Prescribe and Teach These Things #2

So this morning, we're going to be continuing on in our study of Paul's first letter to Timothy. The last time we were in this book was two weeks ago. I didn't preach last Sunday because we had a baby a few days previous to that. But when we addressed this section of 1 Timothy before, we focused on the first few verses, verses 6 and 7 of chapter 4. And today we're going to be spending our time picking up again in verse 7. Spending a good bit of time in 8 and ending with 9. And the next week we'll come to verses 10 and 11. And so our topic this morning is godly self-discipline in the life of a believer. Before we get into our text, I want you to think for a minute about something that may give you sort of a rubric to process what we're going to be talking about this morning. And that's the idea of dieting. Going on a diet.

I want you to think for a minute about what the goal of going on a diet is. Now, there are many goals. There's not just one goal. Some might say, I'm going to diet because I want to lose weight. And others might say, I want to diet to lower my blood pressure or my cholesterol. Some might go on a diet to have more energy. While others might go on a diet simply to feel better or to gain confidence. These are the things you hear people talk about when they say, I need to go on a diet or I'm on this diet because of this. There are all kinds of reasons that appeal to us.

All of us have heard this. I suspect all of us have felt it at some point or another. I need to get healthier. I need to lose some weight. I need to feel better about myself or something like that. But all of us have also heard the people who rail against diets. And what do they say about diets? They say diets are bad and diets don't work. And there is some truth to that. An example from my own life about it. Got out of high school. I was very active in high school. Three sports. Used to lift weights all the time. I got out of high school. And I started working and just ate whatever in the world I wanted. And within probably a year of that, I'd gained quite a bit of weight. And my work at the time was climbing trees. And so gaining weight and climbing trees don't go well together. It's much harder to pull yourself up when there's more of you that wants to stay down. And so it occurred to me that I needed to lose some weight.

And so I went on the Atkins diet. That was popular back in the early 2000s. We all know it's not good for you now, but back then it was all the rage. The South Beach diet and then the Atkins diet, long before the days of paleo and all these other things. This was the thing you were supposed to do, and so this is the thing that I did. And in a short time, I lost about 70 pounds on the Atkins diet. It worked. If the goal was to lose weight, it worked. it didn't last. Now, why didn't it last? Why didn't the diet really work? Maybe another way to ask the question is, why was the Atkins diet attractive to me? The reason it was attractive to me was because all you had to know about the Atkins diet was there were foods that you could eat and there were foods that you couldn't eat. And you could have as much of the foods that you could eat as you wanted to. And things like pork rinds were on the list of things you could eat.

So you could get those big $1 bags of pork rinds that you get at the dollar store, and you could just eat them until it came out your ears, and you would lose weight. And the only caution they gave you was, sometimes you should try to eat probably a salad a day, but you weren't allowed to eat any other fruit or vegetables really, because that was against the rules. So I liked the Atkins diet because it allowed me to eat as much as I wanted, which actually was the subtext or the problem that was underneath. my weight gain, right? I lacked self-control. I just thought, I'll eat whatever I want and as much of it as I want. And that's how I gained weight. And so a diet that says, you can eat anything, as much of this as you want. You just can't eat this stuff over here. I went, okay, well, this is a diet I can subscribe to. So I lost a bunch of weight, but it didn't last. It didn't work in the end. I once had a doctor tell me that, they said, you know, instead of trying to lose weight,

You're young. This was years ago. She said, if you could just make it your goal not to gain the normal 5 to 10 pounds that people gain every year of their life, if you just make that your goal, you would be doing better than going on some crazy diet. And I thought, that's strange advice. It wasn't very attractive to me. There's nothing exciting about trying not to gain any more weight. But she understood the nature of diets and how they work, that they're short-lived, and that oftentimes what happens is you end up in a worse state after the diet. It may take a few years, but you'll end up in a worse condition than you were previous. And so those who rail against fad diets will tell you that you don't need to go on a diet. They'll tell you you need to do what? You need to make some what? Yes, that terrible phrase, lifestyle changes, which is code word for nothing fun or easy, right? They'll tell you to start small. And then as you develop new habits, add in some new, better habits as you go.

