1 Tim 4:15+16 Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress may be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you. 
We’ve spent a couple of weeks in Chapter 4 of this letter with its admonition to godliness and some of what that entails. This morning, as we push on toward Chapter 5, we continue in terms of the lives that we live before God and before man. They are to be godly lives, proclaiming the true nature of Christ Who now indwells us. The Apostle Paul is continuing with his admonitions to Timothy as Timothy is overseeing the Church at Ephesus. Paul is directing his attention to those practical aspects of the church in order to urge Timothy on to preach and to live forth Christ Jesus.
	 One of the themes of these letters is that of seeking after the discipline of the Lord in our lives as Christians. While the specific letter is addressed to Timothy, it is absolutely applicable in each life of the Body of Christ. As we read in 1 Tim 4:7+8, But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. And verses 14+15, Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed upon you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress may be evident to all. 
	The Apostle Paul is setting before Timothy, before all of us, some very sobering charges that can only be fulfilled in the power and the life of Jesus Christ. These are aspects of holiness and righteousness that man can not accomplish in any measure. It takes the power and the love and the discipline of the Lord to set us into the fulfillment of the life which is ours in Christ. 2 Tim 1:6+7 And for this reason I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline. 
	Discipline is to be desired in the Lord for the purpose of establishing that which shows forth the godliness of Christ. In it, we find our promise of life in Christ, setting aside our wants and our desires for the sake of that which fully pleases the Lord. We are brought lovingly to the place where we no longer want to please our self life in any measure. It is not just a matter of putting God’s interests ahead of our own interests. It is wanting nothing other than God’s interests in these lives, period! No allowance for any aspect of self at all. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Rom 6:11. In the Amplified     
Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God [living in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus. 
Likewise, consider the discipline of the Lord from His vantage point. In Job 5:17, we read "Behold, how happy is the man whom God reproves, So do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. This is the attitude in which we are to live before God. We must not despise the work of the Lord as He deals effectively to bring our lives into conformity with our new nature in Him. We should rather, as indicated in this passage, rejoice in the truth that God so loves us that He works in our individual lives to His perfect purpose. 
All the discipline and the chastening and the reproof is not for our undoing. It builds us up into the full enjoyment of our new spiritual nature in Christ. That process needs to work unto completion, as we are encouraged in James 1:2-4, Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. … that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 
Of our selves, we see suffering only in terms of pain, sorrow, a lack of enjoyment, and excessive and egregious rules and regulations. Our self life sees God’s discipline and His reproof and His trials and His tests as exactly what they are – the utter death of self interest. That is so because true discipline, in Christ, does deal continual death blows to those desires of the flesh. It must do so in order to institute the new life that is now ours in Christ. That old nature tries to avoid this deadly discipline at all costs. It is looking out for itself and its own interests. It can’t afford to allow the Lord full and unhindered access into our heart and soul. 
Self wants to hold on to the status quo, to remain in control, and to protect itself at all costs. In that last gasp of self preservation, it embeds its lies into our hearts and minds. It tries to convince us that to give God His complete way in our lives will only serve to devastate our enjoyment and our freedom and our feeble abilities to make something of ourselves. It is the very same lie now, as it was in the Garden.
	Praise God for the truth, however. We are set free from that lie in our new spiritual nature in Christ. He is our freedom, our joy, our very life. It is only in the perfect work of the Lord that we will find absolute, complete, and perfect freedom, joy, and peace from our own striving. Even in the Old Testament, it was recognized that what the Lord does, He does because He so loves us. Prov 3:11+12 My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord, Or loathe His reproof, For whom the Lord loves He reproves, Even as a father, the son in whom he delights. 
