I've been preaching through Timothy, of course, in these services here at Glenholm, and this is where we are now in chapter 4 and verse 6. Here is the Word of God. If you instruct the brethren in these things, You will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of good doctrine which you have carefully followed. But reject profane and old wives' fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness. For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having a promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. For to this end, we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living God who is the savior of all men, especially of those who believe. There we end the reading of God's word from the New Testament. I have a question for you. Do you want to be godly? What I mean is, Do you want to have a life that is in harmony with God and pleasing to God? A life that's lived in the way that God wants life to be lived? Sadly, this is not a priority to us in our fallen human race, in our sin. There are a lot of people that pretend to be interested in pleasing God, But there are all kinds of superficial ways that people embrace. I say my prayers, I go to church, I try to be kind to other people, various things. But no one really takes godliness seriously until God opens their eyes to see their true need of godliness, their need of true godliness. Once this happens, they can find no satisfaction in their own superficial ways of godliness. All they have is God's way and nothing else will satisfy them. In the Bible, God's way of godliness is referred to in many different ways. It is called the way. It is called good doctrine. It is called the faith that was given to the saints. It's called words of faith. It's called the gospel. It's called the word of truth. It's called the mystery of godliness and a whole lot of other things. Whatever it is called, it is God's instructions to you about how you as a fallen, sinful man or woman can be godly. I hope that all of you who are here today want to be godly. that you have a true desire to grow more and more into ways that please God. Today, I want to focus on three things that you will need to grow in godliness that Paul points to in 1 Timothy 4, 6 through 10, the passage that we just read. In this passage, Paul begins to explain to Timothy how he can be a good minister of Jesus Christ. A good minister of Jesus Christ is obviously a minister that is godly, one that pleases God. He is one who walks in God's ways and therefore is godly as we should all be. It doesn't really matter what people think of him. He's not a good minister unless he is approved of God. So other people can think, oh, he's a great minister, but he's not unless he is approved by God. Now, Timothy was surrounded by other ministers at Ephesus that were not godly because they had abandoned the faith. That is, they had rejected God's instructions about godliness and were embracing their own way over against God's way. They're described in chapter 4, verse 1, as having departed from the faith. It says, we read this last time, said, now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith. giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons." So a minister can depart from the faith. They can never really know God, and they can end up going far away from God. I've mentioned before that the church I grew up in, when I got in university and I came to trust the Lord, I talked to the minister and found out he didn't even believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, and yet he was a minister. So Paul encourages Timothy that he will be a good minister of Jesus Christ if he continues to instruct the brethren in God's way. Now that's easy enough to understand, but the question is that we wanna focus on today is what are some of the things that Timothy needs if he is to himself continue in God's way when so many others around him have fallen away from God? Obviously, you could answer that question by saying, he needs God to keep him. But you need to understand that God does not keep us in a way that a farmer keeps chickens in a chicken coop. It's more like the way that he keeps a dog by feeding it and training it and motivating it, or more the way that we would keep a dog, where you motivate it and you train it. Of course, God's intention with us goes much deeper, but His Spirit renews and keeps our heart. My point is that his work in us is personal and it brings about a response of loyalty and obedience to him rather than being kept up in a chicken coop that you can't get out of, you know, you can't go away. He does not just keep us as in a prison, but he works in us so that we become more and more loyal to him and more and more devoted to him. And so you may also ask, what do I need in order that I might grow in godliness? This is what Paul shows Timothy in this passage. And here is instruction for all of you, not just for ministers, anybody that wants to be more godly. So, first of all, you must be nourished with words of faith and good doctrine. It's impossible to be godly if you don't receive God's instructions about godliness. This is what you might call the food of godliness. You know what happens if a person doesn't eat? They starve. Likewise, if the person eats but is somehow unable to process the food so that they don't receive any nourishment from it, it cannot be healthy and will eventually die as well. My father had cancer in his stomach and he couldn't process the food and he died. He could not receive nutrition. And so it is for you. You cannot possibly be godly unless you are continually nourished from God's word. You have to feed on the words of faith and good doctrine is what he told Timothy. You need to be where you