A Disciple is Pure

During the OJ Simpson trial, one of the many troubling things that happened was that a police officer committed perjury. Detective Mark Fuhrman lied on the witness stand to cover up his own racist attitudes. And, as it turns out, he had a lot to cover up.

It’s terribly distressing when a law enforcement officer—who has been commissioned to safeguard the rights of citizens and uphold the law—is found to have deliberately broken the law himself. It’s a betrayal—a breach of trust. And it damages the credibility of all the other police officers who do their job well.

Did you know that the same thing is true of Christians? Our reputation as a body of believers rides on the conduct of every single one of us. And that is especially true of Christians who are in positions of leadership. I don’t need to remind you of the scandals of the 1980’s, when a few high-profile televangelists failed to practice what they preach.

That’s one of the reasons Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy. Timothy was a pastor in the city of Ephesus. He was a highly visible public figure among the Christians of that city. He had been entrusted with a position of leadership and authority. How he conducted himself was crucial.

Would he be a man of integrity? Would he be honest in his dealings with others? What about his personal life? Would he practice what he preached? These are questions which were relevant then and they are relevant now—and relevant to all of us, not just to pastors and church leaders.

If we want to bring honor to the cause of Christ, there are three crucial areas we need to get a handle on—how we handle the Word, how we handle ourselves, and how we handle other people. We need to be pure in these three areas if we want to have a good testimony. Paul writes to Timothy about these things in 2 Timothy 2:14ff.

2 Timothy 2:14 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.

The first area we need to get a handle on is our relationship with the Word of God—specifically, with what we believe as Christians. We call that doctrine, and it is a crucial area of the Christian life. We need to know what we believe and why we believe it. And that information is found in the Bible.

The KJV has the word “study” in verse 15. That is a misleading translation; it doesn’t mean study—it really means “do your best—make every effort—to present yourself to God as a workman of the Word.” A craftsman, in other words.

I’m sure you’ve had opportunity to see a craftsman—perhaps an Amish furniture maker—at work. He carefully selects the right materials and the right tools. And he has tremendous respect for the wood. He will only select certain types of wood for the job. He won’t violate the properties of that wood by trying to make it into something for which it isn’t suited. He’s very patient as he works: he doesn’t rush the job.

And when he’s done, the article of furniture that he has made brings out the natural beauty of the wood.

That’s the image that we get here. A Christian needs to become a craftsman of the Word of God. We need to have a fundamental respect for it. We need to be careful to let the Bible say what it says, and not try to press it to say something that it doesn’t say. Our doctrine—that is, the body of beliefs that we build from the Word—needs to be true to the Word, not in violation of it.

If you do that, you will become a workman who is approved by God for doing a good job; a workman who doesn’t need to be ashamed when his work is inspected. You will be a workman who “correctly handles the Word of truth”. That expression means “to cut it straight”. You’re not playing fast and loose with the Bible’s teaching: you’re cutting the truth straight.

My prayer every Sunday when I get up here to preach is that I might cut the truth straight—that the Word of God might be clear in my presentation. That you might understand what it says, what it means, and understand what God wants you to do on the basis of it.

The first and most important area of the Christian life is your relationship with the Word of God.

Now having said that, we need to hear Paul’s warning to Timothy in these verses: “Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen.” he says in verse 14. And then he goes on to describe some false teachers who indulge in a lot of chatter. And he says to Timothy “Stay away from that stuff! Stay out of the word wars”.

You know there are some Christians who just love to argue about doctrine. They like nothing better than a theological fight. They thrive on controversy. They love to go around bashing anyone who doesn’t believe exactly the way they do.

For example, just the other day, I happened to come across something like this. It was a pamphlet that was an all-out attack on the Promise Keepers movement. The writer—who was supposedly a Christian—was denouncing PK in the most scathing terms—trying to show how it was unbiblical and of the devil and so forth. And I’m sure that he thought he was doing the Lord’s work.

Paul says to us “Don’t get sucked into that mindset where you want to duke it out over doctrine all the time. That’s unprofitable. Stay out of the word wars.” We’ve got enough to do to just make sure we’re cutting it straight ourselves than to go around acting like the doctrine police.

Now there’s a second very important area we need to get a handle on. We not only need to get a handle on the Word, we need to get a handle on ourselves.

2 Timothy 2:20 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.

In the ancient world, they didn’t have TupperWare, so they had to make their household containers out of metal, or wood, or clay pottery. The material dictated the use. They had silver and gold for their finest serving dishes; wood and pottery for storing food, oil, and water, and rough old clay pots for holding their garbage.

