If you have a copy of God's Word, please open it up to 1 Timothy chapter 4. 1 Timothy chapter 4, and we're going to read verses 1 through 8, but we're only really going to be looking at verse 7, and we're only really going to be looking at the second half of verse 7, so let not your heart be troubled this morning. By way of introduction, Paul writes to Timothy, who is a young pastor, and so that he might know how to conduct himself in the household of God. And we often, I think sometimes, mistakenly think of the pastoral epistles as being for pastors, but much of what Paul tells Timothy is simply for the fact that he's a Christian. In other words, we ought to read the pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, through the lenses of Paul talking to Timothy as a Christian. As a Christian, these are the things that you are supposed to do. Yes, especially as a pastor, as a minister in the church of Christ, but it has application for every single one of us in this room. So we're gonna begin in verse one and read down to verse eight. So hear the word of the Lord from 1 Timothy chapter four, beginning in verse one. Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of the faith and of the 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 promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. And back up in verse seven, I just wanna repeat these words where we will focus our attention today. And exercise yourself toward godliness. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. We begin today a new series which I'm calling Back to the Basics. And there is always a need to return to basics. As much as we might think I'm past that, I don't need to hear about that. If you think that about a series having to do with the basics of spiritual disciplines, there will be time after the service where you can confess that pride and thank the Lord for His forgiveness later. But there's always a need to return to the basics. If you go and see a concert, some of the best musicians that you've ever seen before the concert begins, they're going to be backstage going through the most basic scales that they learned when they were a young pianist. If you go to a football game or a baseball game or any sort of sporting event before the first crack of pads, before they run out with the smoke and all the cheering and everything like that happens, you're going to see those athletes on the field doing the most basic things that are related to each position that they're in. If you go to a baseball game, they're simply going to be throwing a baseball back and forth. Now, these are the world's greatest athletes. but before every single time they perform at the highest level, they always go through the basics. And this is necessary for us as Christians, too. And we're going to go through what we call commonly the spiritual disciplines. Now, there are some children that I can see starting to sweat in this room, so I want to clarify what I mean by discipline. I don't mean when your mother gets out a spoon or when your dad takes his belt off, so just set your heart at ease. That's not what I'm talking about when I'm talking about discipline. I'm talking about discipline. I'm talking about building good habits. That's what we mean by discipline this morning. By the way, if you were beginning to sweat, children, you have good parents. Let me just say that. Your parents love you very much. But that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about spiritual disciplines in this series. And so we're going to take time over the next three weeks to help us really reorient ourselves toward basic practices of the Christian faith. And these are, we're going to cover really six disciplines, and I'm gonna go ahead and give you these disciplines. And these are not in any particular order of importance, so don't think that we start with one and then the last one isn't as important as the first one. Don't think that. But I am gonna go ahead and give you these at the outset so that you know where we're going. We're gonna begin with the Word of God, then move into prayer, and then move into evangelism. That's where we're going to be in the second week. The Word of God, prayer, and evangelism. And then in the third week in this series, we're going to look at fellowship, Christian fellowship, discipleship, and worship. So these are six what we might call disciplines of the Christian faith. And this week we're going to lay a foundation. We need to see the importance of these because if I were to come to you and say, hey, here's a bottle of pills. I think you should take these pills. You should not, as much as you might trust me, just take those pills no matter how much you might love me. Don't do that. I hope that you wouldn't do that. But if I were a doctor and I could tell you, hey, this is wrong with you, this is wrong with you, you've got these symptoms and very bad things are going to happen if you don't take these pills, if you don't take this medicine, you would be concerned about it and hopefully you would take it. So that's what we're gonna do this morning. I want to build a foundation and show the necessity of the spiritual disciplines before we move into what they are. And so that's what we're gonna do really from this one verse this morning, from this half of a verse this morning. We're gonna look at it under three headings. We're gonna look at the destination that's given, is a destination, there is a road, and there is a vehicle, a destination, a road, and a vehicle. So let's begin