In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of warning the people about the apostasy in the world and the need for pastors, preachers, and teachers to constantly warn the congregation. He highlights the damaging effects of a culture that values leisure and avoids hard work, even within the ministry. The speaker shares a personal anecdote about a father questioning a potential suitor for his daughter, asking if he delights in God-honoring labor. The sermon then transitions to the passage in 1 Timothy 4:6, where the speaker encourages the brethren to point out these warnings and teachings to be good servants of Christ Jesus, nourishing themselves on the words of faith and sound doctrine, while avoiding worldly fables and disciplining themselves for godliness.

Well, again, it's a great privilege to be here. Let's open up our Bibles to First Timothy, chapter four. We studied verses one through five this morning, and I'll go ahead and pick up in verse six and we'll read from there. Chapter four, verse six of First Timothy. In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following, but have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance, for it is for this we labor and strive because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the savior of all men, especially of believers. Prescribe and teach these things. Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith and purity. Show yourself an example of those who believe. Until I come, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation and teaching. Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you, bestowed on you through prophetic utterance, with the laying on of the hands by the presbytery. Take pains with these things, be absorbed in them so that your progress will be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching. Preserve in these things, for as you do this, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you. Now, let's begin in verse six and pointing out these things to the brethren. You will be a good servant of Christ Jesus in pointing out what to the brethren? Well, here's some very important things that I want you to look at. If you look in verses one through five, you see, first of all, that there is great warning here. There is a need for a pastor, preacher, teacher to be constantly warning the people, to warn them of the apostasy in this age that all around us, the world is moving farther and farther away from gospel truth, but not only to warn us about the apostasy of the age, but to warn us about our own apostasies. To constantly be checking us. Now, people have asked me many times, why did you go to Muscle Shoals? I mean, you moved all the way from Illinois and things such as that. And why did you go to that church? Well, Grace Life or what used to be First Baptist is very different in a sense than than me. I'm kind of small church guy. I like small churches, nothing wrong, big churches. But I'm just kind of a more of a Mennonite sort of small church, simple guy. Believe it or not, two of the reasons I went there, the first one is. Is. A true gospel. A gospel of repentance and faith that they're not just going to ask my little children, do you love Jesus, get them to raise their hand, and if they raise their hand, baptize them. The leaders are going to scrutinize their lives to see if there's genuine fruit. Also, another reason is church discipline, the fact that if I went astray, someone would get a hold of me and they would warn me and they would hold me accountable. Now, you see, this is what he's saying, point these things out in a sense, a good minister is going to be a pleasure to be around. In another sense, at certain times he's going to be a bother. It just depends on where you are spiritually. You know, it always seems funny to me that a person who's truly walking with the Lord, if you preach on some hard doctrine like the wickedness of man, they're just smiling. They like to hear biblical truth even when it hurts. So if you're walking with the Lord, you will enjoy a minister who is constantly pointing out dangers and even errors. Now, that's not all he's supposed to do. He should be a very positive person, a very uplifting person. But at the same time, he should be a person who loves you enough to point things out. Now, also, I think it's very important that when Paul talks about apostasy here, he's talking about things like forbidding marriage, abstaining from foods. It's don't seem like really big things. I mean, he's not talking about someone who denies the Trinity or someone who's teaching salvation by works or someone living in open adultery. He's simply talking about people who have serious confusion with regard to manners matters concerning food and relationships with other people. And I think what's going on here is that we need to see that there is nothing too large that it shouldn't be pointed out and there's nothing too small. That it shouldn't be pointed out, we think that maybe the minister ought to come to us if we're in an adulterous relationship and point that out to us. But, you know, he may also need to come to us if we're greedy. And point that out to us, because greed is idolatry. And no idolatrous person will enter into the kingdom of heaven, you see, there are no small sins. And so he's saying, listen, in pointing out these things to the brethren now, look at this. Here's a problem many times in the church. I know that that that all pastors, true pastors have a love for lost people, and we ought to preach evangelistic messages in the church. But there's something that I've seen in our own denomination that sometimes scares me. The preachers preach more to lost people than they do to the sheep. And the sheep are starving to death. He