Useful In The Master’s Hands

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

The Apostle Paul’s Words to Timothy and the Call to Be Useful

The words we've heard read moments ago are the words of the Apostle Paul to young Timothy. He may have been in his early 40s, we just don't know. But these words in verses 21 and 22 exemplify or have been exemplified many times over the centuries of church history in the lives of godly men and women and young people.

These words, Paul speaks to here, have been seen in the lives of many Christians. But I think none more than the lives of two brothers I'm thinking of. Over 250 years ago, David Brainerd and his brother John were from Connecticut.

And they both went to Yale College. You may know the name David Brainerd if you've read his journal. You may not know that he had a younger brother named John. But they were at Yale College. And David was wrongly expelled from Yale College severely and wrongly by the administration for criticizing someone profitably in his dorm room to a couple of friends.

Some of you heard it. It was reported. And the administration expelled him. And he was the class president of the junior class, the largest class Yale had ever had. And he was going to be a pastor. And he was expelled.

Well, all his hopes were crushed of becoming a pastor because in the 18th century, to be ordained as a pastor in the American colonies, you had to be a graduate of either Harvard, Yale, or a European university.

So David was crushed. He thought everything was over. He thought he would go back to the family farm in New Haven, Connecticut, and take over the farm. He did not know what to do. But God had greater plans.

In fact, that expulsion for David Brainerd from Yale, which was a great severe trial, became the path of David Brainerd finding God's life work for him. Can you still hear me, saints there? All right, just making sure.

My computer sent me a signal, so I've got to be sure. What happened was David Brainerd was asked to go to the North American dangerous Indian tribes that were in Long Island, New York, later Pennsylvania, later New Jersey.

And as a 25-year-old single man who already had tuberculosis, he went along to those Indians. And he was there for three years. And he saw God do mighty things. In his third and final year with an Indian tribe between Princeton, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, God moved in great power.

You can read about that revival, David Brainerd among the Indians, and across weeks of New Jersey. God saved virtually the entire Indian tribe when they had never seen a Bible, they had never heard a white man preach, they had never heard the gospel.

God saved them all over those weeks. And they became exemplary Christians. David was already dying. And soon he left those Indians to go to Jonathan Edwards' home for the last 19 weeks of his life where he died under the care of the Edwards family.

His younger brother John, two years younger and 26 years old, said, I will go to the Indians. I'll replace my brother. I'm called there. And John went, not for three years, but for 35 years. He labored among Indian tribes all over the continent as a white man alone in dangerous areas.

They suffered great trials. They had loneliness, hardship, sickness, dangers on every side. Indians wanted to kill them regularly, and God protected them. And so even at the same time, they were educated men, they were scholars, they were sound in the faith, and they had a reputation of godliness.

They were both offered comfortable churches, influential churches in the colonies, in Boston, in New Jersey, in New York City. And they both said no. They stayed, and they lived and died among the Indians.

They would not leave them.

And the fact is, read their lives, David Brenner, John Brenner. You'll see two young men in their 20s. John lived to be 61 years old. David died at 28. They were men who were courageous, passionate, visionary, and gospel-centered in living and in dying.

And David and John Brenner exemplify the words in our text today. They were living epistles. And so it came to mind as I thought about this text that not only Christians in history need to exemplify this.

If you're a Christian lady, whether you're just raising children and being a wife or you're working outside the home, if you're a Christian man, if you're a Christian young person, young children there that are listening to me, whether you are a Christian yet or not, what we're going to hear today is what God wants to build in each of our lives.

Paul's aim in 1 and 2 Timothy is to shape into Timothy's life, shape him into being an honorable servant of Jesus Christ. Now, the entire chapter of chapter 2 can be summarized this way. I want to give you an overall summary of what's here.

Chapter 2 shows us the difficulties, the dangers, and the disciplines of the Christian life. Not God's discipline of us, self-discipline by us. The difficulties, the dangers, and the disciplines of the Christian life.

