1 Timothy 4:3-11| Episode # 1203

May 27, 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

1 Timothy 4:3-11

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for over 25 years. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse-by-verse and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Hope Alive, where we apply God's Word to our daily life. My name is Chad Harrison. I'm first a husband, a father, and a grandfather. I'm also the teaching pastor at Lake Community Church in Dadeville, Alabama, on beautiful Lake Martin. I've been serving as a pastor for over 30 years. I also serve as the Tallapoosa County District Judge. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word verse by verse through the Bible and to find his purpose and will for your daily life. If you would like sponsor this podcast, go to the Show Notes, where there's a link where you can make a donation. I pray in the name of Jesus that God would open his word to you, allow you to see him and to know him, so that you would know his will and his way for your life, that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today. Word of God, please speak to the hearers of your voice today in the name of Jesus. Amen. Okay. He says, notice what they do. Forbidding to marry. Boy, we get big into that. Right? Right? We get. We. We get big into that. All. All the things. All. All the trappings of what Me, What. How we do marriage rather than what marriage is supposed to be about. Okay. All right. And we've had it in all kinds of ways. And I could go into all of them, and, boy, I'd step on a lot of toes. And people turn off the tv. The Bible study. But if you'll think about it, we rarely teach how to do marriage. Well. We always are all focused on how this marriage is not fitting God's perfect plan for marriage. Okay. How it doesn't work. Look, you can take two intensely lost people and they can have a great marriage if they do the principles of marriage, which is husbands, love your wives like Christ loves church. Right. Wives, submit to your. Allow your husband to take on the leadership role that he ought to. If. If. Even if you're totally lost and you do those things, you're going to have a good marriage. Why? Because God created marriage and he knows how it's done. And if you do it the way he says do it, even if it's not spiritual, it's going to be a good marriage. Are y' all listening to me? Lots of good marriages out there by non Christians. How are they good? Well, the husband loves the wife. The wife is the helpmate to the husband. Look, nowhere in Scripture does God ever instruct a woman to love her husband. Did y' all know that? Nowhere in Scripture and by the way some men say. And she doesn't. No, but I mean, you know, but, but, but, but, but. Nowhere in scripture does it mandate that. Why? Why? Because. Shocking shocker. Over 90%, probably over 95% of all the marriages that have ever been have been arranged marriages. They've been arranged marriages. Did y' all know that it's, it's abnormal for two people to choose each other and get married. It's not the norm in the world. And so God's mandate for marriage, for a husband to be self sacrificial in his love to his wife and for a woman to make her husband better by being a helpmate and honoring him and helping him do the leading, submitting to his will, helping him do the leading. If you do that well, even if you don't know God, you're going to have a good marriage. Pastor, you saying that marriage is not a Christian thing? No, no, I'm saying it's intensely a Christian thing, but it's an institution that does not necessarily have to have Christianity involved for it to be done well, because God made it and if you use his principles, it will work no matter the context. Wow. Wow. Do you mean that God's stuff works even if it's not done perfectly by people? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why self help stuff does work. It has some underlying biblical principles to it. Now, is it God's way of doing it perfectly? No. Is it going to lead to the blessing of God? No. Does it work? Sometimes. A lot, yeah. And then the devil uses that to deceive you and make you think that that's how it's perfectly done. Notice he uses God's stuff to deceive you too. Okay. He uses God's stuff to deceive you too. All right. They forbid him, Mary's commanding notice, to abstain from food. Notice it's in italics. Those words are not in there. We've added them to make it to give you the understanding. Because these other words tend to indicate cut and dry. You got to do it this way. To abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. So what are they, what are they teaching? Dietary laws. Old Testament dietary laws. What is Paul saying? That we don't go by those Old Testament dietary laws. Why don't we? Because. Because God said God created those to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. So if