1 Timothy, I said this morning. Let's find the third and fourth chapter of 1 Timothy. They're right next to each other. It just works that way, unless you are deucing modern math. In modern math, we don't know if any number really exists. Of course, we don't know if anything really exists in modern math, modern anything. 1 Timothy chapter 4, let's Look at chapter three, excuse me, chapter three, verse 14. These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And without controversy, Great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. Now, if you would skip down to chapter 4 and let's look at verse 7. where the Bible says, but refuse profane and old wives' fables and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. Father in heaven, as we look at this portion of scripture from Timothy and as we compare to other portions. Father, I pray you'd open our eyes on the subject of godliness. I pray that you'd help us today to breathe in the air of scripture and receive that which God has given to us. And I pray that as we are here in this auditorium this morning, that thou would save the lost. Certainly in a crowd of this size, it's very possible, indeed likely, that a man, a woman, a teenager, even a child has walked in aware that his sins are still unforgiven, still carrying the guilt of sin. I pray that today thou would save the lost. And Father, that you would encourage and build and challenge and motivate and sanctify every child of God who is already saved. Would you do a mighty work here, renewing and reviving believers and redeeming the unbelievers? Would you fill me, I pray today, with the Holy Spirit? Help Pastor Kroll, wherever he is today and whatever it is that he's doing, Pray that you would bless him and help him. For Jesus' sake, amen. I do appreciate the little bit of humor. I get the medium. So it's not quite that luxurious, but anyway. I like a little picking and teasing. I do a little and I take a little and I enjoy it. No, really, appreciate the imagination and thoughtfulness that went into that. I want to preach a message entitled The Godly and Their Godliness. Godliness is a Bible word. The scripture uses the word godly or godliness approximately 30 times and the Greek word from our Greek textus receptus is also translated holiness in Acts chapter 3 verse 12 and the simple definition is piety. Webster 1828 dictionary defines piety as extremely strict devotion, a compound of veneration and reverence of God and a love of his character. respect accompanied with love, the exercise of these affections in obedience to the will of God. And so we can understand here that godliness is certainly a character trait to be coveted. It is certainly a character trait of those who would want to walk with God. It is a character trait of those who seek to honor and glorify God. It's a top-of-the-bucket list goal for any spiritually-minded believer. There ought to be, in our prayer lives, a time that we pray for God to constantly, continually work in our lives to develop the character of Christ in us, and certainly the character of Christ would include godliness. We ought to be praying from time to time, Lord, develop your love in me. Develop your joy in me. Develop your peace in me. Develop your long-suffering, your gentleness, your goodness. Develop faith in me. Develop meekness in me. Develop temperance in me. We ought to be praying for those things. Those are much more important than the physical things. In fact, when we seek first the kingdom of God, Well, all these things, all the trifles, all the unimportant stuff, all the physical comforts of life just get added. That's the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ. Seek ye first the kingdom of God. He tells us through the apostle Paul, set your affection on things above. Seek those things which are above, not on the earth, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. In other words, There is to be a seeking and a setting of affection. There is to seek the kingdom of God, which is not meat and drink, according to Romans 14, but it's righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. And the Christian life is a spiritual life. Now that spiritual life translates into action. That spiritual life translates into an outward lifestyle. And that is the reason that godly people live a certain way. That is the reason that godly people have a certain way they talk and a certain way they wouldn't talk. And that's the reason godly people have certain places they would go and certain places they would not go. And that's the reason that godly people have in their close circle of friends a certain kind of people. That is the reason that godly people might choose to be in the house of God on a Sunday, or a Wednesday, or during revival services, or during other activities of the church. It's a top-of-the-bucket list goal for spiritually-minded people. Carnally-minded people and worldly-minded believers scoff at godliness. They actually ridicule it. They neglect it. They diminish the importance of it. They might actually slander or scandalize those within the church or within the community who want to be godly and strive to be godly and are actually praying and asking God to help them. in that endeavor. What are the things that have caused godliness to wane? What are the things that have caused godliness perhaps to be less common and less and less common as time goes on? One of them is humanism within our culture. Humanism is a philosophical persuasion that man is more important than God. And man's desires are more important than God's desires. And we have all sorts of sub-philosophies like relativism and secularism and materialism that contribute to what humanism really is. And they are just being forced on us in our culture. They're part of the They're part of the training in employment. They're part of the training in the military. They're part of all the education system. Public education in the country is just rife with humanism. What's another reason that godliness may have waned in the church? Well, the philosophy of self-love. Because when you love yourself, you don't love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. and you certainly don't love your neighbor as yourself. You love yourself and that's where it ends. Self-love is actually the cause of the tragedy of our culture. The Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some will depart from the faith. This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come. Why? For men shall be lovers of their own selves. The love