It’s the same way today. My wife has a set of nice Royal Albert china dishes. (We hardly ever actually eat off these dishes, but we do have them.) They are on display in our china cabinet. When we have special company, we get them out and use them. And that’s sort of a sign of special honor.

When we clean up after having company, we handle those dishes with special care. They don’t go into the dishwasher; you have to hand wash and dry them, and put them carefully away. It’s very nerve-wracking!

But the scraps of food—the garbage left over from the meal—we put into another container, which is made by RubberMaid. It’s our big garbage can, which we keep outside at the side of our house.

Now when you come over to our house, Carolyn is pleased to have you see her set of Royal Albert china. But she’s certainly not going to take you around the side of the house to see our RubberMaid garbage can. One vessel is for honor, the other is for dishonor.

And Paul says that you can choose the kind of vessel you want to be in God’s household. Do you want to be a vessel for honor, or dishonor? Do you want to be Royal Albert or RubberMaid? You can choose to cleanse yourself—to be set apart— for God to use for special purposes.

Your choice is based on what you do with verse 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.

How I handle myself—and what kind of vessel I end up being—depends on what I’m running from and what I’m running to.

This past Monday, I went to a hockey game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Boston Bruins. It was only a pre-season game, but there were a lot of young guys trying to make the team, and so they were playing hard. And a couple of fights broke out.

It was interesting to see the reaction of the players when a fight broke out. They all immediately rushed over to where the fight was. They all paired off and grabbed each other. And some of those secondary pairings actually became fights too.

And it was interesting to see the reaction of the fans when a fight broke out. For the hockey game, everybody sits and watches; for a fight, everybody stands and yells. They stand on tiptoe because they don’t want to miss a thing.

That’s because there’s something in us that makes us want to run to wherever there is anger and hatred and pain and ugliness. Remember when you were in high school and word came through the halls that there was a fight going on outside? Man, everybody ran as fast as they could to see the fight.

Did you ever get into an argument? A real big argument? Did you ever feel that heat rising in you—that desire to lash out and strike back and really wound that person you’re arguing with? That’s the kind of evil desire that Paul is talking about here. It’s a strong desire which leads us to sin.

We all have these desires within us—they’re youthful, headstrong passions—that we never entirely outgrow. And these passions make us want to head in a direction other than where God wants us to go.

And Paul says “When you feel that desire rising within you, run away from it. Flee from it, just like Joseph fled from Potiphar’s wife.” A lot of people understand this verse only in terms of sexual temptation, but it really means a lot more than that. It means any situation where you feel yourself being overcome with a passion that will make you end up doing something that God doesn’t want you to do. Run away from that.

And run toward righteousness, faith, love, and peace. Pursue them with all your energy. If you run in that direction, you’ll start to get a handle on yourself.

That gets us to our final area: how you handle other people, especially the people who drive you nuts. Look at verse 24

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.

Paul says: “Look Timothy, being a spiritual leader is not easy. As a pastor, you are going to run into a lot of people who can be pretty frustrating. Some of the people you meet in church you will be convinced are demon-possessed. They will oppose your teaching and they will oppose your ministry. They will be in your face constantly.”

How you deal with those people will reveal a lot about your progress as a follower of Christ.

Paul says “Be kind to everyone—even those fire-breathers. Instruct them where they are wrong, but do it gently. Above all, don’t get resentful, because then you’ll just spiral into a black hole of bitterness and you’ll end up behaving just like them.”

One of the most important interpersonal lessons we need to learn as Christians is to move positively toward the people in our lives who are irritating us. Our natural inclination is to move away from them, to push them away, to avoid them.

But if you succeed in pushing a frustrating person out of your life, you know what happens? God brings along someone else to frustrate you. You know why? Because God is interested in dealing with our underlying attitudes.

You see, we blame the other person for being the cause of our frustration. We say “He makes me so angry…” or “That woman just drives me crazy…”

But what’s really wrong is that there isn’t enough love in our heart to bear that person’s misconduct and go on loving them anyway. And God wants to change that.

How you deal with the frustrating people in your life reveals a lot about your progress as a Christ-follower. Are you brittle? Are you impatient with others? Are you resentful?

Or are you moving toward those difficult people with love and gentleness?

There are three areas where we need to be growing in purity:

1. In our doctrine, and what we do with our doctrine

2. In our personal lives, and how we deal with those evil desires

3. In our relationships, especially in our relationships with difficult people