Zachary Peters

This is the final message in our series addressing superstition and hyper-spiritualism in the discipleship process. Text: 1 Timothy 4:1–10 (ESV).

Introduction

We’re in the final week of our series that’s been addressing superstition and hyper-spiritualism worming its way into our discipleship process, into our relationship with God, into church in general. It’s really easy to let some stuff in if we’re not careful. For a lot of different reasons, we just let stuff in sometimes. And it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re heading in the wrong direction — it just might mean you’re getting a little distracted from what you need to be doing.

One of the attitudes or mindsets that can help us avoid this problem of superstition and hyper-spiritualism is holding on to the basics. The minute you start walking away from the basics is the minute you start allowing yourself to be influenced by things that don’t belong.

Two Key Concepts

Faithfulness. Faithfulness means you are holding on tightly to something. You are being consistent in your belief and connection to something. It means you are not swaying, not bending, not breaking from your relationship with this thing, this person, this idea. Your faithfulness in marriage means you are intimately connected to that person and will not stray in any way, shape, or form.

Doctrine. Doctrine is a set of organized beliefs and thoughts that dictate how you live, how you act, how you behave, how you respond to life. Your doctrine can be good or it can be bad. As Christians, we get good doctrine from scripture, from looking at Jesus’ life, from being inspired by the Holy Spirit, from thoughtful reflection and tradition — all of it combined helps us have sound doctrine.

One of the greatest weapons we have to guard our discipleship process and keep superstition and hyper-spiritualism out is faithfulness to sound doctrine. Our faithfulness is directed and embedded in Christ, the gospel, and the basics: Jesus Christ crucified, his life, his death, his resurrection, the Holy Spirit’s empowering in your life, and the Great Commission. If you spend your time in those things, you’re going to be a really, really good Christian — and you’re going to protect yourself from a lot of mess.

Scripture: 1 Timothy 4:1–10

Some Will Depart from the Faith (vv. 1–5)

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who 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 and prayer.

1 Timothy 4:1–5 (ESV)

Train Yourself for Godliness (vv. 6–10)

If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

1 Timothy 4:6–10 (ESV)

The Big Picture

Before breaking all of this down, here’s what this scripture is really saying: Paul is teaching Timothy — one of his students, a young pastor and leader — what to avoid, how to avoid it, and how, when you do that, you become an effective teacher and example to your community.

Like the last several weeks, what we have here is a church community clearly being impacted by outside spiritual concepts and superstitions. Timothy is being charged to be faithful to sound doctrine, to forget the silly myths, and hold on to the basics as an example for the people he’s leading.

It’s not an accident that over and over again Paul addresses churches struggling with similar situations. It seems there is a spiritual distortion — an attack on grace, on mercy, on Jesus, on the basics — happening in the early church everywhere Paul goes. People trying to minimize the gospel and interject things that give them a little more control over the process. I still see this push today.

A Word on Demons and Spiritual Pressure

Paul mentions deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons. When most of us think about demons, we picture something out of a cartoon or a horror movie. But as I’ve studied this, I see them less like that and more like an unseen pressure — a presence that warps God’s purpose in our lives. They twist truth and introduce lies and manipulate things.

We see this in several ways. Communism, for example, takes a real and true idea — that your neighbor matters, that community matters — and twists it so that the group becomes the god. This is similar to say socialism where god is the state. Nihilism distorts reality into the belief that nothing matters at all. The devaluing of human life which produces human sacrifice and even abortion, is a pressure that shows up across human history. We can see this manipulation at work even in capitalism, in materialism, in cults born from the church like Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witnesses. These broken ideologies don’t happen in a vacuum. From the very beginning of time, the enemy has been at work introducing broken spiritualities to lead us astray.

The Specific Problem in Timothy’s Church

In this passage, the people Paul addresses have traded sound doctrine for the idea that not eating certain foods and living a life of celibacy will produce an extra dose of holiness — a closer connection to God. But that’s just not how it works.

Paul has already dealt with the issue of clean and unclean foods repeatedly, from church to church. And Peter, early in Acts, receives a vision that boils down to this: How dare you call anything I make unclean? I make you clean. It’s Jesus who makes us clean — not what we eat or don’t eat.

Even if people were well-meaning in their attempt to live a holy life through food restrictions or celibacy, it still wouldn’t fit the gospel. Think of it this way: if you’re trying to cure someone of a disease with poison, does it matter that you had good intentions? No. Good intentions don’t change the fact that it’s still poison.

And Paul adds a second problem: at least in this scripture, the people preaching this aren’t well-intentioned at all. He says their consciences are seared — numb, hardened, calloused. There’s a selfishness and wrongness with their motivations. Watch one of those cult documentaries sometime. You’ll see exactly what Paul is describing — people whose hearts are calloused, who are not acting in the well-being of the people around them.

Your Life Is a Message

Paul tells Timothy: if you can keep this in your head, recognize the truth, and live by it — it’ll be good for you and good for your church.

Listen: everyone reading this, no matter who you are — your life and how you live it, whenever it is aligned with Jesus, it matters. It doesn’t matter that you’re not a pastor or teacher. It doesn’t matter that you’re in a new city and don’t have many connections. Your example aligned with God matters for the people around you, for your family, for this community — in big ways and in small ways.

Be Trained: The Heart of the Passage

…you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness.

