the positive sense, doing good deeds, works 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:50.159 of mercy, loving your neighbor, loving God, loving neighbor, and doing that in external 00:08:50.159 --> 00:08:59.159 actions. So far, we know godliness at least is the ability to know what's true, to discern 00:08:59.159 --> 00:09:07.360 doctrinal truth well. It secondly is the ability or the actions of good works, of avoiding 00:09:07.360 --> 00:09:13.279 sin and doing good, loving your neighbor. But it's not simply to know something, and 00:09:13.279 --> 00:09:18.799 it's not simply to do something. Those are both external, those are both externally oriented, 00:09:18.799 --> 00:09:25.279 but there's an internal sense as well in this passage that's all over the Bible, but it's 00:09:25.279 --> 00:09:33.120 somewhat covered up a little bit in this passage, a third sense, and it's in verse 6. In verse 00:09:33.120 --> 00:09:37.480 6, he says, if you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of 00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:43.679 Christ Jesus, and then the little verb, being trained in the words of the faith. Now, in 00:09:43.679 --> 00:09:48.120 verse 7, he says, the command is train yourself in godliness, and in verse 6, you have the 00:09:48.120 --> 00:09:53.480 same word, being trained in the words of the faith, but it's not the same word. So the 00:09:53.480 --> 00:09:59.759 N-A-V and the N-A-S-B translate differently because the S-V chose to use the word train, 00:09:59.759 --> 00:10:05.960 but the actual word there is the word, you will be nourished. So if you do these things, 00:10:05.960 --> 00:10:11.320 if you pursue godliness, if you teach about this, he's saying you will be nourished. Now, 00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:17.200 what does it mean to be nourished? To be nourished, it's a metaphor, right? Being nourished is 00:10:17.200 --> 00:10:22.879 a metaphor, and being nourished doesn't mean just knowing something with your intellect 00:10:22.879 --> 00:10:32.480 or acting out something. Being nourished means that you actually thirst and hunger for something. 00:10:32.480 --> 00:10:36.559 In other words, being nourished means you were thirsty or you were hungry, and that 00:10:36.559 --> 00:10:42.639 thirst and that hunger has been quenched, you see? So in other words, learning sound doctrine 00:10:42.639 --> 00:10:51.279 and doing good is part of godliness, good things. But what he's saying is that true godliness 00:10:51.279 --> 00:10:57.720 is done in such a way as that when you know, learn about God or pursue God, knowledge of 00:10:57.720 --> 00:11:06.919 God and do good works, it says if you're drinking water in the middle of the desert. That's 00:11:06.919 --> 00:11:13.919 the internal sense of godliness. It's not mere knowledge or mere action, but it's the 00:11:13.919 --> 00:11:21.279 experience of God in knowing and acting, you see? And that's why we read Psalm 63 in the 00:11:21.279 --> 00:11:28.319 first reading. Psalm 63, one of the great Psalms of David, is deeply experiential, and 00:11:28.319 --> 00:11:33.439 it's the Old Testament's center passage of what it means to be godly. In the Old Testament, 00:11:33.439 --> 00:11:41.039 this is David. Oh, God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh 00:11:41.039 --> 00:11:48.039 faints for you as in a dry and weary land. Now, this is language of thirst and hunger 00:11:48.039 --> 00:11:52.759 and quenching, right? And it's got God as its object. It's deeply experiential. It's 00:11:52.759 --> 00:11:58.360 experiencing God. This is the sense of godliness from David. But the other thing to notice 00:11:58.360 --> 00:12:02.879 is that this is covenantal language. So we talked about this last week in terms of the 00:12:02.879 --> 00:12:07.279 crucifixion when Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That was 00:12:07.279 --> 00:12:11.279 covenantal language. This is covenantal language. You see, he says at the beginning, oh, my God, 00:12:11.279 --> 00:12:17.639 my God. This is the language of the Abrahamic covenant. It's when God came to Abraham and 00:12:17.639 --> 00:12:23.639 said, I will be your God. You will be my people. You will