look for the words of faith. You need to know where to look for the words of faith and good doctrine. And Paul tells us in the second letter to Timothy, God's instructions to us are found in the scriptures, the Bible, from which Timothy had been taught from childhood. So in 2 Timothy 3.14, this is in the second letter to Timothy, He says, But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. What does that say then? God gives you everything that you need to know in order to please him. The Bible is sufficient. You don't need to go beyond it to make you complete and to be thoroughly equipped for every good work. It is not, the Bible is not mere human writings, but it says here that it's inspired by God, given by inspiration of God. It's breathed by God, is literally what the language is. So it's like God is speaking to us when we go to the word. That's how we hear from him and learn what he wants. It's here then that you find nourishment for godliness. This is just what we find in Psalm 119 verse 9 that we sang earlier. How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your word. You could say, how can he be godly? It's by paying attention to God's word. Now this ought to stir us up to feed on God's word. God has appointed two ways for us to receive his word. Do you know what they are? The first is by hearing the word preached. Before he returned to heaven, Jesus commanded that the gospel would be preached, what we're doing now, to all people, and that they would be taught to observe all things that he had commanded. Those who do not willingly attend to the preaching of the word put themselves in peril because they resist the ordinance that Jesus made for how we're to learn the word of God. Inevitably, they will suffer from malnutrition. But it is not enough to just listen to the word when you hear it preached. The goal is to be nourished by it. You want to take it in so that it makes you healthy and in godliness. The aim of good preaching is to apply the word of God to your life. So like right now, if you hear this, you say, yeah, I heard that we're supposed to go to the Bible for our nourishment. But then if you take it in as nourishment, then you start going to the Bible to get nourished in that way, or to preaching in this case. It must be your aim to be nourished. You ought to pray before you hear God's word. Pray that God will nourish you with his truth. We prayed at the beginning of this service that it will be assimilated into your life, that it will penetrate to the very core of you, to your heart. Really, you ought to pray that you will hear God speaking to you through the preaching of the word, because God uses it to bring truth to us and change us. And you ought to meditate on the word as well. What does that mean? Does it mean you sit around and go, hmm? and empty your mind? No, that's the wrong kind of meditation. The Bible kind of meditation is where you take the word of God and you turn it over and over and think about it and how it applies to you in your life. Something that stays with you when you meditate on it because you're thinking about it, you're carrying it with you. It's sort of like a cow chewing the cud after you've heard things and then you chew the cud and get the nourishment out of it. Remember the illustration, that's one that we used last time about how when there's something that you're really interested in, then you remember it. You know all about it. Not because you have a great memory, but because you can't stop thinking about it. You keep on going over and over in your mind, and so then you remember it. Somebody loves baseball, and they'll know all about all the stats of the different players and things like that. They just learn it all, and they can tell you, give you all kinds of answers about everything. Well, that's how you are if you need to be, if you want to be nourished up by the word of God. You say, oh, I don't have a very good memory. Well, you don't have to. If you're interested, and you're wanting to use it, you'll begin to apply. The second way, so that's the first way, is through preaching. The second way to receive the Word is by your own private study of the Word. In many respects, the reason there is so much literacy in our society is because our Protestant forefathers saw the importance of reading the Bible. And so schools were established to teach people that didn't know how to read to read. And missionaries still, this still goes on in the world, missionaries will go to another country, and one of the first things they do to a place where they don't have any written language, they'll give them a written language. They'll use our letters and put the words, make sounds to give the words, usually, because that's what they're familiar with, and then they give them a written language that they can use so that they can read and understand because God uses the reading of the word. So wherever the gospel has flourished, there's always been an emphasis on teaching people to read. Since God has revealed his will to us in writing now in the New Testament, then reading has been taught along with the gospel. Those who cannot read are to listen to the public reading of the word and to meditate on that. But what a blessing when you can read yourself and have a Bible. Interesting story is there is an elder that taught John Brown of Haddington many things from the word when he was a young man. He was an elder in the church and he didn't know how to read. But he had something that was very effective. He had listened to the word read, and he had the whole Bible memorized from listening to it. He didn't have any audio things to listen to, but just listening to it, they read through the scriptures in the church, and over the