Developing a Good Servant

This morning, we're thinking again of Timothy in Ephesus. He is the pastor there, a young pastor, sent by Paul not long after these comments were recorded in the book of Acts. He was set up to lead the church there, grow the church, and develop a leadership team around him. As a young pastor, he has to face many challenges in a modern pagan city. We read about some of those challenges in the worship of Artemis in Acts 19 just a moment ago.

And I'm sure there were times when Timothy was feeling somewhat isolated, somewhat remote, and desperate to have Paul there with him just so he could run a few things past Paul, to ask him a question or two, you know, just to have a chat, a kind of catch up and review of the situation in Ephesus. You know, way back then, there were no mobile phones or Internet, no chat or Zoom meetings. So how much then would Timothy welcome this particular letter from Paul? Timothy ministering in the middle of a dangerous and potentially life-threatening situation. For Timothy, his calling, duty before God, was putting him into direct conflict with some of the most powerful men in the city, false teachers who threatened to undo the work of the gospel.

And so I wonder how many times must he have thought, where is Paul when I need him? And yet, I think we can all be glad that Paul wasn't actually there, because Timothy would never have received this great letter from him if he were there. And throughout the ages, the church has been blessed because of this particular letter. And so when Paul writes to Timothy, he doesn't mince his words. He faces facts with facts.

He addresses reality. He doesn't want to minimise the gravity of Timothy's situation or pass it off. Paul knew that this young man was up against it, a hard, tough, and dangerous situation. And it's in that kind of context that Paul functions as his mentor, someone with a cool head and a loving heart and a strong, sturdy, unwavering faith. Paul is all of that for Timothy, and that, of course, is all of God's grace.

So the passage we're looking at this morning is another one of those encouragements that Paul gives and has been giving since he first put pen to paper and began writing to Timothy. It's all about being a gospel empowered Christian. Let's have a look at the text this morning. First Timothy 4, beginning at verse 6. "If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather, train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end, we toil and strive because we have our hopes set on the living God, who is the saviour of all people, and especially of those who believe."

Pardon me. With those words, the great apostle hopes to encourage young Timothy. Hang on there, he says. Just get on with it. Despite the opposition you're facing, our hope is set on the living God.

And this morning, we're going to look at who Timothy is in respect of his calling, then the spiritual training Paul encourages him to exercise, but also physical training, and lastly, the motivation for doing so. First of all, Timothy's calling. There is there in verse six a title for Timothy. Paul identifies Timothy as a good servant of Christ Jesus. And the word that's used there for the word servant is actually the Greek word deacon or diaconos, a good deacon of Christ Jesus.

Other translations have the word minister. The word is not referring to Timothy so much as a leader or a pastor or elder or even an office bearer in the church, someone serving on the church council of the local church in Ephesus, but this is simply a reference to his works of service. Here, Paul is using that word in the widest possible sense, a good servant of Jesus Christ. In that sense, the word servant includes everyone, all of us too. Anyone who wants to follow Jesus today can be identified as a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is especially true of those who are involved in the ministry of teaching or leading or discipling others.

Together, you and I, we're servants of Jesus Christ. And that helps us to think through in so many ways what it means to have a pastor in the church who is also a servant, a good servant of Jesus Christ. And maybe today is a good day to talk about that since our pastor and his wife are not here with us. A pastor is no slave to his congregation. We should never intimidate or seek to control the pastor as if he needs to appease us or gratify us in some way or even humour us. And the brothers on the church council should be especially aware of that.

You see, a pastor, and especially a young pastor, can so easily fall into the trap of wanting to please others, to please elders or those who have maybe a stronger personality within the congregation. By the same token, we're not to manipulate the pastor or in some way control him. First and foremost, the pastor is, as we all are, servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. He remains that whether he's in office or not in office. Jesus alone is the head of the church.

From Colossians 1, and it is Him that we must serve. And a good, no, a great leadership team in the church recognises that. A pastor is a servant among other servants, and Jesus Christ is the head, the master, the one whom we serve. Now Paul goes on to give Timothy some great advice in order to develop and grow as a good servant of Jesus Christ. The apostle says, you need to be busy doing certain things.

Interestingly enough, they are about his own spiritual welfare. This first encouragement is to keep on with the things that he has been brought up on and is in fact doing. Paul says to Timothy, keep feeding your soul, or keep nourishing your soul, being trained in the words of faith and a good doctrine that you have followed. Now, nourishment. What is he talking about?