somebody's trying to get you to live by the Old Testament dietary laws. Are you following me? Don't Work, don't work. Why New Testament? We've got the apostle Paul, we've got the apostle Peter. Both of them telling us, can't buy. Go by the Old Testament dietary laws, God told them to take and eat. You got it. I got that one, too. I got that one, too. What I love about people with the dietary laws that are not Jewish, okay, I'm excluding the Jewish people. They need to. They. They gonna live by their faith, okay? Excluding them out. But people who want to live by the dietary laws, they don't know. They don't know them. Are you following me? You go. What are you talking about? Well, by the way, you can't even touch those animals. You can't even be around them. So if you're going to live by the dietary laws, listen to me. If you're going to live by the Old Testament law, if that's how you're going to be justified before God, you cannot transgress it in one place. Are you following me? It is this principle, and I've told you this before, burglary, enter the dwelling place of another with the intent of committing a felony therein. Are you following me? All right. Under the Old Testament idea of the law, if I enter the dwelling place of another without permission, I'm a murderer. Y' all get that? Because I have. I have transgressed one aspect of the law, which makes me a transgressor of the whole law. I'm a rapist, a robber, a murderer, a thief, a liar, a embezzler, a cheat. I'm all those things if I just do it. One aspect of transgression, one. That's why it doesn't work. Those things reveal the character and the holiness of God, but they are not the avenue by which you get to Him. You cannot. You are a law breaker. Are you following me? He says, for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received for Thanksgiving. Okay, Now, I need to teach my wife this because she believes that only chicken is receivable by God. My granddaughter the other day was making up words, and she said, america Polla. And I said, that's all your grandmother eats, is America Polya. Okay? American chicken. That's all she eats. All right. Notice, he said, you can eat it all. Escargot, snails. All right, all right. You can do it. You can do it. All right. Fish. Fish eggs, good to go. You can have that. All right. All the foods that you think you can't eat, you can eat them all. They're all Good. Well, they're all edible. Not all good. Okay, not all good. But you can eat them. You can have them. He says you can. We're not living by the law anymore, for it is sanctified. Notice what he says. It's sanctified by what? The word of God and prayer. You go, why that? Why the word of God in prayer? Well, it's sanctified by the word of God because God is revealed to us that it's available. The Spirit revealed it to a human being, a human being wrote it down inspired by God, and now we have it. Now you go, well, how do you do it? Well, you do it prayerfully. Are you following me? All right, you do it prayerfully. You. You. If. If it's a problem for somebody, you try not to be a problem for them. Unless they're legalist. And then I try to be a problem for them. Okay? Then I try to be a problem for. Seriously try to. Okay. Why? Because their conscience is seared. Their conscience is seared. That's why I look at it. If you're going to put people under the law, all right, I'm going to treat you like you're. See your conscience. He says if you instruct the brethren in these things. What he's saying is, I'm teaching you to teach. Teach the doctrines. If you destroy. If you instruct your brethren these things, you'll be a good minister of Jesus Christ. Now I want you to notice, because this is something I want you to see right there. He says you'll be a good. What? Huh? Minister. He's not a minister. He's an Episcopal. Now, I want you to hear that because that's very important. Paul just got through going through in bitter detail two offices in the church, and now he goes to chapter four, and he's wanting him to be a good. What? What? Notice. Even in that we should not be legalistic. Even in that we should not be legalistic. And I know that because those who try to be legalistic get tripped up. Because there's always something in there in scripture that trips them up. It always does. And you get to where you're not. You're rudimentary, you're very. You're very. You're very elementary in your thinking with God. And I'm going to tell you, you're not going to know the deep things of God if you're elementary in your thinking. You're not. You're not going to get it. And it's painful to see people who've decided it's Easier to be elementary. He says you'll be a good minister of Jesus Christ. Should. Should Timothy be a minister? Yeah, it means to serve. What was Jesus's last act with his disciples? He washed their feet. Is that a position of ministry or is that a position of episcopy? Or an elder? It's