call me my God and I will call you 00:12:23.639 --> 00:12:28.799 my people. You know what this means? This means that when David's out in the desert 00:12:28.799 --> 00:12:36.240 of the soul, hungering for God in godliness, deep experiences with God, deep desire for 00:12:36.240 --> 00:12:43.240 God, the only way that he's doing that is because he's already been found by God. You 00:12:43.240 --> 00:12:47.639 see, this is the language of the covenant. It means he's already been called one of God's 00:12:47.639 --> 00:12:54.399 people. He's already been found by God. In other words, what he's saying to God is, I 00:12:54.399 --> 00:13:00.159 will seek you because I have been found by you. I will seek you because I've been found 00:13:00.159 --> 00:13:06.679 by you. In other words, godliness for Paul, godliness for David is not a search for God 00:13:06.679 --> 00:13:13.159 where you, it's not being spiritual. It's not the modern 21st century sense of spirituality 00:13:13.159 --> 00:13:17.600 where you're just seeking after the transcendent or something like that. It's more specific 00:13:17.600 --> 00:13:22.000 than that. It's not a search for God for the first time where you find God, but it's the 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:31.000 cultivation of desire for the God who has already found you. In other words, you can't 00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:36.919 have godliness without the gospel. You can't have godliness without the gospel. That's why 00:13:36.919 --> 00:13:42.279 in our passage in 1 Timothy, right before he says, Timothy and all the people, train yourself 00:13:42.279 --> 00:13:49.340 in godliness, he mentions in just the passage before that in chapter 3 verse 16, he talks 00:13:49.340 --> 00:13:55.000 about the mystery of godliness. In other words, what's the mystery or the revelation behind 00:13:55.000 --> 00:14:01.399 your ability to be godly, to pursue God, to be holy, to want God, right? And this is the 00:14:01.399 --> 00:14:09.399 mystery of godliness. This is what he says. 3 16, he was manifested in the flesh, indicated 00:14:09.399 --> 00:14:14.000 by the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:18.840 taken up into glory. In other words, what's the mystery that stands behind the ability 00:14:18.840 --> 00:14:26.280 to be godly? Jesus Christ humiliated. That's his answer. That's the background that he's 00:14:26.280 --> 00:14:32.720 giving. In other words, Jesus Christ, he's saying, was humiliated in order that God would 00:14:32.720 --> 00:14:38.920 find you, in order that you would seek him. See? Jesus Christ was exalted in order that 00:14:38.920 --> 00:14:44.400 in him you would be found by God, and you would turn and you would seek God. So the basic 00:14:44.399 --> 00:14:50.439 idea of godliness is seeking after God, but it's doing so walking on the ground of the 00:14:50.439 --> 00:14:55.480 Gospel. So the Christian life, this is the Christian life. The Christian life is the 00:14:55.480 --> 00:15:00.799 pursuit of godliness, Paul is saying, and it's where you walk on the ground of the Gospel. 00:15:00.799 --> 00:15:06.559 The Gospel is the floor that you're walking on. Without it, you would fall. But it's looking 00:15:06.559 --> 00:15:13.039 up to a horizon that stands off in the future, and that horizon is God himself. You see, 00:15:13.039 --> 00:15:18.719 godliness is not just a knowing things about God. It's not simply doing good deeds, but 00:15:18.719 --> 00:15:23.399 what he's saying is that in both knowing and doing, you're deeply desiring, hungering and 00:15:23.399 --> 00:15:30.719 thirsting. That God is the only thing that can satisfy, that can nourish the thirst and 00:15:30.719 --> 00:15:35.959 the hunger that you feel deep down in the pit of your stomach. That's how he's describing 00:15:35.960 --> 00:15:49.879 godliness. Now, are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Are you hungry or are you thirsty for God? 00:15:49.879 --> 00:15:59.080 One of the deep evidences of being found by God is being hungry and thirsty for God. It's 00:15:59.080 --> 00:16:09.680 what the text is teaching here. Do you desire him? Do you desire him? But even if you feel 00:16:09.680 --> 00:16:16.680 