They tell you to take your time. They tell you to settle in for the long haul. And they tell you to have a big picture view and not a focused microscopic view. They don't want you looking at the scale every day, for instance. And this is the way in terms of, if we're talking about dieting, remember, this is not what the sermon's about, but it's an illustration to get us thinking. If we were to want to become more healthy, that's a change that has to be made for the rest of our lives. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you actually have to change your lifestyle for it to work, for it to last. It's not quick, it's not exciting, and most of all, it's not easy. And so it's not very attractive to us as a result. We would actually prefer diets. If we would all be honest, the ads that say, you can lose 25 pounds in a month, and we all go, really? How? Because we would love to have a very quick fix and have our problems just be gone away with and done. And yet that doesn't work.

It doesn't last. And so my contention this morning, as we talk about self-discipline in the life of a believer, my contention is that we pursue growth in godliness in much the same way as we diet, which is to say not very well and without real change that needs to happen in our lives. My hope is that by the end of our time this morning, we'll have a better understanding of ourselves and also how God intends us to grow in godliness, how to gain the profit that godliness produces in our lives. Our text this morning is 1 Timothy 4, verses 6-11. Would you please stand for the reading of God's Word? This is the Word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following, but have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.

For bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers. Prescribe and teach these things. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. To recap the sermon that I preached a few weeks ago, just to give us context here and why we're skipping over verses 6. Our sermon a couple of weeks ago basically was a description of what a pastor's job is. A pastor's job, if he's to be a good servant as the text describes, his job is to point out and to teach the truth to the flock. It's a pretty simple job in terms of...

it being written down on a piece of paper. It's a very difficult job in terms of its implementation and working it out. It's the sort of job that's never done. It's the sort of work that has lots of job security attached to it because people are always needing the truth pointed out to them, taught to them, being reminded of it. This is what we need. And so a pastor's job, if he's to be a good servant, is to point out and teach the truth to his flock. Both the pastor and his flock have an obligation to receive that instruction. by faith and to submit to it for their own benefit and for God's glory. In other words, they're to lead fruitful lives for the Lord. They're to bear fruit for the Lord. Now, a fruitful life doesn't come out of the box pre-assembled. It requires some assembly. It's not an easy thing. I thought of this a few weeks ago when my wife had bought an Ikea bunk bed.

which is fine, except she bought it on Facebook Marketplace, and you know what it didn't come with? Instructions. It came with a bunch of pieces of wood and a bag full of screws. Here you go. Figure it out. You start comparing the screw lengths, you know, and it's a lot of work. It took time. And so a fruitful life doesn't come out of the box pre-assembled. It requires us to put effort into it, and it's helpful if our effort is in line with instruction that we've received. If we think that we will become fruitful for the Lord, that we will bear fruit, that we'll turn a profit for him without having to apply ourselves to that work, we're fools. We will not produce anything good for the Lord unless we apply ourselves to it, pursue it, say yes to obedience to the Lord and say no to disobedience. And without instruction, if we say, I'm going to lead a fruitful life and I'm going to apply myself to it, but I'm not going to listen to anybody, I'm not going to be discipled, the best we can hope for

is that we'll learn lessons the hard way. After much trial and error, we will have figured out, that doesn't work. I should try something different. But it's amazing to me, in my own life and as I watch people in their other lives, how blind they are to the examples in their lives that are very evident to those around them. Whether that's in their marriage, whether that's with their children, whether that's in their work, we get in these cycles where we do the same things. The same things. I've known men who can't keep a job more than a year and a half, maybe two and a half years. It's just sort of their cycle. And you watch them over the course of five or 10 or 15 years, and you start to notice a habit. And you think there's some thread of commonality that runs through all of this. I don't think it's always the employers. I don't think it's always the company. I think it might be the man. He's not learning the lessons. Keeps getting fired. And so we need instruction.

