Now tonight I want to speak on the
subject, Take Heed to Yourself.
And we'll read together from 1 Timothy, Paul's
first letter to Timothy, chapter 4.
1 Timothy 4, chapter 4, and verse 7,
the latter part of it, Train yourself to
be godly, for physical training is of some
value, but godliness has value for all things,
holding promise for both the present life and
the life to come.
This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full
acceptance, and for this we labor and strive,
that we have put our hope in the
living God, who is the Savior of all
men, and especially of those who believe.
Command and teach these things.
Don't let anyone look down on you because
you are young, but set an example for
the believers in speech, in life, in love,
in faith, and in purity.
Until I come, devote yourself to the public
reading of scripture, to preaching, and to teaching.
Do not neglect your gift which was given
you through a prophetic message when the body
of elders laid their hands on you.
Be diligent in these matters.
Give yourself wholly to them so that everyone
may see your progress.
Watch your life and doctrine closely.
Persevere in them, because if you do, you
will save both yourself and your hearers.
My theme centers around Paul's three injunctions to
Timothy in this passage.
In verse 7 he says, Train yourself to
be godly.
In verse 15 he says, Watch your life
and teaching closely.
In verse 16 he says, So that everyone
may see your progress.
You'll notice that Paul's emphasis here is on
young Timothy as a leader.
And the emphasis is not on leadership, but
on the leader himself.
And it may sound trite, but I believe
it's true that the most important factor in
leadership is the leader himself.
It's what we are that determines the effectiveness
and value of what we do.
Not everyone is qualified or is called to
prominent positions of leadership.
Some of you will be called to that
in coming days.
Some of you won't, because it's not God's
plan for your life.
But every one of us, in a sense,
is a leader, because leadership is influence.
Leadership is the ability to influence other people
to do something which otherwise they would be
unlikely to do.
And we are leaders to the extent that
we influence others.
And which of us has no influence?
You know, every one of us is unique.
And you have a sphere of influence with
people that no one else in this world
has.
God has given you a certain sphere in
which you can influence others toward him.
And in that sphere you are a leader.
You are able to influence others.
You notice that Paul said to Timothy, train
yourself to be godly.
Timothy was to train others to be godly,
but Paul is not emphasizing that.
He said, train yourself to be godly.
He says, watch your life closely.
Well, Timothy was going to watch over the
life of his congregation.
But Paul says, you watch your life closely.
Timothy was going to look for the progress
in maturity of the congregation he was going
to.
But Paul said, you give yourself to these
things so that everyone may see your progress.
You see what he's doing?
He is placing the emphasis on the leader
himself.
And that's the emphasis I wish to make
tonight.
You see, like his master, Paul puts character
before service.
He puts character before teaching.
Watch your life first and your teaching afterwards.
The life is more important than the teaching
because we couldn't live a kind of life
that would negate our teaching.
If I'm not exemplifying my teaching, then I'm
doing harm, my teaching.
I'm not helping at all.
This is something that we have to do.
Watch your life.
Train yourself.
God won't do that for us.
A coach can train the people, the sportsmen
he's training, but they have to go out
and put into practice what he says.
He can do only so much, and God
can show us the way.
He can make provision for it, but we've
got to go out and work it out
in our own daily experience.
The leader's first responsibility is to himself.
I mean, after his responsibility to God, his
first responsibility is to himself, and only then
to the people he's leading.
Because if he is not walking with God,
and if he is not in touch with
him, if he is not controlled by the
Holy Spirit, then his teaching will be ineffective.
And so the emphasis that Paul makes is
upon the leader himself living the kind of
life that will demonstrate the truth that he
teaches.
You see, our personal walk with God is
of the utmost importance.
If I look back over my life, if
I were to draw a graph, it wouldn't
all be going upwards.
There are dips in it.
And you know, those dips are the places
where my walk with God was not consistent,
where my communion with God was not steady.
Then there was the slump in Christian experience,
and also the slump in effectiveness in service.
Water can rise no higher than its own
level, and we can't lift people higher than
we are ourselves.
