1 Timothy 4:6-10 | Edifying Exercise

If you have a Bible, go and grab it and turn it to the book of 1 Timothy. We're going to be looking at verses 6 through 10.\n\nLast week, we saw Paul exhort Timothy to watch out for those who come in with deceitful, demonic teaching, having him pay attention to things that don't really matter, like abstaining from marriage and from foods. And now it turns to the positive aspects for Timothy. What are you supposed to pay attention to if you don't pay attention to the silly and pointless things?\n\nSee him exhort Timothy here in 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 6. If you don't have a Bible, you can use a pew Bible in front of you. If you don't own a Bible, that's our gift to you. We would love for you to have a copy of God's Word that you could take home and read on your own time. So feel free to take that with you.\n\nAgain, we'll be looking at 1 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 6. It says this:\n\n> If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished by the words of the faith and the good teaching that you have followed. But have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths. Rather, train yourself in godliness. For the training of the body has limited benefit, but godliness is beneficial in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance. For this reason we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.\n>\n> — 1 Timothy 4:6-10 (CSB)\n\nLet's pray. We pray even this morning that you would help us not to be distracted by pointless and silly myths, things that seek to draw us away from what really matters. Help us even now to train our hearts and our minds to be focused on your Word. We need your Spirit's help to be able to do that, so we ask that you would help us in Jesus' name, amen.\n\n## The Pursuit of Discipline\n\nWe love discipline, or at least the idea of it. When you think about examples of greatness, whether it's the Olympics coming to Los Angeles in a couple of years, or Rocky running up and down the steps of whatever building he was climbing up, we love the idea of seeing people train for the sake of having a great goal. We love seeing discipline because it shows the worth of what you are seeking after.\n\nWe work for things all the time, whether it's in your own job, or at the gym, or in your hobbies. We pursue, we put in effort into things to achieve certain goals. But we only work if we think that it's ultimately worth it. If you don't think that you're going to be healthy for the rest of your life, then there's no purpose. Why should you step foot in a gym? If you have zero confidence that your family can ever turn around from where it currently is, then of course you're going to recline in your lazy boy on Washington Television.\n\nWe put effort into things that we believe in, and the things that we place our hope in. You work if you're convinced that it's worth it. What Paul gives Timothy here isn't a 'how' exhortation, isn't even necessarily a 'what' exhortation. He's coming to Timothy, not showing him how he ought to train, but explaining that he ought to train because godliness is worth it. He's not coming in with a how; he's not even necessarily coming in with a what. He's coming in with a 'why': that godliness is worth your effort.\n\nGodliness is worth your effort, and it comes with three reasons why you ought to work. First, the worthlessness of myths, other things that you may pay attention to. Second, he points out the worthiness of godliness. And third, he points to the hopefulness of work—the hopefulness of a Christian's work.\n\n## The Worthlessness of Myths\n\nRead again with me from verse 6: "If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished by the words of the faith and the good teaching that you have followed." Paul wants Timothy to be a good servant, a good minister of Jesus, and the way that Timothy is supposed to do this is by pointing these things out to the brothers and sisters.\n\nLast week, we talked about the goodness of creation, how everything created by God is good, according to his created order, for us to enjoy. If Timothy takes this good truth from God and points it out to the brothers and sisters, he will be a good servant, nourished by the words of the faith and the good teaching that he has followed. If Timothy wants to be a good pastor and a good servant, he needs to point out the good truth from a good God.\n\nHe does this by pointing out the truth from "the words of the faith." You notice how Paul describes that? He says "the faith." He doesn't tell Timothy to say words *of* faith. He doesn't even tell Timothy to tell words *from* faith. He tells Timothy to speak the words *of the faith*. Now there is a specific faith, a truth that Timothy is supposed to hold onto—a true faith, a true belief that false teachers will come to attack. The duty of Timothy is by himself to stand up and protect that true faith.\n\nThe same is true for you and I. People talk about their own faith all the time. They live in a society where people love talking about their truth, their perspective, their opinions. And absolutely, in a sense, we need to make sure that the faith that we have is something that we ourselves own. The Christian faith is absolutely a personal faith in a way that you can say that Christ is mine. But just because your faith is your faith doesn't mean that it's only your faith. Your faith also needs to be *the* faith. It can't just be *my* faith; it also has to be *the* faith, meaning there's a true faith, which by extension means there are false faiths.