says, point these things out to the brethren, feed the brethren, feed them. Feed them. Now, men, you'll understand this, if someone if you walked across the parking lot at Walmart. At 11 o'clock in the evening and my wife happened to have been there shopping and you see two or three men trying to do damage to my wife in the parking lot and, sir, you don't do something, you don't intervene. I'm not only going to go after the guys that were messing with my wife, I'm probably going to come knock on your door and say, what is your problem? What kind of coward are you? You saw my wife in danger and you did nothing. OK, or if you saw my wife starving. Going house to house, begging for food and you did nothing. I'd be very angry with you if I ever got back into this country to deal with you. I want you to think about this. A pastor ought to care for lost people, but more than anything, he ought to care for the sheep of God. He ought to be zealous for them. He ought to love them so much that he'll risk his own life, just like a good shepherd will go after a bear or a wolf with just a cane in his hand. He'll also be someone who wants to win the loss, but most importantly, he wants to feed God's people and not just feed God's people with what you may think would be abstract doctrine or something that's not applicable to our lives. Well, all true biblical doctrine is applicable to our lives, but he's not just going to talk about. What you would consider theology, he's also going to be concerned about your marriage and he's going to teach regarding marriage, he's going to teach regarding children, he's going to begin in the places where you most struggle. He wants to teach you and let's face it, I just mentioned two places where we all struggle. Greatly. And so he's going to be a person who points out things and sometimes you're you're just you're not going to like it. It's like, you know, when when you've eaten a meal or something, you're out at a restaurant or maybe a fellowship and you just got a big piece of mayonnaise right on the side of your mouth. Anybody who points it out to you, it embarrasses you. Hey, you got mayonnaise on the side of your mouth, would you eat like a hog? But still, wouldn't you rather have someone point it out to you than to have them leave you walking around the whole fellowship for three hours looking like you got hit in the face with a Big Mac? You want them to point it out, don't you? And you know this, the man who points out things to you, he's risking himself here in this day and age in this country. A pastor goes to someone and says, listen, I see something in your life that's not right. Don't you realize there's a lot of love in that man's heart? He's risking what he's risking making you mad. You're looking at a man, he comes to you and says, look, your 16 year old son is living like an unbeliever. We need to talk to him. You're looking at a man who loves you. He loves you enough to risk everything. Now, let's be careful here, though, he's not going to be because there are these types of men. He's not going to be a critical spirit, a critical man. He's not going to be an angry man. He's not going to be a nitpicking man. He's not going to be a judging man who doesn't take the log out of his own eye, but wants to pull the speck out of yours. But he is going to be a man who points things out. That's our job. Point things out now in pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus. Now look at this. Above all things, the man who is going to be in this pulpit needs to be a servant of Christ Jesus and not a servant of you. Now, he is to serve you, he is to give his life for you, but above all things, he is a servant of Christ Jesus. And if he has to make a choice between pleasing you and pleasing Christ Jesus, you want him to please Christ Jesus. You want him to be God's man. Now, how will you know if he's making a God's man decision? Just open up your Bibles and study it and compare what he's saying to scripture. But you want God's man now a few years ago, had someone come up to me and they said, Brother Paul, they said, you're the bravest man I've ever met. I mean, you just said a bunch of things to a bunch of men and all of them just hate you right now. I mean, they're back there at the back of the church. I think they're going to lynch you. Aren't you afraid? And I said, I'm probably one of the most fearful men in this church. And he said, well, then how can you do that? I said, well, it's all relational. It all depends on the way you look at it. And they said, what do you mean? I said, if I've got if I've got a man who's six foot six, three hundred and twenty pounds and full of muscle standing beside me and another man that's five foot two and weighs ninety pounds soaking wet and I got to decide which one I'm going to make mad, I'm going to make the little guy mad. Now, I may be afraid of him, I may be more afraid of him than anybody else on the planet, but still, no matter how afraid I am of that little guy, I'm more afraid of the big one. So if I'm going to make somebody mad, it's going to be the little guy, not the big guy. It's the same way, not courageous, many times fear men. But if I got to make a choice between fearing men and fearing God, I'm going to fear God. See, that's why in Christianity, the most frightful man on the face of the earth can be the strongest, because as long as you fear God more than men, you'll be able to overcome fear. Man, it's like the two guys in the woods being chased by a bear and one of them looks at the other one and says, you know, we can't outrun this bear. And the guy goes, I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you. That's the same way. OK, now. So he is a servant of Christ Jesus that ought to be his