And what are you and I being nourished with? That's essentially the question that Paul raises here. What do you feed on daily? What are you feeding your mind on? What input comes most naturally into your life?

TV, so-called reality TV, movies, best-selling novels. What's actually on your Facebook feed? You can literally choose to follow people on Facebook. So where does your mouse land when you most often surf the net? These are the things that you can be following today.

And if any of those things become your daily diet, then I can guarantee that you will be a spiritually malnourished servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, Paul makes the point here, it's what you feed on that determines what you're going to become, and it's going to determine how effective you're going to be as a servant. Now before you walk away this morning from this place deciding to unfriend or unfollow those who are on your list of contacts, I want you to know that maintaining a relationship with them is not bad in and of itself. We're not to eliminate them, but we are to regulate them in order that we can regulate ourselves. That seems to be the point Paul's making here.

We can take control of those things that can be very distracting to us and too often control our own thoughts and our own attitudes. Instead, Paul says to Timothy, feed on those things that really do enable you to become a good servant. Those things that will nourish your spiritual life. What do we all need? Paul tells us, the words of faith and good doctrine.

Don't be put off by that word doctrine. It means teaching, sound teaching about the reality of life. It's what all Christians need. Notice how Paul combines those two elements, faith and doctrine, or decision and knowledge. Those things we're committed to, and those things we understand with our mind and our heart.

That's the way it works, he says, for a good servant of Jesus Christ. Faith, committing yourself to nourishing yourself, and then knowledge, feeding upon those things that help you deal with the reality of life and then following them. Because of the hostile reception of the gospel in Ephesus, this is going to be a great and ongoing challenge for Timothy. And it remains for us a great ongoing challenge too, in the office or in your workplace or on the factory floor, at uni or in the schoolyard where you attend.

And what about while you're online as well? This is Paul's very positive encouragement to young Timothy. These are the things you ought to be doing, but then there's a negative side as well. Look at verse 7. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.

These things are sure to distract and be a stumbling block to you as you pursue godliness and become that good servant of Jesus Christ. The Greek word translated myths really means foolish old wives' tales, in the NIV. Stories that foolish women riddled with superstition spread around, and everybody believes them. It seems that there are a lot of distracting silly things that Timothy could have given his attention to. From our reading in Acts 19, we know a little bit about the followers of the Greek god Artemis.

Artemis, you see, had gathered quite a following. And at her temple, business was booming as a result. And business people do what business people have always done, and that is they want to protect their product and continue to be viable in the marketplace. And so they target the church, and particularly the teachings of the apostle Paul. They target their leaders, and they see them as real competition and set out to eliminate them. No doubt this, along with other kinds of opposition, was what Paul was thinking.

We know these are the things the false teachers were hoping would undermine the gospel. Earlier on, Paul had also mentioned these foolish myths back in chapter one, right at the beginning of his letter. It was one of the first things that he mentions to Timothy. He writes in verses 3 and 4, "Stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God's work, which is by faith."

Same word here in chapter 4, only the language is slightly stronger. Now they're referred to as irreverent, silly myths, translated in the NIV as godless old wives' tales. Paul had said that some people use genealogies to link their stories, and the things they want to spread, to others who've gone before them. And it kind of raises their credibility and gives them respect so that they can propagate their stories and their myths with good authority. And today, I'd suggest that if you wanted to spread a myth or a story, you might gain credibility if you make the 6 o'clock news.

No fake news. All of a sudden, it would become the real deal. But the words ring true. Paul says, have nothing to do with them. It means not to devote any thought or effort towards them.

Paul tells Timothy not to identify himself with these kinds of things. In other words, don't get tangled up in these stories. Don't try to resolve them. Just walk away. These myths are the scourge of every generation, and I fear they infect our generation as well.

And today, they have the potential to undermine the good work of the gospel, and they can so easily distract any one of us from being a good servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. I think it's important to identify some of them this morning. I don't pretend to know to what extent they have affected us here in our own church, but in mentioning some of them, I don't want to mince words with you. I want to be direct, even as Paul was direct with Timothy. What about the most popular, almost universally accepted truth that is out there in the world today, but also having an impact in the church?