talking about this destination. And the destination is given to us in one word, and it's the last word in verse 7, godliness. Many Christians make the mistake of thinking that conversion or salvation is the destination. They think all that matters is that we come to saving faith in Jesus. And conversion matters. I mean, there wouldn't be anything else after that if there were not conversion. And conversion is important. You must come to faith in Jesus Christ. You must have your sins forgiven of you because of the work of Christ on the cross, because of his forgiveness, because of his resurrection. You must have that work applied to you by the Holy Spirit. You must come to saving faith in Jesus. But that is not the end of the Christian life. That's not the goal. That's not the destination. That is a means to an end. You cannot have godliness, you cannot have what God actually wants of you, which is that you would glorify and enjoy Him forever without that, but that's not the end in and of itself. And some have suggested that if that was the end, if that was the ultimate aim, that at the moment that we were converted, perhaps God would simply bring us up to heaven and maybe leave a few people here to do the evangelism, but that's not what God wants. God wants us to grow in godliness. That is the destination. Now, this word godliness is, how many of you ever heard the name Eusebius, the early church writer Eusebius? Well, this is where he gets his name from. This is the word Eusebia in Greek, and it simply means to do a good duty, to do that which is right in God's eyes, and that's what godliness is. In other places in scripture, we see the word holiness, and holiness, sanctification, which all come from the same group of words that mean to be set apart, no longer living for the world, but set apart for the purposes of God. In other places, we read the phrase of being conformed to the image of Christ or that God takes those things out of you that do not look according to God's Word, do not agree with the image of God in Christ that has now been implanted in you by the Holy Spirit. We read about God-fearing, about being obedient, about doing that which is just or righteous in God's sight. All of these ways that this is described in the New Testament have their various aspects and their various emphases that they point towards. So there are a number of ways that this is described in the New Testament. Here it's godliness, but they're all talking about the same thing. You're all talking about living in a way that pleases God, living in a way that is according to God's word. And this begins with discipline. Jesus says in Luke 9, 23, if anyone desires, anyone, note the exclusivity here, you're a part of this statement that Jesus is about to say. If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. To be a Christian, to follow Christ, you must deny yourself. This is part and parcel of the Christian life. So this is the destination in 1 Timothy 4, 7, is godliness. Secondly, there is a road. And the fact that there is a road can be seen in the second to the last word of verse 7, toward. Remember, every single word that God has inspired in this book is important, including this word that we might tend to overlook, which is the word toward. And the fact that the word toward is used here shows us that there is a road, that there is a process. That obtaining godliness is not something that comes in an instant in the Christian life. That when you are converted, when you are saved, when you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you are not instantly freed. from all sin. Now, you are free from sin, and there are really three ways in which you are freed from sin. And there are three Ps. This will be very helpful to remember. In the first place, you're freed from the penalty of sin when you are converted. You no longer are under the wrath of God, but Christ has borne that for you, and so you are immediately, when you are converted, freed from the penalty of sin. You are also at conversion freed from the power of sin or the dominion of sin, such that when the Holy Spirit comes to reside in you, he gives you the power to walk in God's commands so that you can live a life of obedience to God, dying more and more into sin and living more and more unto righteousness. but you are not yet saved from the presence of sin. You'll be saved from the presence of sin either when the Lord returns or more than likely at your death. That is how we are saved from sin. Now, the fact that there is a road shows us that there is an inescapable link between effort and progress. You know, if you work in whatever trade, if you work in a trade, if you have a skill that you've learned or if you work in business or whatever you work in, if you don't master the basics of that, you're never going to be promoted. If you can't do something basic in a store and you work in retail, you're never going to move up. If you can't do that, if you're a plumber and you can't fix a leaky faucet, you're never going to expect to advance in anything. You have to master the basics in order to have a promotion. And there is a process here. There's a link. between effort and progress. You have to put in effort at anything that you do in order to make progress at something. And the same is true in the Christian faith. Now, thankfully, we're not going to get fired by our employer. Thankfully, God doesn't fire us. However, we will miss out on promotion. We will miss out on advancement. There are things that we could obtain