Years ago, as I was finishing my Master of Theology degree, I was also pastoring a small church. And as I moved toward graduation and prepared for graduation, some of the people in this small church got together and they got me a gift. The gift they got me was a silver rectangle slab, about yay big, I would say, that had a small clock embedded in the middle of it. So most of it was just silver slab. on which they had engraved some words of congratulations with my name and my degree and the name of the church, just to highlight and celebrate that opportunity that I had to finish school and graduate with my degree. I kept that on my mantle, on my bookshelves for many years. We've moved three times since then. And for most of the time over the years that I've had that, it moved with me from one place to another. And it served as a reminder of the love of the people in this congregation and their kindness in highlighting an accomplishment in my life, the earning of my degree. But as kind as that gift was, it wasn't all that useful. As I told you, there was a tiny clock embedded in it. And that tiny clock, was hard to get at. And so twice a year when we spring forward and fall back, it was hard to gouge out of there and change the time on. The batteries died on it and needed to be replaced at times. And compared to like a cell phone or a computer, which gets the time off of a time server, it didn't keep very good time. So as kind as the gift was, as nice as it was, it wasn't all that useful. And I don't know where it is. I assume it made it with us from the last move, but I don't know where it is. I don't have it in my possession. I scanned my bookshelves in my study this morning. It's not there. I think it might be in the basement of our house, but I'm really not sure. And that's because as kind as the gift was and as loving as it was for the people who gathered it to give it to me, it wasn't all that useful. And useful things get used and non-useful things often get forgotten. Things that are useful, like a cell phone, get picked up every day, multiple times a day. Things that are not useful get left on the shelf where they collect dust and only get picked up so that you can dust the shelf underneath them and the item itself. Useful things get used and unuseful things get forgotten. And this principle applies when it comes to our relationship with God. The passage that we're going to look at this morning talks about what God and how God uses people for his service. And it begins with an assumption, an assumption that I hope you share and I think is important. And that assumption is very simply this. that as Christians, we should want to be useful to God. As Christians, we should want to be useful to God. God created us. And he gave us incredible gifts and abilities in order that we would be productive on this earth, in order that we would be useful. And now that if you're a Christian, you're in Christ, and you've been redeemed from sin, and you've been given a new nature, and you've been given the Holy Spirit, and you've been told that God is building a kingdom that will last forever, and that your reward in that kingdom is based on how you live your life in this world, all of those things should motivate you as a Christian to want God to use you, to want God to take your life and apply it in a meaningful way in this world. And as we come to our passage this morning, the passage that I read earlier during the scripture reading time, Paul begins to talk about the usefulness of various objects. and how they apply to the kind of usefulness that we may or may not have as followers of Jesus Christ. Please look again with me at 2 Timothy 2 beginning in verse 20. 2 Timothy 2 verse 20 says this, There are articles, not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay. Some are for special purposes, and some are for common use. Here in this passage, right in the middle, Paul begins to make an analogy between a large home, a mansion, in fact, in his culture. A mansion owned by a wealthy family. And Paul begins to make an analogy between that and God's house. The people of God who have been saved by grace and called to follow Jesus Christ and live for Him. And the analogy that Paul uses here is of articles based on their usefulness. In verse 20, when it says, in a large house, there are articles, the word articles is designed to evoke for us and to make us think of things like plates and bowls and cups, containers that have various types of usefulness to them. And unlike most people who lived in a more common life, people who lived in kind of one-room homes, and who may have only had enough plates and cups and dishes for just their own family. Paul says in a large house, in a wealthy homeowner's home, there are lots of different containers, and they are made of various different types of quality, and they all have different kinds of uses. He says there are some articles of gold and silver, and there are some that are made of clay, and they all have some purpose, some usefulness for them, but not all the same kind of usefulness. In your own home, You may have some expensive china that only comes out for special occasions. And even if you don't, you probably have plates that are nicer and some that are not as nice. Some that are, you know, made of ceramic and some that are made of plastic. Certainly in your home, you have some bowls that look better on the table than others. And you have some plastic ones that are used for various purposes. Maybe even at times they're given to a child who's feeling nauseous to carry around so that they don't mess up the carpet or whatever. All of us have these different kinds of articles in our homes. And Paul says, the scripture says, that the people of God are, in some sense, like those articles. Now, this is the analogy that Paul makes here, it's kind of a very specific one, and it's not all that detailed