of self is what has brought about the perilous times in which we live. And every time somebody determines to love himself, godliness disappears. substandard lifestyles, the acceptance of lifestyles that we wanna be Christians and then a cousin decides to go off into some deviant lifestyle or maybe a brother or sister or maybe a parent decides to just go off and have an affair and substandard lifestyles, all of a sudden, godliness goes by the wayside. And there's a lot of that in the culture in which we live. The embrace of compromise, we talked about that in Sunday school. I won't rehearse that. And then some people are just afraid they'll be accused of being Pharisees. Now, I can take that accusation. It's untrue, because a true Pharisee is a person who actually rejects the laws of God, not somebody who tries to keep them. All you have to do is read Mark chapter 7, where Jesus said, full well ye reject the commandment of God. You know, Jesus never scolded the Pharisees for the commandments they kept. It was always for the commandments they broke. It's not being a Pharisee to keep a commandment. Listen, you're keeping a commandment. It's just obedience. And you can't be godly if you disregard the commandments of God. And so we have these words, and we have these little catchphrases, and people get afraid of things that they shouldn't be afraid of. So let's look at this Bible subject this morning, and I'll try to have you out of here somewhere close to two o'clock or thereabouts. Only one amen on that. Guess you'll be an audience of one before it's over, brother. The book of 1 Timothy emphasizes godliness more than any other one book. It's mentioned several times. I'm not gonna give you the whole list of verses, but it also appears in 2nd Corinthians, and 2nd Timothy, and Titus, and Hebrews, and 2nd Peter, and 3rd John. And so I wanna, first off, talk about the availability of godliness, and keep your finger here in 1st Timothy, because we'll be coming back to that as our main text. But let's look this morning at 2nd Peter, 2nd Peter chapter one, 2nd Peter chapter one. Let's look at verses three and four. 2nd Peter one, verses three and four. according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness. Everything that we need, God's divine power has given us everything we need, all that we need, all that we need. for things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that is called us to glory and virtue, whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And so what Peter is writing to us here is that godliness is available, it's available to a saved man. The availability of godliness comes out to us in the book of Timothy. It comes out to us in these other books that I've mentioned. And what we find out is it's available to us. It's there. The grace of God, Titus chapter 2 tells us, the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world. And so this grace that brings salvation has appeared to everybody in the world. Nobody's gonna stand before God one day and say, well, you're not fair, you didn't give me a chance. No, the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. You know what that grace does? It teaches us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and how? Godly in this present world. In 1 Timothy, again, If you were to go back to 1 Timothy and chapter six, the Bible says, if any man teach otherwise and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ unto the doctrine, which is according to godliness, he is proud knowing nothing, and so on. And the Bible is very clear that godliness is something that is available to us. God has not commanded something for which he has made no provision. Let me say that again. God has not commanded something. God has not made something that a believer should strive to develop. God has not given us something that should be a goal of the Christian life without providing for it. If you want to be a godly man, you can be a godly man. If you desire to be a godly woman, you can be a godly woman. If you're here and you're in that age group that we call teenagers, I prefer young adults. If you're a young adult in this church, you can be a godly young adult. You don't have to be worldly. Nobody has to be worldly. Nobody has to be carnal. Nobody has to be devilish. It's all choices. And if you desire godliness, you can beg and plead with God for it, and He will develop that in your life. It's available to you. It's available. In fact, if you were to go on in 2 Peter, you would find out that he said, and beside this giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness. And to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity, for if these things be in you and abound, they make you that you'll neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And so what Peter is teaching us and what is taught in the Word of God throughout on this subject is that if you want it, it's there. And as a matter of fact, it's not just if you want it. It is commanded we should add to our faith. Now, look, our faith is that which Jesus Christ provides. Back in 1 Timothy 3, the Bible says, great is the mystery of godliness. There in verse 16, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. We know that Jesus Christ came into this world, the God-man. We know that he took upon him the form of a servant. He was made in the likeness of men, being found in fashion as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. We know that Jesus Christ revealed the Father to us. The Word was made flesh. and dwelt among us. The Bible tells us in Hebrews, he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest. No, Jesus Christ became a man. He was all God. He was all man. Then this mystery of godliness is that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. Number two, he was justified in the spirit. He rose from the dead after he died to pay for our sins. I mentioned in my prayer this morning there would possibly be unsaved people in here. I want you to know the price has been paid for you to be saved. Salvation is available to you, it's not automatic. It must be received, as many as received him. And it's a receiving by faith. You don't get saved by receiving a wafer. You don't get saved by receiving baptism. You don't get saved by receiving sacraments. No, it's faith. