Achieving Godliness

All right, if we could find our way to our seats. OK. One of these days, One of these days, we're going to have, just have like a 45 minute greeting time. And then close with prayer.

Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. This greeting time is a part of our, worship, one of my favorite parts. well, let me have you turn in your Bibles this morning to, First Timothy chapter. 4, we're coming back today to our study of First Timothy.

And as we continue in our study of this book, we come. this morning, 1 Timothy chapter 4, and, the end of verse 7, which is where we left off a couple of weeks ago. And my goal this morning is to at least get into, to verse 10. And the title of the message this morning is Achieving Godliness.

Achieving Godliness. first of all, how many of you Desire to be godly. Just raise your hand, OK. good.

I, I know that I'm in the right place then. OK. And my message will at least be a help. we desire, I think every genuine, genuinely born again child of God desires to be a godly, person.

And fortunately, if your passionate desire is to be godly, then, it's, it's a very fortunate thing that we're doing a study through First Timothy, because there is no book in the New Testament that talks about godliness more than First Timothy does. it's not, the word godliness is not a word that shows up that many times in the New Testament. But of the few times that it does show up, 9 of those times is in 1 Timothy. There's no other book of the New Testament or Old that mentions this word godliness more than 1 Timothy does.

So, Amongst other things, the Book of First Timothy is a book that teaches us much about godliness. And I would encourage you, even on your own to go through First Timothy and mark every time you see the word godliness, and then make a list of all the things that you can learn about godliness from just looking at those passages. Some of the things that you would learn, not all of them, but some of them, is that godliness is really a great thing to have. It is of greater value than physical fitness or exercise.

We'll be learning that this morning. It is of greater value than money. if someone who's ungodly had a billion dollars, he is in a more impoverished state than you are if you have nothing, but you do have godliness. It is far more valuable than money or the things that money can buy.

we learned that it is profitable for all things. We'll be seeing that in chapter 4, verse 8. this morning, but also, we're going to learn this morning and we learned in 1 Timothy 6:11 that godliness is something that needs to be pursued. not everything in the Christian life needs to be pursued.

Your justification, don't need to pursue it. Forgiveness, don't need to pursue it. the Holy Spirit, you don't need to pursue the Holy Spirit. All those things are given to you at conversion.

Godliness, however, needs to be, pursued, needs to be chased after. what is godliness? We can piece some things together from 1 Timothy and even taking a sneak peek into 2 Timothy. We know that godliness involves doing good works, works that are beneficial to other people.

In fact, in 1 Timothy 2, Paul Tells women to engage in good works, good deeds, which are befitting to those that make a claim to godliness. So Paul would say godliness and good works go together. sound doctrine is involved in good works. any true godliness has as its foundation, solid gospel doctrine that serves to, as the foundation for godliness and also as the fuel.

And the power for that godliness. Also, we find in 1 Timothy 6:11 that godliness is synonymous with righteousness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. So these are traits that are attached to godliness. We would expect to see these traits in the life of a godly person.

And also in 2 Timothy 3, when you read the text there and look at the contrast, you would, you would be able to observe that whatever godliness is, it's opposite is self love, money love, verbal abuse, disobedience to parents, ingratitude, love of Pleasure, more than lovers of God, along with some other things that are listed there. These are opposites of, of godliness. So even from that, you can learn that godliness involves gratitude, obedience to the authorities in your life, loving God passionately more than you love yourself, more than you love money.

And more than you love pleasure.

Basically, godliness is a lifestyle. It is a lifestyle that is all about God. It is a lifestyle that is based upon God. It is obedient to God.

It is pleasing to God. It displays a passion for God that serves as the core for everything in a person's life. And a godly lifestyle is a lifestyle that also reflects a likeness to God. People that are godly began to look like God in terms of his attributes that can be communicated to men in terms of love and holiness, purity, justice, righteousness, and so forth.

And so you look at, the promise of godliness, how profitable it is, and what it actually looks like. And all of us who know the Lord would say, I want that. I want that. I, and you can even dream a little bit about what would it be like to be godly like this.

Sometimes we fantasize about what would I do if, if someone gave me a million dollars. We try to imagine what we would do. Well, just dream a little bit. What would I do?

What would life be like if I were godly like this? Well, Paul's going to help us with this tremendously today. Before we actually get into the text, let me just point out two prepositional phrases, in the text for today that I think would be helpful to take a quick look at. In verse 7, he says, have nothing to do with worldly fables.