compared to many analogies. What I'm saying is this, we shouldn't read too much into what Paul's saying here. He's not saying there are certain Christians who are gold-plated and there are others who are cracked pots, okay? That's not what he's saying. And he's also not saying whatever you are is what you're going to be. He's not saying if you're Tupperware, that's all you're going to be for the rest of your life. Instead, what he's saying is there are some objects that are useful for special purposes that God uses, and he uses often, and he uses them for particular kingdom uses. And the question is, are you one of those? Are you ready? Are you prepared to be used by God in that way? Look again at verse 20. He says, in a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay. Some are for special purposes and some are for common use. Then verse 21 says this, those who cleanse themselves, and this actually could be translated and probably should be translated, anyone who cleanses himself or herself. Paul moves from the analogy to the specifics, and unlike the cat's litter box, which can only be used for one particular purpose and can never graduate up to be a platter used in a formal dinner. Unlike that, Paul says, you and I can change. We can, our usefulness for God can be adjusted. Look at verse 21 again. He says, those who cleanse themselves from the latter. That means from being common. Verse 20. And the word common describes something that's kind of like a litter box. It's something that's used to deal with excrement. You don't want to touch it with your hands and they didn't have gloves. And so people had various objects that they used to deal with those kinds of things. In verse 21, Paul says, if you're a Christian and you cleanse yourself from that kind of common usage, you can be a vessel unto honor. You can be used by God in a more special and a more profound way. And that's something we all as Christians should want. If we love God, if he's our king, if he's our Lord and he's building his kingdom, we should want to be part of that process. We should want to be, we should want to say to God and to ourselves, Lord, make me a cup that carries your blessing to others, that carries your truth to others. Use me in the growth and development of your kingdom. And so that's what verses 20 and 21 are giving us. They're telling us that as Christians, we should want God to use us. We should want to be useful to God. Now the verses that follow are gonna tell us how to do that. They're gonna tell us how to separate ourselves from common use. and prepare ourselves to be used for special purposes. These verses are gonna tell us how we can, by the grace of God, graduate from the kind of use that might be similar to the cat's litter box, and instead grow and change to the point where we are like sterling silver serving trays. useful for God's kingdom. The Bible says anybody can be used this way. And so what is that process? How does someone go through the development stage to where they go from being of common use to being used powerfully by God? There are two answers provided in this passage. The first one is this. To be useful for God, you and I must develop personal holiness. To be useful for God, you and I must develop personal holiness. An unclean plate, no matter how expensive it was, no matter how gold-plated and fancy it looks, If it's dirty and has food encrusted on it, I'll take the Tupperware until it gets cleaned. Right? People don't want to eat off of unclean vessels. And when Paul describes how you and I as Christians can be used by God, he begins by saying, God wants to clean us up morally. God wants to make us holy. And he wants us to take the means of grace that he has given to us. and apply those to our lives so that we become more like Jesus Christ. And as we become more like Jesus Christ, we become more useful to God in his kingdom. That's what we see in these verses. Look at verse 21 again, where it says, those who cleanse themselves, from these, from the latter, from those that are common, will be instruments for special purposes made holy, there it is, growth and personal holiness. And I've told you in times past that holy means set apart. Sometimes in the Bible it just means set apart in the sense of special. It's like your special china that you only get out once or twice a year for special meals. It's holy, it's set apart. But often the word holy, most of the time it means a moral kind of holiness. It means separation or being set apart from the sinful world around us and from the sins that come so easily to us. Paul says if we follow Christ and if we grow in our faith, verse 21, then we can be set apart made holy, useful to the master, and prepared for any good work. And so how does this work? Well, first it begins by cutting yourself off from false doctrine. You become holy in your character. You develop personal holiness, first of all, by purifying the informational inputs into your life. And we have to step back and look at the context of this passage to see it a little bit more clearly. This verse that I began with here in verse 20 really comes in the middle of a larger paragraph of Scripture. And that larger paragraph of Scripture is addressing the problem of false teaching. And if you step back with me to verse 16 of 2 Timothy chapter 2, The scripture says, avoid godless chatter because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. This tells us that when we engage in information inputs or informational activity that is unholy, it results in an ungodly, unholy life. Whether that's godless chatter, as he calls it here, in other words, it's words that are separated from the knowledge of the true God, words that are not in conformity with biblical truth, or it can be simply the destructive effects of false doctrine, which is also addressed in this passage. The Bible says anytime we allow ourselves