We need to actually be taught. You need to put effort forth to produce fruit for God, and you need to put effort forth in these areas and in these ways. This is where you need to plow. This is where you need to dig. This is what we need. And so we pick up in verse 7. Paul warns Timothy. He says, And the part of this warning that I think is most helpful to us, the most descriptive thing, the thing that brings it into the... most clarity for us is the part where it says fit only for old women. It's also the part that cuts across the grain and we go, man, why did he have to say that? Why is that there? Doesn't the point stand without saying fit only for old women? I mean, how are the old women supposed to feel? My contention is that no, the point doesn't stand if you don't say fit only for old women because that's actually what makes it very clear to us the sort of thing that's being spoken of here.

Back in chapter 1, verse 4, Paul warns Timothy against giving his attention to speculations and to myths and to endless genealogies. But here he puts a finer point on it. He says, I don't want you to give your attention to worldly fables that are fit only for old women. And all of a sudden, those myths and those speculations, all of a sudden you go, oh, you mean the kind of stuff that old ladies talk about. And we all go, you can't say that. And I say, I didn't say it. Or at least I didn't say it first. The Lord said it. And it's not meant to be in any way demeaning to old women. The scripture actually speaks to older women, to widows, about what they ought to do so that they can bear fruitful lives. They're cautioned against this sort of thing in their own lives. And here Paul uses it as an example to Timothy. And he says, you, you man of God, don't pay attention to that sort of stuff. Don't be consumed with that sort of stuff. Why? Because it's not fruitful.

It's not going to produce a profit in your life or in the lives of those who hear you. Turn away from it. Now I want to note to you that not all Bibles have this section of the verse in it. Many of you read the ESV. If you were to read the ESV, this whole part's just gone. It doesn't exist. And in the one that I looked in, it's not even footnoted. It doesn't even say, And another translation would be, you know, down in the fine print in the bottom. It's just not there. Don't pay attention to any silly myths. Period. End of story. On to the next verse. And I say that to you to say, we have to love God's word. And we have to search out what it says to us. And as we do that work, there's a fair bit of dependence that we have on those who give us the word. Those who say, here's what God said.

We read here from the NASB, 1995. There's a new version of the NASB coming out, I believe it's this year or maybe next. I don't remember which yet. And it's headed in this direction of taking out the things that are demeaning to Jews and the distinctions between men and women. And we ought to understand that as being a threat to our soul, a danger to us. Because how would you know if you were reading something and it didn't say this? You go, oh, I guess that's just what it says. But there's actually, a word in the Greek that says fit only for old women. That's what it means. It's the only time it's ever used in the Bible. It's very clear. Paul was very intentional in using that word to communicate this truth to us, to Timothy. Don't pay attention to the sort of fruitless things that old women talk about. They should not be your guides. They should not be the ones directing you in the way of godliness with their old fables.

And while that may cut across the grain of our sensibilities, it's something that we do need to hear and something we do need to know so that we're cautioned against it, so that we know how to love those who are older and who are tempted in those ways, that they might also lead productive, fruitful lives as Timothy and we are being called to do. So why does Paul warn us in this way? Well, because it's the epitome of fruitlessness, as I've said. It's an incredible waste of time, and the reason it is is because it doesn't produce anything. Our conversation and our interest in the things of God should always be aimed at how to grow in grace, and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. And it takes discipline even to think that way, let alone to implement it into our own lives. To be about our work, to have some sort of conflict come up at home or in the workplace and say, what would the Lord have me do here? What words should I speak? What inclination should I repent of so that God is glorified in the way that I conduct myself in this situation? It's work for us even to think this way, let alone to do it.

