This weekend is notable for two things: first, it’s the start of Daylight Saving in the enlightened states of Australia, a truth that will dawn painfully on those who arrive for church about thirty minutes from now. Second, it’s footy Grand Final weekend in two of the three major codes, which this year is a battle of the birds (yesterday) followed by a battle of the hoofs (this evening).
It is said that Australians will gamble on two flies crawling up a wall, and football is no stranger to gambling. Indeed, it is almost as common and accessible as water in Australia today. You might be able to escape the cost, but it’s very hard to escape the ads.
I have never gambled for money, not even a school Melbourne Cup sweepstakes, not even a lottery ticket. But I did grow up with games of chance and strategy: cards, Scrabble, Monopoly, Snakes & Ladders, Boggle, Mastermind, draughts, chess. Playing these games, I created enjoyable family memories, honed my memory skills, learned to think and act strategically. I also learned to play the card or tile I had been dealt, and learned not to grumble because someone had a better hand, or better tiles, or a better throw of the dice. I enjoyed those games, and I still do.
It’s not always such fun. A slightly different formative experience, or a genetic predisposition for reckless gambling, or fear of hunger, or the desperation that poverty brings, and you could well be one of those whose “bad luck” destroys families, careers and lives.
Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with playing card games. But as biblical scholar N. T. Wright observes:
social fashions have associated some things so closely with gambling, and gambling so closely with irresponsible, immoral and ruinous behaviour, that the very objects themselves – pasteboard cards with lifeless decorations – have been seen by some as ‘tainted’ and so to be avoided.[1]
Some of those who lived long ago experienced the seductive and destructive power of the pagan world, celebrating gluttony in the indiscriminate consumption of food, drink and sex. In doing so, they lost a sense of the goodness of sensory pleasures and the ability to discriminate between good and bad. The inner guiding light that ought to be telling them that some things are good and other things are bad has been so mistreated that it now winces with pain at the very thought of some things which are perfectly all right in themselves, part of the good creation of a good creator God.[2]
In Ephesus, some of these people were teaching in the church, confusing others and drawing them away from the truth (Ac 20:29-30; cf 2 Th 2:3-14). Paul denounces them as “hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron” (v. 2). Strong words!
Chapter 3 ended with a reference to the church as the “pillar and foundation of the truth” (v. 15), and a summary of that truth in relation to Christ (v. 16). In chapters 4-6, Paul addresses various practical questions, including what to do about the false teachers and their lies (4:1-10), and how Timothy could make a positive and lasting difference through his public ministry in the church at Ephesus, despite his youth (4:11-5:2).
Paul is convinced that the Holy Spirit imparts specific knowledge about the future. How this happens he does not say. Perhaps verse 1 is an allusion to Matthew 24:10-11, or to Paul’s own prophecy recorded in Acts 20:29-30.
What is clear is that there will sadly come a time when false teachers will lead professed Christians to “abandon the faith” through the agency of “deceiving spirits” and “things taught by demons” (v. 1) – supernatural powers opposed to the Spirit of truth (Jn 8:44) and the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15).
The false teaching at Ephesus was not profound but simple and practical. People were forbidden to marry, and ordered to abstain from eating certain foods. There may have been other aspects too. Was it a move to return to an imagined pre-Fall Garden of Eden, where there was no marriage, no sex and no carnivores? We can’t be certain.
Paul counters the danger with an appeal to good theology: everything God created is good, and we should receive God’s good gifts of marriage, sex, food and drink with gratitude, enjoying them as God intended (v. 4). To say no to such natural blessings without very good reason is to abandon the faith (to deny our biblically shaped worldview), to insult the Creator, and to impoverish our everyday existence.
Paul also counters the danger with an appeal to good ethics: instead of listening to the “hypocritical liars” and adopting the lifestyle they demand, Christians should devote themselves to training in godliness (v. 7). No detailed training program is provided, but just as Timothy is to nourish his inner life with Scripture, with “the truths of the faith and the good teaching that you have followed” (v. 6), so too he is to exercise, to train for godliness, by using Scripture. As John Stott says, “Disciplined meditation in Scripture is indispensable to Christian health, and indeed to growth in godliness.”[3]
More generally, discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most. Godliness prepares us for eternity (v. 8). If you want your life to please God, you need to train hard like an athlete. Make that choice, and follow through with discipline and perseverance, and you will be spiritually fit, you will have an increasingly vibrant spiritual life, you will become the kind of person who faithfully and consistently reflects the image of God, and you will bring glory to God through who you are and how you influence others.
But it won’t be easy: there will be pain and sacrifice and criticism. Nurturing Christian spirituality involves hard work, discipline, self-denial, the road less taken.
All of this is unpopular today. People want to believe that spirituality can be reduced to the consumerist mantra of “eat-pray-love,” or is nothing more than the feeling I get when I sing praise songs, or walk through a cathedral or forest, or go on a detox diet, and buy crystals, and burn incense, and think peaceful thoughts about myself.
That is all rather different from 1 Timothy 4:6-7, where Paul counsels Timothy to master and share the hard biblical truths as well as the soft, feed on them, be nourished from them, reject the “silly stuff,” and “train yourself to be godly.” See also verse 10: “That is why we labour and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, and especially of those who believe.”
Good Christian teaching will always glorify God and encourage godliness. And good Christian teaching, accompanied by disciplined training in godliness, will enable everyone to flourish, the church to grow, and the kingdom of God to be established.
If I were asked to nominate the greatest general human need or desire, it would be to live in peace and tranquility – the foundation for human flourishing. If I were asked to nominate the best way to achieve this goal, I would say it is by ensuring access to truth, and training in godliness.
This passage confirms the reasonableness of such a conviction, and encourages us to press on toward the goal.
Sermon 638 copyright © 2015 Rod Benson. Preached at Lithgow Baptist Church, Australia, on Sunday 4 October 2015. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011).
[1] Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: The Pastoral Letters (London: SPCK, 2003), p. 43.
[2] Ibid., pp. 43-44.
[3] John Stott, The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus (Leicester: IVP, 1996), p. 117.
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