to be fed information that is untrue and unbiblical, it is going to result in an unholy and an ungodly character. And so if you want to be used by God, if you want to be separated and set apart and holy in your character and useful for God, it needs to begin with you looking very carefully at the kind of information inputs that you allow into your life. Are you careful about what you watch and what you read? Are you careful about the podcasts you listen to or the radio shows or the television shows that you watch? Some of them are flat out false teachers. There's an immense amount of false teaching available on the internet, on the radio, and on television. But in addition to specific false teaching, meaning stuff that comports to be religious or Christian, a lot of secular programming falls into that category of godless chatter. If you want to be cleansed and made holy, if you want to become more like Jesus in your personal character, if you want to develop personal holiness, You need to make sure that the information inputs in your life are feeding you with truth, are feeding you with things that will help you grow in your faith. And that's not to say that You can never learn something from secular sources, but it is to say you should never let anything into your life unfiltered. Everything needs to be passed through the grid of the truth of God's Word, and the only things that should be accepted and applied by you and by me are things that are conforming to God's Word and that are helpful to us in our growth in Jesus Christ. If you want to be useful to God, You need to develop personal holiness in your life. And that starts by cutting yourself off from false doctrine. Paul goes on and tells us something else about developing personal holiness in our life. And he tells us in the next verse, verse 22, that we develop personal holiness by following godliness in your personal character. Look at verse 22, where the scripture says, Don't flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. This is one verse, but it's really packed with meaning, more meaning than I can really extract in this one message. But I want you to notice, first of all, in verse 22, The words that are associated with the concept of running. Verse 22 again says, flee. What does that mean? It means to run away from, yes? Later on in the verse it says, and pursue. What do you do when you're pursuing someone? You run after them. Paul uses this analogy of running. He turns away from the analogy of vessels in a master's house. And in the process of telling us how to become vessels that the master can use, he tells us we need to run. We need to run away from some things, and we need to run toward other things. And what are those things we run away from? Verse 22, flee the evil desires of youth. This refers to the passions that drive much of human behavior. And those passions become evident, they become apparent when a person is young, especially when they are in that transition from childhood to adulthood. Many young people are motivated by sinful things. They're motivated by the satisfaction that they want from sex outside of God's commands. Or they're motivated by the allure of money and worldly possessions. But the truth of the matter is, just because you get older and you get married, and so you have a godly way to express your sexuality, and you acquire some money and some things, that doesn't mean those evil passions go away, as you well know. The passions of the sinful nature start to manifest themselves when someone is young, but if you don't deal with them, if you don't run away from them, if you let them take root in your mind and they entertain your thinking, if you let them be the force that causes you to act or to set goals in your life, to try to fulfill them, those will uproot personal holiness. and it'll lead you down a pathway of sin. The scripture says if we're going to be useful for God, we need to be clean and holy. We need to be pure and growing in purity in our moral character. And we do that by cutting ourselves off from false teaching, but also by running after and away from, in fact, first of all, the sinful passions of youth. I wonder at this point as you're listening to this message and thinking about your life as we begin a new year, are there sinful passions that are in your life where you have a desire to grow in holiness and you have a desire to be used by God, but you also have this other thing that pulls your attention away, that calls your attention towards sinful things? One of the things that you and I need to keep working on in our personal holiness is to learn to run away from those sinful desires that Paul says characterize those who are young. But the verse goes on in verse 22. And instead of running toward those things, we should run away from them. And then verse 22 says, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace. And these are just a few of the virtues that are true of God. God is a righteous God. God is a God of truth. God is a God of love and peace. And I think Paul here is just pulling out certain attributes of God, certain characteristics morally of Jesus Christ. And he's telling us, If we want to grow in our faith, if we want to become pure like God is, if we want to be personally holy and used of God, we need to think about what we're pursuing in life. Are we pursuing sinful passions or are we pursuing the attributes of God? Do we want God to make us righteous like Jesus is righteous? Do we want God to strengthen our faith and our faithfulness to Him? Do we want God to grow us in love and in peace? And are we doing anything to try to cultivate those things in our lives? When Paul says that we need to be following godliness in our personal character, this is what he has in mind. He has in mind the pursuit of Christ-likeness in various aspects of our moral character. But notice the last phrase of verse 