So let's just follow me before we get to verse 21 for our text. Let's see the context. In verse 1, one of the difficulties. He says, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. That implies the need for strength because of difficulties.

Be strong in the grace that's in Christ Jesus. Verses 3 and 4, endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Verse 5, train lawfully as a champion athlete. Verse 6, work hard like a diligent farmer.

Those are the difficulties in the Christian life spiritually. All those things represent difficulty and challenge and perseverance and maturity. Then the dangers are seen between verses 16 and 23. I'll just reference those.

What are the dangers? Well, there are two, Paul points out. Number one, false teachers. He says in here to Timothy, avoid empty talk.

Avoid false teachers.

Even those who say the resurrection is already past, avoid them. Cleanse yourselves from these. Their teaching is worthless and even dangerous. So Paul is saying to Timothy and to all of us, if we want to be an honorable vessel of Jesus Christ, we have to avoid all shallow, questionable, weak, imbalanced, and false teaching.

It is dangerous. The writings of false teachers, in my opinion, are good for nothing more than to tear the pages out of the books and lie at the bottom of the birdcage in your house. It's worthless. It's dangerous.

We should never submit our minds to bad or weak or improper teaching. What else is dangerous, Paul? Well, look at verse 20. Look at verse 20 with me, and I want to read it again. He says there, but in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of earth, that is, dirt or clay, some to honor and some to dishonor.

So what does Paul mean here by the great house? I think he means this. The house, the large house of the professing Christian world. Christianity had been spreading in the biblical world then, and you remember in Acts, there were already false converts, Ananias and Sapphira, others.

And the house had been getting big, a great house. And Paul here says that within the great house of professing Christianity, the church world, in our day, the evangelical church in America and Canada, there are two kinds of vessels.

There are vessels that are honorable vessels, and there are vessels that are dishonorable ones. What does he mean by this? He means true and false Christians are in the house. Now, think about it. Some you know in the Christian circles are honorable vessels.

They are genuine believers. And they're worth something to God, their life, their witness, their example, their character. They're valuable to God. They're vessels of honor. But Paul says some are dishonorable.

Dishonorable vessels are not honorable vessels. So what does Paul say for Timothy to do? He says in verse 21, Notice, if anyone purges or cleanses himself from these, what do we get to cleanse ourselves from?

False teachers and false brethren.

Think about it.

A Christian cannot hang out with vessels of dishonor and still be a vessel of honor. A Christian cannot worship in a worldly church without becoming worldly. You cannot be joined to a compromised church without ultimately compromising.

There is no fellowship possible with false Christians. If we are connected to those, we will be affected. So that's what Paul means leading up to our text. There are dangerous false teachers, false brethren.

So Paul says, Timothy, if you cleanse yourself from these, you cannot have these connected to your life. Then you will be what? Verse 21. A vessel unto honor. Now, brothers and sisters, my message is on calling us all to become more of a vessel of honor for Jesus Christ.

Every man, every woman, every Christian, every young person is called to be, no matter what their background, no matter how wicked your past life was, God can make you a vessel of honor. Not a vessel that gets honor, but a vessel that brings him honor.

So let's look at these two verses this afternoon for a few minutes.

I want you to think about it.

It says there, that one who purges himself will be a vessel of honor, being useful for the master.

Now think about it.

Just because a person is a Christian does not mean that they're useful yet. Just because a person holds to a reformed Christian doctrine doesn't mean they're a vessel of honor yet. Many people who are Calvinists or who hold to a reformed doctrine, they're proud, argumentative, worthless, and do no one any good.

So just holding to the right doctrine doesn't make you yet a vessel of honor. Just because you're in a biblical church doesn't mean it's you or yet a vessel of honor. What's here in verse 21 and 22 is what makes us become a vessel of honor to the Lord.

Or to use Peter's words, applied to verses 21 and 22, if these things are in you and abound, you will neither be unbearable nor unfruitful in the knowledge of Jesus Christ your Lord. So now to the text 21 and 22.