and have in the Christian life if we put forth the effort that God has for us. And what I'm saying is, you will not advance, you will not progress in the Christian life if you do not give yourselves to the spiritual disciplines. Now, a couple of weeks ago, we read Hebrews 12, 14, where we're talking about pursuing peace. Just a few moments ago in the worship service, we read Hebrews 12, 14, and I'm gonna read it again, because I wanna emphasize something different. Hebrews 12, 14 says, pursue peace with all people. We talked about that. Let's talk about another emphasis in this verse. Pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Think about what the author of Hebrews is saying here. Without holiness and particularly without the pursuit of holiness, you will not see the Lord. Now, remember we mentioned the plumber who couldn't fix the leaky faucet. I want you to think if you had a leaky faucet in your house and you call a plumber over and he can't fix the most basic thing that you think of when you think of a plumber, And he says, well, I've been doing this for 30 years. You would have reason to question whether or not he was telling the truth, whether or not his profession really was being a plumber. And the same is true of a Christian, that if you've been a Christian for 30 years and you have no progress, if you can't do these most basic things, if you're not giving yourself to the daily intake of God's Word, to prayer, to all of these things, then I think we have reason to believe that we ought to question your profession the same way that we would with a plumber if he can't fix a leaky faucet. If you don't have a daily intake of God's word, if you haven't disciplined yourself to do those things, then you ought to look into yourself. If you're not growing in holiness, if these things aren't a part of your life, then you need to take seriously Hebrews 12, 14 and recognize without the pursuit of holiness, no one will see the Lord. You will not see the Lord without the pursuit of holiness. Now, the pursuit of holiness doesn't save you. Christ saves you, His person, His work, what He has done on the cross and His resurrection, as we've already mentioned, that's what saves you. But the inevitable fruit of someone who has had the Holy Spirit change their lives, give them new life in Christ, grant them faith, grant them repentance, is the pursuit of holiness. And that's why the author of Hebrews says, without this, no one will see the Lord. But it is a pursuit. That's why we say there is a road. And that's why we have this mention here of the word toward. So there is a destination and it is godliness and there is a road. We must be working towards this destination. And there is also, thirdly, a vehicle. And the fact that there's this vehicle that will get us to that destination is in the word exercise, or as it is in some translations, discipline. Now, if you want to get to a location, you have to have a vehicle to get there. You can walk, you can take a boat. You can drive a car, you can take an airplane, there are a number of ways, there are a number of vehicles that will get you to a certain place, but there is only one vehicle that will get you to the destination of godliness. We think that there are instantaneous things, we've already mentioned this, where there is an instant where you're going to be godly, where God strikes you with a bolt of lightning. And by the way, if that did happen, you probably would be instantly godly because you would be dead at that moment. And that's when you're going to be freed from the presence of sin. But there is no spiritual bolt of lightning, by the way, that's going to come from heaven and simply make you all of a sudden overcome a certain sin that you've been struggling with, or all of a sudden make you a more loving person. That is not how the Christian life works. It works by the same principles that things work in the earthly realm, in the world, and that is why Paul brings us into one of my favorite areas, which is the world of sports. And here is this word, exercise or discipline yourself. It is the word gumnazo. You recognize that word? That's where we get our word gymnasium, the world of sports, the world of discipline, disciplining your body, exercising your body. This is the world, the way that Paul describes how we are to grow as Christians. It's not by lightning bolts from heaven. It is by spiritual exercise or spiritual discipline. And he explains it in the next verse, verse eight, when he says, for, that by the way, almost always in the New Testament signals explanation. When you see the word for, it's signaling explanation. For bodily exercise profits a little. There is value in bodily exercise. If you get up early and you stretch and you go run or you lift weights or you do something of that nature, there is value in that. It's going to help your body. But guess what? It's not going to help you very much if you do it one time. If you go to the gym and you lay down on the bench and you put some weights on the bar and you bench press one rep, that's not going to do you a whole lot of good. In the same way that if you try and eat healthy and you say, you know what, tomorrow I'm going to start eating healthy next year and you go and you eat a salad and then you finish it off with six rounds of candy. One time of doing something doesn't help you. And this principle that he's bringing us into, Paul is showing us how we are to advance, how we are to grow as a Christian. And it's not by one time reading your Bible. It's