\n\nYou can believe something, hold it to be your own thought, and believe it with all of your might, and it will still just be your opinion. There is a fact that we are to believe. In fact, it's those that are not holding onto the faith that are then elevating up their own opinions as though they were fact. That's exactly what Hymenaeus and Alexander are doing. That's exactly what the false teachers in the church in Ephesus are doing. It's exactly what people do all around the world all the time—people who sound good, articulate things, but the actual content of what they say doesn't line up with what's true.\n\nAnd look at the way that Paul describes these words in verse 7. He tells them, "But have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths. Rather, train yourself in godliness." We are to have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths. Some of you with older translations may have the phrase "old women's fables" in your Bibles to describe it. It is the same idea. These superstitions about the faith, these sayings that are pleasing to the ear, but if you take an extra second and think about it, it actually doesn't make any sense.\n\n"Don't step on a crack, you'll break your mama's back." "Knock on wood." "Don't walk under a ladder." Silly, pointless superstitions that make otherwise meaningless things feel like they have some kind of purpose or importance—except for walking under ladders. I think that's a dumb thing to do. I recommend you don't do that. You might laugh at these silly statements that come out of these superstitions that people may believe. Your heart might jump a little bit when you see a black cat; you might chuckle at yourself. But these silly things can turn sour real quick.\n\nA family member gets sick and you start asking yourself, "Did I do something to cause this?" You get convinced as you listen to a televangelist that makes you feel good about yourself, but you find out that Jesus is actually coming next year. You spend all your time, your money, your effort, analyzing moons. You become convinced that if you just give some of your money or some of your attention or do this or that, you start following different superstitions thinking that you're trying to follow God. From reality, the truths that you are circulating over and over in your mind are utterly silly and pointless.\n\nAnd all of this speculation, all of this theorizing, actually distracts us from what matters. It's spiritual junk food. It makes us feel smart, gesticulating about different deep things of God, when in reality, we're not really talking about anything. Ever meet people like that who use a lot of big words to say nothing at all? At least not anything important. If you spend your time wrestling on pointless and silly myths, you will have a pointless and silly life.\n\nAll of these things come from talking about faith without looking to the words of *the* faith, saying that you might assume are even in the Bible, like "God helps those who help themselves," or "When praises go up, blessings come down," or "God will never give you more than you can bear." Phrases that are so common in our vernacular sound like they're probably in the Bible somewhere, but aren't actually there at all.\n\nSee, Christians don't just ask themselves whether something feels right. They ask themselves whether or not it *is* right. Don't just think things because you think them; figure out why you think them. And don't take my word for it either. I can come up here and say all sorts of things. I'll make you nod your head, or think that's pithy or profound, and it might not even be in the book. Look at the Word of God and test to see if what you assume is actually true.\n\nAnd the way that we make sure that we're holding on to the true faith is by being nourished by the words of *the* faith, taking God's Word and reading it, and making sure that what we think is actually aligned with God's Word. And that also happens by listening to good teaching that lines up with the words of the faith. That's exactly what Paul's exhorting Timothy to do here. The way that he combats this is by teaching, giving good teaching, and the way that you evaluate whether or not that teaching is good is by asking yourself whether or not that teaching lines up with the good Word, sermons and Bible teaching that lines up with the faith. Look at the book. See if what I say lines up with what God says.\n\nThe Bereans in Acts 17 hear the word from Paul, an apostle (doesn't get higher ranking than that), from Paul and Silas, and it says that "they receive the word with eagerness and examine the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11, paraphrased). They hear the word from Paul. They know he's an apostle. They respect him. They even appreciate it. They are eager to hear that good teaching, but they don't look at Paul's badge and then shut their brain off. Their eagerness pushes them deeper into the Bible. They examine the Scriptures every single day. There's not a point where they put the book down, they go, "You know what, Paul? I trust that you know what you're talking about." They examine the Scriptures daily. Do you do that? Do you examine the Scriptures to see if these things are so? See if what you think actually lines up with what God thinks.