What does the text say? It gives us two truths. The first one is in verse 21, things that we must be. And the second truth is in verse 22, things that we must do. So let's cap out verse 21 first. The things we must be.

If we're to be useful for the master, these are what things we must be. And Paul mentions four things right in the verse. Look at them and we'll go through them. First of all, we are to be and become a vessel of honor.

An honorable vessel. As I said, not one that gets honor because we're used of God or because we love the Lord. No, it's that we become a vessel as a Christian through whom Christ gets honor. And we become a vessel for his honor.

A vessel that brings him glory. A person that increasingly has as his goal and purpose the honor of Jesus Christ. He has come to the place that he knows his life is not about him becoming something. About being popular or well-known or influential.

But his life is a vessel. And that's what Paul calls us here. A vessel that is to bring honor to Jesus Christ. And brethren, that means that our entire life and all of our ways need to reflect the goodness and the greatness.

And the love and the grace of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Being a vessel for his honor. And I want to pause and ask you a question. Be honest. How much do you want your life, more and more, to bring honor to the Lord Jesus Christ?

Being a vessel of honor. That's what we're to do. The second thing follows it.

One word.

See it there in verse 21. Sanctify. Just one word. Sanctify. Now, most of you as a Christian, you know what that word means. It means set apart. You take the vessel. This is about water. I'm setting it apart for my use.

It has a purpose. And that's to quench my thirst and keep my throat moist when I need it. It's been set apart for me for my use. Paul says, Timothy, if someone purges themselves from false teaching and from false things, he's going to talk more about that in verse 22.

He will be a vessel for honor. He will be set apart. Now, the Bible says when we were converted, that by the sanctification of the Spirit, we were brought to the Lord. That means by the setting apart work of the Spirit, God set you apart and made you His.

You were dead in trespasses and sins, lost without God and without hope in this world. And God came to you and the Holy Spirit took you. And He said, no, the world's not getting this one.

This one is mine.

And He took you and He set you apart by the drawings and wooings and work of the Spirit. And He brought life to you in your deadness and you came alive and you were the Lord's. From the moment you were converted, you were set apart unto God.

That's true. But here's what is meant here. What Paul means here is not that. It's talking about Timothy. If you cleanse yourself from these things, you will be sanctified. You'll be set apart. Paul wants us to realize here that we must truly be sanctified daily.

That is, setting ourselves apart. He said, if a man cleanses himself, we must set ourselves apart to Christ continually. We must view ourselves and bring ourselves always over and over to be consecrated to the Lord from our hearts.

No one can do that for you.

Your pastor can't do that for you. A family member can't do that for you.

Your closest Christian friend cannot sanctify you. You must sanctify yourself unto the Lord. That is, our entire life and all our ways are set apart and yielded to Him. Now, what does a sanctified life look like?

What does a Christian whose life is set apart look like? Well, before you think about that question, don't you know Christians?

You've known.

And they're godly people. They're Christlike people. And you've seen them live. And you can say about them, their life has really been set apart for the Lord. You know it. It's observable. This is what God wants to make each of us.

What does the sanctified life look like? It is a person who has a yielded will to Jesus Christ. They are dying to themselves. And they say, Father, in all my life, not my will, but Yours be done. A consecrated heart.

That our heart is the Lord's. And we love Him out of our new heart. A consecrated heart. A dedicated life purpose. We must be all out. All committed.

In our marriage.

In our job. Our family.

Our home.

Our time.

Set apart for God's glory and purpose. Is your life, is my life, a life set apart and sanctified daily? Is your time the Lord's? Your 24 hours, your free time. Is your time the Lord's? Are you the Lord over it?

Your money. Your house.

Your choices.

Your future. Your family holidays. Your family vacations. Listen, brethren. Everything is the Lord's. And we are His. Set apart. You know, this is the meaning of Romans 12, 1 and 2. Remember that. Paul says, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to what?

Present. Consecrate. Be yourself. I urge you to present yourself on living sacrifice unto God. Holy and acceptable. Which is your reasonable service of worship. The old Puritans used to talk about renewing our covenant with our King Jesus Christ.