And yet it is our work. How can I love him more? How can I give glory to God in this situation? So the warning to us generally is to avoid fruitless idleness in our lives. And you might think, well, I don't listen to any old women. And I say, okay, good. Is that the only way that you can waste your time in your life? And in a word, all God's people said, no, right? No, we are masters of wasting time. Masters of wasting time. How do we waste time? How do you waste time? YouTube? Facebook? Social media? Pinterest? I like to, you know, for myself, I like woodworking. I'm not a woodworker. I don't have any woodworking tools at all. But it's an interesting thing to me. I admire those who are able to create out of wood. And so sometimes I watch things on YouTube. And my wife says, why do you do that? You're not a woodworker.

And I say, well, maybe I will be someday. And I'm just getting my education started. But I'm not. And neither are you when you waste time. It's possible to be very busy, to not have a minute to yourself throughout the week, and even to be very knowledgeable. I could talk intelligently about woodworking and what the different tools are called and what the different techniques are. Lots of knowledge. I could busy myself with learning that knowledge. And the sum of all of that, is what? What's the sum of it? It doesn't do me any good. I don't work with wood. Maybe it would do Nathaniel some good. He actually works with wood for a living. I don't. I work with words. I work with people. And so it's possible to be very busy. When you think of wasting your time, I don't want you to think that that just means that you sit around and stare at a wall all day. I'm sure there are some who do that. But the vast majority of us don't waste our time staring at a wall. We waste our time. We busy ourselves with stuff.

We try to clear out our schedule so we can put the things we want to waste our time on into it. That's how binge-watching anything became a thing. We clear out our schedule. Sorry, self, you don't need to sleep tonight. You need to binge-watch something on Netflix or Amazon. So being busy doesn't keep you from this sort of idleness. Being knowledgeable doesn't prevent you from this sort of idleness. The way we have to learn to think of ourselves and our time, is whether or not it's profitable. What is it producing? How will it benefit yourself? How will it benefit others? How will it glorify God? This is what Paul is impressing upon Timothy to think about and to consider. Be productive. You are to minister to these people. You're to make them productive. Tell them they have to be productive. Tell them not to waste their time. And set them an example of not wasting time.

Paul goes on and he says, on the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. The things we do should result in godliness. That should be our aim. That should be our goal as Christians. And it can only be accomplished through daily discipline. Daily saying no to our temptations. John Owen, in the mortification of sin and believers, says this. He says, let no man think that he makes any progress in holiness who doesn't walk daily over the bellies of his lust. In another place he says, be killing your sins daily or they'll be killing you. He acknowledges that we're in a minute by minute struggle against our own flesh and our own desires. And Paul here calls us to the work of making profit and progress in that battle and to not lose ground, but to take ground. Turn a profit. So are you working to maintain your spiritual life? Are you working to improve it? Are you thinking about how you spend your time and the interest that you have?

Are you considering the things that you neglect in order to be able to free yourself up to do the things that you would prefer to do? Disciplining ourselves, in essence, is asking God what he requires of us and then pursuing it simply, saying, this is what's required of me, that's the direction I'm going to go. Now you'll notice that Paul's not very descriptive here. He doesn't tell us, this is exactly how you become godly. He doesn't define it. He does give one caution. He singles out one type of discipline and says, this is not the sort of discipline that will benefit you the most. And it's bodily discipline. For bodily discipline is only of little profit. And I want to say to you, as I was preparing over the last couple of weeks and thinking about preaching on this, I've often thought of this as being in a warning against exercise. Like, don't be vain. And it's not because I don't like to exercise. You understand? I just have always thought, well, they're just telling you that you need to, you know, it's not going to be that profitable to you.

