Video Transcript: Training for Godliness: Spiritual Disciplines

Video Transcript - Training for Godliness: Spiritual Disciplines (Dr. Feddes)

Young people who are performing the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Now the most impressive thing about that performance, to me at least was that nobody put any effort into the thing. They got up there. They did a nice job. Very impressive job. And nobody studied their lines. Nobody practiced. Nobody rehearsed and it just went great. It's just wonderful to know what talent we have in our congregation. Now, I suspect that I just did some lying, I think probably a few people might have studied their lines for a while and studied them again, and then studied them again and tried to pound them into their heads because they knew if they didn't, they would be a disaster up there. Come the night of the performance. And I know the last few days before the performance there were very long rehearsals because not everybody was quite up to speed with their lines or their cues and So on. And so they were going to make sure they got it right. But in order to get it right, they were going to study hard and practice hard. Actors are not going to succeed in a play without memorizing and rehearsing. What about athletes? How do they do in sports without exercise? and practice? 

Well, let's take the sport that I know the best basketball, basketball is a simple game. You throw a ball through a ring more often than the other guys do. Okay, what could be easier? And so if you want to be a superb basketball player, you just head on out there, and you throw the ball up the ring, and make sure it goes through more often than the other guys throw it through. That's pretty simple, isn't it? I still can't understand those coaches we had. They would make us run bleachers up and down, up and down, up and down. What does that have to do with throwing a ball through a ring, they would recommend that we take a little tennis ball and squeeze a tennis ball and squeeze it with the other hand, why in the world would you do that when you're playing with a basketball, and then when we get to practice, they would have something they called the medicine ball, which was bigger than a basketball and heavy as lead, and you pass that thing back and forth. You're never going to have to throw a medicine ball through a hoop or pass one. And they would have you doing all this crazy stuff, just to play a game where you throw the ball through a hoop. Now actually, if you learn to pass a medicine ball, you develop a very crisp pass, you can move that thing you can catch it without it knocking you over. 

If you learn to squeeze a tennis ball, you get strong hands and when a rebound comes toward you and you grab it, and they try to knock it out of your hands. Good luck with that, because you have strong hands. When you run those leecher laps. You don't get tired. At the end of the game, like sometimes the other guys might, if they haven't trained as hard, you practice your free shots or free throws. At the end of practice, when your dog tired, and you can hardly move anymore, then you got to shoot 25 of those things yet, because when you're in a game, you're not always going to be fresh as a daisy when they hack you, usually it's gonna be at the end of the game. And you've got to be able to hit it when your legs are weak. And when you're out of breath, so you practice hitting free throws, when you can't breathe anymore. 

Now, if you want to be good at basketball, you better understand that the object of the game is to throw the ball through the hoop. You don't want to lose track of what the object of the game is. And you practice that too. And they'll you know, what's so what's that limp wristed thing. You know, well, you got to have the right kind of backspin and you practice your form again and again and again. You know, just chucking the ball in the hoop your likelihood of going through is not that high. Now, all of this is to say that whatever sport you would choose if you want to do well at it You do a lot of things that may not even seem directly related to it, but they are part of your training. And you succeed because of those things in warfare, all you that, again is kind of a simple thing, you have to get rid of them before they get rid of you. But in doing so, you'd better have a lot of training on distinguishing enemy from friend, you better have some training on how to handle weapons or you might shoot your foot off or shoot one of your fellow soldiers. If you're handling tanks, it'd be nice to know how to operate the things. I prefer my tank operators to be trained. That there are many aspects of, of warfare and of course the many troops learn to train their bodies. They do lots of push ups and weights and running and rigorous physical exercise just so their bodies are in shape. 

Some of the elite troops learn to sit in water Rather tread water for hours at a time. They go through Long, long times of sleep deprivation, and all of that, so that they are going to succeed in their mission. The same is true if you want an academic career or any kind of career that requires any talent and skill at all. If you have talent, you still have to sharpen it and develop it. If you wish to do well, in a career, it takes a lot of education, and a lot of study. And yet for some reason, we figured well, this being like Jesus stuff that supposed to be kind of one of those things that happens automatically. And sometimes we even have a theology of that. We take the biblical truth of salvation by God's grace and not by our works, and of the power of the Holy Spirit and not dependence on our own power. And we use that as our excuse to do little or nothing. To develop godliness, and the scripture says, Train yourself in godliness. Let's look at this passage again. Just briefly, Paul has read it for us. A few things that I want to highlight. One is that Timothy has already been trained. He's not fully trained, he has more things. We all have plenty of room for growth, but he already received a lot of nurture and a lot of training in his home from his mother and grandmother, who were believers, and who taught him the scriptures from the time he was a baby. 