What did they mean?

They meant this.

Whether monthly or quarterly or annually on the day that you were saved, if you know the day. To renew your redemptive relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. To get alone and to come to Him and just say, Lord, all over again I'm Yours.

I'm Yours, lobstock and barrel. Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Lord Jesus, all to You I surrender. Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free. Get alone with Him and renew your covenant time and time again.

Yield to Him again. This is the meaning of a vessel. Your life exclusively set apart for the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're going to be a vessel of honor. Who is sanctified. Thirdly, and I'm going to skip to the bottom one in verse 21 and take the third one last.

Thirdly, he says prepared or ready for every good work. A vessel of honor is sanctified and prepared and ready for every good work. And the idea of prepared means you are growing in grace and God is equipping you and making you mature into serving Him and serving the saints of God, serving others.

You begin to do good works for His glory. You begin to serve in the household of God. You're being prepared and equipped to do so. But then it also means being ready and hard to do it. You know, a person can be equipped to serve.

If they don't have a heart to do it, they won't do it. So ready and prepared for every good work. How long have you been a believer? All right. Are you beginning to be fruitful in every good work? Are you ready for any good work?

The Lord will let you do. God, good works are not an optional thing. If we're going to be a vessel of honor. And neither are they optional even in our salvation. I want you to read the book of Titus sometime in the next church or days.

And I want you to look how often Titus mentions or Paul mentions to Titus good works, good works. Let me just read some of these statements. You don't need to turn to them. Paul says to Titus about the religious unbeliever.

He says, they profess to know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable and disobedient. Goes on and he says, in all things Titus, show yourself to be an example of good works. Brothers and sisters, are you right now in your life an example of good works?

He goes on and he says, speaking about the cross and why Christ saved us. He says, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed. And to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Zealous for them, red hot, ready to do them. Seeking it, how they can serve Christ and his people more and more. And then Paul says an interesting thing. He says to Titus, this is a faithful saying. And I want you to affirm it constantly that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works.

So prepared and ready for good works, being zealous for them. John Calvin said one time, the highest honor in the church is not governing, but serving. And we all have such a heart. Our good works should be scattered upon all people, unbelievers or believers.

Are you excelling in good work that will bless others? This this is part of being a vessel under honor. Are you excelling in that? Remember, there's nothing small in the service of God. So we should purge our motives from all thoughts of being great and serve God.

And that were too small. And that would make us an honorable vessel, a vessel of honor. So those are what Paul says in verse in verse 21, that we are to be a vessel of honor, sanctified, ready for good work.

And then he says useful for the master. What if that were our life motto? Lord, my life needs to be this useful for the master. What a motto. What a thing to have on your tombstone. Useful for the master.

Because think about it, dear ones. If your life is useful for your master, Jesus Christ. Ultimately, what else matters? And if your life is not useful for Christ, then you've wasted your life. If we're not useful, we're useless.

So that's what we're to be. Point number one, that's what we're to be. A vessel of honor, sanctified, ready for good works, and useful. Now, point number two is the next verse. Verse 22. It tells us what we're to do.

What we're to do. If anyone wants to be a vessel of honor, useful to the master, two things are necessary to do. Look at verse 22. The first word he says, flee. And then the next line he says, follow.

So there are two things we're to do. We're to flee and then we're to follow some things. What are we to flee? Well, he says two words there.

Youthful lust.

Now, lest you think this is for young people or those in their 20s or 30s or, you know, those really old people that are in their 40s now. Lest you think this is for this young people, think again.

It is not.

If you're over 50, if you're 60, 70, whatever, you know that youthful lust, vain, empty desires and passions do not cease the older you grow. We are to flee them. This has to do with vain pleasures. The vanity of life is solemn, solemn, worldly pursuits, pleasures, trying to gain popularity, position, reputation, possessions, fame, fortune.