not by one time bench pressing or going for a run around the block one time. You have to discipline yourself on this road. You have to work towards godliness. And godliness is profitable for all things. not just for your body. Godliness will profit you long after bodily exercise will. And so he brings us into the world of discipline in the way that you obtain a strong physical life. works by the same principle that you obtain a strong spiritual life, good habits are initially challenging. Have you ever watched a three-year-old struggle to button a shirt? I mean, it makes me wanna pull my hair out, but you gotta let them button their shirt. They wanna button their shirt, and then when they start, you know. But when you woke up this morning and when you buttoned your shirt, you probably didn't think, okay, I need to take this little plastic circle and put it through this little hole. Why? Because you've done it so many times that you don't even think about it. You probably had a hundred times when you've gotten home, turned your car off and thought, you know, I don't even remember driving home because I was so deep in thought about something else. Why? Because it's a habit. It is so many times you've driven home that you don't even think about it anymore. Or with tying your shoes, buttoning your shirt, all of those things are things that become habits to us. Initially, they're challenging. Initially, we reward children when they do these things. You think, man, you got one button and a whole good job. Well, it's not a bad thing to reward those initial things, but if a 15-year-old comes up to you and says, daddy, daddy, I buttoned my shirt, you would think, why are you doing this? Why are you telling me? You don't reward that, because it should be a habit at that point. But initially, Building habits are difficult things to do. They're challenging. And the same is true in the Christian life. When you build a habit of daily taking in the Word of God, daily ensuring that you're spending adequate time in prayer, and all of the other disciplines that we're going to mention in this series, initially they are challenging. But if you do them over and over and over and over and over again, They become a part of you just like anything else in life. The same God that governed and created the principle for how you advance physically is the same God that governed and created the principle for how you advance spiritually. It is not by some lightning bolt from heaven. It is by spiritual discipline. And by the way, the same is true after you get past the spiritual disciplines. It is a difficult thing to grow in patience and really any sin that we're committing. And so you have to discipline yourself and say, OK, what is the godly response when I'm angry? It's not to respond back in anger when someone is acting sinfully towards me. It's to give a patient and loving response. And so you have to discipline yourself initially to do that thing. And it's hard to do it, because you want to strike back verbally or even physically sometimes. You get angry. But you have to discipline yourself to do that which God has said in His word. And then you do it again. And then you do it the next time, and then you do it the next time, and the next time, and the next time, over and over and over and over again until it becomes a habit. You discipline yourself, exercise yourself for the purpose of godliness. That until these habits are built up in you and become a part of you, they are initially challenging. Now, when we teach, here's a principle of learning I think we need to remember. I love to teach. I've always enjoyed teaching. I come from a line of teachers. My dad is an excellent teacher. My grandfather is an excellent teacher. They are far better teachers than me. Sometimes I think, I hope no one from my church ever goes to hear my father or my grandfather teach because they'll never come back and hear me teach. But they're great teachers. And so we like to be teaching and studying. We love these things. But not all lessons are learned the same way. You don't learn everything the same way. You don't learn everything in the classroom. Let's go back to teaching children again. How many of you have ever taught a child to ride a bicycle? Yes. How many of you are going to teach a child how to ride a bicycle one day? Yes. That's just about everybody in the room. All right. Yes, you will one day. You will, children. Now, here's the deal. When Noah was first going to ride a bicycle, I did not sit him down in the living room and pull out my blackboard with a diagram of a bicycle on it and begin working on the physics of motion with Noah. What did we do? We set him on a bike. We said, this foot goes here, this foot goes here. And you give him a push, and he falls down, and then you do it over and over and over again until they get it. When you teach your child how to tie their shoes, you don't say, okay, class, open up your textbooks to page number seven, and we're gonna begin looking at a diagram of the shoe. That's not what you do. Why don't you do that? Well, we don't do that because not all lessons are learned in the same way. And it is true, as Paul is bringing us into the world of sports, you don't learn everything by sitting in front of a computer or sitting in front of a pulpit, even. or sitting in front of a classroom, or at the back of the classroom, or wherever you sit in a classroom. You don't learn everything the same way. When Michael Jordan went on to the court, he didn't just wake up one day and