That's what it says in Paul's letters, how from infancy you've known the Holy Scriptures. And then of course, Paul himself was also a mentor to Timothy. So he's already had training both in how to walk with Christ and then how to lead others in their walk with Christ. When you're thinking about training, the number of things to keep in mind one is that part of training is learning. What to ignore, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths, what's your focus? Sometimes a well trained Christian needs to know enough about the myths to know how silly they are, and to be able to, to dismiss them, rather than be taken in by them, or to be able to help others avoid such things. So you may need at least a little bit of knowledge of those things, but don't spend too much time on them. Another area that I think is very telling, for most of us would be the kinds of myths that we do take in all the time. Many of you are not going to fall into the pit of having studied too much of the area and heresy and you're just spending all of your time occupied studying arianism or Apollinaire, us and his errors. 

You may not know, Islam inside out and backward. And so you say, Well, I'm really not too tempted to spend too much time on errors and silly myths. Well, now, what about Hollywood's silly myths And how much time do you spend on those every week? When you're sitting in front of your tube? Or what about Nashville's silly myths? When you have your little iPod stuck in your ear from morning till evening, on most days, if your time is spent on input from others, you better check out who those others are, and how much of what you're being fed is silly Miss. If you spend most of your focus most of your time and most of your input on what the world feeds you, you will be worldly. Not might not have a small danger of it. If you pride yourself and say yeah, I spend five minutes a day on Bible reading, and five hours a day on other stuff. The result will be to a high degree in preparation Due to the time and attention, you're giving something if you spend most of your time on the world's input, you will be worldly. If you focus primarily on God's input, you're much more likely to be godly. And so we need to know how to focus, what to avoid, what to focus on, and then the promised benefits. 

It's promising benefits for this present life and for the life to come. Godliness has benefits for both lives. You don't wait till heaven until glory to get benefits from godliness. Many benefits come now although the greatest are lying in the future. But to know God now to know God is eternal life. This is eternal life says Jesus to know you the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have said Godliness is life. You get to be alive. The Bible speaks of people who live for pleasure of being dead. While they're still living. They're walking around, but They're zombies. They have no actual life. And so godliness has value in this life and that you're relating to God, God is working through you. And it has a tremendous blessing now to be God's child. One thing, of course, that we don't want to fall into, and I'll say a little more about that later, is that we count on God's grace to save us. Here it says, we've set our hope on the living God who is the Savior, he's this, he's the only Savior anybody's gonna have and he's already the savior of those who believe. And so when you think about spiritual disciplines, or about training in godliness, don't think you're earning your way to salvation, or that your hope is in you, and how good you get at being godly. 

If you have any right standing with God, it is based on someone entirely outside yourself. It's based on the finished work of Jesus Christ. outside of you. That's God's forgiveness. That's what your status depends on. But then what Christ does inside of you, it's not the basis for your forgiveness or your relationship to God, but it is the basis of the transformation in your life, and of you becoming more and more godly, and that too is a work of grace in the sense that God does it that God sends his spirit. But it also is something that enlivens us and moves us and we never look to ourselves to say, Well, God forgives me because I've worked hard enough to make up for what I did. Now. That's not how it works. And so I trust that you'll understand that. Another thing just noticed that a leader worth following lives a disciplined and godly life Timothy is a pastor is the young pastor but he's a pastor. And the apostle says set the believers and example in speech in conduct in love in faith in purity. Read the Bible in public, encourage and preach to people, teach them But this is the same man that Paul has said, Train yourself in godliness. Before you try to train others. You need to train yourself. And you can say, well, that's nice. So I hope pastor Dave and Jim Martin pay attention to that and hope Martin's omegan catches wind of it, you know, when he gets back from his preaching trip? 

Well, last time I checked, there were an awful lot of people here who are parents. You really can't lead where you haven't been. If you want your children to grow up in godliness, you need to discipline yourself for godliness, or they will not be shown the way or if so it will not be through you but in spite of you. And so any leader in whatever capacity that you're leading, is going to live a disciplined and godly life. Another thing that spiritual disciplines do is they develop your gifts. God gives talents, His Holy Spirit gives talents. But Paul says, Now don't neglect the gifts that you have. You develop it, you work on it. And practice these things, immerse yourself in them so everybody can see your progress. So the purpose of spiritual disciplines is godliness overall, but then it's honing your spiritual gifts. It's shaping your character. It's guarding your life and your doctrine. And note what it says. So that you'll save both yourself and your heroes. Now, again, don't misunderstand. That's not self salvation, but it is when you're walking in the way of salvation. When you watch the doctrine that you take in very closely. And when you watch the life that you live very closely, then that's part of your persevering in the faith. That's part of your walking the road that leads to glory. And when you do that, it's a benefit to you and to those who are influenced by you. So do this to save to walk the way of salvation for both yourself and for others. Now what is this godliness that's being talked about?