a. It's a position. Did Jesus operate as an elder? Did Jesus operate as a minister? Did Jesus operate as a prophet? Did Jesus operate as a priest? Did Jesus operate as a king? Notice, our Lord operated in all those things. And Paul is telling him that he should be a minister also. Okay? He doesn't hold that office, but he should operate in that. In that office, all right? He says. He says, nourished in the word of faith. Now, that's part of what he's supposed to be operating in, right? He's a teacher. He's a teacher of the doctrines. So he's supposed to be a minister and a teacher. And of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed. He's given him encouragement. You have been following the teaching. Keep on doing that. You're going to be a good minister if you do these things, if you teach them rightly, okay? He says, but reject profane and old wives fables, okay? Now this can be. This can be tran. This can be interpreted two different ways, okay? They can be interpreted separately and they can be interpreted together. And you go, well, Pastor, which one is right? And I'm going to say to you both, both, okay? Profane wives tales, all right? Which are stuff that you know you don't want to say, okay? Because they're dirty, all right? Or the profane, period. Notice he says, reject the profane. What is the profane? Well, it's, it's, it's dirtiness. It's the idea is that, okay? Filthy language, filthy sayings, filthy thoughts, filthiness. He says, he says. He says, reject them and reject old wives tales, okay? He says, and why does he say that? Because he doesn't want you to be teaching worldly principles while you're also at the same time teaching spiritual truths. Are you following me? Now listen to me. It is not a bad idea to teach people take a bath. It's not. I've had to do that in the past, okay? The. The worldly principle is cleanliness is next to godliness, right? Where's that in. It's in second hereticals, okay? Our third condominiums, all right? It ain't in there. It ain't in there. Is it a good idea? Is it a good Idea to take a bath. Should I preach a sermon on taking a bath? No, I should not take it to someone taking a bath. Why? Because that's a. Oh, that's a wives tale. Okay? That is a worldly idea. We're not in the business teaching worldly ideas, okay? I want to tell you, you can easily stray into those things. Paul's being good to Timothy. By the way, we have a lot of topical preaching that has taken place over the last 50 years. And topical preaching can be very biblical and very good. You pick a topic, you find what the Bible says. You go to the Bible, you preach the Bible. It can be very. Listen, I'm not hammering topical preaching. Are you with me? Topical preaching's fine if the topic you're preaching on is found in a passage of scripture and you exegete that passage. Y' all hear what I said? You break down the passage and explain the topic. There's nothing wrong with it. Here's the problem. If I'm topically preaching, then I'm going to be preaching the things that topically I like to preach. Okay? You go. What's the problem with that? Well, you're not going to teach the whole counsel of God, all right? You know, you're going to miss out on things because you're not going to teach about. I'm not going to teach about eating too much. Are you following me? I getting into that. You with me? If I were going to preach topically, I'd have nothing to do with anger. We get. I would act like that. You know, that's not a problem. You with me? That's what I do. That's what I do. I. And so, so topical preaching ends up becoming you preaching your own topics. Now, what happens. What happens that gets bad is you begin to look for information that's not biblical information. And your topical preaching, that's leaves the word of God, okay? And you start preaching, oh, wives tales, okay? You talk, you start preaching worldly understandings, okay? Nothing wrong with them in the sense of they're good stuff, but they're one oh, too many. They're not God stuff, all right? And, and, and Timothy is being instructed to teach God stuff and not the good stuff. Okay? My, my Pat, my teacher of preaching, he was really good. His name was Shadix. He. He was a. He was fabulous teacher. He used to say, you need to preach God's stuff, not good stuff. Like, how do you preach God stuff? We gotta preach it from the word. How do you make sure you preach God's stuff? Well, it's usually better. Cause I'm just. I'm kind of. I'm kind of just set that way. It's usually better. You just preach through what he's saying and you get. You'll always be in the guide, Stu. Okay? And the cool thing is God's stuff, whatever passage you're in, it usually fits for the church because God, he's nourishing the church through a passage. So he's gonna lead em into things while those things are going on. He's gonna lead em into those things to make them be able to hear him