And while it's true that with exercise there can be all kinds of sin and vanity and those sorts of things wrapped up in it, as is with the rest of our lives, this warning is not primarily against that sort of discipline. We could understand this verse in a way of Paul saying, your body is the easiest thing for you to discipline. In other words, he could say, it's easy for you to lose weight. It's easy for you to stop drinking soda. Or whatever it is that you think, I shouldn't have that. Paul's saying here, it's easy for you to stop those things. And you say, no it's not. And I say, compared to growing in godliness, yes it is. I lost 70 pounds in six months. And all I had to do was stop eating carbs. And I could eat as much meat and pork rinds and diet soda as I wanted. That was enough for me at that time of life. It was easy.

It didn't last, but it was easy. It was of little profit. And the reason it was of little profit to me is because it never touched on the problem that I had, the sin that I was struggling with. It just said, don't eat this, eat this instead. You could describe it as a whitewashing of the real problem. So how is it that we might pursue godliness through bodily discipline? Historically, it may have been through harsh treatment of the body. Just before this passage, Paul warns against men who teach the abstaining of certain foods and who forbid marriage. Those are two manifestations of bodily discipline, two sorts of things that in the church have been forbidden. And they say, it's more godly if you don't get married. It's more godly if you don't eat this or that or the other thing. And when we preached on that, I said, no, it's not true.

Actually, those admonitions are taking what God has said is good and saying, no, actually, it's not good. God made marriage, but it's more godly to not be married. God made food for all of us to enjoy, but actually not all food. Those are just two examples of bodily discipline. Bodily discipline is sort of like the entry-level sort of discipline that we have in our lives. And it doesn't benefit us all that much. Think of it this way. If someone was overweight, And they're Christian and they're feeling bad because they just ate a quart of ice cream or they drank whatever it is. I don't know. And they're feeling bad and they're going, that was bad. I shouldn't have done that. What will their repentance look like? I just won't eat breakfast tomorrow. I just won't eat tomorrow. I'm just going to have celery and water or some stupid thing. They'll come up with these kinds of ideas in their minds. This is their bodily discipline. This is their response. This is how whatever brought them to eating that.

a quart of ice cream or whatever it was they did, their response is going to be some silly thing. Like, I have an idea. I won't eat tomorrow. That'll help. And yet to anyone who's done that sort of thing, you know it doesn't help. What's the angry Christian's answer? I don't want to get in a fight. I don't want to yell. I don't want to be mean and saying things I shouldn't say. What's their answer? What is the bodily discipline that they'll institute in themselves? I just won't talk. They're just silent. Or they'll become more reclusive. They just won't even go be around people. Why? Because they're struggling with anger and they're making such headway and fighting against it that they can't even look you in the eye because they might sin. Better for them just to hold up in a cave somewhere. This is bodily discipline. What about the lustful Christian? About the man who can't control his eyes, who's spending his time on the internet looking at things that aren't his. I'm just not going to date. I'll just never get married. I'll just never go on the internet.

It's been my experience that men who struggle with lust have far more fighting to do than to simply get off the internet. Because they're surrounded by opportunity to sin, and they don't have to be on the internet to do it. Which isn't to say that there aren't helps that they ought to implement. But if that's all they do is say, I can't be on the internet anymore. They've not begun to do battle with the real problem they have. They've just implemented some sort of simple little... I just won't do this with my body. I just won't. You understand the list could go on. We could continue to list sins that we all struggle with. And we could say, what is the simple sort of just, I'm not going to do it anymore response to it that pops right up in our minds? What is it that we do? I'm not going to cuss anymore. Okay, well, good. I hope you don't cuss anymore. Why is it that you cuss though? That'd be a better question to ask. And it'd be a better grounds to till up and to,

Break apart and figure out what's in there. Bodily discipline is only of little profit. It's not going to produce a harvest of righteousness in us. And if we pursue bodily discipline in the absence of pursuing true godliness, it won't profit us at all. And so Paul tells us going forward, but godliness, this thing we haven't defined yet, is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. it's a bit irritating that he doesn't define how to pursue godliness. We'd all like, I mean, if you read 2 Peter, it's kind of nice that in 2 Peter 1, Peter says, do this, and then add to your moral excellence, love, and to your love, charity, and he just goes on and he says, this is sort of how you bake the cake of godliness. This is how you pursue it. This is what you do. Paul doesn't do any of that here. He just says, don't waste your time on things that are entirely unproductive. Worldly fables fit only for old women. Discipline yourself for the sake of godliness.