goal, folks. Folks, there are a lot of criteria today that are used to judge churches and judge pastors, and most of them are wrong. You are not a good church necessarily because you have more baptisms than everybody else or you're bigger than everybody else or you have a greater budget. You're not necessarily a great preacher because you have a television program, a radio program, because everybody knows your name. And you are to follow the criteria of heaven. What does God say about the man? What does God say about the man? Several years ago in Peru, I was crossing the Andes Mountains and I was freezing to death. I mean, I was so cold and I was sitting on a two before for 12 hours over a cattle truck filled with cattle. And I was I had a hold of a steel bar that I was hanging on to and sitting on that two before and just I was almost delirious. And so I took an old Willie Nelson song, Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. And I changed it. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be missionaries. Don't let them read their Bibles or pray too much. Make them be doctors and lawyers and such. And one of the lines says men who don't know them don't like them and them that do sometimes don't know how to take them. They ain't wrong, they're just different. But their hearts won't let them see people die without Christ, there are sometimes you will not understand the man of God, and there are many times you won't even like him. But he is not in a popularity contest. Now, again, there are some men that are just mean spirited, unloving, and that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a guy who loves you. Who is kind and gentle of spirit, but at the same time will tell you the truth, and many times you won't understand him and you won't like him. But don't you want a man who, first of all, is a faithful servant of Christ Jesus and loves you enough to tell you what sometimes you're not going to want to hear? Now, in pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus. Now, let's look at his secret life for a moment, his life before God constantly nourished on the words of faith and of the sound doctrine. One of the things that you want to look for in a man is this his relationship with the word of God. You don't want a man who lives on. His own logic, his own wisdom, who teaches pithy little sayings that encourage and warm your heart, you don't want a man who's going to serve you chicken soup for the soul. You want a man whose own life is nourished, constantly nourished on the words of faith. He's a man who literally is on a lifeline like a man hooked up to a life support system, cannot be separated from that life support system. This man can't be separated from the word of God. And he will not allow anything to come between himself and the word. Between himself and the word of God. Now, not just for you, for him, he lives in powered and strengthened and nourished on the word of God. You cut open his veins. And he bleeds bibling. He bleeds the Bible, he opens his mouth, you hear the Bible, he is strong in the things of God because he is constantly feeding on the word. You need to ask that man. Before you ever allow him to become a pastor, what is your relationship with the word of God? And if he says, well, I preach the word, that's not my question. My question is, are you yourself nourished upon that word? Do you feed upon the word to such an extent that when you're not in the word, you know it? And so he's constantly nourished on the words of faith and of the sound doctrine. Folks, your pastor must be a theologian. He must be a teacher of doctrine. He must study doctrine. You get a guy in here says, well, you know, I don't know much about that doctrine stuff. I just love Jesus. He says, don't let him in the pulpit. This is his job. Many of you men do certain things because of your expertise. My dad always used to say, you hire somebody to work with you as a carpenter and the first thing you need to do before you hire him is look at his toolbox. Because if you don't have any tools or those tools are just a mess, don't hire him. You know, a man by his toolbox. In the same way, you look at a minister is going to fill this pulpit, look at his library, look at the books that he reads, ask him, what do you read? What is your doctrine? What do you believe on this? What do you believe on that? Now, here's something very important. Don't. Brush over things because you like someone's personality or the way they speak. Find out what they really believe and be kind, say to them, look, you may believe things differently than us. And if that's true, we love you and we want God to bless your life. But in theology and counseling, that's supposed to bring breakthroughs to people. And it's nothing more than than than secular antichrist social science. Or it's not just they get caught off on something like that, but they even get caught off saying, but when you hear a man say, folks, it's all about worship, there's a problem. It's not all about worship. Christianity is too big to say it's all about worship. Now, he may sit there for a while and teach you on worship and that will be good, but if he does worship to the neglect of the word, I'll give you an example. There is a new emphasis and I praise God for it. On the family that we need to have biblical families. But now we're starting to have churches that are all about family. Christianity for them is family having a strong biblical family. But that is not all of what Christianity is or Christianity is all about evangelism. No, it's not. Evangelism is important, but it's not all about evangelism or Christianity is all about missions. No, it's not. Christianity is so big that when you start making statements to hone it down to one