The Last Habit: That All May See Your Progress (1 Timothy 4:10-16)
Good morning. Please open your Bibles to 1 Timothy 4
Today we are wrapping up our series on developing spiritual disciplines. Next week, Cody will be preaching as part of our DNow weekend, and after that, we will be starting the series that will bring us to our Easter Sunday celebration. It’s called Love Reigns: Living in the Hope of Easter, and it’s going to be a powerful time of focusing on the sacrifice Jesus made for us.
We’ve been talking about habits of abiding and habits of pruning [show slide, talk about this]
Before I talk about the last habit, I want us to think about what all this is leading up to. We don’t pursue spiritual disciplines just for the sake of being disciplined. It’s not so we can prove how much willpower we have, or so we can be some kind of super Christian. Spiritual disciplines are what enable us and empower us to live the lives of peace and joy and contentment that God truly intends for us.
I came across a story this week that can really help us understand why we need some pruning in our lives. [Baarack the sheep slide]
This is Baarack. He is a rescue sheep from Australia. After he was abandoned by his owner, he was picked up by an animal shelter, who determined that apparently, the poor animal had never been sheared. Sheep have to be sheared once a year. Without shearing, not only do they get weighed down, but can get sick and infected, as wool gets matted with feces and urine and bits of food and, well, its gross. And that’s what had happened to Baarack. Not only was he infected, but his vision was also impaired because of the way the fleece had grown over his face. Rescue workers removed 75 pounds of matted, gross, stinky wool.
Here’s what Baarack looks like now. [show before and after slide]. How did they remove so much wool? Well, it was an act of shear determination! [pause for groans]
So all these disciplines we have been talking about are about helping us to walk in freedom. When we abide in Christ, we aren’t weighed down by all the distractions of the world. When we trust Him as our Good Shepherd, then we trust Him to shear us—to trim away what weighs us down, or makes us sick, or obscures our vision.
I think that’s what the apostle Paul was getting at when he was giving some of his final instructions to a young pastor named Timothy. Let’s look at 1 Timothy 4:10-16 together. Please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word:
10 For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
11 Command and teach these things. 12 Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. 13 Until I come, devote your
self to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. 14 Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. 15 Practice these things, immerse yourself in them,[c] so that all may see your progress. 16 Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
Let’s pray
I want to spend most of our time this morning digging into this scripture passage, but we need to talk about this last habit first.
I’ve had second thoughts about what to call this one. On your listening guide it says that the last discipline is choices. But that’s a little misleading. The truth is, our problem isn’t having choices. Our problem is making choices!
A few years ago a psychologist Barry Schwartz, did some work on how having too many choices can actually paralyze us and weigh us down, kind of like poor Baarack the sheep. He proved his point by going to his local grocery store, where he counted
• 275 varieties of cookies
• 75 different iced teas
• 230 soups
• 175 salad dressings
• 275 breakfast cereals
• And 40 toothpastes!
Ladies, if you ever wonder why it takes men two hours when you send us to Wal-Mart, this is why.
So “choice” isn’t really a discipline. What we are talking about this morning is the discipline of DECISION. Remember God will lovingly prune and trim back even some of the good things in our lives, or things that aren’t inherently sinful, in order that we can bear more fruit.
Choosing or deciding is how God’s pruning process works. The word itself means to kill or cut off. Decision has the same Latin root as the words incision, which means a cut, or scissors, which is a tool to cut things. And decide has a lot in common with words like pesticide or homicide. When you make a decision, it means you are cutting off other options. When you decide on one thing, you are putting to death the opportunity to do something else.
And that’s hard. Especially in our FOMO culture, You guys know what FOMO is, right? Fear of Missing Out. We don’t want to miss anything. We don’t want to limit ourselves, so we hold off as long as we can before making any kind of decision. Or we make halfhearted commitments to lots of things instead of going all out on any one thing. It happens in relationships. It happens with jobs. It even happens in our relationship with God.
And so the discipline of decision is about joining God in His work to make us more fruitful. It’s about realizing that there aren’t enough hours in the day for you to be involved in every single school activity, to attend every single event, to serve on every single committee. The discipline of decision is the discipline of making the most of the time you have in order to bring the most glory to God and to experience the peace and contentment He desires for His children.