22, because it's really important in situating how this happens in our lives. Verse 22 says, flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. This tells us that we should not run alone, but rather we should run in a group. The phrase that is described in verse 22 as those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart, of course, describes Christians. It describes other people who have been saved by the grace of God. They've had their sins forgiven. They are now declared righteous in the sight of God, and they are pursuing the same attributes of Christlikeness that God calls us to pursue. The Bible says, as we work out our personal holiness, sometimes we need the help and assistance of other believers. And God gave us the church. He gave us one another. And in our church, we have small groups, among other ministries, to try to put you in meaningful spiritual contact with other people who are also trying to run away from the passions of the sin nature. And who are also trying to pursue holiness in their lives. Godliness is not an individual effort. It needs to happen individually to us. But God gave us one another. to correct us, to encourage us, to help us and pray for us in the times of struggle. And I wonder, do you have any relationships like that? Or are you working on cultivating relationships like that? People who also want to become holy in their personal character. And people who will help you along the race, the pursuit of godliness, to become like Jesus Christ. If you're going to become useful to God, you need to develop personal holiness. And one way to do that, an important way to do that, is to pursue Christlikeness with others who are also pursuing Christlikeness. Let me just encourage you, if you're not part of our small group ministry, maybe that's the way for you to make a move in this direction in your life. Maybe this is a way in which, in 2021, you can take a step of faith toward developing godly relationships, godly friendships that will help you to run away from evil and run toward becoming like Jesus Christ. As Christians, we should want to be useful to God. And to be useful to God, the first thing you need to do is develop personal holiness. The passage goes on and tells us a second way in which we need to develop if we're going to be useful to God. And that is to be useful to God. You and I need to develop strategic speaking skills. We need to develop strategic speaking skills. Look with me beginning in verse 23 and through the end of the passage. The scripture says, Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but must be kind to everyone, able to teach. not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed in the hope that God will grant them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. Before I walk through the early parts of this verse, these verses, I want you to notice the very end of the verse I just read, the last verse, the last phrase. 2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 26. where it talks about escaping the trap of the devil who has taken them captive, notice this phrase, to do his will. To do his will. The word do is a word of utility. It's a word of usefulness. And I began this message by talking about what it means to be useful to God. I don't know if that idea of being useful to God, the idea of being used by God, offended your American sensibilities, but it may have. Because we have independence, we have freedom when we value our freedom, and we should. I think sometimes Christians recoil from and even try to rebuff the idea of being useful to God. But this passage tells us you're going to be useful to somebody. Either you're going to be useful to God, or you're going to be in the devil's trap, taken captive to do his will. Look at the verse again, verse 26. The devil has taken people captive to do his will. You are going to be used by someone, either God or Satan. You're going to be used for either godly purposes toward the kingdom of God, or you're going to be used as an enemy of God. And the Bible tells us that the way that God uses us, if we go back to that analogy, that image of like a platter or some kind of a plate or a cup that delivers food, what is the usefulness that God wants from us? That usefulness is that God wants us to be deliverers of truth. just as those plates and cups and utensils even deliver nourishment to someone in a great house at a great banquet. So the Bible says, if you're going to be used by God, the usefulness that you're going to have is going to be as a deliverer of truth. But the skill that you and I need to develop as deliverers of truth, we'll have a big influence on how well we deliver that truth, all right? That was maybe a confusing statement, so let me put it into analogy again. If you've ever used a cup or a bowl or something that had a crack in it, it still might be useful. It still might be, the crack might be in a certain place where it still will carry what you need it to carry. And if it leaks, maybe it only leaks a little bit. It still has usefulness to it, but the more complete it is, the better it will deliver the food. The less of an annoyance and the less unuseful it becomes. You follow what I'm saying here? So it is with us as Christians. If we're going to be used by God, that use is going to be the delivery of truth into the lives of other people. But there's great skill that is needed to be effective in delivering truth to other people. And here's a truth that you and I need to understand. We're not very good at it by nature. We're not very good at delivering truth in a compelling and powerful way. We are not strategic in our speaking, nor are we very skillful by nature, but that can change. And so in verses 23 through 26, as Paul describes what it means to become useful for God and the development of usefulness as a Christian, he focuses on the words that we use and how we use them