Fit only for old women. But on the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, literally discipline yourself toward godliness. And what that means is whatever you're facing right now, turn and face godliness, and then begin to move towards godliness. And then in verse 10, he says, it is for this And when he says this, he's talking about godliness.

It is for this godliness that we labor and literally, it's into this godliness, we labor. It's the preposition into So the idea is that godliness is something that we are to face. It is something that we are to move towards. And godliness is also something that you get into.

All right, you need to be into godliness. it's not just enough to approach godliness, or even arrive at the outskirts of godliness, but having arrived at the outskirts of godliness, your passion should be, I want to get into godliness. And then even getting into it, I want to go deeper and deeper and deeper into the wealth, and the character, and the qualities, and the promise of godliness. So there should be two movements, movement towards godliness and then into godliness, and this should be essentially a daily pattern.

What I want to do with the time we have is to give you 7 essentials that we observe in our passage today. And by the way, I think 4 of these are actually reviewed. So we'll go pretty quickly through the 1st 4 and then focus on, on the last 3. Of these essentials to achieving godliness in In our lives.

If you want to be godly yourself, if you want to help other people to be godly, then, then you want to take good notes and, and really master these essentials. All right. Number one, and this is review, that if you want to, to be godly in the way that we have seen described, then fundamentally, you must realize that godliness is a great mystery beyond human attainment. You must first of all, the beginning of godliness is to despair of ever being godly.

The beginning of godliness is to despair of your own ability to ever be godly. You must see your bankruptcy. And look what it says in verse 16, by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. In other words, godliness is something that cannot be attained by human ingenuity.

Human intellect or even human ability or the exercise of one's will. It is something that is a mystery. It must be granted by divine revelation and illumination and by divine enabling. It is something outside of ourselves.

that must act on our behalf in order to make us godly. Godliness is a mystery. You can't, if you don't know the Lord Jesus, you can't just sit here today and say, man, I'd like to be godly, and I'm going to resolve today to begin to be godly. You can do that, but you will fail.

to be godly because godliness is a mystery. A second essential to godliness is that you must realize that the secret of godliness is Jesus Christ, not you. The secret, the revealed secret of godliness is Jesus Christ, not you, by common confession, chapter 3, verse 16, great is the mystery of godliness. What is that mystery?

He, speaking of Jesus, he who was revealed in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up. And glory. You're never going to be godly unless you look away from yourself and you look to Jesus and say that the revealed secret of godliness is the person and the work of Jesus Christ. And so I will put my trust in Him who left heaven's.

Glory and came into this world and revealed Himself in the flesh through the life he led and through the shedding of His blood on the cross and even revealing Himself after his resurrection in the flesh as he then ascended on up into the glory. The answer to my Pursuit of godliness is Jesus, and I must always keep my eyes fixed firmly upon him. There's a third thing that you need to do. Let me skip a few slides here.

All right. All right, real quick., how many of you have heard of the book, The Secret? OK. I think it came out in 2007, and the whole point of it, listen to what the author says, there isn't a single thing that you cannot do with this knowledge.

The Secret can give you whatever you want. You will come to know how you can have, be or do anything you want. Over 4 million copies of this book sold just in 2007 alone, and it's got a mysterious looking cover, it's like inside, I can find the secret, that I need to know to be everything that, that I need to be. Well, what the secret is, according to the author of this book?

Listen to this. By the way, real, real quick, before you look at the screen, look down at your Bible, everybody. Chapter 3, verse 16, by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He, God, who was revealed in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit.

All right? That's the secret. Now, look what this author says, you are God in a physical body. You are spirit in the flesh.

You are eternal life expressing itself as you. You are a cosmic being, you are all power, you are all wisdom. You are all intelligence, you are perfection, you are magnificent. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of you on this planet.

goes on to say, no matter who you thought you were, now the truth of who you really are. You are the master of the universe, you are the heir to the kingdom, you are the perfection of life. And now the secret. That's the message of the world, only this is so blatant.

but the message that we hear from so many sources in the world today is that your problems are from without, and your solution is from within. And the secret is to look within. to look within yourself and you will find the wisdom and the insight, and even the power that you need. But what, if you want to be godly, you have to look outside of yourself to the person of Jesus.