Godliness is having a relationship with God. But if you have to sum it up it can be summarized as Christ living in you. And three very important aspects of godliness are that one is growing closer to Jesus all the time. That doesn't just happen automatically. You don't just automatically get to know Jesus better. If you spend most of your days ignoring him. You need to spend time with him. You need to discipline yourself to be able to focus on him and concentrate on him. And so part of discipline and growth and godliness is growing closer to Christ in your experience. Now there is growing more like Christ. In holy character. The Bible says those who before knew he predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. That's the goal of godliness is to be conformed or made like Jesus Christ. And if you've been born again at all, that is how you're going to end up. But it's not just automatic. It happens through God enlivening you and enlisting your powers and disciplining you and you disciplining yourself in spiritual disciplines. And a third aspect is growing light Jesus Christ in the impact that you have. 

Now one of the more frustrating things, when I think about these things and look at my own life, and when I look at the Christian church around me, is that much of what the Bible says about Christians just doesn't seem to be borne out. In the way a lot of the church lives today. How much of the church is really growing closer to Christ? inexperience in simply a sense and a reality that they're coming to know God? Better and better That they're drawing closer and closer to Jesus Christ in the way they relate to him. And knowing how many of us are growing more and more like Jesus, in the character that we have in much of American Christianity, the church goers are almost indistinguishable from those who have nothing to do with the gospel. That means something is terribly amiss. And what about the impact that we have on others if we want to know Christ better, to be more like Him, and to have that life changing eternity changing impact on people? Perhaps we need to be trained in godliness. And not just wonder why such things aren't happening but realize that one of the reasons may be that American Christianity is an undisciplined mess. That was tactful. Now notice just a few of the things that the Bible says in the book of Hebrews it talks about people who remain infantile and babyish and childish. Now there's a sense of, of childlikeness, where you have a hunger for God and a sense of wonder and a humble dependence on him. That's healthy, but childishness, where you never grow up. We're always kind of a helpless little baby in the faith is not meant to be. And Hebrews says, solid food is for the mature for those who have their powers of discernment, trained by constant practice, to distinguish good from evil. These things don't happen automatically. 

To be a discerning person. You don't just get a gift of discernment dropped down on you by the Holy Spirit there. There's an element in which the Holy Spirit can give some more than others in that particular area. But you develop and train powers of discernment By knowing God's word really thoroughly, by spending a lot of time in God's presence and having a sense of his spirits leading in your life, another passage written by the Apostle Paul, every athlete exercises, self control and all things another translation says, everybody who competes goes into strict training kind of thing I talked about in relation to basketball. He says a little later, I discipline my body, and keep it under control. And so these are aspects of Christian life and of Christian discipline, and training. Now, let's just look at a list of, of disciplines, not all are equally important on this list. And there are some other things that wouldn't make the list and I'm not certainly going to go into a long detailed explanation of each of these or we will be around here a very long time today. But I, the ones at the top of the list are non negotiable. Bible intake. I'll say a little bit more about various aspects of that In a moment.

But simply listening to God's Word on a regular basis and taking it in and hearing God's voice and learning his wisdom and his will and his truth, that is not an option. That's an absolute necessity, prayer talking to God and spending time in his presence, worship, just magnifying God. Some disciplines are more personal disciplines, some are meant to be done together with other people. Some are both you do personal daily worship and praising God, you also get together with other people, whether your family and certainly with God's Church, to praise his name together and to lift him up. Rest. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, you've got six days to work, take on the rest. That's part of the regular pattern of work and rest that God built into the 10 commandments. And that relates also to our wider use of time, simply having our time structured according to a pattern that seeks godliness of having time for rest and relaxation each week. Now when you're hearing me say, we've got to have spiritual discipline, we've got to train you may have been thinking, boy, that sounds like a lot of work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Well, some of these things are work, but some of us need to work on resting. Because we are 24/7 people, we will always find one more thing to do. And an important spiritual discipline is learning how to hit the brakes, and to just rest in God. 

Silence, solitude, that one's not a negotiable one either. And that's one that we're just not very good at in our society, and I'm not that good at simply being quiet. It's a preacher Lee hazard not to be good at being quiet anyway, but to simply spend time without interruptions without noise in the screwtape letters, The demon who's writing there speaks of Satan's realm as the kingdom of noise. Well, silence reflects and silence puts us in God's presence, be still and know that I am God. The Lord is in his holy temple, that all the earth, keep silent before him. Now, as many of you know that I was in radio for a lot of years, and I was going to do a radio program on this theme of silence and the need to just spend time in silence and to and I was going to speak about how uncomfortable some of us get with silence. So I told my sound guy, let's just be silent for 30 seconds. And then I'll move on with the radio program. These were taped. These were taped in advance so it wasn't on live. And he says you can't do that. If you have 30 seconds of dead air, the computers and everything else in the whole radio thing will be You know, they'll just, they'll declare that something's wrong with the program, because they can't handle 30 seconds of silence. Now, a lot of us on our program, kind of like those radio stations, can't handle 30 seconds of being quiet. 