Don't give much attention at all to bodily discipline because it's not going to be that profitable to you. But godliness, this thing, is profitable for all things since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. And so I want you to see what Paul does here. Instead of defining and giving us a roadmap for how to pursue godliness, what he does is he argues from the benefit of it. Because he understands, the Lord understands what motivates us. Okay? We can give you a five-step plan and you know what the truth is? You won't follow it. If it were that simple, if we could just give you a five-step plan and all of your problems would be solved, we would do it. But the reality is we don't listen to it even when we get the five-step plan. And why? Because we're not motivated. Because it's just like, it's just another thing I'm supposed to do or not do. And so instead of defining what this godliness is and how to pursue it, he argues from the benefit and he says, here's a carrot. Do you want the carrot?

Donkeys will walk miles chasing the carrot that's hanging in front of their nose. Will you walk down the path of godliness because you want the carrot? Here's the carrot. That's what he gives us. The first part of that carrot is he says that godliness is profitable for all things. In other words, godliness creates a surplus in our lives. That's what a profit is. A profit is after all of the bills have been paid, there's money left over. There's a surplus. There's a profit. Now if I were to ask you, do you feel like you have a surplus of grace? A surplus of patience? Or humility? Or diligence? Or meekness? Would you say, yes, I have a surplus of that. I have more than I need. We'd say, no. Oftentimes I feel like I don't have quite enough. And it's wearying. And so here what Paul says is, I know that's how you feel. I know that's what's going on.

If you'll pursue godliness, you'll have a surplus of it. And we think, man, wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to have a surplus of grace so that when my kids do the sorts of things that they do every single day, I would not respond the way I respond every single day? Wouldn't that be nice? I wish I had a storehouse of patience. I was talking to a man who has many children older than mine recently. And he was talking about his wife. And he said, you know, when we only had a few kids, she would ask for prayer with regard to the nuts and bolts of life. Pray that they don't get sick. Pray that they get better. Pray that school goes well. Pray that they pass their tests or whatever. Normal prayer requests. But as their children got older and there became more of them, he says, you know, my wife's prayers changed.

They changed from the nuts and bolts of life. All she wanted was people to pray that she wouldn't be angry with her kids. And that's all she ever could say. And you might think, well, that's a terrible mother. And I say, that's a normal mother who needs prayer and who needs God's grace to do her job. Just as an example. Pray that I wouldn't be angry with my kids. Pray that God would make me profitable as a mother. That my motherhood would not be in the red. And so godliness produces a surplus in our lives. It's fruitful. It produces a return. The things that you want, the things that you need, the things that you feel that you're in short supply of in your life, if you pursue godliness, you will have those things. And here's the blessing that's often hidden until you experience it. If you pursue patience, or let's use our mother as an example. Please pray that I won't be angry with my kids. Do you think that will bear any fruit in her life anywhere else? If she grows in her

mercy and her patience and her long suffering with her children, do you think that's the only place where she'll find that she's growing in grace? No. It'll show up in other areas of her life. And that's the second thing Paul tells us, is that it will be, it holds promise for this life, that we will receive the benefits of our pursuit of godliness, not just in the future. We're not just storing up treasure in heaven. It's not just for retirement, if you will. It's for now. You actually will receive the benefits of those things in this life. presently and not just in the area that you are concerned with it, but in other areas of your life. Our lives are all interconnected. They're all mixed together. It's one of the reasons that pastors and elders and deacons are required to be good managers of their household because if they're a good manager of their household, those gifts and that discipline and that maturity will translate into good stewardship and good care of the church. It bears fruit in multiple areas of their life.