He is the mystery of godliness and never take your eyes off of him. All right? Now, if I get done late, whoever said that, I'm going to blame you, OK? all right, number 3, the third essential to godliness is nourish yourself continuously in the gospel., anyone that wants to be physically fit, They got to think through their diet and make sure that they're only partaking of those things that are going to nourish them.

And in encouraging Timothy to godliness, he says, in chapter 4, verse 6, and pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, continuously, perpetually nourished on the words of the faith, which is the gospel. So we just need to be living and breathing in the atmosphere of the gospel. Gospel, just devouring and gorging ourselves on, on gospel truth where we're actually partaking of this and nourishing our souls, growing strong, and even using that as the power and the fuel that drives us towards our pursuit of godliness.

There's 1/4 essential to godliness, and that is you must reject everything contrary to godliness.

You must learn how to say no to certain things that the world will offer you. He says in verse 7, have nothing to do, have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old. Women. So you must push yourself away from the table of the offerings that the world is offering you.

You must say no to these things. To be in good physical health, a person needs to do more than just eat healthful food, right? You can eat healthful food. But if you turn right around and also eat a bunch of junk food, then you're undercutting your purpose there.

To be healthy physically, you must eat healthful food and reject any food that is not. Something that would produce good health in you and the same spiritually, you must say yes to the gospel, perpetually and nourish yourself on gospel truth. And you must reject anything that is contrary to godliness and say no to it. So I don't want to partake of this, though everyone else in the world may seem to be partaking, even though others even in this church may be.

partaking of these things, I'm going to say no, because this doesn't serve my agenda of godliness. So I won't partake. Well, there's a 5th thing that a 5th essential to godliness, and this is where we left off two weeks ago, and that is you must exercise yourself continuously toward godliness. Look at the end of verse 7.

He says, on the other hand, present tense, be continuously disciplining. Yourself for the purpose of or toward godliness. This is something we need to always do perpetually disciplining ourselves toward godliness. Now, a number of months ago when we started our study on First Timothy, I pointed out what the Greek word was here that is translated discipline.

At our men's retreat, we talked about this word again back in, I think it was March or May. but let me just point this out for the benefit of anyone that was not here on those occasions. The Greek word that is translated discipline yourself is the Greek word gymnaso. And what English word do we get from that Greek word?

gym or gymnasium. And it, it means to exercise, to engage in athletic competition, or to exert oneself, but it's actually a little more nuanced than that. The word gymnoso comes from the, the, the noun gymnos, which literally means, does anyone remember? Naked.

All right. and That's not an inappropriate outburst. That's the right answer. Gymnast means naked.

And the reason for that obviously was back in this day, in Paul's day, as well as nowadays, that when, when an athlete engages in athletic competition, strenuous exercise, they tend to strip down. Back in Paul's day, some of them would strip down to nothing or to very little so as to remove any hindrance, any obstruction, anything at all that would slow them down. And so if you're looking at an athlete who's wearing his warm-up clothes, and he's got his gym bag, and he's supposed to be racing, and you say to that athlete, Jim Nazzo, he wouldn't just with the bag on his shoulder and his warm-up clothes, he, he wouldn't just get to the starting blocks and be ready to go.

No, he would, he would take that to mean I need to take off my jacket and my warm-up pants.

And I need to set all of my equipment aside, and then I get on the starting blocks. That's what the word means. It means to strip oneself down for exercise, and then exert oneself towards a goal. And what Paul is telling Timothy, is if you want to be godly, you must strip yourself down of anything at all that either obstructs the path toward godliness, you must strip yourself down of anything that would even slow you down in your pursuit of godliness, and then continuously exert yourself towards that goal.

And what, the Christian life does involve labor and striving. We're going to see that this morning, but what? We, we make it so much harder than it needs to be because we try to run the race. With 100 pounds of, of baggage that we try to take with us, we need to learn something even from Olympic athletes who They don't want anything on their body that will even slow them down 1 100 of a second.

If you went up to Michael Phelps, the swimmer, and said, hey, I know you've got a race coming up here, and it would just mean a lot to me if you would wear this particular item, this medallion around your neck. It's a little heavy, but it would mean a lot to me and to my family if you would wear it. and I just want to let that we've done some research, on this, and, And the studies show that this will only slow you down, in a one minute race, it'll only slow you down 1 1000 of one second.