to communicate with other people. One of the things he tells us, the kind of strategic speaking skills that we need to develop, is this, don't argue with false doctrine. Look at verse 23 again. Paul says, don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know that they produce quarrels. Now again, in context, this refers to the kind of false teaching that easily infiltrates the church and that I've already told you is abundant in the various media sources that we have available to us. The internet, radio, television, one another, our relationships with one another. There's all kinds of false ideas about God that get communicated from person to person, from Christian to Christian. And a lot of that information is designed to actually call attention to the person. A lot of false doctrine begins when someone wants to be regarded as a spiritual person or as a spiritual leader. Someone who thinks they have insights into truth, but they lack the moral character to see that they're actually trying to call attention to themselves. And so Paul says, the first kind of strategic speaking skill that you and I need to develop as Christians is the discipline to refrain from getting involved in pointless arguments. Again, verse 23, don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments. If you reflect on social media, the kinds of things that many people, many Christians spend hours arguing about, I would contend that it falls into this very category, foolish and stupid arguments. And what do they produce? How do we know they're foolish and stupid? Verse 23, because they produce quarrels. The longer the thread of comments on that Facebook post And the more heated the rhetoric becomes and the more personal people get with it, the more likely it is, in my opinion, but based on God's word, to be reflective of something that's foolish and stupid. And one of the ways in which we need to grow in our ability to communicate truth is to learn not to argue. is to learn to refrain and have the discipline to stay out of arguments that aren't productive, that don't lead toward godliness, that only make people mad and puncture and sever relationships. But there's a positive side to these strategic speaking skills that I've been talking about, and that's developed for us at the end of the passage in verse 24. Verse 24 says, the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but must be kind to everyone. Those are words that I want to sink in, and I want us to think about. When you are engaged in discussions, in scare quotes, with other people, whether they're in person, whether they're by text message, or email or smoke signals or however you're doing it. If you're engaged in discussions with another person and you lack kindness, that means you've got work to do, you've got growth that needs to happen in your strategic speaking skills. Instead of, having these kinds of arguments that produce quarrels. We're supposed to be kind to everyone, able to teach, it says, not resentful. But then notice verse 25. Opponents must be gently instructed. That's not to say that we let error just go unaddressed. But rather the strategic speaking skills that the Word of God commands us to develop if we're going to be useful to God. is a way of addressing problems, addressing disagreements, addressing false ideas and false doctrines in a way that engages the person, in a way that is kind to the person, and in a way that gently points them to God's Word or points them to the relevant facts. And that's because, ultimately, If our speaking is really in service to God, if it's really delivering, nourishing truth to God's people or to other people, the gospel, if it's really going to be served, if God is really going to use us to serve them truth on a silver platter, then it's going to be a spiritual experience for them. It's got to be the truth that God uses to change them, not our compelling arguments. Again, verse 25 says, We gently instruct others why in the hope that God will grant them repentance. Leading them to a knowledge of the truth. God wants us to develop strategic speaking skills. But those strategic speaking skills aren't the ability to debate anybody under the table. They're not the ability to out scream and out insult other people. That's the stuff of cable news shows. The strategic skills that God wants us to develop are the ability to speak to others kindly and gently because we love the person, not because we want the attention. So if we're going to become useful to God, if we're going to be people that God uses powerfully in this world, in this year that we have before us, we've got work to do. We need to change and grow in our faith. We need to take the tools that God has given to us, his word, his church, his spirit. We need to go to work on the kind of vessels, the kind of plates and cups that we are, asking God to use those things to refine us, to be good deliverers of his truth, to make us holy like he is, and to make us powerful, strategic, speakers for His glory. So if you take those last two ideas, how do we become useful to God? To be useful to God, we need to develop personal holiness and we need to develop strategic speaking skills. If you put those together, that's the big idea for today's message. As Christians, Believers are useful to God when we develop personal holiness and when we develop strategic speaking skills. And I hope God has used this to work on your life a little bit this morning. I hope God has pointed out some areas where you need to grow, where you need to change. And I hope God will use this year to purify us and to strengthen us and to skill us to create a word to install skills in us that make us useful for him so that his kingdom grows and so that his glory is magnified. Believers are useful to God when we develop personal holiness and strategic speaking skills. May God help us develop those things this year.