And so you look in one area and you say, is there a surplus? Is there a profit in this area? If there is, good. If there is not, he's not ready. It bears fruit in our lives, in our present lives. I think one of the strangest things I ever had a guy say to me at work, at least maybe it wasn't strange, but it stuck out to me. This was years ago. And sort of out of the blue, we were having a rough day. This is when I still worked for Bob. painting and we were on a job site and you know sometimes you just go to work and the days are miserable nothing goes right you have these days at home we all have these days at work it's like everything is out of out of time and so we were having a day and it was just one thing after another things were messed up things were broken things were not going right and I just I wasn't even thinking about it I just thought well

okay, that's a setback. We're going to have to deal with that setback. Okay, we're going to have to work a little longer tonight. This is the thoughts I'm having in my head. And at some point, this guy that worked for a different trade came up to me and he's like, why aren't you pissed? And it didn't even occur to me. And I want you to know, I'm not saying this to toot my own horn or to say, this is how I'm so great. I'm not. If you know me well, you know this is not always the case. But in this instance, I think God was glorified. And the guy said, why aren't you angry?

Like everyone else is just pitching a fit because of how miserable everything is. And I just looked at him, and I knew him. He worked for the general contracting company. I looked at him, and I said, because I have kids, that's why I'm not upset right now, because I go home every day and have to deal with stuff I didn't know was on the dock for today. Oh, I got to go home a few days ago and get a possum out of my shed that my youngest kids were poking with a stick. So my wife's grown in grace. She's one week after having a baby and she just texted me and said, there's a possum in the shed and I told Nico to stop poking it with a stick. That's profit. Because I can tell you 10 years ago, neither one of us would have handled it the same way. You'll be happy to know we released the possum out into the woods and no harm was done to the creature. But I said to the man, he's like, why aren't you so upset and angry? And I said, because I have kids. This happens every day. This is life. And I've learned some level of patience because I have kids.

My kids demanded of me that I be patient. And so godliness produces profit in every area of our life and in this life as well as the life to come. Now, that's a sweet thing. Carrots happen to be one of my favorite vegetables, and it's because they're one of the sweeter vegetables. And this carrot is getting sweeter and sweeter as we delve into what the benefit is. Instead of saying, to be godly, you have to do this and this and this, we say, listen. It'll produce a surplus of grace in your life in every area. Don't you want that? And it won't just produce for retirement, for the future. It will produce it now. Don't you want that? And finally, Paul tells us that it holds promise for the life to come. We as Christians ought to think of this life that we live now as a trial run for the glory that awaits us in heaven.

We ought to be learning to do the things now that we will do for eternity. That's our job. That's our goal. That's what we're aiming toward. We're in bondage and are held back in so many ways by the sins that we struggle with and bear up under in this life. But this life for a Christian is the shedding of that stuff. The new life breaking forth out of this husk of death. And so we ought to think as Christians, I have a life to come. There's a day when all the troubles and all the toils and all the difficulties that I face in this life are going to be over and finished. I'm going to have finished my race. I'm going to stand in the presence of Jesus Christ. And it will be a glorious day. I ought to prepare for it. I want to be prepared for that day. I want to meet him in the fullness of his glory. I want to see it and behold it.

And I want to prepare for it now. The carrot gets sweeter. These are the things that Christians want. And you may think, well, I don't want that the way I should. And I say, I know. I know you don't want it the way you should. Am I supposed to say, shame on you, you don't want it the way you should? No, I say, I know you don't want it the way you should. Pursue it. You aren't going to get there overnight any quicker than you're going to lose 30 pounds in a month. Pursue it. Make it your life's ambition. Make it your life's goal. Pursue godliness. Discipline yourself for the sake of godliness. Verse 9 says it is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. And so Paul deals with, finally, our apprehensions about it. Well, I don't know. But there are things I want in this life. You're telling me I can't have? Sure. The Lord's telling you you can't have the foolish things you want because there are better things that are better for you, but really they give more glory to him. And that's what you're here for.