That's why it's so important that our Christian
lives are steadily growing in likeness to Christ.
We belong to an activist generation, don't we,
and to an activist race.
The world today is a frenetic place, isn't
it?
You stand up one of your big highways
and watch the people shuttling backwards and forwards.
What's it all about?
We're always under pressure.
We think that the more we do and
the faster we go, the more we achieve.
But I wonder if that's true.
I wonder if we couldn't perhaps do more
by doing less.
We might have more time to get our
roots down deeper, and that is a very
important thing.
The reverse of that idea is very often
true.
And because we are rushing about so much,
the work we do is wood, hay, and
stubble, not gold, silver, and precious stones.
And yet that should be what we are
working for, that our work will stand the
test of time and stand the test of
the fire.
Our Lord stressed the fact that quality of
life was more important than quantity of activity.
And yet, judging by the kind of life
we live today, that is not generally recognized.
Do you yourself really feel that the quality
of your life is the most important thing,
or the quantity of your activity?
What we are determines the value of what
we say or what we do.
And our devotional life is the soil for
an anointed ministry.
How is your devotional life?
Did you have a quiet time this morning
when you met with God and had communion
with Him?
Are you really having times when you take
the Word of God and allow it to
sink into your heart and allow the Lord
to speak to you?
Or is the pace of life such that
your devotional life is very thin?
This is the point at which the adversary
will constantly attack.
He hasn't given up on me yet.
He keeps at it.
And he'll do anything in his power to
prevent you from daily having real and deep
and close communion with God.
Dr. Alexander McLaren, who was a great preacher,
said this, he said, I have always found
that the greatest comfort and effectiveness in my
ministry is in direct proportion to the depth
and reality of my communion with God.
And that's true.
He didn't say the length of my communion
with God.
He said the depth and reality of my
communion with God.
We can't always have long times.
There should be times when we do have
long times.
We can't always have long times.
But are we having deep times, real times,
when we really get in touch with God?
The real influence that we exert will be
dependent upon the closeness of our touch with
God so that he can work through us.
Paul said, train yourself to be godly.
And the word train there is the word
from which we get our gymnasium.
Now you know what a gymnasium is for.
In the gymnasium you harden your muscle, you
prolong your wind, you maintain flexibility, and it
means that you're able to work effectively.
And Paul takes that very word and he
says, train yourself, gymnasticize yourself, do in the
spiritual realm what the gymnast does in the
physical realm.
Train yourself.
It needs strenuous, persevering exercise, doesn't it, if
you're going to be effective in the gymnasium.
Now is there anything like that, anything parallel
to that in your experience?
Are you exercising yourself, gymnasticizing yourself in your
Christian experience?
I believe that if we were as much
in earnest as the athlete is, we would
get a long way further in our Christian
life.
But so seldom are we prepared to put
in the self-discipline and self-denial that
the athlete does.
I was looking at a TV program in
my own country, New Zealand, a while ago,
and a young man named Piper had just
completed a very grueling cycle race, a very
long one over a very rough course, and
he'd made a new record.
And after the race was over, the commentator
was quizzing him, as they do, and asked
all kinds of silly questions.
But this commentator asked a very good question.
He said, and what do you aim at
for the future?
Piper answered, I aim to be one of
the best riders in the world.
Well, that was good.
What are you aiming to be the best
at?
Are you aiming to be the best you
can be for God?
There's a new hymn that we used to
sing in our country, Just as I am,
young, strong, and free, to be the best
that I can be, for truth and righteousness
in thee, Lord of my life, I come.
To be the best that I can be.
To be the best physically.
To be the best intellectually.
To be the best spiritually that I can
be for God.
Have you got that ambition?
Paul said, this one thing I do.
Now, that wasn't true, of course.
He did a hundred things.
But there was one thing that to him
was of supreme importance.
And he did that one thing superbly well.
Many of you know the Navigators.
Dawson Trotman, who founded the Navigators, was a
man who had a vision.
And he was very narrow in his work.
He saw only one thing, and that was
Navigators.
And he gave himself to it.
When he was killed accidentally, Billy Graham gave
the address at the funeral.