Any vain thing this world offers, brethren, you know it's out there for the taking. And you and I have to choose. Am I going to dabble? Am I going to flirt with it? Or am I going to flee? There's no neutral ground with the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And John said, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. Paul here says flee. Flee, run from it, turn away. Remember what James said?

Know ye not that friendship with this world is what? Enmity with God. Whoever is therefore a friend of the world is an enemy of God. Look, you may not be living in white and overt sin, but if you are more of a friend with the world than you are with the saints of God, you may be an enemy of God.

Think honestly, brethren, where is our heart? To be useful to the master, we must flee. Flee Sodom. Flee all that is of the world. That's why Paul says in another place, come apart and be separate and I will receive you, says the Lord.

So the next thing we're told to do is not only flee, but he says we must follow some things. Look diverse. Flee also youthful lust, but follow or follow after or pursue. And then he mentions four things.

What are they? The first is righteousness. Now, this is not the imputation of Christ's righteousness that he gives us its salvation. It's a free gift. It puts us in right standing with God. That's not what is imbued.

This is something we're to pursue and go after and attain to righteous living, godly living, purity, holiness, character, right choices. When people are watching, when no one's watching integrity, right kind of living, righteous living, righteous acts.

We're to go after that. We shouldn't. We shouldn't pray always. Lord, just help me live a righteous life. If we're not in fast pursuit of living righteously. That's the first one. Secondly, it says faith.

Follow after righteousness and faith. This means living a life of faith to be a faithful follower, looking unto Jesus Christ, trusting him, living by faith in him. We will either live in dependence on ourselves or we will live in dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Paul says we're to follow after faith, meaning we're to follow after living the life of true faith. And if you don't understand what that means as a Christian, pray to God that he will open your eyes and give you a glimpse and teach you what it means to live by faith.

The third thing we're to follow after is love, love, loving one another, loving the brethren, loving all men. Love is the crowning grace. It must flow from the Christian's heart toward all men. The spirit of God has been the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

And that is to go out to people, people we love. That's easy to do people we don't like. That's harder to do. Do you love the unlovely? Do you love those around you to just irritate you and bother you and make you lose all your peace?

You know, a poem says to live above with the saints we love, that would be glory, glory. But to live below with the saints we know, that's another story. We have to love all men. And that's supernatural.

It really is supernatural. But we're to follow after love. And the final thing he says we're to pursue is peace. Now the Christian has peace with God already. I think he means horizontal peace. Peace with others we are to maintain it.

As much as it depends on us, Paul says, as much as it depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Now if others won't live peaceably with you, that's on them. They will answer to God for their unreasonableness and their hard heart.

But you, as much as it depends on you, you're to follow after peace with all people. Doesn't mean you agree with them all. But you can be peaceful toward them. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called and recognized as the children of God.

So brethren, pursue these things seriously, intentionally, passionately, permanently. And it's the same thing Peter says in 2 Peter 2. I'll just read you those. Listen to what he says. With all diligence, giving all diligence, add to your faith moral excellence.

To moral excellence, knowledge. To knowledge, self-control. To self-control, perseverance. To perseverance, godliness. To godliness, brotherly kindness. And to brotherly kindness, love. You add these things.

You do this holy mathematics of addition. You're building these things by the Spirit and your love. You're adding them. Diligent to add them. And Peter says, for if these qualities are in you and are increasing, you will neither be useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But listen, brethren. In a real way, this is up to you and me. We have to do this. That's why Paul says in our text, if anyone cleanses himself from these things. That's why Peter says, giving all diligence.

It's really up to us in many ways. How much do I want to be a vessel of honor and useful to the Master or not? How much do I want to excel in good works? Or am I content to be mediocre and sometimes fruitless and barren?

How useful for the Master do I truly want my life to be? Now you may have, in closing, you may have never heard the name William Borden. If you can find the book, Borden of Yale, get it and read it. Borden of Yale.

William Borden was a young man in the late 19th century who grew up in Chicago. He was a member of one of the wealthiest families in all of Chicago. And God saved him when he was 15 years old under the ministry of D .L. Moody.