speak to where they're at. You following me? Tell me this is not relevant stuff for us today. It's very relevant. It's very relevant for today. If I were teaching a young pastor and the best book I could get was something from Lifeway, right? No, the best book I could give him is first Timothy, and then I'd follow it with two Timothy. I follow that up with Titus, and then I'd make sure he read Hebrews and Romans and I'd for sure know. Make sure he'd gone through the gospel several times. Right. Then we'd take him to the Old Testament. All right, why? Because God's stuff is the only stuff that lasts. All right? He said, reject those and exercise and exercise yourself toward godliness. How do I do that? With the Word, I exercise myself toward godliness. That's why I. That's why, you know, on Sunday and all the time. Look, look up. All right, this is, this is not. I want you to hear me. It's not like I'm coming up with some great stuff all the time. Are you following me? In fact, if you read the Bible, it just keeps going over everything with different stories. So maybe one of them will relate to you. All right, you go. Why is God doing that? Well, because we're. We're dumb. We're sheep and cheaper. The dumbest animals. You know, we're poor. I mean, we're. And I'm a sheep too. Our sheep too. All right, I'm just. We're not. Look, if God. If it was going to be hard, we never get. We never get it. We wouldn't get it. It's not hard. It's really not. It's not hard. So he. You got to keep going over it. Keep doing it, keep doing it. Excuse me. You got to keep doing it. You got to keep doing it. And if you keep doing, it's going to work. He says, for body, Lee, exercise, profits a little. And I say, amen to that. Amen. Praise God. To God be the glory. Great things he has done. All right. It profits a little. It does. But notice what he says. He says, but godliness is profitable for all things. Meaning knowing the will of God. Knowing. Knowing the character of God and living it out. It helps with everything. It's health. The Bible says it's health to a whole man's body. The word of God is health to a whole man's body. So what is he saying? Well, the word of God will make you healthy. All right. Now, will it keep you from dying? No. Why? Because he said it's appointed unto man wants to die. And then the judgment. He said to Job, I've numbered your days past which you can't go. Sorry, you're going to die. Okay? If, if, if. If faith kept you from dying, we'd be able to go to Peter and Paul and James and John, and we'd be able to see them all. Go see them and talk to them. That none of them be dead. But I want you to hear me. They're all dead. And God killed all of them. God took out all of them except for one. By martyrdom. Notice he made sure he kept one out so that you couldn't say. Yeah, but they were all martyred. So we're supposed to all live forever. They just got killed? Nope, don't work that way. Don't work that way. John died of natural causes. Okay. So we would at least have John. We'd at least have him, right? Do we have him? Nope. Don't have him. He's not here. He's not here. Why? Because we're all going to die. We're all going to die. And so the profitableness of this is that when you walk in the peace of God, there is physical results that come from it. Okay. When you have God's peace, it has very intense physiological advantages to it. Okay, it does. And so he says it's profitable not only for the physical, but it's profitable for the spiritual and it's profitable for the soul. So he's saying if you do physical exercise, that's good for the physical, and it may be in some ways good for the soul, but if you do spiritual exercise, it's good for all three. He says having promise of life that now is and of that which is to come. What he's saying is he's giving you promise of a good life now and a good life in eternity. Aren't that. I mean, Tell me that's not relevant. It's very relevant. He says, this is a faithful saying worthy of all acceptance. Now, when he says something like that, it's like when Jesus says, truly I say unto you. I mean, if Jesus says, truly I say unto you, you need to be listening up. He's giving you word up, okay? Listen to me. He says, for to this end, we both labor and suffer reproach. He's saying, we're doing these things and we're working at it, and we're being reproached by it. People are not going to like it because we trust in the living God. We do these things because we trust that God is what? That he's alive? That he's actually doing this stuff. We trust God. We trust in the living God. He says, who is the savior of all men, huh? He's the savior of all men. All right? Even those who don't believe notice. I'm going to go back. God. Jesus is the manifestation of the full will of God. So if you were to be married and not a believer, but you were to operate in the will of God for marriage, would you not be saved in your