God is cold and absent, even if you feel God is cold and absent and your heart is far from 00:16:16.680 --> 00:16:28.720 him, does it bother you at all? Does it hurt? Do you want him back? Do you want him back? 00:16:28.720 --> 00:16:34.519 Godliness too means you're seeking godliness, the simple desire for him, even if he's cold, 00:16:34.519 --> 00:16:39.960 even if he's distant, even if it feels like he's far off. So the question then becomes 00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:48.120 how do we get there? How do we develop desire for God? How do we get to that horizon? And 00:16:48.120 --> 00:16:56.040 that brings us to the second point. The second point is this, godliness is formed. In other 00:16:56.039 --> 00:17:02.199 words, the gospel is not something you do, but something done for you, Christ for you. 00:17:02.199 --> 00:17:08.079 But godliness is something you do. Godliness is something you do, something you pursue, 00:17:08.079 --> 00:17:13.159 something you have to be trained in. It works out by the Spirit, but it is something that 00:17:13.159 --> 00:17:18.839 you do, that you engage in. How do we become people who want God, who worship Monday to 00:17:18.839 --> 00:17:23.480 Saturday and are affections for God? And the answer throughout all of church history, throughout 00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:28.160 all the great theologians and our confessions and things like that is that we do have to 00:17:28.160 --> 00:17:37.160 work at it. Walking on the ground of the gospel, not legalism, but we have to work at it. 00:17:37.160 --> 00:17:41.400 Now what is it? So the word in this passage that points us to that is the word train in 00:17:41.400 --> 00:17:46.319 verse 7, train yourself in godliness. This is something you're being called to act on, 00:17:46.319 --> 00:17:50.440 right? What does the word train mean? What does it mean to train in godliness? Now you 00:17:50.440 --> 00:17:59.640 know this Greek word, the Greek word is gimnazio, G-Y-M, gimnazio. It's the word, root word 00:17:59.640 --> 00:18:05.080 for where we get gym or gymnasium from, right, today. And what do you do at a gym? What do 00:18:05.080 --> 00:18:12.320 you do at a gymnasium, right? You train, you work out. This morning I was publicly shamed 00:18:12.319 --> 00:18:21.359 for being an advocate of CrossFit by our dear brother and leader. I'm just kidding. But tonight 00:18:21.359 --> 00:18:30.919 I'm vindicated, right? Because train, gimnazio, there it is. Seriously though, in verse 9, 00:18:30.919 --> 00:18:35.879 in verse 8, this is, he makes it, he couldn't make it any clearer, in verse 8. Verse 8 is 00:18:35.879 --> 00:18:41.799 a proverb. He says, for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in 00:18:41.799 --> 00:18:45.879 every way as it holds promise for the present life and also the life to come. Now this is, 00:18:45.879 --> 00:18:51.759 this is a proverb from the first century. While bodily training is of some value, and 00:18:51.759 --> 00:18:56.240 different words have been used in the proverb and other Greek texts, godliness is of value 00:18:56.240 --> 00:19:01.680 in every way. He's quoting there from a kind of proverbial saying that was floating around 00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:08.519 at the time. And what he's saying is this, athletics, which requires daily practices, 00:19:08.519 --> 00:19:15.759 is valuable. Training your body, he's saying, is valuable. It's got some value to it. But 00:19:15.759 --> 00:19:20.799 training in godliness, same word, gimnazio, gimnazio, is of much more value because while 00:19:20.799 --> 00:19:27.160 the former is just pertaining to your physical body, which will die eventually, godliness 00:19:27.160 --> 00:19:32.160 extends beyond the grave. It goes beyond death. It's of much more value than simple physical 00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:39.720 training. That's what he's saying. So you can see, I mean, Paul draws very direct, strikingly, 00:19:39.720 --> 00:19:46.200 that training in righteousness or godliness has a relationship to the way you would train 00:19:46.200 --> 00:19:53.360 your body at the gym. And what he's saying is this, he's talking about daily habitual 00:19:53.359 --> 00:20:02.679 spiritual practices that we're called to. Now, Callum hinted at this last week because 00:20:02.679 --> 00:20:08.679 our word for godliness here is the word I just mentioned, eusebia. But a lot of times 00:20:08.679 --> 00:20:13.240 you'll see the word eusebia just translated as worship. And it can be translated just 00:20:13.240 --> 00:20:19.759 as worship. But there are all sorts of different words that can be translated worship in Greek. 