What do you think he'd say?

First of all, I'd say, I'm not gonna wear it. I don't even know who you are. secondly, he would say, I don't even want to be slowed down 1/100 of a second. That's not acceptable to me.

And even one of the races that he won, he won by 1000 of a second. And so, you look at the outfits that he wears, if he's wearing those walking through the shopping mall, we would all just think this guy is really strange, but, but he, I think he can make a pretty decent case for needing to Dressed that way in the swimming pool so that he could get to his goal as quickly as he possibly can. And that's, that's the mindset that we need to have. what we're learning here is that if godliness is something we need to pursue, something we need to exert ourselves towards in order to move towards and get into, if we're going to be able to enter into the riches of the godliness that God wants us to experience, we must strip ourselves down.

and travel as light as we can, and then exert ourselves perpetually every day towards godliness. In verse 10, we find two other words. Let's skip to verse 10. He says, for it is into this godliness that we continuously labor and strive.

Labor means to toil. Like workers would in the field to the point of weariness, strive is the Greek word that we get our English word agony or agonize from. So these are very muscular, very visceral words. Paul is telling Timothy that we need a gymnaso.

Toward godliness, we need to perpetually labor, agonize, strive into godliness if we're going to experience the godliness that we want to know in our experience, and that God wants us to experience as well. Now, let's think about this for A minute, just looking at these three verbs, we can infer a few things. Number 1, we can infer that godliness does not come automatically, right? Is that a safe assumption?

some things do come automatically, like I said, our justification, forgiveness of our sins, becoming a part of the family of God, becoming a child of God. there, there's a number of things that just instantly are handed to us the moment we place our faith in Jesus. Godliness. In its mature state is not one of those things.

It doesn't come automatically. We don't just wake up one morning and we find that we're godly. It's something we must gymnaso. We must labor and strive towards and into.

We also can infer that godliness apparently is not supposed come easily, right? Is that fair? It's something we need to perpetually gymnaso labor and strive in order to move towards and get into that those aren't easy terms that are used there. They don't give us the vibe that, oh, I guess this is going to be fun and easy.

No, godliness does not come automatically. It does not come easily. We can also infer that godliness apparently does not come permanently. Because we need to perpetually be doing these things.

So, in other words, you need to labor and strive and gymnaso towards an end to godliness, but then having attained to a certain level of godliness, you got to labor and strive in order to maintain what you have obtained in the realm of godliness. Does that make sense? How many of you have ever been shocked? this has happened to me.

I think I've attained to a certain character trait that I have sought for, I've studied and, and asked the Lord for and I think I have that and, and, And like a month later something happens and I realize I don't have it on that day. Well, that's because I stopped. Doing this agenda. I may have had it, earlier, but I was not careful to maintain that.

And so godliness does not come automatically, easily. It does not come permanently. It requires perpetual striving and laboring and exerting of one's self. Now, Does that bother any of you?

Just think about it. Does it, does it bother you to hear, and I want you to know that this message has been something of a challenge for me. our goal here at Cornerstone is just to let our theology just be shaped by scripture. And, and there's, there's language Paul uses here that actually sometimes we can be uncomfortable with.

There are some people who would say, no, the Christian life is not one of striving. It's one of, of just letting go and letting God. in fact, if you're struggling in your Christian life, and you're talking to someone like this, they would say, what's your problem? You're like, I'm struggling to be godly and striving for, they would say, oh, no, no, you misunderstand.

To be godly, you must quit trying to live the Christian life and let Christ live it through you. How many of you have heard that? Just quit trying, quit struggling, let Christ live it through you. The problem with that, and by the way, when I was in college, I was exposed to a lot of literature along these lines and became a believer in that myself.

I gave that counsel to people. The problem with that is that you have to just ignore passages like this. It doesn't square with the actual teaching of scripture. Yes, the Christian life is one of a huge amount of rest in our justification and in the finished work of Christ, but Paul, Who knew a lot about sanctification, I would think, and about godliness is telling Timothy continuously exert yourself gymnastically toward godliness.