1 Timothy 4:6–7 (ESV)

Be trained. Discipleship takes a little bit of effort — a little bit of time you give to God every day, every week, every month, in order that you might become more like Jesus. It takes effort on your part to be a good disciple. I’m not talking about effort to earn salvation — that’s not what this is. I’m talking about what happens after you get saved. About growth. About heading in the right direction. It’s like the difference between going to school and learning. They’re connected, but not the same thing. There’s a real level of responsibility that initiates growth.

Train on the Right Things

You’ve probably heard the phrase practice makes perfect. Someone told me early on that’s actually not quite right — because you can practice something the wrong way and get really good at doing it the wrong way. The real version: perfect practice makes perfect. You’ve got to focus on the right stuff.

1. Read scripture on your own. Don’t rely on Sunday mornings alone. Listen to it in the car. Take three minutes and read a couple of verses at home. Get the word in your head and in your heart.

2. Read scripture and talk about it together. You’ve got to be around other people who are in scripture. People you trust. People who are maybe more experienced than you, more gifted in this area. One of the easiest ways to fall into superstition and hyper-spiritualism is to not read scripture for yourself and to not fellowship with people who are responsibly doing the same thing. You’ve got to do this in community.

Avoid the Fringe — Go Deep in the Basics

When it comes to spirituality and scripture: avoid the fringe and go deep in the basics.

I’ll be the first to tell you as a pastor that not everything in scripture is crystal clear. There are confusing things. Things with some ambiguity. Scripture is not always a Lego instruction set for life. But I also know that a lot of scripture is very straightforward. A ton of it is easy to grasp and comprehend. Make your home in that part, and vacation to the other parts.

Vacation to prophecy — but come back home to the basics. Take a trip to eschatology and end-times stuff — but come back home. Think about angels every once in a while, that’s okay. Wonder about how people lived hundreds of years in Genesis. Think about the creation story and how it connects with what we know about the world. But always come back home to the basics.

Make your home in Christ Jesus — his life, his death, his resurrection. Stay at home in the anointing of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit. Stay at home in the Sermon on the Mount. Stay at home in the Great Commission. These things are clear. If you make your home there, you’re going to be training the right way, and you will avoid the pitfalls of allowing nonsense to weasel its way into your Christianity.

Train for Today — and for Eternity

Training in godliness not only builds you up for today — it holds the hope of eternity.

I like to work out. I’ve worked out most of my life, through sports and weight training, and it is good for you. It produces results. It prepares you for the day, for physical work, for picking up your kids and staying active. Lots of practical good for right now. But at the end of the day — I’m still going to die. It doesn’t matter how good my training regime is. That’s where physical training ends.

Training in godliness is different. Not only is it good for today — it helps me navigate my life and bring God glory. And even on the days when I fall short, it helps me remember there’s grace and mercy for that too. Training in godliness is also good for spiritual longevity. It keeps you going in the right direction. I used to think that as you age as a Christian, it was just a natural process — that you’d gradually become better and better. But I’ve realized that’s simply not the case. It takes effort every day.

And the beautiful thing about the very end is that in training and godliness, it’s not really the end at all. It’s connected to eternity.

A Story About Eternity

Recently, a man that Tara and I knew from our last church in Clayton, Georgia passed away. His name was James. He had special needs. He wasn’t that old. And it wasn’t a good situation.

But James was something else. He was a sweet, sweet guy. He’d walk to Ingles every day for work and walk home. He didn’t really have much family — a brother who didn’t take care of him the way he deserved. But James would faithfully, faithfully show up to church. Every small group he could make it to, he was there. Anytime the doors were open, he was there. In his simple way, he trained in godliness. He had such a sweet heart, and he had a tough life.

When he passed, I just became overwhelmed. For lack of a better phrase: when James woke up and he wasn’t here anymore — what must that have been like for him? For the first time in his existence, his mind was clear. Everything clicking and making sense. A clarity of existence born at the perfect moment. All the struggles, over. To hear the words: Well done, my good and faithful servant.

I think it was overwhelming because it’s so easy to forget about eternity — to forget about what it means, what we’re really heading toward, what it’s all about. We have a job to do right now. But in the distance is that beautiful thing called eternity, the presence of God, resurrection, new creation. We have an appointment with eternity. And so we have to train in godliness, which not only produces results for our daily life, but also for that appointment.

When Training Feels Hard

The other thing about training is how frustrating it can be at the beginning. I go to the gym now with a game plan — I know which muscle groups I’m hitting, when my rest days are. But that’s because I’ve been doing this for years.

I was talking with my mom recently, and she pointed out something interesting. She recently started going to the gym. Now, she grew up in church, so church is familiar — she knows what to expect, she’s not lost. But the gym? She’s floating through uncomfortably: what does this machine do? What should I be doing today? It’s all new and disorienting.

The thing about training is you have to start somewhere. And the start is very confusing. It can be very frustrating to begin training in godliness. But here’s the answer: stay at home in the basics. Stay consistent. Don’t get distracted by things that don’t matter. Go take a vacation to some interesting places in scripture — that’s fun. But get back home to the stuff that matters and just hold on. Scripture says don’t grow weary of well-doing. You know why? Because God knows human nature. He knows how easy it is to slip into a homeostasis where we’re not growing, not dying, but just staying the same.

Conclusion

Let’s not get distracted by what Paul calls “irreverent, silly myths.” Don’t let the fringes lead you astray. Don’t let them open a door to stuff that doesn’t belong.

Make your home in the basics. Make your home in his grace and in his mercy. Make your home in the mission of the church. Make your home in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. You’re not going to go wrong there.

Hold on to the basics. Train in them. Dig deep in them. Let them become second nature.