00:20:19.759 --> 00:20:25.119 In English, we only have one word that really means worship and it's worship. But in Greek, 00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:29.759 there's all sorts of them. And here you get eusebia, which means something more like 00:20:29.759 --> 00:20:36.279 deep desire for God, all reverence and devotion to God. But Callum pointed out last week, 00:20:36.279 --> 00:20:43.759 another word, Enrollments 12.1, where Paul says, present your bodies as a living sacrifice. 00:20:43.759 --> 00:20:48.160 This is your spiritual form of worship, right? And that's a different word. It's not eusebia, 00:20:48.160 --> 00:20:54.200 it's the word latria. And the word latria, and Callum pointed this out, is a word that 00:20:54.200 --> 00:21:01.120 comes from the Old Testament idea of the practices of a priest. When a priest goes into the temple 00:21:01.120 --> 00:21:07.720 and he performs daily practices, he has to light the candles, he has to do the sacrifices, 00:21:07.720 --> 00:21:12.880 he has to cook, he has to do all sorts of things. That's the word latria. In other words, these 00:21:12.880 --> 00:21:17.840 are the daily sacrifices of praise is the word that's been adopted, that a priest was 00:21:17.839 --> 00:21:25.720 called to, daily practices, you see. And what Paul is saying is that now you're a priest, 00:21:25.720 --> 00:21:29.480 if you're in Christ, you're a priest, and you've also been called to daily sacrifices 00:21:29.480 --> 00:21:33.000 of praise. That's what he's saying. Now they're not the same thing as the priests of the Old 00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:39.720 Covenant. Yours are completely different. Jesus has made, He's put away that type of 00:21:39.720 --> 00:21:45.919 priesthood. But the point is that he's saying in both Romans 12 and in 1 Timothy 4 that we 00:21:45.920 --> 00:21:51.160 are called to these daily practices. He uses the metaphor of working out like an athlete 00:21:51.160 --> 00:21:55.920 in 1 Timothy 4, and he uses the idea of the priest, like a priest who goes into every day 00:21:55.920 --> 00:22:02.039 faithfully into the temple, doing their daily morning practices at the temple in Romans chapter 00:22:02.039 --> 00:22:11.240 12. So, of course, the question that we're throwing back again, how, what are these practices? 00:22:11.240 --> 00:22:17.120 What does the Bible teach us about what this looks like? How do we shape our desire for 00:22:17.120 --> 00:22:24.120 God in specific ways, and what do these practices look like? These New Covenant priestly practices. 00:22:24.120 --> 00:22:31.559 Well, look, the answer's simple, really. I mean, it's the same thing every preacher always 00:22:31.559 --> 00:22:38.359 says. It's a duh kind of an answer, but prayer in Scripture, right? Prayer in Scripture, 00:22:38.359 --> 00:22:47.240 that's the New Testament formula. But when you attach prayer in Scripture reading to 00:22:47.240 --> 00:22:53.159 godliness, it takes on a slightly different form than what we're might be used to normally, 00:22:53.159 --> 00:22:59.740 because when you attach it to godliness, prayer is not, prayer for the sake of godliness, 00:22:59.740 --> 00:23:07.079 for deep desire for God is not simply petitionary prayer. So it's not just prayer that's prayer 00:23:07.079 --> 00:23:15.359 for me's, for me's prayer, things for me. It's actually, it's more prayer that enjoys 00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:23.599 God in prayer, that rests in God while you pray. In other words, it's prayer that's 00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:29.839 reflective and meditative on God's person, on who he is and what he's done, on his great 00:23:29.839 --> 00:23:37.439 