become the world's greatest basketball player. Michael Jordan dribbled a lot of basketballs, shot a lot of hoops for decades before he was ever drafted by the Bulls and before he ever became the world's greatest basketball player, bar none, including with Ron James. He did not wake up and do that. Yes, he had God-given talent. Yes, he was an incredible athlete. But if he would not have worked and worked and worked as he did, by the way, you read any book on Michael Jordan, you watch any documentary on Michael Jordan, you will find out he was the hardest working person in the NBA, which is why he was the greatest. Same is true of Tom Brady, greatest quarterback who ever lived. But you may not know about Tom Brady because what many people don't talk about is he was not very highly sought after before he went into the NFL. Most of you probably don't even know where he went to college. He went to Michigan. He wasn't the best quarterback at Michigan. In fact, he's slow as Christmas. He was never a fast runner. And he was maybe a six round draft pick, something like that. People didn't want him. He wasn't very impressive. But he became the greatest quarterback of all time. Why? Because he put in the effort. He put in the effort of the intense execution of the basics. And this is exactly where Paul is bringing us here. He's saying every athlete has to have these intense execution of the basics and it's the same in the spiritual world. If you watch what's called the combine, no you don't watch it because nobody cares about the combine, but it's where all of the college athletes go before they go to the NFL. And all the scouts go there and they watch them intensely execute the basics. What do they do? They run a 40-yard dash. They have a very standard route where a receiver goes this way and he goes that way and you throw that pass and they see how accurate you are in that very simple maneuver. All of those things, very simple, very basic maneuvers, and that's exactly what all the The best scouts in the NFL look at is how well can you execute these very basic maneuvers so that you can perform at the highest level of any profession. And it's the same with any profession. The principle is true. And this is where Paul is bringing us. into the spiritual realm, it's the same. If you do not execute these basic things really, really well, you cannot progress as a Christian. You cannot expect to reach the destination, or beyond that road, or going closer and closer to the destination of godliness. If you don't progress in the spiritual disciplines, you will not grow in holiness. And that is why it's important for us to return to this at the beginning of the year. So in this series, we're going to cover these six primary spiritual disciplines, the Word, Prayer, and Evangelism. And in the last week, we're going to look at Fellowship, Discipleship, and Worship. And I want you to know that this is going to be practical. Because I think one of the things that hinders us, and one of the things that is often daunting to us is, well, I know I'm deficient in at least one area, because you've been talking about the Bible, and I'm not even reading my Bible every day. I understand that one area, being deficient in that, when you're talking about, okay, six things, that's even more daunting. But I want you to know that these next couple of weeks are going to be very practical, very practical. I'm gonna give you very, easy steps so that you can get into this. I'm not talking about tomorrow, day one, the first day of the year, you're all going to be spending four hours in prayer and two hours in Bible study and you're going to be ready to preach in two weeks. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about very simple, simple, excuse me, practical steps. And it's going to begin. The only thing that I'm going to ask you to do is pick up the piece of paper on the table at the back of the room. There is a Bible reading plan. on the table at the back of the room. Now, if you have a Bible reading plan that you like, that's perfectly fine. You do that. This is the one that I'll be using this year. It's a great plan. It only has 25 days a month, which means that if you miss a day or two days or three days or so on, up to four or five days, depending on how many days are in the month, what month it is, you'll be okay. You won't get behind and there's no need to discourage. All I'm asking you to do to begin is you pick up one of those Bible reading plans and you begin this week reading, and you will progress. And I'm gonna give you very simple steps so that you can grow in the spiritual discipline so that you can have what Paul is talking about here in 1 Timothy 4, 7, to grow in godliness. So begin with this initial step of walking to the back and picking up a piece of paper. That's how we start, amen? You see, I just tricked you because when you said amen, I was making you agree to do this. So you just, let's pray. Father, we do praise you for your goodness and your grace to us and we thank you that you have given us such simple instructions that, yes, at the outset are very difficult, very difficult for us because many of us are children in the faith still needing to build up the discipline to be able to spiritually tie our shoes or button our shirt. But God, we ask that by your grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, you would help us to develop godly habits that we might progress to be strong spiritual giants this year for your glory and for our good. In Christ's name we pray, amen.