marriage? Yeah, yeah. You would. You absolutely would. Are there principles that a lot of people live by that are godly principles and they don't even know they're godly? Yeah, they are. And so he saves notice. Save doesn't mean go into heaven. Save means setting your soul, which is your heart and your mind, within the will of God. It is a process. I can't say that enough. I can't say that enough. We do have redneck theology, okay? We use the word saved to mean justified. When were you justified is what we say. But it's not really even that. We really are saying, when were you converted? Okay. The moment you realize that you needed the Lord and you turned to him, that's conversion. That's repentance. When did you repent for the first time? All right. That would be a better explanation of it because it'd lead you. When we use the word saved as if it's an event and not a process, we lead people astray. Salvation is a process in which God orders your heart and your mind according to his will and his way. All right? Can God work salvation in the soul of those who are not born again? Yes. In some ways, that's how he is the saver of all men. Yes. If you. If you're a Buddhist and you believe Jesus was a. Was a great sage and you lived by his teaching, such as love your neighbor as yourself, do unto others as they would do Unto you, would you in some ways have your soul being saved? Yes. Would you be born again? No. Would you have eternal life? No. Would you be being saved? Yes. And I'm giving you that idea. I know. Listen, this is. This is winter Bible study. It's cold outside. We're coming in to dig deep in the ground. All right. If you're going to do third grade theology, this ain't going to make sense to you. If you're going to think about things in the depth of God's word, it begins to really make a lot of sense. And not only does it make a lot of sense, it helps you understand what God's really doing with you. What a wonderful work God's doing. Which is not. Which is not superficial. It's not superficial. God's at work in the whole world. He's pouring his spirit out on all flesh. Are all human beings going to heaven? No. How'd I know that? Jesus said it in John last week. Right. Not everybody's going to believe. They're not going to believe. Are they going to heaven if they don't believe on the risen Savior? No, they're not. Weird. It's not heresy. Weird, though. Can some people be saved by the word of God and not born again? Yeah, in the sense of God is ordering their heart and mind in his will and ways. That's what salvation is. Listen to me. There's no way to explain it any other way. I'm sure if you wanted to proof text me, you could do that. Are you following me? But I don't operate with the word of God as one verse by one verse by one verse. By the way, this afternoon I listened to a heretic explain to me why God allowed all types of marriages and people to be in all types of sexual relationship. He used Galatians, chapter six. He proof texted it. He said, in Christ there are no more male and female. All right, now the problem with that does. Does Galatians say that? Yes, it does. It says, in Christ there's no more male or female. All right, let's give the whole verse, though. In Christ there's neither gentile or Jew, male or female, slave or free. What? He's talking about social orders, physical connotations, birth rights, how you're born, families. He's saying, in Christ, we're not those things. We're all. We're all believers in front of him. All right, but notice I could proof text that as that heretic did, and say that any marriage that's not between a man and a woman is okay in scripture. God said it's okay. Well, it's not okay. It's not okay. How do I know that? Because the major theological book I know I'm fixing to kill myself on Facebook. The major theological book of the Bible, of the New Testament to the Gentiles, which is the book of Romans, starts out in chapter one spelling out that you can't do that, that that's against the natural order of how God created the universe. You don't have to go any farther than chapter one of Romans, and you know that. All right? But you can always proof text what is not very deep. You can. It's not the way it works. It's not the way it works. All of God's Word sits on top of any verse. And your interpretation of that verse must be in line with the rest of God's word. If what you believe that verse says is out of line with something else God says somewhere else, then God's not wrong, you're wrong. God's not wrong, you're wrong. These things he says command and teach. Notice he says now. Notice he's telling them to give them commandments, not the law. He's commanding them to live by these ideas, these principles that flow from the law of the Spirit. Loving God, love, loving each other, loving your neighbor as yourself. They flow from this all right. As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.