Nourishing and Strengthening Our Faith

1 Timothy chapter 4 I want to get into our our lesson tonight because um I don't want to waste time I have until a certain period of time tonight so verse number six the Bible says this if thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things Thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ nourished up in the words of faith and of good Doctrine where unto thou has attained verse 7 but refuse profane and old wives fables and exercise thyself rather unto godliness for bodily exercise profited little but godliness is profitable unto all things having promise promise of the life that is now that now is and of that which is to come verse 9 this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation for

therefore we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the Living God who is the savior of all men especially of those that believe let's pray and then we'll get into our lesson tonight father we love you so much and we thank you for the opportunity that we have to be here tonight to uh worship and and fellowship together uh thank you for the time of of singing uh just to be able to uh to glorify your name but now as we get into your word would you speak to us and would you use me as a mouthpiece to be able to uh say what you would want me to say and help me Lord to be able to uh hide behind you as as I as I teach her word tonight so father we ask that you would just be with us

tonight and open our hearts open our ears and open open our eyes to you in Jesus name we pray amen so 1 Timothy 4: 6-10 Paul is basically encouraging Timothy to eat well and he's also encouraging Timothy to exercise and he tells him he gives him the reason why later now he he's telling him to eat well spiritually and to exercise spiritually there's there's places where that's important to us physically but Paul is actually going to highlight why this is so important for a Christian to pay attention to these things and so I guess the question tonight before we get into our lesson is how is your spiritual health how is your spiritual health let me let me just give you kind of a context and

disclaimer for this passage uh this passage is a challenge specifically for Timothy who was the pastor and leader of the church in Ephesus and um in Ephesus at this church there have been problems uh confusions even and false teaching that have Arisen in this church and Timothy if you can remember he is about 30 years old as he is leading this church so Timothy a young uh person I say young because I'm still in that age Rin so a young uh Pastor is probably overwhelmed and he is probably uh he probably feels a little over his head because could you imagine as a young person trying to preach truth and you have older people or maybe majority of the church that is questioning your Authority that

is not obeying God's word that are actually preaching false truths and false teachings these false prophets were teaching false doctrines and I imagine that that this church uh the the church members were probably questioning his authority and I imagine that because Timothy and Paul addressed this as well I imagine that there were some ladies and women that were trying to step over Timothy as well and and trying to usurp and trying to teach in the church here in Ephesus and although Paul is writing specifically to Timothy his message is actually very important to the church in general so this isn't just an encouragement to a young pastor this is an encouragement to every single believer

because we have been given the word of God and we live in the world where there will be false doctrines and where there there will be false prophets as Christians will face opposition from the world we we'll face oppositions uh from just false teachers themselves and we also face lies from the father of Lies uh in our Sunday school our teenth Sunday school we've been uh teaching through um lies that we believe and you might be surprised that how many lies you yourself have come to believe that is actually unbiblical and against what scripture teaches um but I've been just I've been encouraged to see the response from our teenagers and them soaking up God's truth and what we do is we teach

the lie or we say what the LIE is and then we combat it with with the truth from God's word and that's actually how we combat false doctrines is by going to the source which is the truth but here's the thing if we are not spiritually strong we will be easily swayed if we are not eating right spiritually and if we are not exercising spiritually the Bible actually says exercising onto godliness if we're not doing those things then we will be easily Swip so tonight we're going to look at Paul's words to Timothy and find out how we can be spiritually strong for the Lord so verse number uh 6 and S the first thing that we need to understand or we need to do is we need to eat spiritually we need to

eat spiritually the verse number 6 and 7 says this if thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things Thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ nourished up in the words of faith and of good Doctrine where unto thou H has attained but refuse profane and old wives fables and exercise thyself rather un unto godliness now what is Paul referring to when he says in verse number six if thou put the brethren in remembrance um you have to we have to take a step back and look at the ear earlier part of this passage when Paul says these things he's actually referring back to verse number three and uh 3 to 5 the beginning part of this and in verse number three Bible says this forbidding to

marry and commanding to abstain from Meats which God had created to be received with Thanksgiving so here's the thing some people in this church or some of the members of this church in Ephesus were forbidding things or were putting things that were putting unbiblical restrictions on things that God had called good that God had actually made good and so they they started to to forbade marriage and they Tau that certain foods were off limits for believers um last uh before my portion of uh Timothy Pastor John preached on this p on this uh from verses number 1 to five and he highlighted how there's people in the church that have gone away from the Lord and these people have actually followed