Verse 10, it is for this or into this godliness that we, including myself, Paul, would say, are continuously laboring and agonizing or striving. This is the language that he uses and we just have to, we don't want to just ignore it. We, we have to somehow incorporate that into our theology of sanctification. Some of you may say, well, it doesn't really bother me from a theological standpoint, but just bugs me that God makes this so hard.

he gave me justification. He just handed it to me, and the day I was converted and forgiveness for a whole lifetime of sins and made me his child, gave me a spirit, he just gave me all this stuff for free. And instantly, on the day I believed in Christ, couldn't he have just slipped in godliness, and just, just handed it to me? Why is it that, that there's got to be labor and striving in order to get to it?

And sometimes we get weary from From the battle and from the pursuit, and we might even grumble about, about this. But let me give you a few thoughts to think about. First of all, at the bottom of the screen in front of you, what we learn here is that godliness, apparently is attained and maintained through constant labor, striving, and exertion. Is that, is that a fair enough understanding of the passage?

going one step beyond that and maybe just rephrasing that, What we're observing here is that God has so chosen in His good providence that many of the qualities and riches of godliness are discovered and experienced inside of striving, labor, struggle, and exertion. You can draw a circle on your notes, and that circle represents labor, struggle, striving. And inside of that circle, just write the word godliness. And God has just so ordained things that there are riches and character qualities of godliness that you will only find inside of labor and striving.

And exertion. Now just some thoughts that might encourage you with this labor aspect. First of all, is it not true that true character is formed and manifested inside of struggle? And we all know that's true.

Do you really want a Christian life with no struggle? Do you really want that? If, if, if it, we did get that, we'd be bored half out of our brains. If you say, God, give me patience, give me the quality of patience, and God says, OK, here you go.

If it were that easy, what would be the joy in that? And then you could go around telling people, hey, I asked God for patience this morning. And he gave it to me. And they'd say, well, how do you have patience?

I don't know. It's never going to be tested because there's never going to be hardship or struggle. to put that patience to the test or to reveal that character quality, but at least I have it. we begin to see how nonsensical this is.

True character is both formed, and it's manifested. It's revealed inside of struggle. You think about the most life changing moments in your life, and, and, and those life changing moments happened inside of the context. of struggle, of trial or tribulation.

When recruits go to boot camp, the drill instructor does not say on the first day, listen, this, this boot camp is all about you. And, for the next several weeks, you're going to get to do whatever you want to do and we're going to hope somehow in the process that your character will be developed. You want to sleep in tomorrow. That's OK.

That's OK. But, but think about having determination and initiative. These are traits that we want. No, what they do is they try to create an atmosphere.

Where you have to do what you don't want to do, you have to work harder at it than you want to work, and you got to wait longer for what you're hoping for, then you want to wait. And it's in the context of just several weeks of very intense struggle that character is formed, and also character is revealed. God has so designed the Christian life in the same way. That's not Plan B.

This is Plan A for the school of sanctification. Also, is it not true that what we obtained through struggle is more appreciated? I think we all would say definitely, it is. And also, don't we all like struggle anyway?

Think about it for a minute. Don't Don't we all like to strive and labor? Anyway, for things that are important to us. We all like this to such a degree that that movies and books, we only are interested in movies and books that show a character facing a crisis that he struggles through.

His character is formed and revealed, and there's resolution. none of us would ever want to watch a movie that has no struggle, in any way, shape or form in that, that movie. We, we like struggle and striving to such a degree that we'll watch athletes on television like the Trojans yesterday in Ohio State and, we'll watch well-trained athletes who are at the, who are at the top of their profession, the best at what they do, strive against one another, and they're just, just pounding into each other and just gutting it out in the trenches in order to accomplish a goal.

And we like watching that.

That's not a bad thing. It's just there's something inside of us that just, that we're struggle and striving resonates with us. Some of us love struggling and striving and laboring to such a degree. That we will, we'll pay for a monthly gym membership.

So that we can go to the gym and get on a treadmill and run nowhere for half an hour. we're huffing and puffing and we're sweating and, and 30 minutes later, we've gone nowhere. but man, that was great. And, I'm, I'm happy to pay my money for this membership.

We'll get under some weights and just repetitively do just motions and we're, we're, it, it, it may hurt, we're sore the next day. We accomplished nothing, but we're willing to pay for. That gym membership to do that because life without any struggle or exertion like that is not the life that we want to live. In fact, some people in our church love struggle and striving and labor so much that I guess this week, They did a 5 km mud run.