years, he had come to put the whole thing to memory. But just as mere listening to sermons is not sufficient, so mere reading of the Bible is not sufficient. The word of God is to be food for your soul. If you read and are not nourished, then you read in vain. Reading the Bible is not meant to be a religious ritual that you perform. Sometimes people know, oh, I'm supposed to read the Bible, and so then they make that one of the religious rituals that, okay, I read, and then they go on their way. They didn't get nourished. Like, what's the point of eating if you don't get nourished? That's the whole purpose. No purpose of reading if there's no nourishment. You're to come as a soul longing to be nourished up on the good words of God, and then to receive that and to go along with it. Observe that it says of Timothy that he had carefully followed the words of faith and good doctrine. Followed them. He had been nourished by them so that they became part of his life. He received the truth and then practiced it. Now, what is the way that God has revealed to us? Okay, we need to talk about what is the way that he's revealed to be godly. Well, obviously, I can't be exhaustive here. The instructions of God are found from Genesis to Revelation. Even Timothy, who had studied the word from childhood under the apostle Paul, still needed to continually be nourished in the word, as Paul told him. But it's possible to summarize the way of godliness. But we can find God's way to be godly summarized for us throughout the Bible. When Jesus first appeared in his public ministry, the message that he preached everywhere, anyone know what it was? He said to repent and believe. Okay, here are his words, Mark 1, 14. It says, now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, went all over the place doing this, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. So God's way is summarized with that. Repent and believe the gospel. Repentance occurs when you look at God's moral commandments and you confess that you've miserably failed. Of course, the greatest commandment is that we're to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength that we confessed earlier today. We realize I haven't done that. I'm not really connected to God like that. I don't live because of love to God. You acknowledge that these commandments are just and right and that you ought to have lived that way. They ought to have been kept by you, but you admit that you have not kept them. You come short of God's way. This makes you cry out to God and say like it does in Psalm 119, how can I cleanse my way? And that is where believing the gospel of the kingdom comes in. Okay, so the repentance is when we realize, hey, I'm not really connected with God, I haven't really loved God, I haven't really lived for Him, I've come short of His commandments. But then you say, okay, how can I cleanse my way? Well, the gospel tells us how Jesus came to wash away the sins of His people through His death on the cross, by looking to Him to cleanse you, your still imperfect efforts at implementing all that Christ commanded are then accepted by God. So in other words, I trust Christ for forgiveness, and then even though I still don't love God the way I should, because I'm trying to grow up into that, you have repented, and I'm trying to do that, Jesus cleanses me from my sin so that I'm accepted of God. And by the working of the Holy Spirit, you become more and more godly. So you grow and you go on being nourished up in the words of faith. Always remember that God keeping God's way not only has to do with obeying the moral commandments. Some people get off on that. They think it's just by obeying. No, you have to be cleansed through. That's why Jesus came and died on the cross. Jesus is God's provision for sinners. So the message is not just repent and live a new life, turn over a new leaf toward living toward God. That's necessary. But repent and believe the gospel, repent and trust in the good news that salvation comes by Jesus. We look to him to do the saving because we can't save ourselves. We turn to him, we turn away from our own way, we turn to him, and then he does the saving. As sinners, we must keep the way that God appointed for sinners, which is summed up in those words. repent, and believe. So this is the way of godliness according to God. Those whose eyes have been opened to see their need of cleansing cannot be satisfied, this is what I said before, with any other way than Jesus Christ. If you have found this way of godliness through Jesus Christ, you have been nourished up in the words of faith and good doctrine, and you need to continue in Christ to continue to be nourished. So you must then, as it says here with Timothy, to Timothy, Paul says, you must reject profane and old wives' fables. That's kind of an interesting language, isn't it? If you have the word of God, you've found God's way of cleansing in Jesus Christ, why would you embrace some other way of godliness? This is exactly what some had done at Ephesus, where Timothy was. As it says in 4.1, They had departed from the faith, doing what? Giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons or devils. And as I showed you when we studied that passage a few weeks ago, the doctrines of demons are not presented to us as a devil with horns and a red suit and a pitchfork. They are presented as enticing words of man's wisdom. Isn't this clever? Isn't this smart? That's how they're presented to us. They're presented as very spiritual-sounding ways to attain godliness. That's why it's so important for you to do what is said here, to carefully follow God's way is set forth in the word. You need to have discernment so that you can reject these profane wives, old wives