after their own sins um and this is so true a person that has seared their conscience as Paul would state is a person that does not even believe that a a something that's wrong is wrong what they actually have made to believe is that something that's wrong is right that that's what a seared conscience is is someone who has made something that is a lie a truth it's so seared that they don't need it doesn't bother them anymore and this is so true for Sinners because Sinners will do these things but I want to highlight some other another aspect of this which Paul actually addresses here is Paul is actually calling the false teachers and the false prophets the ones that had this seared con

conscience so what that means was these were people that studied scripture that were had some form of leadership but they were swaying the people away from God's truth because what they were doing was they were preaching things that God said that's not actually what is right and so they they started to uh preach uh things that were not Doctrine and they they they they use things that were standards or that were preferences and they put it up into what they would call their own Doctrine and we know this to be true because that's what Israel and the the Pharisees did uh in the law the Pharisees were so passionate and zealous about keeping the law that they actually put up a lot of safeguards

outside of the law just so they don't break it and if they break it they would consider that as a sin and this is what the false teachers and the false prophets were saying hey if you do not marry and if you get stay away from from these food you're spiritual you're doing good because you're you're you're being really religious in how you're doing it Paul makes it clear God has blessed both marriage and food in this context this is the problem the issue that uh Timothy had to address that Paul is actually addressing in his word and he and Paul refutes this by saying that every creature of God is good and can be received with Thanksgiving and we we see Paul actually addresses this in Romans

chapter 14 again uh with what is right to some people is wrong to some people but what is wrong to some people is actually right to some like there's there's confusion there but the Bible says that whatever is done without faith is sin and that's the problem here is that if you're not taking it with Thanksgiving and faith and that that is sin because it's going against your conscience there but here I find it interesting that Paul actually had to address this problem to Timothy and I had to question was was did Timothy not a address the issue that is happening in this church that Paul had to write out write it out and say hey the people that are forbidding marriage and forbidding food are

wrong and it was was Timothy just not doing his job in actually calling that out um and I think that's probably part of the reason why Timothy is encouraging I mean Paul is encouraging Timothy to nourish himself in truth so that he would be able to combat these these lies that are that are risen in this church and so for Timothy um he is to remind the Believers of the truth of God's word so they don't fall for false teachings and he is to stay he is to be grounded in sound Doctrine and help others to do the same and that's his job but why did why did Paul have to do that as well and um I think maybe Timothy did address the issue but people didn't want to listen to him and maybe Timothy did

preach against these people but because there are so many of the people in his church that were making this right that maybe he was timid and didn't want to follow through on that and so Paul pretty much had to establish his own leadership and and he said it in chapter 1 in 1 Timothy I am an apostle and my son Timothy I'm leaving here in Ephesus listen to him and so what Paul is doing here he's actually making sure that the church in Ephesus understands that Timothy has every right to preach the truth of scripture that he's preaching that he's teaching to his church and maybe Timothy struggled to refute the false teaching because he wasn't sure how to explain God's truth clearly or or maybe

the false teaching sounded so good that it appeared spiritual that it just yeah that's right if I am to be spiritual then I should stay away from marriage and food and things like that and to Timothy it just sounds good and maybe that's why he didn't know how to quote this scripture to refute that problem or quote this scripture to refute whatever this false Doctrine was but as Christians we're often good at creating our own rules that end up being false doctrines as well and Paul I praise the Lord for Paul that he's able to back up Timothy and say nope this is what true truth is Timothy here's here's what they should be doing and he gives them what the correct thing is and then he

encourages Timothy to study God's word so he himself can can uh nourish himself in the truth but here's the problem I think we might look at these false prophets and false teachers and say yeah they're wrong but a lot of times we've kind of put up our own false doctrines in our own lives and here's what I mean just like these false teach teachers we can forbid things that God never forbade adding unnecessary burdens to Christian Living um we must be careful not to replace God's truth with human Traditions or personal preference or personal convictions 1 Timothy chapter number 4:7 says but refuse profane and old wives fables and exercise thyself rather unto godliness the word profane in verse