and mighty works. It's prayer that really seeks to ask God to enjoy God. That's more 00:23:37.439 --> 00:23:41.519 of the sense of prayer connected to this idea of godliness. It's the prayer that asks for 00:23:41.519 --> 00:23:48.720 deep desire for him. It's prayer that asks to be hungry and thirsty. Same thing with 00:23:48.720 --> 00:23:55.240 Scripture. You know, tons of the church fathers and our fathers and mothers and brothers 00:23:55.240 --> 00:24:00.160 and sisters in the faith before us have all reflected on this a lot. And one of the things 00:24:00.160 --> 00:24:05.799 you see pretty consistent throughout church history is that Scripture reading as a formative 00:24:05.799 --> 00:24:12.039 practice of training and godliness takes on more of the sense of Scripture reading as 00:24:12.039 --> 00:24:17.960 prayer than it does simply Scripture reading as information gathering. So it's not simply 00:24:17.960 --> 00:24:23.000 Scripture reading that's there for content to learn what happened and what this might 00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:27.279 mean and all this. There is a time and place for that. And of course, we're doing some 00:24:27.279 --> 00:24:33.880 of that now. But with respect to godliness and spiritual practices, that type of Scripture 00:24:33.880 --> 00:24:40.640 reading daily Scripture reading is priority. Number one is as worship. So it's it's praying 00:24:40.640 --> 00:24:46.000 the text, praying the text back to God, reflecting on God as you read about God and praying it 00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:50.279 back to God. That's the main sense throughout history that people have gathered of praying 00:24:50.279 --> 00:24:57.680 and reading Scripture in relation to godliness. But there's there's a lot more practices. 00:24:57.680 --> 00:25:04.200 God uses other people as iron sharpens iron. So one man sharpens another God uses individual 00:25:04.200 --> 00:25:10.799 habitual practices as well. One of the great examples of a person who's thought a lot about 00:25:10.799 --> 00:25:15.839 this and a place that's done a lot of work on just developing day in and day out relationship 00:25:15.839 --> 00:25:22.199 with God was John Calvin. And when he came over from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism 00:25:22.199 --> 00:25:31.000 and he became the pastor in Geneva in Switzerland, he he he what he realized was that he needed 00:25:31.000 --> 00:25:35.480 to change things that had happened in the Roman Catholic Church in the past, especially 00:25:35.480 --> 00:25:40.359 in the monasteries or the monastic communities and did not simply throw it all out but to 00:25:40.359 --> 00:25:46.119 take what was true and what was good and what was best and to in a way democratize it. So 00:25:46.119 --> 00:25:51.479 for instance, the monasteries, the monastic orders, right, they were every single day 00:25:51.479 --> 00:25:57.479 they were deeply devoted in those monasteries to praying, to working with their hands, right, 00:25:57.479 --> 00:26:02.879 to studying the scriptures, to memorizing the Psalms, like all good things, right. But 00:26:02.879 --> 00:26:07.039 Calvin said but they shouldn't have gone and left society and become monks to do it. So 00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:10.720 in other another words, he said, we're going to democratize this. And we're going to put 00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:15.079 in these practices for our people here in Geneva, but we're going to make it for everybody. 00:26:15.079 --> 00:26:19.799 It's not there's no clergy, laity distinction here. These practices are for every single 00:26:19.799 --> 00:26:27.799 person. And so Calvin did all sorts of things. I mean, he one of the things Calvin did that 00:26:27.799 --> 00:26:35.119 will not be anything crazy to you is that he put pews in to the church. So prior to 00:26:35.119 --> 00:26:41.319 the Reformation, there weren't pews in churches or chairs or anything because people stood 00:26:41.319 --> 00:26:46.239 around and basically like just kind of chatted while the priest did their thing. Because 00:26:46.239 --> 00:26:49.479 you weren't involved. You didn't even take the