“Command And Teach”
1 Timothy 4:6-11
INTRODUCTION: Read Scripture. Paul is writing to Timothy, the young “preacher-boy” – 4:6. I used to be a young “preacher-boy” many years ago … I know a little of what he was going through. NOW … this doesn’t mean that just because you’re NOT a young preacher-boy, you can sleep through this sermon. It’s Paul’s message for EVERYONE.
There is NO DOUBLE STANDARD … 1 for preachers & 1 for laymen (non-preachers). You can never say: “It’s OK for me to do, say, read, watch, think something … BUT … it’s wrong for the preacher to do it..” HOGWASH! If it’s wrong for me, it’s wrong for you. If it’s wrong for you, it’s wrong for me. AND … if it’s right for me, it’s right for you … right for you, it’s right for me. If you are doing anything in your life that you think would be wrong for me, as your Pastor to do … THEN … it’s wrong for you to do it. If it’s wrong for me, then it’s wrong for you.
There is NO DOUBLE STANDARD … there is 1 STANDARD … the Word of God. If it’s true for Timothy, it’s true for you and me. There is NO DOUBLE STANDARD with God.
NOW … let’s take a look at what God wants Timothy … and us … to command and teach this morning. 4:11 – “these things” … WHAT THINGS? Those things in 4:6-10.
I. COMMANDS – These are GOD’S commands. God gave them to Paul … Paul gave them to Timothy … Timothy is giving them to you & me … AND … we are to give them to others.
COMMAND #1 – 4:7 – “refuse profane fables”. What are some? You’ve probably heard, or maybe said, some of these:
1.- “You can worship the Lord just as good in a boat on a lake on Sunday AM, as well as you can in church.” Do you know what the problem is? You don’t! You do more fishing than you do worshipping! What does the Bible say? “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.”
2.- “You don’t need to be saved to get to Heaven … all good people go there.” The truth is, there will be a lot of good people in Hell. How good do you have to be to get to Heaven? PERFECT! That eliminates most of us! “There is none righteous, no not one.” That’s why we can’t make it there unless our sins are forgiven … washed in the blood of Jesus.
3.- “All you have to do to get to Heaven is believe in God.” Satan believes in God … BUT … you won’t see him in Heaven. The truth is, EVERYBODY in Hell will believe in God … 1 minute after they arrive!
4.- “It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you’re sincere.” Are you saying that God will honor sincere Atheists? What if you’re sincerely WRONG?
5.- “It doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re not hurting anybody else (drugs, illicit sex, etc.)”. The truth is … all sin hurts. Ask Jesus! Ask Him if it hurt Him when your sins were placed upon Him at the cross. Ask Jesus if the crown of thorns, being beaten beyond human recognition, and the nails HURT! Jesus took YOUR punishment for sin upon Himself.
6.- “Anything is all right, as long as you do it in moderation.” Try cutting off a cat’s tail an inch at a time, and see if he believes in moderation!
These are all “profane babblings”. They’ve been around for centuries … AND … they’re just as stupid now as they were then. Here is the COMMAND … “Don’t believe a word of it … refuse them!” – 4:7a. They all say the same thing: “God is irrelevant.” He really doesn’t matter. There are no absolutes. There is no standard. Refuse such teachings.
COMMAND #2 – 4:7 – “exercise godliness”. Why don’t we exercise? BECAUSE … it’s too much like work. I tried it once in 1986 … didn’t like it … haven’t tried it since! 4:8a is one of my favorite verses … “For bodily exercise profiteth little.”
This is an athletic term … the idea of winning a contest. Paul is exhorting us to EXERCISE OUR FAITH with a view of excelling in Godliness … to grow strong in our faith.
4:8-10a – “labor” – in the GK. it means to ‘labor to the point of exhaustion’. Like running, and getting your SECOND WIND. At 55 YOA, I have trouble getting my FIRST wind! Godly exercise is WORK. It is COMMANDED. We will be judged as to how we obeyed this command.