number s has the idea of irreverent or worldly or Unholy yeah it's whatever is sinful yeah as a as a as a minister at this church Timothy you should stay away from this and that's very applicable to us Christians as a as a Son of God as a child of God or as a daughter of God there are some things that are just worldly that are sinful that you should stay away from because it's not right but then he uses the word old wives fa and the word um old wives um comes from it comes from the Greek word which means old woman or implying like silly superstitions or childish beliefs and the word uh fabl uh means myth which is myth myth Mythos which where we get our word myth from and it it just means uh

fictional story and Paul uses this term elsewhere to describe false teaching in second Timothy later on when he writes Timothy again and Titus Chapter number 1:14 he says this not giving heed to Jewish fables and Commandments of men that turn from the truth and so Paul was saying Timothy there's some things that man has created to add to their religion that makes them look and sound good those things are actually not biblical like these standards that this church has put up for this these false teachers that have put up for this church are actually against God's word and as Christians we can fall into that and what I mean by that is there's there's a lot of false doctrines that we can put up

ourselves now Paul says later on if it's your conviction it's personal to you that's okay he says it in Romans chapter 14 but it's not something that we should look at another brother brother or sister in Christ and say you shouldn't do that if it's not clear in scripture so let me just give a couple examples here tonight um I've heard this before but women should never wear pants to church there's another one um men should never wear shorts to church um here's another topic which is red but hymns are the only acceptable way to worship God or the other one is uh Drums of the devil probably would never have drums here but you know what's you know what's really funny God created the heart and

what does the heart do sorry I just wanted to throw that out there but the heart beats that this is a joke guys um but that's a a blanket statement that's that's silly and some people actually have high convictions about against that in a sense and that's fine for themselves here's another one uh Christian should never celebrate Easter or Chris uh Christmas is a pagan holiday so Christians should never celebrate Christmas so forbidding certain holidays is one um there is the forbidding of certain phrases um I grew up in a culture i GRE I'm a micronesian I'm tures and I grew up in a culture that uses a lot of phrases and there's certain phrases where you just don't say because if you say that

curses upon your family and that's that's all superstitious these are all old wives fables that have been embedded into certain cultures that if we're not careful as Christ Christians it creeps into the church and we start implementing them into our own doctrines of what the church should do and here's here's here's the biggest thing many people add their own standards to God's word and these extra rules sound spiritual but aren't actually scripture this is what legalism is and the definition of legalism is just adding extra rules to scripture and judging others based on those rules what we need to understand is that Christ has given us freedom and Christian freedom is following Christ while

allowing for personal conviction on great areas so what the Bible actually says is that in Romans chapter number 14 I would encourage you to read that we did a study on Romans and we we um preach through that passage but Romans chapter 14 verses number 1-6 the Bible says this or the essentially what the what the passage actually for the sake of time I I'll have you guys read that just read Romans chapter 14 but what that what Paul is saying in Romans 14 is that Believers should not judge one another on personal convictions about the food certain food or the certain days that uh they were highlighting there uh and he says that one man esteem it one day above another another esteem it every

day alike let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind later on in in CH 14: 19 uh down he says for meat destroy not the work of God all things indeed are pure but it is evil for that man who eat it with offend so here's the goal though everybody has personal convictions but the goal is still edification so as we come together as a church the right thing to do and the humble thing to do is to prefer one another that's why Paul preached through the go the his letters when he's writing the letters he's he's speaking about the one anothers there Pastor actually had a series on the one anothers and he's saying preferring one another be kind to one another so if you feel like a brother or

sister does have conviction in one area it is unloving to go up to their faces and say ha you don't like to do this but guess what I'm free I can do this that is that is not love that is not kind legalism turns personal convictions into Universal commands while Christian Freedom allows for differences in areas where God's word is silent or is doesn't specifically State Paul challenges Timothy here if if thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things Thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ nourished up in the words of faith and of good Doctrine where unto thou has attained but refuse profane and old wise fables and exercise thyself rather unto godliness so here here is where

eating takes place just as physical health require requires proper nutrition spiritual health requires being fed by truth becoming spiritually strong and healthy means you must nourish yourself with scripture and sound Doctrine so here's what we feed off of spiritually first of all we feed off of God's word scripture Bible says in John 17:1 17 sanctify them through Thy word and the reason why is because God's word is truth Thy word is truth in uh Second Timothy Paul later writes to Timothy again and he he quotes he he writes this in verse number 16 and 17 all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for Doctrine for reprove for correction for instruction and righteousness