It's me, me, me, me, me, me, me and you get in a car and on the radio, you go somewhere else, you say, Oh, I'm bored. I've got to watch my computer. I've got a Chava and iPod in my ear, we can't be quiet. Pascal said, the main thing wrong with the world is that a man cannot sit in a room quietly by himself. Now you might think that was a little bit of a harsh diagnosis, that the main thing wrong with the world is people don't know how to shut up and be quiet and just be there with God and themselves. But try it sometime. fasting. I don't. I may have been a bad listener. But I attended church from the time I was a baby until now. And I don't recall ever hearing anybody else. preach a sermon on fasting. Now some do i know but I mean, in the churches I attended, it was just nothing that I was ever taught. There is a lot about fasting in the Bible, just never heard much about it. And then we move on into some others. And I'm not going to comment on all those just now in the coming weeks and they say more about some of these spiritual disciplines. journaling, for example, is not something commanded in the Bible. And for some people, it can be a negative thing. I remember reading CS lewis's letters, he was an obsessive diary writer when he was unsaved. 

He was always writing about his thoughts because he thought he was so important, such a great genius. And, you know, he was always writing and after he was converted, he stopped keeping a diary. Because he said, he just didn't think about himself that much anymore. So for some people, that might not be the way to go, but for others, keeping a spiritual diary, or at least making occasional notes to yourself, and then checking back about some of the things you've discovered some of the things you've resolved to change. I find helpful for myself, I'm not an everyday diary person, but it has helped me on in when I've had times of reflection and prayer and kind of stopped taking what's happening in relation to my family or myself or my church, I'll write down some things I want to work on, go back a month later. And sometimes they Well, I guess, just blew that when they haven't been paying any attention to it or others. Yeah, that that's something I've paid attention to. So these are all our areas that are practices that some have very strong roots in the Bible itself. Others have considerable things to command to them from Christian history. Now the point of it all is to walk in the newness of life, not to do something for the sake of doing it. 

I'm Dallas Willard who wrote a book called The Spirit of the disciplines. He says the message of Jesus himself and of the early disciples was not just one of the forgiveness of sins, but rather was one of newness of life. Jesus did not just announce your sins can be forgiven through me. He said, I am the life. And he came to give us life and that life expresses itself that life is to be lived out. And we can make a mistake if we only have what we are forgiven, and pay no attention to the new life that we have and the transformation that God is working in us. I'm Don Whitney, who wrote spiritual disciplines of the Christian life. If you get one book, I'd recommend getting that one on disciplines if he has a very strong biblical and evangelical approach to these matters. He says the spiritual disciplines are the God given means were to use in the spirit filled pursuit of godliness. I've never known a man or woman who came to spiritual maturity, except through discipline. You may think that's a strong statement. I've never known anybody who reached spiritual maturity. Without spiritual discipline, but that's his statement. And I think I could corroborate that. Let's look at Jesus. Just briefly. We're going to be starting to read in the book of Mark this week. And you might, as you read, Mark, just be struck by this miracle and that teaching and this demon being kicked out and rewrite over some of these little statements, and rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark. He departed and went out to a desolate place. And there he prayed. He says to His disciples, come on, they've been busy, busy, busy preaching and spreading the gospel. 

He says, Come away by yourselves to a desolate place, and rest while Jesus has been preaching and working with crowds, and it says after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. These are things that you shouldn't do. Just go over them and read the really important stuff that Mark is telling you about Jesus. These are important things about Jesus. Jesus was the Son of God and is the Son of God. During his time on Earth, though he was not just always tapping into his direct deity. He was living as a man among men and living the life of a holy and godly man as it was meant to be lived. And it was a life of prayer. It was a life with lots of noise, but also a life when he withdrew into silence in solitude in the time spent, adoring his father in heaven. And these were things that reenergized him to carry out his ministry. Solitude played a very important part in the life of John the Baptist who lived in the desert. Moses spent 40 years living in a desert before God sent him back to Egypt. The apostle Paul spent a considerable time in the desert of Arabia after his conversion. And so the Lord has used times in the life of Jesus as well as others of his great followers times of silence, solitude, prayer, to make them powerful,

to make them deep in the Lord. And when you look at your own life, that we want daily patterns of prayer and Bible reading, but sometimes there are special times when you set apart, have a more extended time of just being quiet, of being away from it. Now some of you say, Dream on, you know, I've got kids, I've got duties, I've got this, I've got that. Sometimes do a kid swap. If you're a mom who never has any solitude, do a kid swap for a few hours and get yourself a few hours of solitude and take turns with somebody else. I'm not going to tell you how to run your lives and how to arrange all that. I'm just going to say I'm not going to buy all your excuses. Okay? Because we all have excuses. I've been busy. Once or twice in my life. And don't think that preachers are just automatically dwelling in the presence of God and living at all times with a divine interchange. preachers can get just as busy as anybody else and start going through the motions just for the sake of going through the motions. And we need that fasting. When before Jesus was tempted by the devil, he was fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. And of course, fasting occurs many, many other times in the Bible, don't have time to talk about those. today. I'm just going to say that that's a discipline, we'll return to reflect on some more. If you haven't, I recall preaching about this at least once, maybe more, but it's an area that we shouldn't ignore, because it's just in the Bible too often. So this isn't one of those. That's an entirely optional one that you can just ignore. 