fables. By using these terms to describe other ways, Paul's making fun of them. See, philosophers in Paul's day would often speak of their opponent's position as old wives' fables, stories that old women that had little else to do but concoct among themselves. and calling them profane was especially cutting because those who propagate them pretended to be spiritual just as they do today. Some of them with wide-eyed would testify of some strange experience they had where they encountered some divine thing or something in which they were made to fall on the floor or to speak gibberish or something like that. This was common in the day when Paul wrote this to Timothy. Some of them would have visions of the saints or of God himself, you know, that they would talk about. Oh, I spoke to angels or, you know, whatever it was. Others walking around with fancy robes, this came about later on, paper robes, I mean, fancy hats and paper hats and fancy robes, and they would have incense burners and cathedrals filled with all kinds of images and different things going on. The word profane means that it's making fun of that, saying it's common or vulgar. It's not God's way. It's not the way of holiness. They call it holy, and it may look holy, and it may seem wise, but what we need is the simple godliness that comes from following God's word. There are plenty of such ways about today. There are those, for example, that make godliness to consist in casting out demons. And talk about fables. They have formulas, chants, potions, and all sorts of foolish things that they use to put up barriers against demons. Sprinkle dust around on their door frame and doing all kinds of different rituals. All kinds of stories and testimonies they have to support their teaching. The question must always be, what does the Bible say? It's not in the Bible to do that kind of thing, sprinkle dust around or something. So it must be rejected. Isaiah said, to the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, it's because there's no light in them. Then there are those who have their fables or myths, the original word is muthos, myths, about the saints, about how the Virgin Mary appeared at Fatima or about how she, there was an image of her on a wall at Tim Hortons or something. Some of you heard about that a number of years ago. And people listen to these myths with great enthusiasm and hope that in some way they can tap into some kind of higher spirituality by connecting with these things, get close to God by visiting these shrines or by coming around bones of dead saints or whatever it is. But we must always ask again. What does the Bible say? That's where it always goes back. If it's not in the Bible, then it should be rejected. Your nourishment needs to come from the word, not from fables. If you would be godly, you must carefully follow the words of faith and good doctrine. From this, Paul moves on to the next thing you need to be godliness, training. Okay, so you have the word, now you need training. You must exercise yourself toward godliness. You see that at the end of verse seven? I think I could safely say that a lot of professing Christians are quite uncomfortable with this instruction. It's one of those passages that makes people uncomfortable, professing Christians I'm talking about, one that they kind of want to explain away. Training yourself to godliness? The word translated exercise yourself toward godliness is a word that's similar to gymnasium in the original language. So it was what was done in a gymnasium. Great importance was placed on the gymnasium among the Greeks. This was certainly the case at Ephesus where they had a high-ranking, where a high-ranking officer was appointed to train boys in the city. in sports and things. Paul is telling Timothy that he must exercise or train, do the gym thing, to use the Greek word like gym, for godliness in the way that people would train for the Olympics. So this is offensive in popular Christianity because it seems unspiritual to the modern brain to train to be godly. Popular sentiment would be that godliness is just supposed to kind of happen to you. You just kind of get zapped, and then you're godly. All of a sudden, you're all, you had a vision, you had some kind of experience. You know, whoever heard of training for godliness? Well, you hear it right here in God's Word, and Timothy says that. Or Paul says it to Timothy. Godliness is supposed to happen to you, according to this other way, when you're listening to music. You're moved into a higher state, a frame of mind. Or it happens when you go to hear an evangelist, or summer camp, or you're sort of overcome by God, and you have an experience that changes you forever and ever. You get zapped during prayer or after seeing a vision of some kind from after speaking in tongues or something, or just when you walk into a big cathedral and you're overcome with awe and you become godly through that. That's not how godliness works. God's word plainly says that we exercise ourselves toward godliness. This suggests that you become more and God, you become more godly in the same way that a soccer player becomes better at soccer. Does he do it by simply going to a weekend seminar on soccer, and suddenly he's a great soccer player? Like, I went to this soccer seminar, and now I'm a great soccer player. I'm ready to go take everybody on. No, he has to put in the long, hard hours of training and work. The only way he can become good is by practicing day after day after day. There are no shortcuts to take. Nothing replaces regular training. Now it's true that you can learn about God and have a deeply, an experience that initiates things like hearing a sermon, coming to believe on Jesus Christ for the first time in your life, and it can be a life-changing experience. But the godliness that develops comes about not by getting zapped. but by training and discipline. If you think you can go to a weekend retreat and become godly, you're like the guy that thinks he can go to a weekend soccer camp and then be proficient on the field, be an expert. I don't mean to say, again, that you can't be converted to Christ at a single meeting. It doesn't even have to be over an entire weekend. Nor do I mean to say that as a believer you can't be redirected into new ways from a single sermon that changes your life forever. 