Lord's supper, the Eucharist. I mean, 00:26:49.479 --> 00:26:53.759 you just hung out and chatted and left kind of whenever it was all done. It was all in 00:26:53.759 --> 00:26:58.639 Latin anyway. So you might not have understood it if you weren't educated. Calvin put pews 00:26:58.639 --> 00:27:01.959 in and he said, we're going to be devoted to learning what the Bible says to praying 00:27:01.960 --> 00:27:08.240 the Bible, to having daily practices. And one of the most important things he did is 00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:15.759 that our own tradition, the Westminster tradition followed after was that he wrote a catechism 00:27:15.759 --> 00:27:23.840 for his people, a form of question and answer of learning about theology and about God. 00:27:23.840 --> 00:27:28.600 And in the catechism, he also put in what's called a daily office, which is kind of an 00:27:28.599 --> 00:27:33.919 older way of saying a daily program for prayer and Bible study. And that they distributed 00:27:33.919 --> 00:27:38.480 to everybody in the city. And in the daily office, it wasn't super programmatic, but 00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:43.000 it just had suggestions. It said things like pray five times a day, pray when you wake 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:48.959 up, pray at every meal, pray the Lord's prayer and your own prayer in the morning while you 00:27:48.959 --> 00:27:55.240 read the Bible, that kind of thing. So that was Calvin's daily office. But following on 00:27:55.240 --> 00:28:00.000 from Calvin's tradition, tons of people have developed this kind of a thing. One of the 00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:05.000 most famous, and I'll just list a couple resources here because we don't have, I can't expose 00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:08.799 it, all these different practices that I'm about to list that would take a whole series. 00:28:08.799 --> 00:28:15.039 But this is just an introduction. Don Whitney is probably the most famous theologian today 00:28:15.039 --> 00:28:21.160 that and pastor that's reflected on developing as a person who is spiritually disciplined. 00:28:21.160 --> 00:28:26.080 So he has a book called Spiritual Disciplines. And here's all the things that he lists that 00:28:26.080 --> 00:28:31.720 he sees in the New Testament of spiritual disciplinary practices or spiritual formation 00:28:31.720 --> 00:28:37.240 practices. Bible reading, prayer. There's a chapter on each of these. Bible reading, 00:28:37.240 --> 00:28:44.640 prayer, praying the Bible, worship corporate individual and family, worship purposeful 00:28:44.640 --> 00:28:51.320 evangelism, mercy acts of mercy acts of service in the church, stewardship with all sorts 00:28:51.320 --> 00:29:00.400 of different resources, not just money, fasting, silence and solitude, journaling and writing, 00:29:00.400 --> 00:29:06.759 education, learning or biblical and doctrinal development and catechism, catechesis. And 00:29:06.759 --> 00:29:12.240 other people that have talked a lot about this, you can go early, go to St. Augustine 00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:17.640 and his confessions, Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections is a great book to look at. But 00:29:17.640 --> 00:29:24.480 in the modern world, easier is Don Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines or Eugene Peterson also, 00:29:24.480 --> 00:29:30.599 very helpful. The point is this, there's no one right way. There's no one right way. 00:29:30.599 --> 00:29:33.680 That was one of the things that the Reformers were upset about is that there's no one right 00:29:33.680 --> 00:29:42.960 way to live godliness and to develop, train in godliness day to day. But the text here, 00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:49.880 1 Timothy 4, gives a command and it says that you must pursue it. You must walk down the 00:29:49.880 --> 00:29:54.600 road of spiritual disciplines. Okay, so last point and very brief. Godliness is hard and 00:29:54.600 --> 00:30:01.120 I'll just be brief here. So we have to train godliness. We see this from Paul in verse 00:30:01.119 --> 00:30:06.799 