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. And when we understand that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and he was buried and he rose again the third day, and we put our faith in that, we believe that, we stop believing the things that send men to hell, and we start believing the things that allow men to go to heaven. And the gospel message of the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is that which saves a man's soul. Paul said, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it's the power of God, he said, unto salvation, not to everyone that is baptized, not to everyone that has church membership, not to everyone who does a certain amount of good works, not to everybody who has a certain religion, not to everybody in any man-made grouping, but no, to everyone that believeth. This is the record that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. He came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. And you can be saved today. So the mystery of godliness therein First Timothy 3.16 speaks of Christ being manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles. What was the whole book of Acts all about? What are we doing here today? We're preaching the word of God. What are we doing when we go knock on doors? What are we doing when we hand out gospel literature? What are we doing when we talk across the back fence when we sit around at a family reunion and there's our unsaved uncle and we try to work in a word of the gospel? What are we doing? to preach to the Gentiles. He was believed on in the world and received up into glory. Jesus Christ today sits at the right hand of the Father. He's able to save to the uttermost those that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. He's a living Savior. And if you walked in here today, without your sins forgiven, if you came to this house of worship today, and you would say, Brother Farnam, if I died right now, I don't have any assurance at all that I'd go to heaven. I'd kind of like to know that, but I didn't even know you could know that. If that's you, when we have our invitation at the end of the service, I beg you. You're only two, the maximum of two chairs away from the aisle. slip out into the aisle, come forward, we'll have somebody show you from the Bible how to be saved. You know why this congregation is here today? Because somebody at some point in their lives sat down with each one of these members of this church and opened the scripture and showed them how to be saved. Now they're no different than you are. You can be shown how to be saved as well. And so when it comes to godliness, It's something that's available to us, and it's available to saved people. And it should be the goal and, as I said, top item on the bucket list for those of us that know the Lord. So it's available. What are the advantages of godliness? We're here in 1 Timothy again. Notice, if you will, 1 Timothy 4 verse 7, or excuse me, verse 8, for bodily exercise profiteth little. But godliness, notice, is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. The profit of godliness, first of all, is earthly, and it has to do with a deliverance from temptation. You know what, people that make up their mind to live godly, the Bible says we can escape the corruption that is in the world through lust. Everybody in this room lusts after things. Everybody. You think the person beside you, the person in front of you, the person behind you has some kind of magic formula to be better? No. Everybody in this room has sin ruts. We're all sin specialists. We have certain areas where we just go astray. Every one of us. Doesn't matter if you have blonde hair, red hair, brown hair, white hair, or no hair. You know the four stages of a man's hair. Bald, fuzz, is, was. I'm heading toward the was. You see, God wants to deliver us from temptations. And he wants to deliver us from the corruption that is in the world through lust. And he tells us that in 2 Peter, in those verses we read. We see it again in 1 Peter 2.9. The Lord knoweth how to deliver whom? The godly out of temptations. God knows how to do that. And God can deliver people, and some people in this room, just like any church that I would preach in anywhere in any other state, or this state, any church, you know what, there are people in this room, you're in bondage. You're saved, but you're in bondage to something. The Lord knows how to deliver you. You don't know how to deliver you. The Lord knows how to deliver the godly. And I guarantee, the more we go after godliness, the more we seek godliness, the more we seek to add to our faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance, patience, and to patience, godliness. The more we seek to grow, that's growing in grace. That's how Peter's epistle ends, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord. And the more we seek to grow, the more we beg and plead and cry out to God that we might develop the character of Christ, the more we're going to see victories over temptation. That's one of the earthly advantages of godliness. Here's another earthly advantage, acceptable service. Hebrews 12, 28, let us therefore have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and, hear it, godly fear. You want to serve the Lord. You want to stand before the Lord one day. Someday you want to see Jesus Christ and hear, well done, good and faithful servant. Someday you want to see the Lord and realize that your service is worthy of the crowns that he promises to those who meet the qualifications. You know, they that run in a race are run all. And so Paul said, run that you may obtain the prize. Amen. Acceptable service. I'd hate to think that I preached for all these years and get to heaven and find out it wasn't acceptable. Whew. A lot of wasted wind. 1 Timothy 1.4, it helps us in the acknowledging of the truth. Look, you were here in 1 Timothy, back up to chapter one, verse four. Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister questions rather than godly edifying, which is in faith. I wanna say something. Godly edifying. I hear people say, oh, you know, I used to go to that church. I wasn't getting fed. Lack of godliness. Because if you're godly, when the word of God is preached, you're going to get fed. Godly edifying is in faith, and those people that are ministering questions, people always undermining, wondering, putting question marks where God puts exclamation points, putting question marks where God puts periods. making questions out of God's statements. That's what the devil does. Yea, hath God said? Yes, God said it. And the devil's gonna come along and say, well, do you really think God really said that? Well, I know he said it. Do you really think God meant that? Surely that means something else. No, the devil is the one who makes the question marks. Titus chapter one, verse one. