A Disciple is Pure

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree

Indeed unless the billboards fall

I’ll never see a tree at all.

Perhaps you’ve heard that before. That bit of verse was written by the American poet Ogden Nash. He had a way of putting thoughts into words that were not only humorous, but went straight to the point. For example, he once wrote in reference to the Biblical story of Israel “How odd of God to choose the Jews.”

In a verse called “Reflections on a Fallen World”, Ogden Nash wrote these words: “purity is obscurity.” That could well be the moral verdict on our 20th century: purity is obscurity.

Purity has a bad name anymore. In a day of shock radio, of R-rated movies, of comedians whose vocabulary would not have been allowed on the air just a few years ago, it seems that if you’re trying to live a pure life, people consider that you are totally out of it, divorced from reality, a bit weird. The word Puritan has become a slur of the worst sort. When people say “Oh, you’re such a Puritan.” they’re not paying you a compliment.

When the world looks at Christians, who are supposed to be pure, it relishes to find those instances when we are not. And the bigger the better. Why do you think the news media has covered the Bakker scandal with such glee? It’s because they delight to point out that if such a high-profile Christian leader wasn’t pure, then nobody in the church is pure. Because purity makes the world uncomfortable. The world would be much happier believing that all Christians are mini-Bakkers, and that purity is obscurity.

But the Bible says that purity is to be one of the marks of a disciple of Jesus Christ. We come to a passage today that is about purity. We’ve been learning that there are several distinguishing characteristics of a true follower of Jesus. Courage. Discipline. Endurance. Now we’ve come to purity.

Paul wrote to his young friend Timothy the letter that we call 2 Timothy. It’s found near the back of your Bible. It was probably the last letter that Paul ever wrote. He was in jail, awaiting execution. And he wrote this letter to Timothy as a kind of last will and testament. He had these final things to say to Timothy about how to live the Christian life. He told Timothy to be courageous. He told him to be disciplined. He told him to be durable. And in 2 Timothy 2:14-26, he tells him to be pure.

Now we generally think that purity has mainly to do with sexual morality, and it does. But purity has a lot more to it than that. In this passage, Paul gives us four areas of life where practical purity is needed:

1. Purity and false doctrine

2. Purity and fellowship in the church

3. Purity and fleshly desires

4. Purity and frustrating people

1. Purity and false doctrine:

2 Timothy 2:14-18 Keep reminding them of these things. Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have wandered away from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some.

Notice the serious consequences of false doctrine. It ruins people. The word in Greek for “ruin” in v.14 is the word from which we get our word “catastrophe”. To be caught up in false doctrine is a catastrophe.

Many years ago, I had a Christian friend who became involved in a cult called the Children of God. His life and his career were utterly ruined. The cult cut him off from his family and his friends. He literally disappeared. We heard later on that he had turned up out in Los Angeles, had a different name, and had married a girl in the cult. His mother was heartbroken.

Notice the characteristics of false doctrine and those who teach it. They like to quarrel about words. They indulge in godless chatter. They become more and more ungodly. Their teaching spreads like gangrene. And ultimately, it destroys people’s faith. I know many instances of people who have left the church to follow false teachers. And you know what usually happens to them? They eventually become disillusioned, burnt out, and they stop worshiping God altogether. Their faith is destroyed by the false doctrine.

Paul says to Timothy “Watch out! False doctrine is a very real threat to the purity of a disciple of Jesus Christ.”

So how do you combat it? The answer is in

2 Timothy 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

The old KJV has “Study to show yourself approved.” The word in Greek doesn’t mean study, it means literally “make haste, be eager, make every effort” to present yourself to God as one approved. Your goal as a disciple is to become a workman of the Word - a workman who won’t be ashamed at inspection time.

The first and most important safeguard of our purity is our relationship to the Word of God. We must be workmen who correctly handle the Word. The phrase that you see there “correctly handles the word of truth” is taken from a Greek word that means “to cut a straight path.” When we come to the Word, we must do our best as disciples to cut a straight path. We must be careful to get directly to the point of the Word of God, to understand what it is that God is saying to us. This is not what the false teachers do. They come to the Word and make it obscure. They twist it and add their own speculations to it. They make it harder to understand.

When I get up here each Sunday to preach, I have only one prayer “Lord, don’t let me get in the way of your Word. Help me to make it clear to the people.” In my preaching, I want to cut a straight path for you, so that you will hear what God is saying to you in the Bible. That is my aim. We cannot guard against impure doctrine unless we’re cutting it straight when we come to the Word of God.

2. Purity and fellowship in the church

2 Timothy 2:20-21 In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble. If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.

We live in a large house. There are many vessels in that house. For example, we have fine china, on which we serve meals for special guests. These dishes are very beautiful and quite expensive. We treat them with a lot of respect. As you can imagine, with five growing boys, we don’t often see those dishes! But we also have a big RubberMaid garbage can that sits next to our house. It’s dirty and not too nice looking, and we throw the most disgusting things into it. When we have company over for dinner, we do our best to make sure that they do not see the garbage can. We don’t take them outside to the side of the house and say “We didn’t want you to go home without seeing our big green RubberMaid garbage can.”