	The Lord loves us so fully in Christ. That is the reason that He takes the time to discipline our lives unto the perfection that is ours in Christ Jesus. If it were truly for our undoing, He would not have to treat us with such longsuffering and patience and correction and understanding and love and mercy and grace. He could just remove us from the earth, as happened in the days of Noah, wipe us out completely and be done with us. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Eph 2:4-7
	Have we ever taken the time to consider that because the Lord so loves us, He works down to the smallest details in our daily lives? There is nothing too little, too trivial for Him to undertake in our lives. The Supreme Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth and all therein, cares for each one of us, individually. He works both great and small things for your sake, for my sake, and for His sake in each of our lives.
Now consider Prov 19:20+21. Listen to counsel and accept discipline, That you may be wise the rest of your days. Many are the plans in a man's heart, But the counsel of the Lord, it will stand. The Apostle Paul knew this truth. This is the key to understanding why The Lord’s discipline is absolutely essential in our lives. He does things with the eternal plan and purpose of Jesus Christ in view at all times. We make our plans and consider our future and work to accomplish our pitiful goals and aspirations, while all along, God has already charted the perfect course of our lives. That course is the fullness of Jesus Christ as Our Lord, Our Savior, Our Husband, - Our Everything. It is only in Him that we have all true joy and completion and the satisfaction of purpose in our lives.
The plans of man are nothing. No matter how great we think we are, no matter how fully we think we have prepared ourselves, it will all disappear in the blink of an eye, in the beat of a heart. It will come to naught. But the plans established from of old in the Lord are those that will endure throughout all the eternal ages – forever! As He works in our lives to focus our eyes and our hearts on this course of our spiritual life, those temporal elements of this world need to be scrubbed out of our hearts. 
Our plans and our desires need to be set aside and we must become focused and one with His plan and His desires. That will be established as we endure His loving hand in operation within our lives. To our physical eyes and nature, this working is utterly miserable and hard and absolutely painful unto death. But, with our spiritual eyes, we see the Lord’s loving hand as He most carefully and tenderly brings our hearts into the softened state wherein He can open His heart ever more clearly unto us. It is through each struggle, through each dilemma, through each correction of our faltering steps that we see the glory of God revealed, moment by moment, and day by day, in absolute reliance upon Him to get us through it all. Listen to Stephen as he faced the crushing blows of those hurled rocks that were soon to break his bones and crush the life from his mortal body. Acts 7:55-56, But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." 
	The Psalmist saw the vast contrast as he considered the ways of the Lord with regard to the godly and the ungodly. Ps 50:16+17 But to the wicked God says, "What right have you to tell of My statutes, And to take My covenant in your mouth? "For you hate discipline, And you cast My words behind you. Mankind is so seemingly clever in the manner in which he will try to twist and to pervert the things of God. Even the beauty of the Lord’s statutes and covenant are made into something dreary and despised within the convoluted schemes of humanity. Just consider what has become the general attitude toward the loving Hand of God for His people in issuing the Ten Commandments. When we look at them through the eyes of our spiritual nature, we see only God’s love expressed as He warns against those things of this world that will harm and incarcerate His people. These admonitions were given in order to make the lives of His people long and fruitful. Man, however, has turned them into declarations of punishment and restrictions that serve only to bind and to chaff against our old nature. The protection of the Lord’s discipline has been twisted and misused, making it a seemingly virtual prison of despair and punishment and hindrance to our earthly enjoyment.  
	Sadly, over the centuries, even within the church, man has taken revealed aspects of the new spiritual nature and created a mockery of God’s intent. Rituals and pagan practices of worship have been intertwined into that which is Holy unto God. It is done with the idea that we can make God’s statutes and covenant more appealing to the masses, more acceptable to the human psyche, less stringent, and less demanding. Man attempts to water down and distort God’s Holiness to make it acceptable and palatable to our vile human nature. These are the exact things that we are forewarned against as we consider the discipline of the Lord. 