Cultivating the Discipline of deciding
We can cultivate the discipline of decision in every area of our life, but one of the things I’ve tried to do throughout this series is give you some practical baby steps for each of these disciplines. So let me suggest one place to start:
1. LIMIT YOUR MEDIA. Like we’ve already talked about, there aren’t enough hours in your lifetime to watch every movie and TV show that’s out there. As of July 2020, Netflix had 13,500 movies and TV shows in its catalog. Disney+ had 7500 television episodes and 500 movies. 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every. Single. Minute.
Thousands of years ago, King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, said, “Of the making of books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” That’s Ecclesiastes 12:12, by the way.
Can you imagine what Solomon would say about all the media we have to choose from today?
So decide that you are going to limit your media intake to _________ hours a week. And for once, I’m not going to tell you what goes in the blank. That’s going to be for you to decide. My number is 10. That gives me about an hour a day for news and social media, a movie, and one or two TV shows. But before you decide on a number, take an audit of how much media you are consuming now.
2. Choose excellent media (Philippians 4:8)
How do you decide what to watch? Follow the guidelines of Philippians 4:8:
8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
This doesn’t mean only watching movies that won awards. There are a lot of movies that win Oscars that are NOT excellent. And there are a lot of movies that are excellent that would never be considered for an academy award.
And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re only going to watch explicitly Christian movies and shows. But the questions you are going to ask about your media are all there in Philippians 4: Is this true? Is it pure? Does it inspire me to pursue justice in the world? Does it lead me to think more about God or less about God? Is it worthy of praise? In other words, “Could I praise God for this?”
Would I want other people to follow my example and watch this too?
And this brings us back to Paul’s words to Timothy. Sometimes as we get older we ignore verse 12 because of that phrase “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young.” In context, Paul was writing to a young pastor, but we have kind of made this our go-to youth Sunday scripture, or graduate recognition passage, and we forget it’s a word for old people too:
Set an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.
• Speech: the words you say.
• Conduct: the way you behave.
• Love: the way you treat people.
• Faith: the doctrines you believe.
• Purity: the thoughts you think.
We spent a lot of time in our staff planning retreat this week talking about what a disciple looks like. And I think a lot of it is right here. This is what a life of visible holiness looks like.
And you’re asking, “what do you mean by visible holiness?” My faith is just a personal thing, right? Can’t I just keep it to myself? And the answer is, yes and no. Look at verse 15:
15 Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.
All means all. Your family should be able to see that you are growing in your ability to set an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity. Your coworkers. The people at your high school reunion. Your church family.
Even your neighbors who don’t know Christ. Especially your neighbors who don’t know Christ. They ought to be able to see something different in the way you talk. The way you behave. The way you treat other people. They may not be able to tell that you are growing in your understanding of doctrine and faith, but they should be able to tell that your faith impacts your daily decision making.
Notice a key word here. Paul says so all may see your progress. Progress, not perfection.
There are going to be days where you mess up. Lose focus. Miss a day in God’s word. If you’re trying to fast regularly, there’s going to be days you start getting a migraine and you just have to eat. There may be a Hallmark Christmas movie marathon that makes you blow your entire media allowance on a rainy Saturday afternoon. That’s ok. This is about progress, not perfection. One author I read this week says that pursuing a life of holiness is like walking up a flight of stairs playing with a yo yo. There are going to be ups and downs on every step, but you’re still heading in an upward direction.
And that’s the second part to this: When you are pursuing a life of holiness, so that all may see your progress, where you are going is more important than where you have been or where you are.
This can be good news and bad news. It’s good news for some of you that are seriously trying to grow in Christ and develop spiritual disciplines. You are heading in the right direction, even if you have a couple of stumbles along the way.
But this can be challenging news for someone who just walked an aisle or filled out a card or raised their hand in Vacation Bible School, and so you think your salvation is secure. Are you heading in the right direction now?
The 19th century Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’cheyne said, “The greatest need of my people is my own holiness.” Every week we read about another pastor with another moral failure. I realize that more important than anything other than the gospel, I have to offer you my pursuit of holiness. I need to be chasing these disciplines in my own life, if I am going to lead you to holiness. But this isn’t just for pastors. It’s for everyone. Because everyone has people who are looking at them as an example.
When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenburg Church in 1517, the first one said, “Our Lord and master Jesus Christ….willed the entire life of the believer should be repentance.” That doesn’t mean living our lives with our heads hung low and feeling miserable. But it does mean living a life that is constantly realigning itself to God’s Will. These spiritual disciplines help us do that.
[INVITATION]