that the man of God may be perfect thoroughly furnished unto all good works so it's very important that we we take in Scripture that we study it that we read it because that is how we nourish our spirit um getting physically healthy isn't just about exercise it requires a a a proper diet a a good diet and you can you can work out every single day but if if you're not eating well you might never find see the results or you might just be weak later on because you're not doing it right and the same is true with Christians you can serve in Ministry all your life you can serve at church in the worship team you can play an instrument you can help with the kids you can come to church and just greet

people and you can go sign waving every single Saturday but if you are not being fed from God's word you are spiritually weak and I say that as a conviction because I struggle with that here's how we can feed ourselves spiritually first of all we need to read our Bibles regularly reading the Bible is very important that scripture uh we can spend time in prayer uh we need to understand that as Christians we have a relationship with God and a relationship with God operates on communication and if all you're doing is listening to preaching and listening to you know spiritual things but you're never talking to God that's a one-way that's a one-way relationship same goes if all you're doing is

just praying every single day but you don't actually uh read scripture or listen to preaching that's again all you're doing is just you're as it's one way it has to be a two-way street um you can also um worship through song alone time not just at church I mean we come here and we worship through the this the music that is amazing but what's even better is if one day out of the week you can just go into the woods I mean we don't have Woods we have jungles no we don't have jungles we have um the trees just go on a coconut tree and just sing songs to the Lord like actually worship God not because you have to at church because it's part of the worship time but because you're actually worshiping

him and glorifying our father um you can listen to to preaching sound preaching so yes that does mean when you come to church you're not just serving you're actually sitting in service and you're listening to God's word being preached and you can also do this by guarding what you allow into your mind you see physically if all you eat is junk food you'll see the consequence of that and spiritually if all you're doing is listening to junk or taking in junk from the news outlet from social media from your phones from whatever it is however you consume whatever it is you consume if all you're doing is doing those things that are not spiritual you'll see the consequences as well maybe one day

it'll just come out maybe another day it might just react a certain way that you shouldn't react that's all coming out the junk is coming out if that's all you're doing and so Paul first of all tells Timothy to be nourished in truth and then he challenges him to exercise himself unto godliness because knowing the truth isn't enough we actually have to live it out and so it's one thing to actually study the scriptures every single day but you're if you're never applying it then it's also useless because you're just it's all head knowledge and it's never put into practice so the next thing we need to do is not only have do we have to eat spiritually we have to exercise spiritually um in verse

number 7even he says but refuse profane and old wise fables and exercise thyself rather unto godliness in verse number eight he says for bodily exercise profited little but godliness is profitable unto all things having promise of the life that is that now is and of that which is to come so here here's the the thing that a lot of people would jump to and and kind of explain away exercise but Paul is not actually adver like advising that Timothy does not exercise physically at all what what Timothy what Paul is actually saying is it's important to keep your body healthy and strong but what is most important and what will have lasting uh consequence in the sense of rewards will actually be

spiritual exercise um the imagery of exercise is is something that the church in Ephesus would have understood because in Ephesus during this time there's actually a gymnasium for um glad Gladiators and so during that time they had they had the the um expectations for gladiators was Peak Performance like they have to be physically fit and and the um people of Ephesus would have seen them every single day as they're walking to wherever they're going the gymnasium was was also where they would learn about U philosophies and all that those kinds of things but Sports and uh Gladiator things were was mostly what was happening in Ephesus and so Paul is using this imagery of hey they dedicate their

lives to exercise to be fit to do this sport that they do whether it's on uh it's something they want to do or something that they're forced to do but as Christians we ought to give that same commitment level if they are so committed to be at their Peak Performance then as Christians we ought to be committed as well to exercise ourselves on to Godliness now let me break down what EXC what godliness means in the Greek uh godliness means uh it just denotes reverence it's piety or true Devotion to God another way another word that that defines this really well is christlikeness so godliness just means becoming more like Christ it's christlikeness which is ultimately what we Christians call

ourselves we are called Christians and what is is a Christian a Christian is a follower of Christ and a follower of Christ does what Christ says and so um exercising onto godliness just means actually implementing the truth of scripture and what Jesus thought uh taught into our own lives so it's it's practicing uh the things that Jesus uh preached while he was here on Earth um bodily exercise Prophet L uh just reminds us that physical training yelds temporary benefits you can exercise and be strong in your Youth and I've seen some people that are very strong and they are much much older than I am ancient a little bit but but as I I almost lost my thought um but what I was saying is there is