What's that about? I'm just going to go run in the mud for 5 kilometers, what, what's the rationale for that other than they like the struggle? It's, it's character forming, character revealing. It reveals a lot about their character actually that Listen to this advertisement for this mud run.

The 2009 mud run is back for another year. The mud pits, whoop dee doos, hills, low crawls, tactical officer pits, explosions, and machine gun fire are waiting for you to tackle them again. And at the end, it says, bring the family, friends and coworkers. To enjoy a day playing in the mud.

But, why, and I'm not knocking that at all. I think that thing is great, but what, what is it that attracts people? to that. It's the fact that there's something in our human condition that, that likes to struggle and to strive and to discover things about ourselves and to have our character further formed and shaped and, and the school of sanctification that God has us in, it is plan A to introduce tribulations.

and trials and to, to locate godly characteristics in such a place that we have to move towards them and to get to them and to get into them, we have to continuously exert ourselves and labor and strive. And it's not that God set it up this way to where, we're striving for a particular quality. And God, we're struggling for it striving, laboring, and God says, what, I've noticed you're struggling for this over the last, you've been struggling for determination and courage over the last several months, so here, I'm going to give it to you.

No, as you struggle for those things, You actually gain them on the journey.

Not at the end of the journey, but the journey itself. The struggle itself is what God uses to shape your character and to reveal things about himself and about your need for him. And you become a more godly person. That's plan A.

And so I just want to encourage you guys, embrace the struggle. Don't run from the struggle. This is a part of just the way God has designed it, and just realize, man, and all the labor and striving inside of that is godliness. And that's what I want.

So, so I want to, I want to live this way. A 6th essential to godliness is you need to appreciate the immense value of godliness. Paul says in verse 8, for bodily discipline or bodily exercise is only of little profit. Now what he's saying is basically bodily exercise, physical fitness is of little profit, only of little profit.

Now when you think about it, guys, if all you're looking at is physical fitness, physical exercise, there's a ton of profit in that. People write articles just listing off gazillions of benefits to even 30 minutes of exercise bodily every day. There's a lot of profit, huge profit. both physically and emotionally, for, physical exercise.

But Paul says it's only a little profit. why? Because he's comparing it to something else. Yeah, by itself.

Yeah, there's a lot of profit there. But compared to the prophet of godliness, it doesn't even begin to compare. He says godliness literally is profitable. in all directions.

the benefits of godliness ricochet in all directions and in the directions that it ricochets, it ricochets on throughout all eternity. It holds promise for the present life, and also for the life to come. There's not a single area of our lives that is not profoundly enriched by godliness. And so some people chase after money.

Other people chase after physical fitness. We chase after godliness, because the profit is huge. Look at verse 9. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance.

And my belief and the belief of most writers is that Paul is pointing back to what he just said at the end of verse 8. In other words, here's a statement that you can take to the bank, you can embrace with full acceptance without any reservation. This is one of those truisms that you can base your life upon, to where you can say to people, what, I may not know much, but this is one thing that I know, chapter 1, verse 15, another one of those statements. This is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That's one of those statements that you can take to the bank and base your life upon. And Paul says, this is another one of those statements that's absolutely trustworthy. Let down your reservations and just receive this wholeheartedly, that godliness is profitable for everything.

You got to believe this. You got to believe this. Godliness is profitable in all directions. And it holds promise for the present life and the life to come to where godliness looms large, and that's what you go after.

That's what you seek after, and others may strive and labor for other things, money and whatever else that this world may offer. But I'm going after godliness. Because with godliness, there's huge profit. In every area of my life now and through eternity.

I'm all for physical fitness. I think it's great. There's huge benefits in that. But people who don't pursue godliness and invest in that, and all they do is invest in their body, there's something actually tragic about that.

Because our bodies are dying. They're dying things. Ultimately, they'll end up in the grave. And even while we live, we just watch our bodies deteriorate.

I'm 45 and I'm just noticing that it just really stinks. I tell people I'm not waiting for death to pay me a visit. It's, it's visiting me every day and just plucking one hair at a time and, and, Just, I, I'm dying every day. We're all dying every day.

And So to invest in our bodies while we do care for them because they're precious gifts from God, they're tools to serve Him, to invest only in that is like tragic. How many of who Jack LaLanne is? OK, he was like the ultimate fitness guru back. 50 some odd years ago.

