SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT
1 Timothy 4:6-7
[6] If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained.
[7] But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.
Anyone familiar with the New Testament will recognize that most of the letters, written by St. Paul, were addressed to congregations like the Romans or the Galatians or the Philippians. Our text for this morning, however, deals with another kind of letter, a letter written to a pastor who was just entering the ministry. His name was Timothy. He was a pious and dedicated young man who had been brought up in a Christian home. His father was a heathen Greek, but Scripture tells us that his mother, Eunice, and grandmother, Lois, had come to faith in Jesus Christ and had brought him up in the word of God from the time he was a baby. Once he encountered St. Paul, the great missionary to the Gentiles, those two became the closest friends. He traveled with St. Paul to serve many congregations. Ultimately, after the apostle had been imprisoned; young Timothy was called to serve the congregation at Ephesus. Although that congregation had been founded through St. Paul, who could walk in the footsteps of that sainted apostle?
The calling was awesome. How could a young and inexperienced pastor begin to handle the problems that were bound to arise? I remember personally that when I graduated from the Seminary to be a missionary on the west coast, nothing meant as much to me as the direction and encouragement of a kindly and elderly neighboring pastor. He was always as near as my phone. How wonderful for young Timothy, that St. Paul kept in touch with divine words of instruction that have been a source of encouragement for pastors and laymen ever since.
One of the problems that faced our young preacher was how to handle those members who went around discussing all kinds of useless questions to the neglect of the teachings of God’s word. St. Paul calls what they talked about as “profane and old wives fables.” Exactly what they were, we don’t know, but from the text, we can deduce that they were weird and silly stories that foolish women were spreading around and that everyone believed. This is nothing new to our world today. Think of the people, Christians included, who search out fortunetellers to find the root cause of their fears or to learn what they are going to have to face in the future. Silly as this may seem to you and me, we are not beyond temptation. The Scriptures speak very clearly about such idolatry. “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?” Isaiah 8:19.
Perhaps even more popular in the unbelieving world is the teaching of reincarnation. Reincarnation is the belief that the soul is reborn repeatedly. When one body wears out, it is cast off like a garment and the soul appears in another one. George Patton, the famous World War II general, considered himself a reincarnation of Hannibal, a general from ancient Carthage. Napoleon firmly believed he was an incarnation of the great German emperor, Charlemagne, and some believe that Hitler was a reincarnation of Napoleon. Such thinking is also common in the religious world. Think of those who speak of Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Allah as a reincarnation of Christ! How many Christians have left their faith in our Savior to follow the vain teachings of Mormonism or Christian Science or any number of the mystic Eastern cults!
Especially dangerous to our young people is the rapidly growing popularity of yoga, a teaching that springs from the largest religions in the world, Buddhism, Hinduism and Mohammedism. Yoga stresses meditation as the key that frees the sense organs from external things by fixing the attention on a single object. If you meditate hard enough, they tell you, you can get out of your body into a state of mind that is pure, free from violence, covetousness, and greed and you will possess super-human strength.
St. Paul wrote strong words to Timothy regarding some of this superstitious nonsense of the devil. He writes, “refuse” it, close your ears to it, don’t give it any credence; it can only destroy your soul. How could young Timothy stand up against the foolish wisdom of the greatest mystics the world has ever known? Timothy may have been young, but he was no fool.
He was “a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine.” Timothy was good in the eyes of God. He did not have a degree from some university and no secular historian knows that he ever existed, but in the eyes of God he was a faithful servant of Jesus Christ, the highest compliment that could be paid any pastor or layman, for that matter, for are not we all servants of our Savior?
Timothy was a good servant because he was “nourished up,” on the words of the Bible, nourished on “words of faith and of good doctrine,” says the text. Nourishment has to do with spiritual growth. In order for any of us to be “good servants of Jesus Christ,” our souls need nourishment. We wouldn’t live very long if we did not nourish our bodies with daily food. In the same way, our spiritual health demands that we feed our souls on words of faith. “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word,” writes St. Peter, “that ye may grow thereby.” 1 Peter 2. This raises some very personal questions. What do you feed on day by day? What do we put into our minds? TV movies, novels, the sports page, the financial section? All of God’s gifts are ours to enjoy, but If any of them is our complete diet, then they become very dangerous and will leave us spiritually undernourished. How many once faithful Christians have been misled by an admiration for the wisdom of the world, because they were fed on a diet of evolution and philosophy and psychology!
Where do we go from here? How can we counter the vain and soul-destroying propaganda of the devil? If we were to judge our lives based on our ability to put God’s word above everything else, we would have to admit at once that we are total failures! We see through a glass darkly. We confess with St. Paul, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect.” Philippians 3:12. Daily, we ask our God to forgive our faithlessness and plead for the strength to put His Word first. Our Bible is the greatest book in the world, but if we don’t use it, our hope for the future is dim. Only through the precious Word of God can our faith grow. If you don’t use it, you loose it, says the proverb. Dedication to the Scriptures is God’s way of preserving us unto everlasting life.
Why do you think we put so much stress on confirmation instruction? Certainly not, so that once our children are confirmed, they won’t have to come to church any more. Our concern for our children runs a lot deeper than that! We want them through the study of Scripture to learn how desperately they need the nourishment of God’s Word every day of their lives. We want them to continue to grow in the faith so that they, on their own, will be able to fight the temptations of the world and find in the word of their Savior and in the fellowship of like-minded Christians the strength to remain faithful unto death. Neglect of God’s word can easily lead the strongest of our children to fall prey to sins like living together outside of marriage, or homosexuality or worst of all, trusting their own strength to get them to heaven.
Far too often, however, parents give up their responsibly toward their children by handing them over to the church for training. Perhaps that is why we have so many failures. No matter how hard Christian teachers work at it, feeding the souls of our children has to begin in the home with our example, and our prayer life, our study of God’s Word. That is how the Holy Spirit works, and he can and does produce wonderful and unbelievable results! When we, as a family, grow together in the nourishing words of “faith and good doctrine,” we will be able to defend ourselves against the lies of the devil. Then will we, almost without notice, pass on to the children that God has given us, the spiritual strength some day to pass these truths on to children of their own. No one summarizes this better than the psalmist David does: “If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall l teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for evermore.” Psalm 132:12.
This sermon was preached by Pastor Robert Dommer on November 18, 2007.