And so that ought to be your first priority. And so if the Lord says, don't pursue the things that are unprofitable, the things that waste time, the things that don't give me any glory, the things that don't satisfy you at all, instead pursue godliness, there ought to be a place in our hearts and in our minds. The hair on the back of our neck ought to stand up. We ought to get a tingle and say, that's what I want. Lord, help me to find my way toward that. I know I don't go after it the way I should. I wax and I wane and I wander. Call me back and keep me in your way. And I want to make one point of application of all of this to our lives. Because you might say, oh, this is helpful and this is very general what we should do. And I want you to think that way. I want you to go home and think particularly for your life, what should you do? How should you grow? Where should you be disciplining yourself? I want you to think that.

But I want to prime the pump just a little bit as you enter into that. God's thoughts, Scripture says, are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. There's been a lot of discussion, we're inundated with it, drowning in it even, surrounding our nation's current situation. And the one thing that's woefully absent from all of the discussions of the virus, the economic shutdown, the political implications and all the political chatter, the thing that no one is saying, no one is mentioning, because no one seems to prioritize, is repentance. This stuff, whether you think the virus is terribly scary or whether you think it's nothing, what we all should agree on is that we have this situation and all of the surrounding fallout from it, from the hand of the Lord. And we're not going to be free of this situation.

And we're not going to be free of all of the encumberments and all the difficulties and all the hardships that we're bearing up under and, to be honest, are fed up with. The requirements, the dissension, the disagreement, the name-calling, the slander, the gossip, all of that. We are not going to be free of this until we repent. And you say, we repent? And I say, yes, until we repent. Until the church repents. Until Christians repent. We could talk, any one of us could talk, I'm convinced, at length about what we think about the virus or the political nature of how it's being exploited or not or the economic implications of it. I think any of us could talk with great conviction about what we believe is true. But all of it amounts to us saying, this is not my fault and I shouldn't have to be touched by the hardships because this isn't my fault. And as Christians, we ought to say, no, this is God, our God.

speaking to us, his people, and calling us to repentance, calling us to grow in godliness, to pursue it and to lay aside all of the other things we've wasted our time on. Instead, I fear that what we actually are doing is saying, I want this to go away so I can go back to wasting my time. My time wasting has been infringed upon by all of this talk of virus and death and infection rates and masks and shutdowns and job loss. I want that all to go away. So I can get back to what my life was before. But was your life before a life of surplus, a life of profit? Maybe it was. And I say that, I don't mean to say that in your life there was no godliness, there was no profit, there was none of that. I don't mean to say that. What I mean to say is, was there room for improvement? And we all say, yes, there was room for improvement. I say, if there was room for improvement, then this is the time for us to pursue that improvement. Scripture teaches us that judgment ought to begin with the household of God.

And so it's my conviction that we as the church ought to be leading the way in repentance. It's no difficulty to get up in arms about what other people are doing and saying and mandating, but those things aren't the point, not for the Christian. You can wear a mask. We all are. It's of little profit to our godliness. Whether you wear a mask because you believe that it's necessary and good and helpful, or whether you wear it simply because your mayor and your elders and pastors have told you to. If that's all you do and all you get out of this whole thing is that I did what I was supposed to do, I put a mask on when I came where I had to wear a mask, you will have missed the opportunity to grow. You will not have produced a profit. Yes, wear your mask. But know that it's only of little profit to you if you do it. And realize that in the moment, how difficult it is for you even to wear a mask. How many of us are like, I don't want to wear a mask. How hard is that simple,

discipline. That simple discipline. And scripture tells us it's of little profit to us. So pursue the things that create an abundance, a surplus in your life. Wear your mask and get on to the things that are important because you're Christians and your job is to glorify God. Let's pray.