That gender is not something assigned to you and me at birth, but a choice. And today, you can identify as male or female or even intersex. Have nothing to do with it, says Paul. It might be that some of us are having to deal with conspiracy theories, stories that filter through on your own Facebook feed or on Instagram, about stuff that's based on no evidence. So not having evidence makes it irrefutable. There's nothing to refute.

Believing that COVID-19 and all these restrictions, including how we sit in church and how we come to church, is a conspiracy. And there are well-meaning Christians who believe the rollout of vaccinations in the community are the modern day equivalent of the mark of the beast. It's rubbish, equated with old wives' tales. Silly myths, says Paul. Have nothing to do with it. The real question is this, what are you going to be feeding your mind on?

Paul says, nourish yourself in the faith. Build yourself up in sound doctrine of the scriptures and understand the truth as it really is in the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Moving on. And Paul directs our attention to the body. He says in verse 8, "For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way."

Now this is a great verse for all you gym junkies out there. I knew of an aerobics class at a local gym that decided to identify and go by the title Firm Believer. It was a class set up for Christians. Can you believe it? They did what they could to get rid of all the flabby bits hanging off Christians.

Now this is Paul's own very down to earth, very real advice on how to treat his own body. There are other letters from Paul in which he often speaks about physical exercises, the races that were run in the Greek world being likened to the race the Christian runs. He uses illustrations drawing from boxing matches and gladiator fights. Maybe Paul had attended these events. I'm sure he had.

But I don't think that Paul was obsessive about his own state of physical fitness. It would be a stretch, far a stretch too far, to call him a gym junkie or a first-century Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because, as he admits, physical training has a certain value attached to it, but it doesn't deserve the same priority as spiritual training or godliness. Training in godliness will always trump training for the body. And I think that's what Paul's saying here, though the two are not divorced from one another. They work hand in hand, so to speak.

There's a lot of truth in the saying, a healthy body equals a healthy mind. And we have an example of this in Paul's own life. On one occasion, the book of Acts tells us that he left a ship with his companions on board. And while the ship sailed around the peninsula, he walked some 32 kilometres all alone across the neck of the peninsula in order that he might have time to meditate and pray. He combined physical exercise with an opportunity to exercise some godly thinking as well.

You can read about that in Acts 20. I put it to you, these days, you and I can go for a walk or maybe even a jog, and then take your earbuds with you and have them connected to your smartphone. And with a good Internet connection, well, you can be listening to the Bible as you walk or as you jog. You can be listening to a message from the Bible or even a sermon from Open House Christian Reformed Church. In thinking about this, I don't think that Paul was overweight or obese or not able to discipline himself when it came to looking after himself physically.

He knew about the value of physical training, but compared to training in godliness, it only occupied a relatively small part of his life. We know from reading other passages from Paul that he struggled with some mysterious ailment referred to as a thorn in the flesh. We're not actually sure what that was, but it could have been something physical, something that troubled him. He most likely suffered from poor eyesight, having signed off on one of his letters in rather large handwriting. But rather than let these things stop him, he was always more interested in training for his spirit, in training for his soul.

Because of that, he said it is all important. Now he wants to impress that upon young Timothy. Timothy, who no doubt boasts the vigour of youth. And he underlines it for us when he says, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance." It's important. Train yourself for godliness, and don't ignore what you do physically.

Five times in this letter, Paul uses that saying, "deserving of full acceptance," and each time he does, Paul means to say, listen up. This is very important. You can count on this. Take it to heart. In the words of Eugene Peterson's The Message, "Exercise daily in God.

No spiritual flabbiness, please. Workouts in the gymnasium are useful, but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and for ever. You can count on this. Take it to heart." Now Paul closes this section with a very important word on motivation.

And I think we all understand how important it is to stay motivated. If you're on a diet in order to look after yourself physically for your own well-being, well, you'll give the bathroom scales a workout, won't you, in order to stay motivated? Just one kilo, maybe, after a week, or two kilos or more. You know how it goes. We seem to thrive on goals, having short-term goals and long-term goals.

They give us hope. So how's Timothy going to stay motivated? And especially when it comes to this task of pursuing godliness so that he can become a good servant. What's more, what's going to motivate you and me to do it? We're so busy.

Please don't ask me to do more, pastor. What's going to help you? Take the time and the effort to train yourself physically, but more so spiritually. Basically, to do something about what you've been hearing from the pulpit this morning in this place. Well, let's consider again the advice Paul gives to Timothy.