3,000 were saved at Pentecost hearing one sermon. They were brought from the darkness to the light in a very real sense to become godly people. But in the sense that Paul is speaking about here, it was just the beginning, you see, it was the start. They had learned the way of God. It's like realizing that you need to go into training and you begin the process. You come to God, you're restored to him, and then you start to walk. Jesus did not command only that the gospel would be preached with a view to converting people. But when he gave the great commission, he said to teach them all things that I have commanded you, make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. So conversion brings you into his training, and then that training is to continue day after day after day in your life. Even someone who had made as much progress in the faith as Timothy is commanded by Paul to exercise yourself toward godliness. It's not unspiritual to exercise yourself to become godly. There is yet more for him to attain. And hard, diligent, rigorous training is required. Our problem is that we always are looking for shortcuts or ways that require very little effort. What athlete makes progress without any effort? Let me give you a specific example that you can all relate to. We recently finished Colossians in our family worship in the evenings. We went through Colossians not long ago. And in Colossians 3, 12 through 14, we find some of the most neglected behaviors that we're called to practice as God's chosen people. Paul says, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies. Okay, what do you care about? It's trouble that other people are having. Kindness. Humility, where you see other people as more important, you act as if they're more important. Meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection. Now let me ask you, do you think that these things just happen to you? Do you just get zapped and then all of a sudden you're able to do all that? that one day you wake up and suddenly you're full of tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, and long-suffering? Or do you look more like a kid when he hears these things for the first time on skates? He's trying to learn how to skate. And like the kid on the skates, is it not true that the only way that he's gonna make progress is to stay on those skates and keep on practicing, keep on training? And that is the way to become really good at it. You have to put it in the hours and the hard work. That's just what Paul is telling us to do here. There's nothing complicated about it. The only way to become good at running is to run, not by talking about running. You can talk about it all day, but it's not going to help you to run better, maybe a little bit. God has given you the grace to do the things that he has called you to do, but it is by means of hard work that you become proficient. You become more merciful by being merciful even when you don't feel like it. You know, you have the opportunity to be merciful and you think, oh, I'm kind of tired. and then you don't do it. You become more kind by being more kind even when you don't feel like that, when it's awkward or when it seems mechanical. You go on and you learn to do it until it becomes part of you. You become more humble by being humble. More long-suffering by being long-suffering. Are you training in these things? The opposite is just as true. How do you learn to be a person that has a cutting comment that is right on your tongue, just really clever at cutting people down and getting back at them? It's by practice. Same way. You do it lots and lots, and you get better and better at it. How do you get good at lying? You know, little children aren't very good at lying. You know, they got the chocolate all over the face or whatever. But when you get older, you become a lot more skilled and proficient at it because you practice. You learn to be proud by being proud. Thinking about yourself. Sometimes we say that we don't have to work at these things. In a way, that's true that they do seem to come pretty easily. But the sad reality is that if you're really good at it, then it's because you've practiced it so much. If you're really good at cutting other people down, you've practiced. That's how you got good at it. A two-year-old is not very good with lying, but if he keeps on doing it by the time he's a teenager, he's smooth. The question is not if you're training. The question is, in what are you training? Everyone is either sowing to the flesh and reaping corruption or sowing to the spirit and reaping fruit. The same is true of your children. They're always training. They're always learning how to do things better. to do wicked things better or to do godly things better. You're called to discipline them to godliness. And this passage says you're to discipline yourself to godliness. But don't think for a moment that this is something you can do by your own strength. For one thing, you must remember that true godliness always requires the cleansing of Christ, which I talked about before. Even your very best works need forgiveness, because they're not all that they