The guy has an incredible, he's 94 years old, he'll be 95 before this month is over. To this day, he works out 2 hours a day, an hour and a half, he's pumping weights, 94 years old, and half an hour, he's either swimming or walking and An amazing physical specimen. My hat's off to him, even from a physical standpoint for a 94 year old. But, but what?

Take a look at these pictures. For all of his investment, as commendable as that is, over many, many decades, he looks worse today than he did 50 years ago, right? He's investing in a dying thing. And I don't know about his relationship with the Lord.

I would hope that he has a relationship with God and he's making an investment there. I don't know anything about that. But, may it be that our investment is in godliness, and we're investing in the well-being of our inner man so that we can say with the apostle Paul, that we don't lose heart, for though our outer man is decaying, Paul's like, I noticed physically, I'm getting older. I'm already decaying.

My body is decaying. Our inner man is being renewed day by day. Spiritually, I'm getting stronger. Spiritually, my inner man is becoming more and more alive and transformed.

I've never been spiritually stronger in my soul than I am today. That's where the investment should be. That's, that's an investment where there are no regrets. Some invest in physical fitness, some invest all their energy and sacrifice everything else for money.

Others seek for fame and stardom and whatever else it may be. But what, at the end of the day, everything else that people strive for will ultimately disappoint. I have to skip these. But let's, let's go to the 7th essential to, to godliness, And we'll wrap it up with this.

I don't want you guys to think that, OK, so Pastor Milton's saying we need to struggle and strive, and so isn't that depending on ourselves? Shouldn't we be depending on God? Actually, Paul sees no contradiction there. Look what he says in verse 10.

For it is for this we labor and strive because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the savior. Paul says, no, no, no, I do put my hope in God to such a degree that that is why I labor and strive for godliness. And I'm not laboring in striving in my own strength. No, I'm struggling and laboring and striving dependently upon him to give me strength.

I'm striving and laboring believingly in Him, knowing that God, God is in control of all of these things. And this is part of God's plan. And I will find the godliness that, that I seek and that he wants me to have. And I will also struggle patiently.

Knowing that this is a long journey. The process may be at times, taxing, but I am, Lord, I'm going to strive, I'm going to labor, I'm going to exert myself toward and into godliness because I put my hope in you. I'm trusting you. And so this is what I'm giving my life to.

It was his hope in God that caused him to labor. And strive towards the things that God Has located inside of struggle and striving. Real quick as we close this, just want to give you one encouraging thought. You might think, man, so I gotta move towards godliness and godliness, and I'm, that's, that's gonna be a long way off.

I hope one day I can say I'm godly. just want to encourage you with this, that if you're moving towards godliness, you are godly. That's God's definition. He says at the end of verse 7, on the other hand, discipline yourself toward godliness.

Verse 8, for bodily discipline or exercise is only a little profit. We would expect him to say, but godly exercise is profitable for all things, but he doesn't say that. Bodily exercise is of little profit, godliness is profitable. What you put that together just real quickly, guys.

And Paul's thinking, exerting oneself toward godliness is godliness. Does that make sense? If you are living your life and you're seeking to move towards godliness, and to get into godliness, And you're striving and laboring in dependence upon God, believing in God. God looks at his children that are doing this very thing, moving towards godliness and into it.

And God says, there goes a godly child of mine. Exerting yourself towards godliness is godliness. Let me ask you to bow your heads. God wants us to be a godly church, full of godly people, the health, and even the outreach and the ministry of Cornerstone.

is utterly dependent upon The conduct of our people. That's why Paul says I'm writing these things so that you will know how to conduct yourself. And may we today commit ourselves to facing ourselves toward godliness. And nourish ourselves in the gospel.

That we wax strong in the gospel. And with eyes that are filled with a holy greed, and even, even a healthy spirit of just violence that we We take what is ours by force, aggressively. And so honor God by the passion that we show. For what he makes available to us.

We're going to take up an offering here in just a moment. We would encourage you to give, As the Lord leads you to give, Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the very practical instruction you provide us.

That tells us what you've given us. That also tells us what you want us to do to arrive at the other things that you desire to give us. May we be faithful to fix our hope on you. And to labor, and to strive, and to exert ourselves toward an end to these riches of godliness.

That you want us to have. We ask Lord that you would accept the offering that we give to you at this time, and may you multiply. The funds that are given for the glory of Jesus Christ. We ask these things in Christ's name, and all God's people said,