Here's what Paul hopes will motivate Timothy. Verse 10. "For to this end, we toil and strive because we have set our hope on the living God, who is the saviour of all people, and especially of those who believe." And again, let's hear it from The Message. "This is why we've thrown ourselves into this venture so totally.

We're banking, or that is to say, hoping on the living God, the saviour of all men and women and especially believers." That's what motivated Paul. That's why he and his companions have thrown themselves into this idea of becoming good servants. We toil and strive, he says. Those words indicate energy, something that's going to cost, that's going to take effort, stuff he was prepared to invest in in order to reach a certain goal.

And the goal? To be that good servant. Not a good elder or a good pastor or a good teacher or preacher in the church, but a good servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says, Timothy, watch out, because you just can't drift into godliness, just as you cannot drift into some state of physical well-being. It's impossible to get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, well, I'm looking leaner and meaner than I did the day before.

You can never say that without effort, without hard work. And it's just as true to be thinking, well, I'm feeling great about my faith today, better than I did the day before, unless, of course, you commit to doing something about it. We have to choose to actively pursue these things, to make the time, to commit yourself to times of study, reading, meditating, quiet times, and prayer. Amazingly, I found that you'll have the time for other things, the normal demands of life, if you prioritise a quiet time with God. If you make that one of the first things or one of the last things you do in any typical day.

But it has to be a deliberate action of your own will. Pursue holiness. Be holy. Jesus says, "Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Pursue godliness.

Why? What motivates? Well, Paul says, because our hope is set on an encounter with the living God. In other words, a meeting or a relationship with the living Lord Jesus Christ. And you can't expect to get near the living Lord Jesus Christ without getting excited, without being passionate, without having a sense of adventure, without recognising that you're in danger in this world, the closer you get to Jesus, without recognising the real joy that you have of knowing Him.

He is the living God, and He's not like that dead idol that was being worshipped in the temple in Ephesus. Compare Jesus to the goddess Artemis, and you're left with nothing but dust and ash. A daily encounter with the living God and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth, the one who's in charge of life. He's the only one who has a firm grip on everything that's happening to you and to me. And I can promise you that your time with Him becomes exhilarating and full of promise and blessing, just as it was to His disciples when He walked on this earth with them. But even more so because He's nearer to you than He was to them in His own spirit.

In just a few moments, we're going to sing about this. The words of the chorus, "Be the fire that burns within us, flames of love that purify." Is that happening in your life? "Christ alone, our hope and glory. Christ alone in you we stand."

Do you stand in Christ alone all day long? That's what happens when you nourish yourself on the great words of faith and sound doctrine of the Word, and then do something physical about it. Do you want to be a good servant of Jesus Christ? Please remember that Jesus Christ is the head of this church too. He's the one in charge of this congregation.

Your elders and those who teach in this church serve with a derived sense of authority from Him who is the head of the church. And here, Paul says very clearly that Jesus has made salvation available to everyone. He is the saviour of all people, and potentially everyone in the world could be saved if they come to Jesus. You see, no one else has made salvation possible. There is no other saviour, no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.

Jesus is the saviour of all men, and salvation only becomes effective to those who will believe. And the good servant of Jesus Christ is the one who knows this to be true. And it is the motivation that he or she needs to act, to grow, to develop spiritually and physically so that the whole world may know that Jesus is saviour and Lord. That's what makes a difference. That's what good servants do, to follow these things, to act upon them, to do something about them, to not merely believe them in your head. That never saves anyone. That never blesses anybody else.

But it's what you do on the basis of what you know that makes the difference. Pursue godliness. Do some physical training and see what a difference it makes in your life. Let's pray. Lord God, we pray that You will teach us to be men and women, young people of faith today.

Faith that knows how to respond. Faith that rises up and obeys what You tell us to do. Teach us to walk today that we might pursue godliness, that we might be engaged in some physical training, that we might demonstrate to this world that we know the living God, and that the Lord Jesus Himself walks with us every day in our daily lives, and that we are empowered and strengthened by His grace alone. We could think of no greater way of You blessing us this morning than to empower our witness of You so that we might be faithful and fruitful according to Your great purposes for this world and until that great day when Jesus comes back again. We praise You for Jesus, and we thank You in His name when we say together, amen.