\n\nIf you don't, you might be fine for a little while. You might not even notice the ground shift underneath you, but pretty soon you will find yourself exhausting yourself on things that don't actually matter. God wants us to stay aligned with His Word, not silly myths. When you listen to His voice, when we get used to listening to good teaching that aligns with His words, that means that you can know the truth in a way that gives you the confidence to have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths. People want to speculate and talk for hours about stuff that doesn't matter. And if you don't have confidence in what's true, you will waste your time too.\n\nI remember when I was 12, I would see videos on the internet talking about how the world was going to end in 2012 because of the Mayan calendar and all sorts of stuff. There were even Christians that were trying to argue that the Bible taught that. And I thought, as a 12-year-old, what if they're right? You go on rabbit trails to try to see whether or not there's even a possibility of what's true. And here's the thing: if you play a Whack-A-Mole game where you're whacking a mole every single time you see false teaching coming up and you don't know what's actually true, you're going to waste all your time figuring out stuff that you don't know. But if you know what's true, if you know what the Bible actually says, if you know what actually matters, and you hear something that doesn't line up, you don't have to analyze it. You can just reject it.\n\nPaul tells Timothy here not to refute these pointless and silly myths. Have you ever tried to argue with someone who doesn't make sense, and pretty soon you just end up not making sense? He's not telling him to do that. He's telling Timothy, "Reject it! Have nothing to do with it. Walk away. Tell them to be quiet." And one of the ways that we do that as a church is through our statement of faith. It's our way of stating clearly, "This is what we believe," and it's also a way of us stating clearly, "This is what we think matters."\n\nWe have nothing in our statement of faith about four blood moons. We have nothing in our statement of faith about the future of America. We have nothing in our statement of faith that can distract us from what we believe actually matters. We believe that Jesus is God, that He lived the perfect life, that He died for us, and He rose from the dead; that if you turn from your sins and trust Him, you can be saved. We talk about stuff like that in our statement of faith. The stuff that doesn't get a lot of views online. The stuff that people might find to be redundant and boring, but for us, it is the word of life. It helps us focus our energies on true, godly things, instead of pointless and silly myths. That's exactly what Paul wants Timothy to do. He wants Timothy to train himself, not in pointless and silly myths, not to become an expert on everything that's wrong, but instead to train yourself in godliness.\n\n## The Worthiness of Godliness\n\nThis brings me to point number two, the worthiness of godliness. Read from verse 7 again: "Rather, train yourself in godliness. For the training of the body has limited benefit, but godliness is beneficial in every way since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance."\n\nThe alternative to pointless silly myths is to train yourself in godliness. And Paul isn't just arguing that godliness is a more accurate or more true thing to do, but that it is a better thing to do. That's a better way for you to invest your time, a better way for you to spend your life—to train yourself in godliness, because the training of the body is of limited benefit. And every person who is not currently working out said, "Amen." It's of limited benefit.\n\nIt's easy to believe that the training of the body is of limited use in a world where we use our bodies so little. I don't think anybody here, at least to my knowledge, walked to church this morning (and no, walking from your car to the church building doesn't count). Most of us don't even break a sweat during work every day. For many of us, we are becoming increasingly detached from the physical world altogether by spending more and more of our time on digital screens than in the real world.\n\nSo if we want to understand what Timothy is talking about, we have to understand this labor-driven world that Paul and Timothy lived in. It had an obvious benefit to train your body. If you lived in Ephesus, a trained body has an obvious benefit because the stronger you are, the more stuff you could do. It just makes sense. You can lift more, you can do more, you can work longer. There is an obvious benefit to training your body. It gets even more obvious when you think about sports. Paul's evoking the image here like an athlete who's training for the Olympics. There is zero question as to why he goes through conditioning, why he monitors his diet, why an athlete goes to the gym every day. Every single part of his life is optimized around obtaining this medal of his accomplishment. There is an obvious, immediate benefit that comes from the training of the body.\n\nAnd I'm sure that there are many things in your life that you also assume have an immediate, tangible benefit on what you do. Getting a driver's license has an obvious immediate benefit, so you train or you practice. Studying for a university degree has an obvious immediate benefit. Investing money into your retirement has an obvious immediate benefit. We have a vested interest in these things because we have a vested interest in ourselves. Our dreams, our livelihood, our good—we sacrifice for the promise of success all the time. We invest in them because we believe that these things are worth investing in, that what we get is worth the effort. All of these things have clear inputs and outputs. The benefits are obvious.