an expiration date you're still going to get weak and death might come but spiritually when you continue to apply the things that you've learned from scripture you are going to reap the benefits even after you die and that's what what Paul is is trying to draw out here it's not enough to Simply read the Bible we must live out the the teachings every single day um and there's a couple ways that we can do this and you see when you exercise um if you want to be if you want to be able to carry 25 pounds you might try it the first time but it's not going to work so you actually have to start small um it's called Progressive overload when you start with 5 lbs and then you exercise that and it

eventually becomes 10 lbs and you exercise that eventually you can carry 15 lbs and then you just work your way until you can actually LIF 25 lbs like nothing it's Progressive over overload and and uh working out the there's also repetition where the more you do it the better you get at these things um there's also consistency the more you do it the better you get at these things and so if these are things that are true for us physically they are true for us spiritually as well and here's what I mean if you want to read God's word in a year like if you want to read through God's word from start to finish maybe not in a year maybe in your lifetime if you want to do that you have to start with

one verse and maybe one day you just read one verse and the second day you read two verses and then a week later you read a chapter it it's just repetition and and you do it repeatedly you'll become good at it you'll start to memorize scripture you'll start to quote scripture and before you know it when you're faced with a situation that is real life you might remember a scripture and say oh that's what I I need to do you know what we call that that's wisdom God's giving you that wisdom because you understand scripture and now you're applying it in that specific situation and so it's it's it's applying what we know physically into our own spiritual lives and so it's it's reading scripture um

it's going to church if you cannot come out three times a week just come out one one time a week I'm glad you're here tonight uh that's that's two times a week now so good job but if it's just starting somewhere and then progressingly adding on to that um making habits um is good with that as well but Paul encourages Timothy to learn the truth and exercise unto godness emphasizing that while physical exercise has its value the benefits of spiritual exercise are Eternal and but and and finally the reason why Paul encourages Timothy to eat spiritually and uh train physically or exercise spiritually as well is because the reason why is because it's for the Lord the motivation behind what what

we do is Jesus Christ and he says it in verse uh number 9 and 10 he says this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation for therefore we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the Living God who is the savior of all men especially of those that believe and so what Paul is saying here look the reason why we study scripture and we we do our best to become more like Jesus Christ is ultimately because that's what pleases the Lord and ultimately that's that's who we're going for at the end of this life we are going to see Jesus Christ and so our motivation is going to be that that one day we'll get to see Jesus and we'll say Jesus thank you for your sacrifice and thank you

for changing my life and because of that I was able to be kind to others forgive others I was able to love others the way I should he says here um he says who is the savior of all men especially of those that believe and here's here's the truth that Paul is again addressing as he's writing in in all his letters is that God wants to save every single person but the problem is is that this is only beneficial to those that actually accept it and he's saying here especially of those that believe and that is good news for us because that reminds us that we have God on our side as we're as we're going through life and he says it here we labor and we suffer the reason why he's saying this is

because you need to exercise and you need to eat healthy because trials are going to come and there's going to be things that come in your life and if you're not ready and if you're weak and if you don't eat right and and you do not exercise at all then you as a Christian are so weak you'll just fail from that trial that's why it's important for us to take what Tim that what Paul has told Timothy seriously because if you are a Christian and the only verses you know is John 3:16 it's good but you're not doing what you should be doing you're not eating enough spiritually and if all you're doing is just going to church one service you're not exercising enough spiritually and when a tri hits

your life I'm sorry but you might walk away from God because you might think God is Not on your side when in actuality you were not strong enough to handle that trial because you have not been eating well and you have not been exercising spiritually and that is what Paul is saying to Timothy here he's encouraging him hey your church there's a lot of problems there's a lot of confusion there's these people that are preaching false doctrines there's these women want to teach in the church and there's these issues that are going on and Timothy you're not going to last if you do not feed yourself in fact in the beginning of Tim 1 Timothy chapter 1 it it seems that Paul is saying that Timothy was

ready to be like he Timothy just wanted to be with Paul already he was done with Ephesus and so Paul is again lovingly encouraging him hey keep at it but what's going to help you is actually studying scripture and applying what you've known to your life and so Paul is reminding us that if we want to be strong spiritually if we want to be able to stand against the walls of the devil then we need to eat spiritually and we need to exercise spiritually