10. He says, we toil, we labor, we suffer, we strive. Why? Because this is eternally 00:30:06.799 --> 00:30:12.359 valuable. He says, Eugene Peterson in one of his books, he puts the whole kind of picture 00:30:12.359 --> 00:30:18.679 we've been painting this way. The person who looks for quick results in the seed planting 00:30:18.679 --> 00:30:26.479 of well-doing and godliness will be disappointed. If I want potatoes for dinner tomorrow, it 00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:32.839 will do me little good to go out and plant potatoes in my garden tonight. There are long 00:30:32.839 --> 00:30:39.640 stretches of darkness and invisibility and silence that separate planting from reaping. 00:30:39.640 --> 00:30:43.400 During the stretches of waiting, there is cultivating and weeding and nurturing and 00:30:43.400 --> 00:30:50.440 planting still of other seeds. In other words, he's saying that there's cultivating and deep 00:30:50.440 --> 00:30:57.080 desire for God requires deep commitment to long-term spiritual practices for the Christian. 00:30:57.080 --> 00:31:00.880 That's part of the Christian life. That's what he's saying. So a few aspects of practical 00:31:00.880 --> 00:31:04.680 advice about this very briefly. And these are things off cold from other people just 00:31:04.680 --> 00:31:10.960 this week, just from reading different guys on this. First, Jesus Christ died for us. 00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:16.600 So that means you don't have to hold on to guilt about not pursuing godliness in your 00:31:16.599 --> 00:31:22.000 day-to-day life. You don't have to hold on to that guilt. Jesus killed it on the cross. 00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:30.119 He crucified it. But he's calling us to indeed confess and repent of ways that we've neglected 00:31:30.119 --> 00:31:36.919 this aspect of the Christian life and to change. The second thing is this very briefly. The 00:31:36.919 --> 00:31:43.240 day in and day out habits of spirituality, of pursuing this stuff is not, we want to 00:31:43.240 --> 00:31:47.039 go completely different from what they did in monasticism. We want to say that doing 00:31:47.039 --> 00:31:54.120 this is helpful for us to be subversive in the culture that we exist in. In other words, 00:31:54.120 --> 00:31:58.039 what it means to be a subversive Christian is that in your daily life, you enter into 00:31:58.039 --> 00:32:02.519 the world, you go to work, you're hanging out with your neighbors, whatever, and you're 00:32:02.519 --> 00:32:07.599 taking on what Eugene Peterson calls the coloration of the culture. In other words, you take on 00:32:07.599 --> 00:32:13.679 some of the color of the culture. But he's saying, well, if you lose the coloration of 00:32:13.679 --> 00:32:17.919 the culture, if you stop entering into culture and spending time with people that aren't like 00:32:17.919 --> 00:32:22.559 you in culture, then you lose effectiveness in ministry. But at the same time, if you enter 00:32:22.559 --> 00:32:27.919 into the culture without daily habits of spiritual formation, without desire for God, then you 00:32:27.919 --> 00:32:34.959 also start to be conformed to the culture instead of an agent that transforms it. In 00:32:34.960 --> 00:32:40.480 other words, he's saying daily spiritual habits, growing in godliness, training yourself in 00:32:40.480 --> 00:32:46.440 godliness is one of the primary ways that we become culture subvergers. In other words, 00:32:46.440 --> 00:32:51.720 showing people another way in the cultures we exist in, a way of truth, a way of life, 00:32:51.720 --> 00:32:57.920 the way of the cross and the resurrection. Okay, thirdly out of four, what kills spiritual 00:32:57.920 --> 00:33:06.000 discipline? Very briefly, what kills spiritual disciplines? Ruining your appetite for God 00:33:06.000 --> 00:33:13.200 by being conformed to the things of the world. In other words, idolatry ruins your appetite 00:33:13.200 --> 00:33:18.320 for spiritual disciplines. Sex, money and power, those are the three that sum up the 00:33:18.320 --> 00:33:25.160 whole shebang. Sex, money and power. In other words, these things are good. We've just heard 00:33:25.160 --> 00:33:31.120 