Ezek 36:17-28 "Son of man, when the house of Israel was living in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds; their way before Me was like the uncleanness of a woman in her impurity. "Therefore, I poured out My wrath on them for the blood which they had shed on the land, because they had defiled it with their idols. "Also I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed throughout the lands. According to their ways and their deeds I judged them. "When they came to the nations where they went, they profaned My holy name, because it was said of them, 'These are the people of the Lord; yet they have come out of His land.' "But I had concern for My holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations where they went. "Therefore, say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord God," It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. "And I will vindicate the holiness of My great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord," declares the Lord God, "when I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. "For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land. "Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. "And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances. "And you will live in the land that I gave to your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God. 
And, in Isa 35:4-10, Say to those with anxious heart, "Take courage, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance; The recompense of God will come, But He will save you." Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer, And the tongue of the dumb will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness And streams in the Arabah. And the scorched land will become a pool, And the thirsty ground springs of water; In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, Grass becomes reeds and rushes. And a highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it. No lion will be there, Nor will any vicious beast go up on it; These will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk there, And the ransomed of the Lord will return, And come with joyful shouting to Zion, With everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing will flee away. 
We are to regard His discipline of Holiness as completely ours in Christ Jesus. It is to be cherished because it is so absolutely far removed from the filth of our old nature. As we read in Prov 19:27 Cease listening, my son, to discipline, And you will stray from the words of knowledge. 
	As parents, we are to instill into our children a love for the discipline of the Lord. We do so with the exact same heart of God as witnessed in the Ten Commandments. Our heart is to be that of our loving Heavenly Father in His work within our lives. We are to look to the Lord for the guidance and the enlightenment as to dealing with the issues of our children’s lives. We find our truth, as parents, through His tremendous and unerring work of discipline within our lives. As we read in Prov 6:20-24 My son, observe the commandment of your father, And do not forsake the teaching of your mother; Bind them continually on your heart; Tie them around your neck. When you walk about, they will guide you; When you sleep, they will watch over you; And when you awake, they will talk to you. For the commandment is a lamp, and the teaching is light; And reproofs for discipline are the way of life…
As we count on the Lord for His Hand of correction in our lives, for the sake of our ongoing growth into Him, so do our children count on us. This is not a matter of beating and deprivation, as this world looks at discipline, but rather that of loving hearts that desire only the very best for our young. They learn to value the Lord’s discipline and love as they see how we respond to His work. They watch as we show that we value God’s discipline and as we respond to His loving reproof. If we, as a family, look together beyond the circumstances to the very root of each situation and that which the Lord is bringing forth, then His discipline will be valued and cherished. It will not be seen as a threat or an offense, but as the very perfect expression of His love. It will be treasured as the active working of God’s love in us and in our children.
	The writer to the Hebrews knew the truth of the spiritual necessity for the discipline of the Lord. In his admonition to the Hebrew Church, he counsels as to the exact purpose for this loving expression of God’s heart toward those who call upon the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Heb 12:4-11 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him; For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives." It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. 
	It is the peaceful fruit of righteousness that will be ours as we submit ourselves to all that God is working within our lives. He is bringing forth the very establishment of His Holiness in our lives right now, at this very time in His church. It is not something for the great by and by, for some time in the future. It is for today, this very moment as we hear His voice and respond. We are to value, beyond measure, this loving work within our hearts and minds and souls. It is His loving discipline that establishes intimacy with Christ.
	We have this from the very mouth of the Lord as we read in Rev 3:19-22. 'Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; be zealous therefore, and repent. 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me. 'He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. 'He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.' " 
	Pray that we do have those ears to hear, as a church and as individual members of the Body of Christ. Learn to acknowledge with thankful and willing hearts the loving discipline of the Lord as He shows forth every aspect of that which needs to be dealt with in our lives. Press on through the difficulties with our eyes set on the goal of becoming His Perfect and Spotless Bride.
	Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress may be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things; for as you do this you will insure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you. Amen

This morning’s benediction is the admonition of the Apostle Paul recorded in Col 2:5-7. For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ. As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. Amen.