\n\nAnd just to be clear, I don't want you to feel bad for investing in any of those things. We should absolutely be taking care of our lives here on earth. But while these benefits are obvious, Paul is also telling us that these benefits are limited. Scripture tells us that despite all of these efforts—whether it's the gym, your 401K, any other interest that you may have in this life—the benefits, though they may be legitimate, are limited. They stop with you. Your ability, your desires, with you, and you are limited. Everything that you do for yourself will be limited by yourself. They will not last. They should never be our ultimate priority in how we invest our effort because these things won't last beyond your life. Your physical body will decay no matter how many times you hit the gym. Your 401K will either get used by you or get squandered by your kids. Your dreams will end with your heartbeat. It is of limited benefit.\n\nBut godliness is beneficial in every way. True devotion to the Lord is beneficial in this present life. It hits all the categories of those limited things that you may desire because it covers everything, because it affects you. Godliness gives you the true fruit of the Spirit in a way that colors everything that you do. You know people that have achieved their worldly dreams and are utterly miserable. Godliness gives you love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These things are universally beneficial. No matter how many zeros you have in your bank account, you carry your soul with you everywhere that you go, and therefore the training of godliness is beneficial for you in everything in this life. And it holds promise not just for this life, but for the life to come. And that might not feel obvious or immediate to you, but it is limitless. In a world where everything around you has expiration dates, godliness will not expire.\n\nIs this piety that you have, this devotion that you have for the Lord in this life, something that will carry on to the next? It will be the project that doesn't end with your life here on earth. It goes on for all of eternity. Any investment you make into your soul will make a permanent impact in your life for all of eternity. It is an everlasting fruit of eternal joy. It's because godliness outranks any potential good or benefit in this life that we need to train ourselves in godliness. We need to work out, as Paul says in Philippians 2:12, our salvation with fear and trembling.\n\n> Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.\n>\n> — Philippians 2:12 (CSB)\n\n## Discipline vs. Legalism\n\nThink about that idea of training. Training yourself in godliness is like going to the gym. It's the idea of deliberate, disciplined effort for the benefit of your soul—that you do something that you normally would not do for the express purpose of growing in godliness. Do you think of the Christian walk like that? It's something that you're called to do, that you're called to act in, something that you're called to work in. It almost sounds legalistic, right? Like I could hear the gospel police sirens going off, like, "Are you telling us that we need to act?" After all, there's nothing that we could do to earn our salvation. Why should we have to work if we sing songs like "Jesus Paid It All"?\n\nAnd the reason is because legalism and discipline are not the same thing. They are different ideas. Pastor R. Kent Hughes puts it like this: "Discipline sounds so much like legalism, but such thinking is mistaken. Legalism is self-centered, but discipline is God-centered. The legalistic heart will say, 'I will do this thing to gain merit with God.' The disciplined heart says, 'I will do this thing because I love God and want to please Him.'" That's good. A Christian exerting effort isn't legalistic anymore than a spouse exerting effort to love their spouse in a marriage. The issue with legalism isn't the effort you put in; it's the motive. Legalism acts in order to earn favor, to earn salvation or earn favor with God. True religion works, exerts effort in order to love God.\n\nWe are all disciplined in the things that we love. Parents get up to feed their kids no matter how tired they are. An athlete diets and conditions his body for sports. And Christians train themselves in godliness. That's what all Christians are called to do. And like all training, godliness requires deliberate, disciplined effort. Sometimes we struggle to read our Bibles, to pray, to meet up with church members and encourage one another. After all, it's inconvenient. It's hard. It's hard to get up on time. It's hard to take time to open the book and spend time with the Lord in prayer. None of us naturally drift into inviting a church member over to your home or reading a good Christian book with another church member. The difficulty isn't there to explain why we don't train ourselves in godliness. Those obstacles, those difficulties, that hardness that you feel, is precisely why you need to train yourself in godliness. You do it because it's hard.