If you were in the Military, you listened to the commands of your superior officers, didn’t you? They weren’t optional. You didn’t get to choose & select those you wanted to obey. Your Commander-in-Chief, Almighty God Himself, says “exercise yourself unto Godliness” … YES SIR!!! In a few minutes, we’ll see how to do this.
COMMAND #3 – 4:10 – “suffer reproach”. In military language, “Don’t give up the ship … Don’t retreat … Don’t give up!” Matthew 5:11-12 – ribbon. We are COMMANDED to suffer reproach … YET … too many people are looking for an excuse to give up.
Have you ever heard of “loser’s limp”? SOMETIMES … when a football player isn’t playing well, and the game isn’t going well, he will favor an injury. This gives him an EXCUSE for his poor performance. He wants sympathy … SO … he’ll develop “sympathy pains”.
SOMETIMES … we get our feelings hurt in church. We get mad at the Preacher … or mad at the church … or mad at someone in the church. This gives us a good EXCUSE to quit coming to church … to retreat … to give up the ship.
The Bible tells us to “suffer reproach”. People get mad over petty things in the family of God. They even get mad at God. WHY DON’T THEY GET MAD AT THE DEVIL? If you want to get mad … THEN … put it where it will do you the most good. If we had more Christians mad at the Devil, there would be more Christians living for Christ … AMEN?
We are COMMANDED to NOT stop living the Christian life … NOT to give up … NOT to fall away from our ministry. We are COMMANDED to “suffer reproach”, and not let our feelings get hurt.
Paul not only gave us some COMMANDS … he also gives us some LESSONS to TEACH.
TEACHING #1 – 4:6 – “remembrance”. It’s not that I have such a bad memory … it’s just that I have such a good forgetter! It’s not that my memory is so bad (the brain stores it all) … it’s our RECALL that’s the real problem.
We have a hard time remembering the Word of God. I can’t even remember what I preached on last Sunday (can you?). Why can’t we remember what God wants us to remember? MAYBE … it’s because we’re so saturated with it. We are like a sponge full of water. We get so much of the Word of God, that we don’t listen to it anymore. It has little effect. Our spiritual system becomes immune to it.
We don’t pay attention to it anymore. If you’ve been coming to church all your life, you’ve been saturated with the Word of God. I really enjoy watching young Christians soak up the Word of God … they can’t get enough! It’s new … and exciting! Most of my preaching is REPETITION … trying to get you to REMEMBER what you have already heard & learned – 4:6a.
There is more preaching in the U.S., than anywhere else in the world. YET … wickedness abounds. WHY? We HEAR it … BUT … we don’t LISTEN to it. We’re so used to it, that it has very little effect on us anymore. How many times have we heard: “Don’t drink & Drive … Just say “No!” … Smoking causes cancer … Buckle up”. BUT … we just don’t LISTEN anymore. We’ve stopped letting the Word of God speak to our hearts.
MAYBE … the Word of God is too available in the U.S. It’s available on the TV, the radio, books, magazines, etc. I have more books in my personal library than some Bible Colleges in other parts of the world. When something becomes too available, it stops being precious.
The Devil is smart. In 1962, we took prayer out of the public schools. In 1963 we took Bible reading out of the schools. NOW … we’ve taken the 10 Commandments out of the public view … They’re trying to take “under God” out of the Pledge … and “in God we trust” off our money … and “in Jesus name” out of public prayers.
Satan is smart. He hasn’t taken our Bibles away. You can buy one in Eckerds, Wal-Mart & Publix. Do you know why? BECAUSE … if the Word of God became PRECIOUS to us, we would take it/God seriously! SO … Satan lets Christianity flourish … UNTIL … coming to church becomes “old hat” … common place … and only if it’s convenient.
Preachers are a dime-a-dozen. You probably passed several other churches on your way here this morning. If you don’t like this one, you have lots of others to choose from. BUT … What if there were only 1 preacher in the county? What if there was only 1 church in the county? What if there was only 1 service a month here at Priscilla? The service would be PACKED … AND … you would be BEGGING for the Word of God. The Word of God would be PRECIOUS to you.