It is one that is so frequent in the Bible that if you've never fasted in your life, then it'd be important to at least know Know what kind of occasions fasting is appropriate for? And then there's Bible intake. When Jesus was tempted by the devil, what did he do? Three times he said, It is written, it is written, it is written, he said, Well, that was easy for him. He's God, he wrote the whole thing. No, that's not how he knew it. He did not know the whole scriptures just because he's omniscient and knows everything. The Bible says that when Jesus was a boy, he grew in wisdom, and in stature and in favor with God and man, he grew up as a human. And he didn't just tap into his divine knowledge of all things at all times to know these scriptures. He also was one who studied the scriptures when he was 12 and talked about them with some senior teachers, and he learned the scriptures. He would sometimes say to his disciples, oh, you have little faith or Don't you see it yet because he would tell them about the scriptures pointing to what was going to happen to the Messiah and his suffering and his resurrection. I should have known that. He didn't say, Well, I'm divine. So I know that, you know, you've got a good excuse for being clueless. The fact is he studied the scriptures thoroughly and knew them and so he knew how to use them. 

In dealing with Satan. He knew how to use the scriptures as they applied to his own unique calling, as Messiah. Bible intake has a number of dimensions. Let me just mention a few of these that are listed here and it's worth a whole nother sermon, and it will certainly get another sermon. The easiest part of Bible intake is hearing. Now, when you listen to a sermon in church, or when you hear a Bible teacher on the radio or in some other setting, they've done most of the work for you. You know, you didn't even have to open your Bible. If you didn't want Paul to read it for you. You heard it, you know, but that's good. It's good. We're just moving from easiest to hardest here. hearing the word is a great and valuable blessing, Timothy was supposed to publicly read scripture for others to hear. And so hearing is a great form of Bible intake and hearing the preaching of the word where in a sense, other people have done a little bit of your thinking for you. They're bringing up applications, they're helping you to understand it. Beyond hearing, then there's your own reading, where you don't just listen to somebody else read it, you read it. And third level is you study it. You don't just read the chapter, say, well done with that for today. We did our vibrating for today. Now, of course, you need that kind of pattern. And we do that a lot in our family, we're a part of our pattern if you read part of the Bible. And if you don't always have a lengthy discussion of it, part of it is just Bible intake. You read it, that's what you do every day. And it's not always a lengthy discussion of it. But sometimes for you personally, there's a time to just dig in a lot deeper than what you did in your brief Bible reading together. A fourth level is memorization. That's something we've emphasized in our churches. Try to encourage him with singing. I'm going to emphasize it even more strongly today. memorization is absolutely key. Jesus resisted Satan because he knew scripture by heart.

You don't have scripture hidden in your heart. The Bible says your word has I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you. The more scripture you hide in your heart, the stronger you're going to be, the more the Holy Spirit is going to be able to use it to help you defend against satan. This the Holy Spirit gives an armory of weapons, but it's that armory of weapons consists of about two or three verses rattling around in your head. And that's about all you could come up with. You just you've neglected a lot of the firepower that is given you so memorization is key and meditation is yet another step. You don't just memorize it, but as you memorize, you think about it. You see, you can be meditating on God's word while you're brushing your teeth. A great way to memorize is to read the sentence of the Bible a few times, just so it's kind of there, then Go brush your teeth or do something where you have nothing better to think about anyway. Okay, you just added two minutes to your Bible memory review by doing your first get there, then you think about it while you're doing something else for me sometimes go jogging, you know, learn a couple of verses kind of loosely, but then just repeat them to myself the whole time, I'm jogging by the time I'm back, I'm out of breath. And I know a couple more Bible verses. 

There are ways that even if you think you're busy, there's all kinds of downtime and every day if you just look at it, and then you just start planning for the rest of it and take a look at a verse. And then it's time to brush your teeth. So anyway, that may sound like that's not your time of solitude and a deep reverence. You know that that tooth brushing time necessarily. So I don't advise you to brush your teeth during your devotions. I'm advising you to do devotions while you're brushing your teeth. Okay, and That's not the only devotional time, but that's a way of redeeming your time of storing the Bible in your mind. And once it's in your mind, then you can start thinking about it, then you can start chewing on it, and meditating and really getting a deeper sense of what each word is about. It's hard to meditate when you haven't memorized because you just don't have it there. Now you can meditate by having it in front of you, and looking at it and thinking about it. That's very valuable. 

But if you do that long enough, you're gonna have it memorized. So meditate memorization meditation, I'm Don Whitney compares it to letting the rain sink in what happens when there is a big thunderstorm and you get about three inches of rain in 10 minutes. Yeah, you say Oh, things are just wet man. They are wet, wet wet but actually what happens is, most of it runs off because it all came down in one big splash when you get an all day rain of those same three inches. A lot more of it actually sinks in and really memorization meditation are ways of letting things sink in. And then you're going to be more ready for application when you face different situations in your life or discipline your Bible intake are going to be helping you to apply it to those given situations. Dallas Willard says as a pastor, teacher and counselor, I have repeatedly seen the transformation of inner and outer life that comes simply from memorization and meditation on the Scripture. Someone says on his law, he meditates day and night and he's like a tree, you know, drawing from streams of water, whatever he does, prospers. 