And among other things, this is what Billy
said.
He said, here was a man who did
not say, these forty things I dabble in.
He said, this one thing I do.
What is the one thing you do?
Is there any one thing that is supremely
important in your life, or are you a
dabbler?
Dabbling in many things, but yet no one
thing that unifies and integrates the whole of
your life.
God wants us to give the best of
our life to him.
To be the best that I can be.
Then Paul said, watch your life and teaching
closely.
Our lifestyle can negate our teaching.
I was preaching in a church in Sydney
many years ago, and at the close of
the meeting, an archdeacon of the Church of
England, who was very well known, rose.
And he said, may I say something?
And I said, yes, certainly.
And he said, I have been a street
angel and a home devil.
He said, when I'm out among you and
I'm out in the street, I'm always full
of fun and jokes and I'm the life
of the party.
But he said, at home I'm quite a
different man.
I give my wife and family a bad
time.
And he said, God has been speaking to
me about this and I want to confess
my sin and ask God to make me
in private what I would like people to
think I am in public.
There he was, well known, public ministry, and
yet his private life negating what he said
in public.
And in leadership, this is a real danger.
Am I in private what I like people
to think I am in public?
And I look back and I can see
places where that is not so with me.
I haven't always been in private what I
seemed like in public.
Is that so with you?
Well, it's something that you can confess and
deal with and put right.
Our lifestyle is to be in keeping with
our teaching.
Now, Timothy was a young, comparatively young man,
and he was going to a very important
church, the church at Ephesus.
And they were a very mature people.
And in the East, young men are not
listened to very much by the old fellows.
Well, maybe so here too, but more so
there.
And Paul knew that Timothy would be at
a disadvantage.
So he said to him, Timothy, don't be
discouraged by the fact that you're young.
Time will look after that.
That will fix it up.
You'll get older.
But he said, you can compensate for your
youth by the quality of your life.
And then he said, set an example to
the flock.
He said, if you live the kind of
life that is godly, the people will listen
to you.
And Paul specified five areas in which he
was to set an example.
He was to set an example in speech.
He set an example in life, in love,
in faithfulness, and in purity.
And those are areas in which when you're
young, you are sometimes deficient.
Isn't it true that sometimes when we're young,
our tongue is rather undisciplined and gets us
into trouble?
Isn't it true that our lifestyle is more
like that of our worldly peers than of
our Lord Jesus Christ?
Isn't it true that sometimes instead of being
unselfishly loving, we are selfish in our lives?
Selfish in the home?
Selfish in our attitude?
Isn't it true that sometimes we are not
faithful in the discharge of our responsibilities?
Are we faithful in our own personal life?
Am I faithful to my Lord in my
inner life?
Am I faithful in my service?
Am I faithful in my work for my
boss?
Well, Paul says, set an example in faith,
and then purity.
We're in a world that reeks with impurity.
We're surrounded by it, and Paul said, you're
living in a world that is impure.
Now you set an example of purity, and
you watch your life in these five areas,
and you'll find that you can compensate for
your youth by the quality of your life.
And that's something that, as if we're going
to be leaders for the Lord, these are
areas in which we need to be diligent.
You'll notice the words Paul says.
He says, now be diligent in these things.
Give yourself wholly to them.
We've got to be enthusiastic.
Throw ourselves right into it.
Abandon ourselves.
So often we're lukewarm.
He wants us to be red hot.
There's a verse in Romans 12, 11, that
one translation says, not slothful in business, kept
at boiling point by the Holy Spirit, doing
bond service for the Master.
And that's the kind of life that the
leader needs to live.
If you're not enthusiastic in your leadership, you'll
never have enthusiastic followers.
And if you're not enthusiastic at your age,
what do you think you'll be like when
you get to my age?
No, this is something, if we're going to
really count for God, we need to allow
the Holy Spirit to keep us at boiling
point.
Then the third thing Paul said, he said,
give yourself diligently to these things so that
everyone may see your progress.
No, he didn't say to Paul, you give
yourself diligently to that so that you can
see the way in which the people you're
working with progress.