You’ve got to hand it to the Devil … he’s smart. In some Communist countries, they have to smuggle in the Bible … page by page … and when they get it, they read every word … and CHERISH it!
TEACHING #1 – REMEMBER the Word of God … LISTEN to the Word of God … DO the Word of God.
TEACHING #2 – 4:10 – “trust in the LIVING God”. Too many people have a DEAD God. People react differently to a LIVING God, than they do a DEAD God. An IDOL is DEAD … worthless … manmade … put on a shelf.
• You can have a RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE praying to an idol.
• You can have an EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE praying to an idol.
• You can have a WORSHIPFUL EXPERIENCE praying to an idol.
• You can WORK for an idol … SACRIFICE to an idol … go to WAR for an idol.
BUT … you can’t have a Godly RELATIONSHIP with a dead idol. There’s no power … it’s DEAD.
As a rule, we don’t worship dead idols … BUT … some people worship a DEAD GOD. That is, in their worship, they act as if their god is dead.
What distinguishes a LIVING GOD from a DEAD GOD? There’s 1 THING that a true, living God will do … THAT … a dead god can never do. The 1 true, living God will live within the believer. A dead god only exists without.
• The Bible says that you are a NEW CREATION … if you can’t say that, your god is dead.
• The Bible says that “for me to live is Christ” … if you can’t say that, your god is dead.
• The Bible says “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” … if you can’t say that, your god is dead.
Does the world see IN YOU, a living God? Is your faith ALIVE? Take time to LISTEN to a God who lives. Take time to TRUST in the LIVING GOD.
CONCLUSION: What’s it going to take for us to take the Word of God seriously? What’s it going to take for us to take God seriously?
• It’s going to take us REMEMBERING the things we have learned in God’s Word … AND … APPLYING them.
• It’s going to take SPIRITUAL EXERCISE … “laboring” in the faith, to OBEY the COMMANDS of Almighty God.
• It’s going to take a RELATIONSHIP with the Living God.
How serious are we, when it comes to God? If you’re LOST here this morning, you need to get SERIOUS about where you will spend eternity … before it’s eternally too late. If you’re SAVED here this morning, you need find, or maybe re-discover, the riches in God’s Word. God wants a RELATIONSHIP with you. You can only find it, when you get serious with God.
STAND – PRAY
OUTLINE FOR HANDOUT:
“Command And Teach”
1 Timothy 4:6-11
INTRODUCTION: Paul speaks to the young “Preacher Boy”.
- There is no double standard … one for the Preacher and one for everybody else.
COMMAND #1 – 4:7 – “refuse profane fables”
- You have probably heard or said some …
- They all say that God is irrelevant … He doesn’t matter … there is no standard.
COMMAND #2 – 4:7 – “exercise godliness”
- God wants you to exercise your faith, and grow in godliness.
- 4:8-10a – “labor” = ‘to the point of exhaustion’.
- Godly exercise is WORK … it is COMMANDED!
COMMAND #3 – 4:10 – “suffer reproach”
- Don’t give up the ship – Matthew 5:11-12
- Don’t look for an excuse to give up church … or serving the Lord.
- If you want to get mad, get mad at the Devil!
TEACHING #1 – 4:6 – “remembrance”
- We have become so saturated with the Word of God … our spiritual system has become immune to it.
- We HEAR it … but we don’t LISTEN to God speak in His Word.
- When something becomes too available, it becomes less precious.
TEACHING #2 – 4:10 – “trust in the LIVING God”
- People react differently to a LIVING God than they do a DEAD god.
- You can’t have a Godly relationship with a DEAD god.
- The one true LIVING God, lives in the Christian.
- Is your faith ALIVE … Do you listen to God speak to you?
CONCLUSION:
• We need to take God’s Word, and God, seriously.
• We need to work on our relationship with the LIVING God.