Willard says Personally, I would never undertake to pastor a church or guide a program of Christian education that did not involve a continuous program of memorization, of the choice of passages of Scripture for people of all ages. Well Here's the part where at least a few of you may have been waiting for. What about that dangerous I mean, when you hear about fasting, when you hear about spiritual disciplines, if you know anything about church history, you know, there are hazards. And if you know your Bible, and those who brag about certain aspects of their disciplines, then you know that there's trouble. And I'll just mention five here. One is the notion that you can save yourself that spiritual disciplines are a form of self salvation. And now there is what I label body bashing, treating your body as a bad thing and just miss treating it as some sort of spiritual discipline. I'm spiritual, not bodily, and the more I mistreat my body, the better my spirit will be. A third one is showing off pursuing spiritual disciplines as a way of looking really impressive The fourth and related to it often is just looking down on others. If you can say oh, I do this and this and that and they don't And then a fifth is Trivial Pursuit majoring in minors where you really got that tithing thing down. You just don't love anybody.

A little more detail from the scripture on saving yourself. Paul says let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism that means being really strict with your own body and following really strict routines, and not holding fast to the head, you know, discipline without Jesus is a major problem. He says these indeed have an appearance of wisdom and promote self made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Now, a couple of the most famous historic examples of this attempt to save yourself would be Martin Luther, and John Wesley. Martin Luther would fast for days at a time, he would inflict other kinds of discomfort on himself. He would go into rooms that were cold instead of warm and just punish his body and every way he could to try to make himself right with God ruined his digestion and did various other things to him, but didn't give him peace of God until he discovered that we're justified by faith in Jesus Christ. John Wesley had a similar experience where he got into what was called the holy club of some other very dedicated people, and they were fasting and practicing other spiritual disciplines. 

But Wesley was afraid for his own soul. He didn't know where he would go if he were to die. And it was only when he heard the teaching of justification that he said his heart was strangely warmed, and he knew that he had peace with God. So there is a terrible danger. And those of us who grow up in the wake of those dangers that Lutheran Wesley went through, will say we're going to focus on Jesus and salvation by grace alone. We're going to ditch all that fasting and all that other stuff that kind of just about ruins them. You might Want to keep in mind that after his conversion, Luther still had a very low opinion of someone who didn't spend a long time in prayer every day. And Wesley refused to ordain as a Methodist minister, anybody who didn't fast on Wednesdays and Fridays? KNow that was overboard. It wasn't biblical. I'm just telling you that, even after they were saved and understood with great clarity, justification by faith, they still did believe that spiritual disciplines were quite important, but certainly not as a contributor to their grounds for salvation. Then in this passage for today, what we read follows what Paul calls the teaching of demons and liars whose consciences are seared what was their terrible error? they forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God. in prayer, God made it, you thank him for it. You eat it, and you enjoy it. Or if you're married, you enjoy the blessings of marriage and don't listen to these losers who say the body is bad, and that food is evil, and you should mistreat your body and do terrible things to it. Now there were monks in the church of the Middle Ages, who would use whips of leather with wire and bits of bone attached to it, and they would whip their own backs to teach their body discipline. And some of the desert monks would throw themselves into thickets of thorns to make their body behave and to punish their body. Semyon Starlights, one of the hermits, went out into the desert and went on a pillar six feet high. Well, that wasn't high enough to get away from the world. So they constructed a 60 footer for him. And then some of his assistance would bring food up to him and food by food, I mean, water and bad bread because that's all He would take. 

There have been times in the history of the church where these words weren't heated and the body was treated as the enemy of the Spirit not as something for the spirit to master and control, but simply for the spirit to attack and do as much harm to it and marriage was looked down upon, and so forth. This is one of the errors of spiritual disciplines run wild. Another one that Jesus talks about showing off. When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. That's the key phrase seen by others. And when you fast do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure the faces, that their fasting may be seen by others. It's been so long since I Holy me have partaken of any food and they would make sure People knew when they were fasting and how long it had been, and how holy they were. Now, if we compare these spiritual disciplines to physical training, then this is a little bit like the guy who lifts weights for the sake of flexing. 

You know, you know, the commercials are those guys, you know, they go like this and then their pinky has muscles bulging and, and every other part of their body has muscles bulging and rippling, and they did all that for the sake of rippling. Okay, now, if you're actually lifting weights to become better at a sport or because you're a soldier in training for a certain mission or objectives, then you're you've got training with a goal. Here the goal of training is to flex. I'm not good at flexing, I don't have too much muscle, but that's what that's what the Pharisees would do. They would flex. They'd be walking down the street and suddenly they just be smitten with the holy desire to pray in public. And they would be smitten with the holy desire to let others know how long and how severe their fasts had been. It was showing off and spiritual flexing. And along with that, of course, is the prayer that Jesus spoke of in one of his stories. 