He said, no, you give yourself diligently to
this so that they may see your progress.
And that's a horse of a different color.
You're a leader in a group, are you?
Are the people in your group seeing your
progress?
Are you growing in your spiritual life or
are you stuck?
Is your growth in grace and in likeness
to Christ visible to others?
My wife died many years ago of cancer.
And about ten days before she died, I
was attending to her and trying to make
things comfortable for her.
She turned to me.
She said, dear, don't make things too easy
for me.
She said, I don't want to get fussy
at this stage.
I must keep on growing.
My, that was a challenge to me.
She was in great pain.
She knew she had only a few days
to live, and yet there was in her
heart that ambition.
I must keep on growing.
I want to grow right to the very
end.
Well, so often we get stuck in our
Christian life.
But the Lord wants us to continually progress
toward maturity, as it says in Hebrews 6
and 1.
Well, when I read that verse a while
ago, it kicked back at me.
And I thought, well now, you do a
lot of talking to other people and telling
them the kind of life they ought to
live.
What about yourself?
Are you growing?
Is your progress in spirituality visible to other
people?
And that was a tremendous challenge.
Am I growing, or have I got stuck?
And I brought my life alongside the measuring
stick of Galatians 5, 22, 23, the fruit
of the Spirit.
And after all, if you think of the
fruit of the Spirit, it's just really a
picture of Christ.
All those things that are in the fruit
of the Spirit are just manifestations of the
life of Christ.
But I asked myself this.
Are you a more loving man than you
were three months ago?
Has there been any progress?
Who has seen it?
Has it been visible to anybody?
Do those you live with see that you
are a more loving person than you were
three months ago?
Joy.
Are you a more joyous person than you
were?
Are you a happier person?
Are you better to live with?
Do other people see it?
Can they see the joy of the Lord
more than they used to?
Peace.
Are you enjoying more of the peace of
the Lord, or are you just the same
old worrier as you used to be?
You're just as anxious as ever?
Do you still borrow tomorrow's trouble today so
that you can get double value out of
it?
Do you manifest the peace of God more
than you used to?
Patience.
Are you a more patient man than you
used to be?
Or are you just the same, or have
you gone back a bit?
Gentleness.
Are you a gentler man than you were?
Or can you still be pretty abrasive?
Goodness.
Are you a better man all around than
you used to be?
Has there been real progress?
Can people see it?
Faithfulness.
Are you more faithful than you used to
be in the discharge of your responsibilities?
Meekness.
Are you meeker under the disciplining hand of
God, or do you resent and rebel against
God's dealing with you?
And then the last one, the one that
is most challenging of all.
Are you a more disciplined man than you
used to be three months ago?
Because discipline is the fruit of the Spirit.
We think of discipline largely as something we
do, and of course it is something we
do.
But here the encouragement comes that we can
depend on the Holy Spirit.
If we realize an area in our lives
which we need to discipline, we form the
resolution that we will discipline it, but you
know how often your will has let you
down when you've tried to discipline yourself along
certain lines.
But this verse gives the assurance that when
I, in order to bring my life in
line with the life of Christ, I purpose
in my heart to discipline myself in this
matter, I can count on the Holy Spirit
working in my life.
The fruit of the Spirit which is discipline.
You know, the fruit of the Spirit, nine
manifestations can be divided into three triads.
The first three have to do with my
personal walk with God.
Love, joy, peace.
The second three deal with my public walk
with others.
Patience, gentleness, goodness.
The last three have to do with my
private walk with myself.
Faithfulness, meekness, discipline.
And these are the things which are the
manifestation of the Holy Spirit working in my
life.
You know, the clearest evidence that the Holy
Spirit is working in our lives is not
merely the evidence of thrills and excitement.
It's not merely the exercise of spiritual gifts,
although that is part of it.
The clearest proof that God is at work
in our lives is when the fruit of
the Spirit is being produced in luxuriance.
You know, you can counterfeit the gifts of
the Spirit, but you can't counterfeit the fruit
of the Spirit.
That's something that can't be counterfeited.