that from Paul, sex, money and power. Sorry, a while she left out power, probably sex and 00:33:31.120 --> 00:33:37.160 money at least. These things are good things, but they give you highs, but if they become 00:33:37.160 --> 00:33:43.400 ultimate, they'll ruin your appetite. They'll become things that you hunger and thirst for 00:33:43.400 --> 00:33:50.480 ultimately, and that ruins, that makes it very difficult to have deep desire for God 00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:58.079 as ultimate. The other things that can subvert or kill our ability to be spiritual discipline, 00:33:58.079 --> 00:34:08.320 boredom, busyness and lack of rest. If you're pretty idle and pretty bored in life, oftentimes 00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:13.440 it's hard to do anything when you're bored. But on the flip side, busyness, and busyness 00:34:13.440 --> 00:34:23.280 is probably the thing that's much more of a problem for all of us. Stop being busy. 00:34:23.280 --> 00:34:27.920 Half joke, but seriously, stop being busy. In other words, be un-busy. How do you be 00:34:27.920 --> 00:34:35.079 un-busy? Well, the one way to help yourself be un-busy is to use your calendar for spiritual 00:34:35.079 --> 00:34:41.800 discipline. The calendar is sacrosanct. It's holy, it's set apart, meaning when you put 00:34:41.800 --> 00:34:46.760 something down on it, it's there. Whenever somebody comes and says, do this, do this, 00:34:46.760 --> 00:34:53.760 do this, you say, can't do it. I got my calendar here, and it says no. Spiritual discipline 00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:58.480 is put them on the calendar, set time apart. I've got an excellent illustration from Moby 00:34:58.480 --> 00:35:02.960 Dick about that, but we don't have time for it, so I'm going to skip it. 00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:08.440 Then lastly, when you're just starting out and getting involved in spiritual and training 00:35:08.440 --> 00:35:16.800 for godliness, be brief. Brevity is longevity. Pray brief prayers. Read briefly, day to 00:35:16.800 --> 00:35:23.280 day. Don't try to do big, long things. Just be as brief as possible. We'll just close 00:35:23.280 --> 00:35:30.440 with this. We had a call to worship from Matthew 11, 28-29, and it really epitomizes the whole 00:35:30.440 --> 00:35:37.440 of what we're talking about here. Jesus says, come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, 00:35:37.440 --> 00:35:43.480 and I will give you rest. That's the gospel. That's Jesus saying, come to the cross, come 00:35:43.480 --> 00:35:50.360 and die with me, come and live with me in resurrection. That's the gospel. Then he says, take my yoke 00:35:50.360 --> 00:35:58.360 upon you and learn from me. He's called you to the ground of the gospel and then said, 00:35:58.360 --> 00:36:03.079 now put my yoke upon you. It's much lighter than the yoke of good works that you've been 00:36:03.079 --> 00:36:08.039 pursuing. It's the yoke of godliness. It's light. It's easy. It's not a burden. It's 00:36:08.039 --> 00:36:14.199 rest. It's deep desire for the only thing that you were created to live for. Our hearts 00:36:14.199 --> 00:36:22.239 are restless until we have rest in God. That's godliness. That's St. Augustine. So this is 00:36:22.239 --> 00:36:27.119 a call to pursue the gospel-grounded yoke of godliness, our call to worship tonight. Let's 00:36:27.119 --> 00:36:33.639 pray. Father, we come before you knowing that we've been so inadequate in pursuing you and 00:36:33.639 --> 00:36:39.960 your face. You've caught us to seek your face because we've been found by you, if we've 00:36:39.960 --> 00:36:43.679 been found by you. So we pray, oh Lord, tonight that you would give us deep desire to pursue 00:36:43.679 --> 00:36:50.119 you and that we would know that being committed to daily practices of worship is, in fact, 00:36:50.119 --> 00:36:55.039 one of the means that you've given us to develop desire for you. We know that it's so hard 00:36:55.039 --> 00:36:59.159 for us, Lord. It's so unnatural. So we ask that you would change us and point us in that 00:36:59.159 --> 00:37:28.159 direction. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.