God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortionists, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I get tithes of all that I get. Aren't you impressed? God? And Aren't you impressed by the worm? And so that's another of these dangers, where you tithe you fast and you do it for the sake of feeling superior and deadly danger. Jesus warned against it. And the punchline of this story is that the man who said God be mercy To me a sinner went home justified before God and Mr. superiority complex did not. So again a very deadly danger and then Trivial Pursuit whoa Do you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for you tithe mint and dill in common, you know, even the tiniest spices gotta make sure you get exactly attempt set aside for God because you would not want to go wrong on that. And you've neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, faithfulness, these you ought to have done without neglecting the others. He didn't say okay, tithing is bad. He said you should have done that. That was fine. But you were majoring in minors and neglecting the really big stuff like loving God, loving others living by God's justice, mercy and faithfulness. Now, having said all that, the answer is not therefore to say, okay, away with all the disciplines there have been a lot of historic dangers. 

There are a lot of dangers mentioned in the Bible, I think we're better off without them. In each of these five areas, first of all, we practice spiritual disciplines not to save myself but to develop my BORN AGAIN self to greater maturity. Henry Smith wrote a great book titled The life of God in the soul of man back in the 1600s, the life of God in the soul of man. And it is only God who gives that life is only God who gives you a new status on the basis of Jesus' finished righteousness. Only God can do that. But once God has given you that new life, that new life is to be expressed and grown up in and developed, not body bashing, but training your body to submit to God's Spirit, and to your own Spirit. The Spirit is meant to be in charge of the body, not because the body is bad, but that's the proper order of authority, and your spirit should not be dominated by bodily desires. Your Spirit should be able to rein in and properly control bodily desires. 

The failure to do that is called gluttony. When the body is dictating to the spirit now I don't preach many sermons on gluttony, if some of you have seen me handle a brownie and ice cream, you might guess why. But that, you know, I can joke about that a little bit. But it is an area of life that we do need to pay attention to, that we control our bodily desires. That's one of the purposes not the only one of fasting can be to sharpen your desires for God while you're praying. It can also have simply a disciplinary effect on the same body. I appreciate you. I appreciate good food. And today, you're not getting any because I'm focusing today on the giver, not on the gift. And I appreciate the gift and most days I'm going to be enjoying it and thanking him for it but not today. I'm going to focus on him today. 

And that's teaching your body that it must answer to Not only your spirit but to the Holy Spirit. And it may well be that lack of the discipline of fasting has also contributed to our culture's failure to discipline other bodily desires and the complete sexual looseness, for example, of our culture is just an inability to control the body. A third area, not showing off, but still having an impact on others. You have the impact though not by flexing, and not by showing off, but by who you are. Not by the image you put on, but by your growth in more and more lightness to Jesus, and you don't need to advertise it and you better not brag about it. But if it's there, it will get noticed without you trying to show it off. And it will have an impact. And you will be robbing yourself of much of the impact you have if you do not discipline yourself for godliness, the fourth not feeling superior now. You can start to feel superior if you lose track of the purpose of these disciplines. The purpose is to know God better and to become more like Christ. 

But when you go into God's presence, that is the most humbling thing that can ever happen to you, you can't become humble by working on it. You can't just get on a checklist and say, you know, I could work a little more on that humility thing, and not so great at it yet, but if I put a little more oomph into it, then you know, then I'll be humble. Yeah, you know, the obvious answer to that, then you're proud of being humble. The only way to grow in humility is not to seek humility directly, but to seek God. And when you seek God, you find that he's really, really, really, really big and you're not and that he knows really, really, really vast amounts of wisdom and knowledge, and you don't and that He is perfectly holy and you are not. And when you stop looking sideways, and spend time looking up, then humility might be helpful byproduct of that constant focus on God. But you can never get humility by looking at somebody else, or by looking at yourself and saying, I'm going to work on humility, you get it by spending time with God. And you might never notice it, if you did to grow in it a little more, because you're looking at him. And finally, in this whole area of Trivial Pursuit, when you get close to the heart of God, you cannot ignore God's justice anymore. You can't ignore the great love that He has for you, or the great love that He has for others and wants to send through you to them, the more time you spend in his presence, really in his presence, not just playing the game of spiritual disciplines. 

Then the more you're going to be a person who majors and majors because you're every day with God and every day, your sight is getting readjusted to be in line with his will. Well, what holds you back? We've looked at some of the dangers, it can be an overreaction against the danger. You can say I'm not a Roman Catholic. I know they had those monks who did some of this kind of stuff. Once upon a time. I know it wasn't good. I know Luther may have managed to set himself free from and I'm gonna say free from it. Well, okay, I think I've said enough about that already, that you do not need to get rid of something that Jesus Himself practiced and that his apostles practiced, and that many of the greatest Christians throughout history have practiced, as well as many of the ordinary Christians, and starting simply with daily prayer, daily Bible reading, and regular memorization of the word and then looking at other disciplines as they may be helpful. So don't overreact against the dangers and other his lack of teaching. Like I said, I didn't know much about fasting growing up, because either I missed the sermon because I wasn't listening well or it never got preached, but I simply wasn't taught in some of these areas. 