thing, you're following wives tales. Fables, you've got off the center of things and the center of things is God revealed to man. And doing a work of salvation among men in the person of Jesus Christ. And that encompasses everything. Now, so we need to be very careful. There is a lot of stuff out there today, especially in the area of counseling and marriage counseling that is supposed to be healing people's lives. But it's not. It's using psychology, secular techniques from men who deny the scriptures. It's making them look Christian and then applying them to God's people. But it's not Bible. Bible. It's not Bible. Remember what we said this morning, the Bible is not only inspired, it's sufficient. It's sufficient. Now, let's go on. He said, on the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. Now, there has never been a golden age. And not all the men born in the World War Two era, like my father, were disciplined men of strong character. There have always been lazy people. But I've noticed something I really have. My father was he was a World War Two veteran, he fought in the war, he was a man who went through the Depression. He made a life for himself out of nothing. At 10 years old, selling newspapers on street corners in Detroit, Michigan. My father was disciplined. He worked hard. And if he was alive today, he would be in his late 80s and he would still be working hard. There is a problem that has occurred. When I was a little boy, my father would get me up sometimes at five in the morning as a little boy and say, Paul boy, get up. No rest for the wicked. That's the first verse I ever memorized. And when he said, get, you better be up before you get to up or you are in trouble. Get up. And you got up and you went out and you fed the cattle and you did all your chores and everything else. And then you went off to school on the school bus and then you came home and you did all your chores and you worked on Saturdays and you did not like summer vacation like all the other kids who lived in the city. Because summer vacation for them meant, man, we just don't have to do anything. Summer vacation for a boy on the farm meant I'm going to be chopping wood, baling hay, taking care of cattle, doing absolutely everything and working from the sun comes up to the sun goes down. One of the things most lacking among young ministers today in their teens, those who feel called in their 20s, even the 30s, is they have no discipline. They know nothing about work. They were raised on video games and football and basketball and extracurricular activities. They've been bought hundred dollar pairs of tennis shoes and things like that, and they know nothing about working 12 hours a day in the hot sun, and it has done a great deal of damage, a great deal of damage. My friend Votie Bauckham says this, he says that when a young man comes to him one day and asked to court his daughter after he investigates. His Christianity. And knows him well in that area, this is one of the first questions he will ask him, do you rejoice, do you delight in God honoring labor? Or. Because if not, even if you're a good kid and you know nothing about hard work, do not knock on my door. And I'm afraid this thing that prevails in our culture. Of boys with no calluses on their hands. Is that it's gone into the ministry, you want an easy life, you want a real easy life, get in the ministry, you'll have a great life if you don't fear God. And so you have got to be if you're here today and you're thinking about being in the ministry or you're looking at a candidate for this church, you've got to look at the idea of discipline, ask the guy what time he goes to bed, ask him what time he gets up in the morning. Ask him how much time he works and does he delight in it or does he see it as a drudgery? You see, we've developed into a culture that no longer sees work as virtuous. We work only so that we can either buy toys or have free time to play and we hate work. We don't delight in it. We've got to come back to delighting in our work. That's why my dad, he always told me, said, son, love your job and you won't have to work a day in your life. He delighted in going to work in the morning. This must be a man who is disciplined. He is a disciplined man. He has control of himself. Now, sure, he can lose control every again. We're not putting him with the standard of Jesus Christ, but he can have problems. But the general course of his life ought to be disciplined and specifically in this area, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. What are you doing, sir, in order to become more like Christ? Tell me your strategy. I mean, if he just throws that, well, I read the Bible and I pray that's not good enough. Tell me your strategy. What are you doing to become more like Christ? How are you disciplining your own life? How are you doing it? I want to know. Because you're going to see if we have time. Later on, you're going to see something that when we study the characteristics of a pastor, of an elder, of a bishop and overseer, that almost all of it has to do with character, character, not that he is a character, but that he has character. And you can see it in his life, you can see it in his life, so he says, and we're going to we're going to close here. On the other hand, he's first of all, verse seven, he says, there's something you should not do. Don't get involved in old worldly fables, things that are teachings and ideas and doctrines that are not found in the scriptures have nothing to do with that. But on the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. When we get a chance to do this, maybe later we will talk about what it means to discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, to discipline yourself.