\n\nA godly Christian isn't preoccupied with trying to figure out ways to make the Christian life as easy as possible. Christians are never satisfied with a bare minimum. A Christian pursues excellence in godliness. And if you want to be godly, you must train. You must do it. Not because it's easy. You must do it precisely because it's hard, because it's difficult. When was the last time you've deliberately inconvenienced yourself for the deliberate purpose of growing in godliness? When's the last time you've trained yourself in godliness where you said, "I'm going to do this because I love the Lord"?\n\nWhere is our soul out of shape? The stakes could not be higher. The author of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 12:14 to pursue holiness without which no one will see the Lord.\n\n> Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness—without it no one will see the Lord.\n>\n> — Hebrews 12:14 (CSB)\n\nWhat will you do? Maybe this means that you take radical steps to completely eradicate any opportunity for a persistent, habitual sin in your life. Maybe this means that you put your Bible next to your table during breakfast so you can read it while you eat your cereal. Maybe this means that you start praying through the membership directory, one name a day, and then you call or you text them and ask them how you can be praying for them. Maybe this means that you go out to Sunday evening service tonight for the first time to pray with everyone and hear from God's Word again to end the Lord's day. Maybe this means that you invite a church member over for dinner and hear about their life and their story. These things are not rules; they're opportunities, they're training, working to grow in our godliness, to grow in the Lord. We need to deliberately make the choice that we are going to grow in our walk with Jesus.\n\nLet me encourage you, don't underestimate the power of habit as you discipline yourself in walking with the Lord. You might feel like you're too far gone, that it's too late, there's not much you can do. But a ship that turns just one degree to the right in the ocean will completely turn around 180 degrees in just five minutes. You might feel completely bent out of shape, I just want to encourage you, take those small steps to make big changes in your life. Don't think of your life in terms of days; think of it in terms of years. If you wake up, for example, and put your Bible next to your cereal bowl at your dinner table—just something that I encourage a lot of parents to do, especially when they sit down with their kids—and you read just one Psalm while your kid is screaming at you and knocking over the plates and stuff, and you just enter your Zen mode and read the Psalm out loud, and you read one Psalm as you eat your cereal (even if you break up Psalm 119 into each of the letters, just one letter a day), you could read the entire Book of Psalms in six months. You can read the entire Book of Proverbs in just 31 days. If you take one person a day in the membership directory and pray for them, you will pray for all the active members of our church in less than two months. Let those one-degree turns transform your life.\n\nThere are two ways that you can live your life: "one day" or "day one." Discipline acts; it does, takes action, is proactive in pursuing godliness. If you walk away from this sermon and you don't do anything about it, if you don't train yourself in godliness, then that means that you are not a doer, you're just a dream or a nightmare. If you're actually convinced that this is something worth doing, then you must train. You must make a decision. A quote from Mortimer Adler says about the art of persuasion (when he's arguing about how to read a book of all things), he says, "If you're convinced by my argument, you must do it. Otherwise, you are not convinced."\n\nWhat I'm saying is true here: if you believe that the training of godliness is beneficial in every way, if you actually believe that in an honest sense, if you believe that that's more important than whatever excuses come in your mind, whatever inconveniences may happen tomorrow morning as your alarm clock rings, if you're actually convinced that training of godliness is worth it, then you must act. You have to do something.\n\nAnd I am so encouraged by you as the members of this church, because I sincerely believe that you guys are doing exactly that. I get a glimpse of that every Sunday evening when people share prayer requests, about people that they're sharing the gospel with, giving examples of faithfulness, godliness, a desire to give glory to the Lord. I am so grateful for all of you who have continued to make choices day after day after day to pick up your cross and follow Christ. Some of you are enduring through this sermon (I'm not just talking emotionally, I mean physically, I see that). The Lord sees that. He's so honored by you. So grateful for all of these examples. You have decided day after day that godliness is beneficial in every way and worth investing in. That's the saying that's trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.\n\n## The Hopefulness of Work\n\nGodliness is absolutely worth it, and it's not just worth it because of what it does for you; it's also worth it because your hope that you have in what you do is absolutely sure. It brings us to our last point, the hopefulness of work. Look at verse 10:\n\n> For this reason we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.