And it was as if he and the Holy Spirit set himself apart unto God. He lived for Christ in exemplary way through high school. He went off to Princeton University. And when he was there, he finished Princeton University.

While he was there, he inherited $2 million when he was 21 years old. Now you run the math of 1895. Let's say $2 million. That was a lot of money. And friends said, you know, William, now you can buy one of those fancy Ford cars.

And William said, you know, I don't need a car. I can ride the public transit. You know what he spent his money on in university and seminary days? He went to Princeton University. He entered Princeton Seminary in the days when it was still good.

He began to spend his money, no one knew it, on rescue missions in inner Philadelphia and in Princeton area. Rescue missions for the homeless, for the needy, for alcoholics. And he would put on normal clothes, go down as a college student.

No one knew he was spending his money on it. He would give them sandwiches. He would share the love of Christ with them. He would preach to them. And no one knew until later that William Borden had funded all those projects as real, fruitful, good works.

When he finished Princeton Seminary, he felt called to go to the Muslim world. His father and mother didn't want him to go. And his father said in going, look, there'll be a job waiting for you here when you come back.

Presumably, young William would get it out of the system and would come home. He didn't. He went to Egypt first to learn Arabic before even going to the Muslim world. As a 25-year-old, while he was in Egypt learning the language, he contracted spinal meningitis.

And in a month, he was dead at 25 in Egypt. The Borden family was world famous. And it made the newspapers. It kind of went viral. And later, the author of the book on his life, the author of Borden of Yale, wrote that book.

And his life became, to thousands of Christians for decades, a powerful example of an honorable vessel, of a sanctified life, of one who was useful for the master, who excelled in good works, though he never, ever got to the mission field.

When his things were finally shipped home, there were very few. But his parents got those things back. And in the bag was his Bible. And they leafed through it and looked at it. And in the back of his Bible, Borden had written three phrases.

The first was, no reserves.

No reserves.

Why did he write that? Because when he went to Egypt, he said to himself, you know, I won't live a life of faith if I have all this money. Besides, I can't use it in Egypt. So he gave $50 ,000 to D .L. Moody's work.

He gave $50 ,000 to George Mueller. He gave $50 ,000 to Hudson Taylor.

He gave it all away.

And he went without any reserves, dependent on Christ alone.

No reserves.

The second thing that was written was the phrase, no retreat.

No retreat.

His father finally said to him, well, you've done it, so you can never work back here again. I won't have a job for you. But Borden had decided already, no retreats. Whether I live, I live in the Lord.

Whether I die, I die in the Lord. Whether I live or I die, I die in the Lord.

No retreat.

And the third phrase and the last was, no regrets. I almost feel sure. And when you read his life, you almost are convinced that if he wrote that when he was dying, he really meant no regrets. No retreats.

No reserves.

And William Borden was mightily a vessel of honor who never even got to the mission field. My friend and one of the men who greatly influenced me, Leonard Ravenhill, would often quote this. He would quote the hymn, only one life will soon be passed.

Only what's done for Christ will last. And then he would quickly add, but don't forget the next stanza. And it's this. And when I am dying, how glad I shall be if the lamp of my life has been burned out for thee.

Brethren, you only have one life to live. Living in such a way that with all your heart, you long more than anything else to be a vessel of honor, to be sanctified, to be useful for the master. And to be ready to do good works for him until your dying day.

I want us to pray together. So bow with me in prayer. And I want you to do something in the quietness of this moment. I want you to go to the Lord in prayer right now. And I want you to talk to him in prayer about what he's spoken to you in this message.

Tell him that you want this work to be done in your life. Consecrate yourself afresh. Give yourself all over again to him. And say, Lord, make me a vessel of honor more and more. Make me useful for the master.

Make my life count. Whether I die at 25 like Raynard, or 28 like William Borden, or whether I live a long life. Lord, make me a vessel of honor for you. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, God bless you, saints.

Thank you for giving me the privilege of being with you. The Lord bless you. And I'll turn this time back over to our dear brother Shane.