Now Paul says that the church is just like a big house. And in that house, the people are just like the different kinds of vessels you’d find in a household. Some of them are fine and noble. They are a credit to the church. When visitors come to the church, these are the people you want them to meet. But other people in the church are not so fine. They’re the ones who, if there’s any garbage going around in the church, they’ve got it. Any bit of gossip, or rumor, or complaining, and it seems that they’re in on it. They’re charter members of the carnal corral. These are the people that you steer the newcomers away from.

Every church has these two kinds of vessels and you get to choose which one you’d like to be. Do you want to be a piece of fine china in the church, or do you want to be a garbage can? The choice is yours. Paul says that if you want to be the former, then you’d better cleanse yourself from the latter. And that just means that if one of the garbage cans walks up to you and wants to share with you some of their garbage, just say “No thanks, I’m in training to be a piece of china, or a silver goblet, or a golden candlestick. I’m out of the garbage business.” Then you’ll be in a position where the Lord can really start to use you. Because you’ll be holy, useful to the Master, and prepared for good works. Purity has a lot to do with who we have fellowship with in the church.

3. Purity and fleshly desires

2 Timothy 2:22 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 probably what you thought this sermon was going to be all about. Purity and the flesh. Purity and youthful lusts. Well, you are only partly right. Because we’ve been finding out that purity has to do with a lot of other things as well.

But it does have to do with our bodily appetites. The Bible says that God gave us these appetites and that they are good, when channeled according to His will and His plan. Our natural desires for food, for sleep, and for sex are all good things when they occupy their proper place in God’s design for our lives.

However, we are often faced with the temptation to satisfy these desires outside of the bounds of what God says is proper. And that is when our natural desires become lust. It doesn’t make things any easier to recognize that we live in a culture which encourages us to go ahead and give in to our desires without regard for what is right.

Paul says that there is only one way to deal with this. Flee. You cannot stand around and argue with lust. You’ll lose every time. The only remedy is to get right out of the situation where lust is confronting you. This is the Joseph principle.

Remember the story of Joseph. He was a slave in the house of Potiphar. Potiphar’s wife was a woman who was bored. She was looking for some excitement. She probably watched Egyptian soap operas all day long. She began to fantasize about having an affair with Joseph, this strapping, good-looking, young slave who was right there in her house. She propositioned him time after time, but he refused. One day, he was alone with her, and she put some moves on him. He ran away.

The world reads that story and snickers at Joseph. What a dummy. He had it all, and he ran away. Listen, Joseph was smarter than you think. He was a healthy, red-blooded man. But he knew that if he hesitated in the face of the desire that was rising within him, he was finished. So he ran from lust. He cared more about what God wanted than what his own physical body wanted. And God honored him for it.

If you want to be pure in today’s society, you’re going to have to put your running shoes on. There are places you’d better not go. There are TV programs and movies that you’d better not watch. There is nothing cowardly about saying “No” to lust when you feel it rising. And if that’s what the world calls being a Puritan, then be a Puritan.

But Paul doesn’t leave us here on a negative note. He tells us that the Christian life is not just a matter of fleeing evil. It is a matter of pursuing good - righteousness, faith, love and peace. Christians should be known for the things we are for, not just for the things we are fleeing. Too much of the time our emphasis has been negative - we have a big list of don’ts for our kids. But do we give them a list of do’s? The Bible gives us such a list…

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Paul says that it is not enough just to run away from what is wrong, we must run after what is right. And I think you’ll find that if you are running after righteousness, faith, love, and peace you’re not going to have to worry as much about fleeing sinful desires because your footsteps are going to lead you naturally away from those areas where lust becomes a real problem.

Purity not only has to do with our relationship with the Word of God, it not only has to do with our relationships with others in the church, it has a lot to do with our relationship with our own physical body and its appetites.

4. Purity and frustrating people

2 Timothy 2:23 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, 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.

Let me tell you that if you are a disciple, you’re going to run into some pretty frustrating people. People who will want to argue with you about the Bible. People who will treat you cruelly, just to see if they can get a rise out of you. Others who will outright oppose you.

This is especially true in the pastorate. You have to remember that Paul was writing to Timothy, who was a pastor in the church at Ephesus. He ran into the most frustrating people in his job as a pastor.

How you respond to the frustrating people in your life will say a lot about the progress you are making as a disciple. Look at some of the characteristics of the disciple in these verses: kind, gentle, not resentful, hopeful. The danger in dealing with frustrating people is that you become cynical, and hard, and cold. And it’s only a natural tendency. After so many people have hurt you, you begin to build a defensive wall around yourself. But to do so is to become less than pure as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

The impression we get here is that a disciple is to remain open to the frustrating people. That he is still to care about them and to care enough for them that he goes out of his way to help them. He cannot get involved in their arguments, but he must still somehow reach out to them. This is part of being pure.

We started off by quoting Ogden Nash as saying “purity is obscurity”. I hope that by now purity isn’t obscurity for you. I hope that purity will be a goal that you will direct your life toward.

- Purity in doctrine as you do your best to understand and apply the Word

- Purity in fellowship as you devote yourself to becoming a noble vessel in the church.

- Purity in the area of your physical appetites, as you flee from sinful desires and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

- Purity in how you handle the frustrating people who often come crashing into your life unannounced and uninvited.

2 Corinthians 7:1 Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.