Silly Myths

1 Timothy 4:7

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Today, I want to share with you one short verse from First Timothy, chapter four. This is from Paul’s letter to a young pastor. He’s encouraging him not to be persuaded or swayed by worldly myths, not to be persuaded and swayed by hypocrisy or by false teachers, but to stand in the truth of God’s Word, to use that as his foundation for everything that he says and everything that he does. He says in First Timothy Chapter four verse seven

Pay no attention to worldly silly myths, rather, train yourself for godliness. (1 Timothy 4:7)

Now, we know that with the advent of the Internet that we have an endless supply of worldly, silly myths that we could investigate, that we can invest time in, to trying to discover the truth, trying to uncover what’s actually happening. And there’s a big temptation for us in this for any range of ideas or topics like politics or aliens or Bigfoot or the End of the World and signs of the end times. And the pursuit for truth is commendable. It’s a good thing to try to uncover the truth, especially when it impacts innocent people. But we also have to be careful. This can’t become the essence of what we do. This can’t become the sole thing that we stand on. We can’t get so distracted by trying to figure out what is real and what’s not real, that we forget about what we know is true. The foundation, the source of all truth in God’s Word.

There we know that Jesus died for us. There we are told that he loved us so much that he came into the world to redeem us, to win for us the forgiveness of all of our sins. Now, instead of worrying about what might be true, Paul says to train for godliness. He says to let the thing, the foundation of our life be His Word, to let it dwell in us richly and let it permeate into everything that we do. To continue to learn more about what Jesus has done for us, to continue to remind ourselves of the Gospel that Jesus Christ is our Redeemer, that He lay down His life for us. That in the end, all the truth will be revealed. That he will lay down, lay out everything that anyone has ever done wrong, and that justice will be served.

But thankfully, that justice was served not to us, but to our Savior. He took on our sin on the cross and paid for all of those things that we’ve done wrong so that we can find redemption in him. Paul’s encouragement to Timothy is his encouragement to you. Have nothing to do with silly worldly myths that they have no impact on our life. But build your heart, your life, your foundation of everything that you believe on God’s Word, knowing that it is the source of truth for now and forever, that it opens up the gates of eternal life for you. Amen.

Let’s pray. Dear God, Heavenly Father, we thank you for the truth of your word. We know that you are the same yesterday, today, and forever. That your word remains forever. We ask that you would enable us to build our life on this, on what we know is true. On that thing that never changes. To find our motivation and our hope and our joy in the knowledge that you have redeemed us as your dear children, in Jesus name, we pray. Amen.