From what Paul has been saying here, it
is clear that the leader is intended to
be a visual aid to the people that
he or she is leading.
We use visual aids, our overhead projectors and
so on, but the leader whose life is
walked in close fellowship with God is a
visual aid that is more valuable than anything
else.
Isn't it true that in our day, people
are longing for models?
There are so many broken homes, so many
broken marriages, so many broken hearts, so many
young people have got no father model, they've
got no mother model, they've got no grandparent
model.
And we as Christians, in our position, if
we're seeking to lead others, we need to
be able to be a visual aid to
people.
This is the kind of life that God
wants you to live.
Paul says, imitate me.
What a thing to say.
Imitate me, but he didn't stop there.
He said, imitate me as I imitate Christ.
People want not only to hear truth worth
hearing, but they want to see lives worth
emulating.
And so Paul said to Timothy, watch your
life and teaching, but your life first and
your teaching next.
And you can, by your life, demonstrate as
a visual aid of the thing you are
teaching.
Paul said to Titus, another younger man, that
we are to adorn and ornament our teaching
and make it attractive.
Listen to what he said, so that in
every way they may adorn the teaching about
God our Savior.
We are to make Christianity attractive.
When people get in close contact with us,
do they think that our lives are really
attractive?
Do they say, I want to be like
that man, I want to be like that
girl?
Well, we're to adorn it.
We're to ornament it.
Make it really winsome and attractive, so that
they will want to be like Christ.
There was an Anglican evangelist came across to
my country many years ago, when we traveled
by ship.
And after breakfast, we used to walk around
the deck.
Six times around the deck would be a
mile, and you'd walk your breakfast down a
bit.
Well, he was going down around the deck
this morning, and he was smiling at everybody.
He was six foot three, a very attractive
man.
He came to a mother with a little
child, and when they drew near, he just
bent down and talked to the little girl,
and talked to the mother, and then walked
on.
And as they went past, the little girl
said, Mommy, was that Jesus?
My, imagine being taken for Jesus.
Here was someone who was a visual aid
of his religion.
That little girl had her idea of what
Jesus was like, and he came up to
her expectations.
Do we come up to people's expectations?
Do people see Christ in us?
Why, that's what we long for, isn't it?
My wife's sister was a missionary in China.
And she went to, when she went there,
she was in a language school with seventy
other girls.
And she told me that one day, the
lady in charge of the school came in
to the door.
She went up one aisle, and down another,
and up another, and down another, and then
went out, and never said a word.
And the girls were looking at each other.
Well, what was that all about anyway?
And they waited a while, and then the
lady came back again.
She said, Did you notice anything when I
passed through the room?
Nobody had noticed anything.
She said, Then one girl said, Well, I
did notice that you were wearing a very
lovely perfume.
She said, Yes, I was.
Did I say anything?
No.
And yet, without saying a word, as I
walked up and down among you, I left
behind me a very beautiful perfume.
She said, You girls came to China to
take the gospel to the Chinese women, and
you can't say a word.
You're dumb.
And you're going to be dumb for a
good while.
But as you move out, in and out
among them in the ordinary course of daily
life, although you can't say a word, you
can leave behind you the fragrance of Christ.
And you know, that's the highest kind of
leadership.
That's influence, unconscious influence.
We can move out, and without saying a
word, by our demeanor and by our expression,
we can leave behind us the fragrance of
Christ.
Are we doing that?
Are we fragrant in the home?
Are we fragrant in the place of business?
Are we fragrant in the church?
And the fragrance that Paul was speaking about
is the fragrance of the knowledge of Him.
And he says, By us.
God spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge
of Him.
When those men had spent their three years
with the Lord Jesus, the heathen took note
of them that they had been with Jesus.
You see, they had gone into the perfumer's
shop, and they'd stayed there a while, and
when they came out of the perfumer's shop,
they carried with them the fragrance of the
place.
And that's when we spend time in the
presence of God, allowing Him to speak to
us through His word, communing with Him.
As we come out of His presence, we
will carry with us something of the fragrance
of the place.
May it indeed be so.
May our leadership be such that we will
be visual aids of the gospel we preach.