\n>\n> — 1 Timothy 4:10 (CSB)\n\nThe Christian life, according to Paul here, is one of work and struggle, of labor and striving, that you do hard things and you endure hard things. But the reason why you do those things isn't just because it's difficult. We don't labor for the sake of hating ourselves. It's not done out of guilt or dreary obligation. The reason why a Christian is called to endure difficult actions and difficult seasons is because of the hope that we have. We put our hope in the living God, the Savior of all people, of all the human race, especially or particularly those who believe—that God saves all those who believe in Him, all who have placed their faith in Him, who have turned from their sins and trusted in Christ. We have placed our hope in this living God.\n\nWhy does Paul here point out that God is living and that God is Savior? Notice those words that he says there in verse 10. He says, "the living God who is the Savior of all people." And we figure out why if you've gone through the books sequentially, like we have up until this point. In 1 Timothy 1:1, Paul introduces himself as "an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope." Christ Jesus, our hope. And where do we put our hope here in 1 Timothy 4:10? You put your hope in the living God. And who is our hope in 1 Timothy 1:1? Christ Jesus. We have placed our hope in Jesus who is the living God, the Savior of all.\n\nThe reason why we have hope in what we do, the reason why we trust that our effort, our endurance, is all worth it, isn't because of the hope of us somehow becoming more competent people, or becoming nicer people, or becoming more moral people, but because we are placing our hope in our competent Savior, Jesus Christ. That's who we believe in. We have placed our hope in the good news of the gospel that Jesus came into the world to save sinners like you and I, that He lived a perfect life of godliness, that He Himself was the mystery of godliness displayed to the whole world. He never strayed from the Lord. And Hebrews 12:2 says that "for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2, paraphrased). That's the good news of the gospel. If you're not a Christian, we want you to believe that good news.\n\nTurn from your sin and trust in this Jesus who does what you and I can never do on our own. That's the good news that completely reframes the entire paradigm, the framework of life itself, because before, the best you could do is optimize for your life now. So try to get your best life now. You could train your body, your careers, your own ambition, but it's limited to your life before you die because we were all cursed by sin. There's nothing you can do to outrun the reaper, because our sin left us cursed and condemned. But God, our living hope, defeats death and sin and rose from the grave. That Jesus did what you and I could never do, which means if you trust in Him, if you anchor your hope in Jesus who has gone through the grave to the throne of God, then that means that you have a hope that goes beyond this life, beyond what you can bench, beyond your health, beyond your promotion, even beyond your family. You have a hope that makes you look past this decaying world until you reach the new heavens and the new earth within. Christians don't look back. We also don't look down. We look ahead. Jesus removes our greatest problem by giving us our greatest hope. Is your hope in Jesus?\n\nDo you believe that Jesus has forgiven you? Do you believe that Jesus will give you life everlasting? Have you placed your trust in Him, where He is, right now, seated in the heavens? Because if that's your hope, if that's what you placed your hope in, you will be like the man in Matthew 13 who discovers treasure buried in the field and out of his joy, he goes and he sells everything he has to buy that field (Matthew 13:44, paraphrased). What motivates a Christian to give up convenience for the sake of godliness? Is it guilt? Is it the feeling that you owe God something? Is it the drill sergeant of the law screaming at you to do better? Or is it that your eyes are fixed on your Savior, Jesus Christ? Who's ahead of you, drawing you towards Himself? Your treasure, our delight, is Christ.\n\nThe pursuit of godliness is the pursuit of Jesus, because Jesus is the mystery of godliness. To train in godliness, to make every effort to grow in godliness, is the pursuit of Jesus. The effort, the discipline we apply to be godly, is to go after Him, to follow Him. It's as much work for a Christian to train in godliness as it was for that man to buy that treasure. It is costly. It does cost everything that you own. It requires you to go to the market and sell everything that you have, all the priorities that you may hold. It requires you to let go of everything, but the reward is always absolutely worth it. Following Jesus is worth it. The treasure will be unlike any treasure you've ever seen because Jesus will offer you true salvation beyond this life, into the life to come. It's because we trust in God's promises that we go to spiritual work. Like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:\n\n> But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.\n>\n> — 1 Corinthians 15:10 (CSB)\n\nTrain yourself in godliness. Work from grace, by grace, to grace. Put your hope in the living God. Place your hope in Christ and go follow Him. And as you work, watch Christ fulfill His good will in you and for you. Let's pray. We pray that you give us the discipline, the sight, the delight, the craving, the appetite to pursue godliness. We pray that you would help us to trust in Christ who is ours. Help us to delight in Him in a way that makes us run away from any worldly pleasure because we ultimately desire you. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.