Now in other areas. I was taught Daily Bible reading, and daily prayer time, and you could call it a quiet time, a time of solitude and silence. These were things that I was grown up and was able to be a beneficiary of, and was quite surprised, to be honest, when I met a fair number of home discipling or homeschooling Christians, who didn't understand that you read the Bible, your kids every day, they were doing subjects of school at home and not reading the Bible every day at home, I was just kind of stunned by that. But instead of feeling superior, that then I've got to look at number two and say, well, they weren't taught that. And if they weren't taught that, what a blessing and benefit, it would be, for some of us to grow in some of these areas that will discipline us toward godliness is simply to be taught better, and fill in some of the gaps of the knowledge that we're lacking. The third one, there is no nice word for it. So I'll say laziness. you're lazy.

If you don't read the Bible, Every day in this congregation or at least close to it, it is not due to ignorance. If you don't bother memorizing the Bible, if you haven't memorized five verses in the last year, I don't have a nice word except that was due to laziness. Okay? You didn't put in the effort to do something you knew was beneficial for your spirit that you had been taught to do. You just didn't do it. I know that I'm not supposed to make people feel guilty or be mean. But that's a fact. Okay, deal with it, deal with it wisely. And well. The only thing worse, of course, is number four, if there is a lack of desire to know Jesus Christ, to want to know him better and better, to become more like Him and to make an eternal impact. If there's no desire for that. Then you've got to ask really hard questions whether you've been born again. Because if you have the life of Christ in you, there's nothing you want more than to be like Jesus Christ and know him in the power of his resurrection in the family. fellowship of his suffering and become like him. And so definitely search your heart and examine your heart if there's just a total lack of desire for godliness in your life, because that's just a sign of spiritual deadness. So, again, my goal here is not to be the judge. My job is to present the options. 

I've taught you a few things about spiritual disciplines as it comes from the scriptures. And then you need to answer for yourself the question: what's holding you back? And whatever it is, deal with that particular area. What's the goal? This is a passage I love. It's one of the Apostle Paul's prayers for his readers, asking that you may be filled with a knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so as to walk in a manner pleasing to the Lord, worthy of the Lord fully pleasing to Him. bearing fruit in every good work. Increasing in the knowledge of God may be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy. Later in the past, he speaks of Christ in you, the hope of glory, and he wants to present everyone mature in Christ. That's the goal, to have life in Christ that is a mature life, where you have spiritual wisdom and understanding and you know God's ways where you have the power from God, to be able to walk in those ways, and to resist the snares of evil one to be worthy of the Lord who gave his blood for you. And a little part of what I left out there is again, the fact that it's all his work. I'm giving thanks to God the Father who qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He delivered you from the domain of darkness and transferred you to the kingdom of the sun. He loves. He did all That and now we just want to mature in the life he has given us. A final text, we all with unveiled faces beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. 

For this comes from the Lord, who is the spirit we become by beholding. The more you see of Christ, the more you become like him. The Bible speaks of idols and says those who worship them will become like them. Bunch of deadbeats, you know, he says they have eyes, they can't see they have ears, they can't hear. They have hands, they can't touch. They have feet, they can't move. Those who worship them become like them. That's the downside. If you're worshiping the idols and listening to the worldly myths, you become worldly and a deadbeat. But when you are beholding the glory of Christ and disciplining yourself to focus on Jesus Christ, then more and more the character of Christ. The glory of Christ is shaped in you and it keeps increasing. So these are the questions to ask, Are you beholding Jesus' glory? Do you need, perhaps a more disciplined life to be seeking to see more of his glory and to know him better? Are you becoming more like Jesus like him in your character, and like him in your impact on others who read up with you? If so, to at least some degree, praise God for that. And if you want it to be more, then discipline yourself, Train yourself, exercise yourself for godliness. And the final question is, knowing him and wanting to know more. Will you practice disciplines to do so?

For Jesus, we desire to know you. To see the glory of God in the face of Christ, with the eyes of our heart, Lord, to grasp more and more of the wonder of who you are, and to have that glorious lightness stamped on our own being. And so Lord, whatever it is that needs to happen, make that happen. We pray above all for the powerful shaping of the Lord, who is the Spirit working within us, drawing us closer to Christ and into an intimate relationship with our mother, our Father in heaven. We pray that in beholding Your glory, we may become more and more like you that you may be pleased in what we are developing to become, and that also you will be pleased to use us to touch the lives of others, Lord, different people here need a different word and a different nudge today in their own circumstances, do that work by your Holy Spirit. It helps them to know what part of this message in particular, you want them to apply first and help them then to take that step and to follow you wherever you lead. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.