should be. They're not acceptable in God's sight. Secondly, you must remember that you cannot make any progress in godliness apart from the Holy Spirit working in you to bring forth that fruit. But does this mean you don't need to exercise? The Spirit is the one who enables you by giving you a heart to obey God's Word and to do the hard work that's necessary for godliness. So in other words, you do have to exercise. What does the Spirit have to do with it? He's the one who makes you desirous to do that and to go on with it. In the end, you may be able to say, as Paul, I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God that was in me. It's all his fruit, but he works it into us by bringing us through the process of rigorous training. Now, obviously, if you're going to do the hard work of training yourself toward godliness, you're going to need something that every athlete needs. Okay, what's the next thing that Timothy is told here? So there's having the word that we use, and then there's the training. We need motivation, motivation. And where do you get motivation? You get motivation when you see how worthwhile it is to pursue something. You need to see how worthwhile it is to pursue godliness. What is it that makes you stupidly hold on to your sin? Why do you continue to allow bitterness or malice or some petty quarrel to remain in your spirit? People can have a little quarrel with each other that lasts for 20 years. It's not that you just don't think it worth the trouble to purge it from. Is it not that you just don't think it's worth the trouble to purge it from your life? It's too much trouble. I don't I'm just going to live with this thing. What is it that causes you to let greed or immorality grow up in your heart and live there so comfortably? Is it not that you don't see the benefit of rooting out those noxious weeds? You don't see how that that desire for pornography or whatever it is that's festering there and that you're feeding. You don't see how all the effects it's going to have on your life. What is it that keeps you from working on your sluggishness about studying God's Word and about meditating on it, about speaking of it to others? You don't think it's really worth the trouble to bother with working on that, with changing. But when you know that there is something worthwhile and certain at the end of the training, then you're motivated to exercise. A farmer goes into all the hard work of plowing and planting because he expects harvest at the harvest time. An athlete puts in the long, hard hours of training because he expects to be able to qualify for Olympics or whatever he's trying to do. He does it because he believes it to be worthwhile, that the training will produce good results. But my brothers and sisters, godliness has far better promise than any of these other things. To godliness, God promises life. Look at verse eight. For bodily exercise profits a little. but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. If you talk to people who have won a gold medal, they'll often tell you about when they win it, then they think, okay, what now? I reached the goal. Now they can do, I guess, serial commercials or something, right? But the life that's promised here is nothing else but godliness. It's being with God, it's being near to God. The life that is promised here is eternal life, life with God. The life in which a soul is again able to commune with God and live under the blessedness of God's favor and reward. The life in which you can give to God what pleases Him, in which God lavishes you with all kinds of gracious benefits. The light, this life has two parts to it. As it says here, the life that now is and that which is to come. In this life, God promises us the forgiveness of sins, the acceptance of our persons as righteous, the receiving of us as sons who can pray to our heavenly father in whom he begins to shape us after his likeness, which is sanctification. He makes us mindful of his great love and causes us to rest in his love and his forgiving mercy. And to the life to come, He, in the life to come, he promises the resurrection of our bodies in glory so that we'll have new bodies or these bodies renewed so that we no longer are sick or die or we're immortal. No more infirmities, nothing else, no more death. Absolute freedom. He also promises absolute freedom from sin and perfection and holy. Imagine that to never send again. That's what God promises in the end. All for for all eternity to live in glory and bliss. These are the things that are promised to godliness. But don't forget what godliness is. It's walking in God's way and the way that he has commanded for us who are sinners to walk. And that is that we repent, turn away from our sin in our own way, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Then we turn from our own way and we embrace him as the Lord and Savior to follow for the rest of our lives by the grace of his spirit. As you grow in godliness, that is as you embrace more and more of God's way, he enriches that life that he has promised to give you. First, he gives you a greater profusion of the blessings of this life. Second, he will bring you into a greater degree of blessedness in the life to come. This is the time to bear fruit for eternal life. What you do now will count for eternity. Your reward in heaven will be based upon the degree of godliness that you have obtained while you are here. This is what Jesus meant when he said we needed to lay up treasure in heaven and not on the earth. This is why it is profitable, as it says, for you to exercise yourself to be godly. For bodily exercise profits a little, But godliness is profitable for all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of the life