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness. There it is. You know, you want some of the earthly advantages of godliness. One of them is deliverance from temptation. One of them is acceptable service. One is acknowledgement of the truth. So when you read the Bible, it makes sense to you. So you can actually acknowledge it. You know, an ungodly man is not going to acknowledge Bible truth. He's going to argue against it because ungodly people don't like Bible truth because Bible truth makes them uncomfortable. It's kind of like the fellow who said, my mind is made up. Please don't confuse me with the facts. There's actually a college course in that. And when you graduate, you can become a news commentator. The advantages of godliness can be earthly. Some of them are eternal. Notice what Paul says here through the Spirit's inspiration in Again, we're in 1st Timothy 4.8, God bodily exercise profiteth little. That means a little bit or for a little while. Yes, there's a place for bodily exercise. But notice what he says, but godliness is profitable unto all things. The previous verse says, exercise thyself rather unto godliness. Verse eight says, has promise of the life which now is, that's earthly, and of that which is to come. Do you realize that one of these days, one of these days, Jesus Christ is gonna split the sky. One of these days, the shout, the voice of the archangel and the trump of God and the dead in Christ are gonna rise first and we that are alive and remain are gonna be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Do you realize that day could be today? You realize it could be soon. You realize this might be the last generation on planet Earth before the millennium. And you know, we're all excited about it. We're Baptists, we believe Jesus could come at any moment. We're not mid-trib and pre-wrath, we're pre-tribulational, pre-rapture Bible believers. Vance Havner used to say it's gonna be hard on the way up, not to tell some of our mid-tribulation brothers, I told you so. The advantages of godliness. Jesus is coming, and godliness is something that is high in the estimation of Jesus Christ. He's looking for that in our lives. He's examining us for that. The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, beholding the evil and the good. God's looking for it. What about the addition of it? We've already looked at that in Peter, add to your faith virtue. I'll just say quickly, it's not automatic just because you're saved. I know many people that are saved that are not godly. Do I need to say that again? I know many people that are saved who are not godly. It's a sad commentary, where we get all excited that Jesus bore the cross for us, but we are not very excited about bearing our cross for him. We don't bear a cross to get saved, we bear a cross out of gratitude. And godliness is part of it, because all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, what? Shall suffer persecution. And that's that part of godliness We don't like. That's a part of living for Jesus and serving Jesus that we just don't like. We don't want to be persecuted. We don't want to pay a price to live for God. We are glad that Jesus paid a price, but we're not very excited about paying our price. Salvation is free. You can't add anything to it. Discipleship may cost you everything you have. It'll cost you some friends. It'll cost you some popularity. It'll cost you the esteem in the eyes of prominent people. It may cost you a job promotion. It may. And if things continue like they are in this United States of America, it may cost some of us our jobs, and our citizenship rights and our freedoms. I don't want that, but we won't be the first country in history to lose our freedoms. So the act of godliness, there are people who act godly in 2 Timothy chapter 3. The Bible says in verse five, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on that, but godliness is easily copied. But let's just remember that copies are not real. Copies are not the real thing. We're not to be phony, we're to be real. As I go back to that definition of godliness, strict devotion, a combination of veneration and reverence for God and love of his character, respect accompanied with love, the exercise of these affections, a desire to be devoted to his service. I wanna ask the question this morning, are you saved? If you died today, do you know 100% certain you'd go to heaven? Do you know that? You can know it. If you don't know it, you can know it before you leave the property. I'm quite certain that even though the pastor is gone today, there are a number of soul winners in this church who could open a Bible and show you how to be saved. If you're a lady, I'm sure there are ladies in this church who know how to lead somebody to Christ. I'm sure that if you're a man, there's men in this church who know how to do that. Churches don't grow to this size in the middle of a cornfield without some people knowing how to lead people to Christ. Amen. I wouldn't have said it if it weren't. I would give you my knock-knock joke, but I'll save that till tonight. Somebody remind me, okay? Put it on the announcements so I remember. If you wanna be saved today, that invitation's open, but I wonder how many of the people of God this morning realizing that godliness is not just something that God wants for you, but it's something that you want for you. It's something that maybe wasn't on your bucket list at all, and you've just placed it right up near the top, and you're gonna leave it near the top. It's going to be your focus and your goal. And you know what? There should be some people making altars this morning. We are very Baptist in our doctrinal statements, but some of our churches have become very Presbyterian in our invitations. We're a little too sophisticated to bow the knee. And that's not helping our cause. It's not helping the cause of Jesus Christ. And so let's stand this morning with our heads bowed, our eyes closed. I'm going to have the instrumentalists come this morning and start playing number 452. The song is Take Time to Be Holy, 452. And if you walked in here this morning unsaved, I'm inviting you to come to the cross of Jesus Christ. inviting you to take this wonderful free gift of eternal life which Jesus offers. If you are a believer, I'm inviting you to examine your heart on the subject of godliness. Where do you stand there and what business do you need to take care of with the Lord as the piano begins to play?