that is to come. God's promise to bless godliness with life is something you can count on. God knows our weakness to believe his promise to godliness. The reason that we don't exercise ourselves to godliness with more diligence is because we don't believe the promise of the rich life that now is and that is to come that he gives to the godly. And so to help us in our weakness, the spirit tells us in verse nine what God says in verse eight is a faithful saying. and worthy of all acceptance. It's something you can count on. This is worthy of all acceptance. Do you think that anyone has ever been disappointed at the end of their life? Because, oh, you know, I spent too much time serving God. I spent too much time pursuing godliness. Maybe to bodily discipline and austerity they might have been disappointed, but not for spending too much time on godliness. And what about on the Day of Judgment? Will you sigh and say, why did I give so much effort to the pursuit of godliness, where there were so many things I could have done that would have been more profitable? That's not what you're going to say. No, the saying that godliness is profitable in every way is absolutely faithful. And as it says, worthy of acceptance by every man, woman and child, you will not be disappointed if you pursue it. Paul himself pursued godliness in such a way that some people said he was a madman. but he had good reason to do as he did. He pursued godliness with such vigor because he trusted in the living God. Look at verse 10. For to this end, he says, we both labor and suffer reproach, and that word labor is like toil, and suffer reproach, people opposing him, because we trust in the living God. He was sure that God would deliver on what he had promised, so he was willing to suffer beatings and hunger and all kinds of reproach. and the care of the churches and all kinds of other burdens in the service of Christ. He was sure that it was all worthwhile because he knew the living God would come through on all that the living God had promised and that his promises were richer than he could even imagine. He knew that he was not serving a dead God as it says here, but what the living God, not a dead God who can't do anything for his servants, but the living God who has all power. Do you trust in the living God like Paul did? Do you really trust him? Do you trust him enough that you're willing to rigorously exercise toward godliness because you believe what God says that it will be profitable? Paul also labored and suffered because he believed that the God that he served is the Savior of all men. Look at verse 10 again. For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe. Now what does Paul mean when he says that he's the Savior of all men? Did Paul think that everybody was going to be eternally saved? Based on his other writings, Paul obviously did not mean that everyone would be eternally saved. For he wrote a lot about judgment that awaits those who reject Christ. I believe that Paul means that Jesus is a Savior for all men. In other words, there is only one deliverer for all men, and it's Jesus. There's not another one. There's not another one that you can find somewhere. And either you're saved by him, or there's no salvation for you. God made him to be Lord and Savior, and not just for one nation, but for all nations, all people everywhere. He is the Lord and Savior and no other. All men everywhere are commanded to repent and believe in him. Now, if they do not acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior, then He will judge them and cut them off for all eternity from His blessing. He is appointed as Savior of all men, but the only ones who are saved are those who believe. For others, He is the appointed Savior that they rebelliously rejected. Indeed, what a fitting note then to conclude on. There is no godliness apart from the Savior. Turn from your sin, embrace him, and you will obtain life. If you reject him, then there is no life for you. Please stand and let's pray. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the life that you have called us to live. You have called us to be godly, and through Jesus Christ, you have made it possible for us to be godly. We can repent of our own way, and we can come to Jesus for forgiveness of sins, to trust in him, and trust in him to help us to go on in the way of godliness. We thank you that the promise to godliness is a promise for life that now is and also that which is to come. And we pray then, Lord, that you would help us to be highly motivated, that we might come to your word, that we might be nourished, that we might come to the word to be fed and to be nourished up so that we can grow in godliness. And then that we would be very rigorous in our exercise, that we would apply ourselves, that we would seek to put the word into action, to believe it, to go over it, and to retain it, and to rest in it, and to walk in the truth, to do the things you've called us to do. There's all kinds of things that are in your word, and we pray that it would be our desire to be pleasing to you, that we would love you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and that we would love our neighbor as ourselves. Father, we thank you for giving us a savior. Without Jesus, we could have no hope whatsoever of the life that you have promised, the life of godliness that now is and that which is to come in life, which is to come. So we pray, Lord, that you would help us to grow and to indeed be disciplined. Help us to be encouragers of each other and also of our children, that we may grow up together in the Lord. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do his will, working in you what is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.