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*Don’t Waste Your Life – Be Useful to the Master*
* *
2 Timothy 2:19-22 (NASB95) \\ 19 Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal, “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Everyone who names the name of the Lord is to abstain from wickedness.” 20 Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also vessels of wood and of earthenware, and some to honor and some to dishonor.
21 Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these /things/, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, *useful to the Master*, prepared for every good work.
22 Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love /and /peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.
* *
John Piper opens his excellent book /Don’t Waste Your Life /like so:/ /
‘… millions of people waste their lives because they think these paths [of pursuing God’s glory and our greatest joy] are two and not one.
There is a warning.
The path of God-exalting [gives great] joy [but] will cost you your life.
Jesus said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
In other words, it is better to lose your life than to waste it.
If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full.
This is not … about how to avoid a wounded life, but how to avoid a /wasted/ life … Please know that I am praying for you, whether you are a student dreaming something radical for your life, or whether you are retired and hoping not to waste the final years … Remember, you have one life.
That’s all.
You were made for God [for His glory].
Don’t waste it.
[p.
9]
 
‘You may not be sure that you want your life to make a difference.
Maybe you don’t care very much whether you make a lasting difference for the sake of something great.
[If you were honest, you just want to be considered cool].
You just want people to like you.
If people would just like being around you, you’d be satisfied.
Or if you could just have a good job with a good wife, or husband, and a couple of good kids and a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, a fun retirement, and a quick and easy death, and no hell—if you could have all that (even without God)—you would be satisfied.
That is a tragedy in the making.
A wasted life.
* *
*These Lives and Deaths Were No Tragedy*
In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa.
Ruby was over eighty.
Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick.
Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon.
The brakes failed, the car went over a cliff, and they were both killed instantly … Was that a tragedy?
Two lives, driven by one great passion, namely, to be spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ—even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw away their lives on trifles.
No, that is not a tragedy.
That is a glory [praise to God].
These lives were not wasted.
And these lives were not lost.
“Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).
* *
*An American Tragedy: How Not to Finish Your One Life*
I will tell you what a tragedy is.
I will show you how to waste your life.
Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of /Reader’s Digest/, which tells about a couple who “took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51.
Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.”
At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke.
A spoof on the American Dream.
But it wasn’t.
Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life—your one and only precious, God-given life—and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells.
Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: “Look, Lord.
See my shells.”
/That /is a tragedy.
And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream.
Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it.
Don’t waste your life
… I plead with you: Desire that your life count for something great!
Long for your life to have eternal significance.
Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.
… This vision of life holds out to students and young adults so much more than the emptiness of mere success or the … spring break … Not just a desire for being liked or for playing softball or collecting shells.
Here is a desire for something infinitely great and beautiful and valuable and satisfying—the name and the glory of God …whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated [purpose you’re here for with God’s glory as the] passion of your life … and live for it and die for it.
And you will make a difference that lasts.
You will not waste your life … Oh, that God would help me waken in you a single passion for a single great reality that would unleash you, and set you free from small dreams, and send you, for the glory of Christ, into all the spheres of secular life and to all the peoples of the earth.’
(/Don’t Waste Your Life, /p.
45-48)
 
I want you to look again at the end of verse 21, which has the phrase I want to focus on and I earnestly pray will be our heart’s desire to be “/Useful to the Master/, prepared for every good work.”
Is your life going to be “useful to the Master” or not?
The opposite of the word “useful” is of course, the word “useless” – a synonym for “wasted.”
How can you avoid being useless to God? How can you avoid wasting your life spiritually?
How can you instead be a useful vessel or instrument in the hand of our Master, the Lord?
God inspired this passage with an answer to that question, especially for younger people, but with application to all of us.
Verse 20 in the context is talking about the house of God, the church.
And there are two types of vessels or instruments which represent two types of people: “gold and silver vessels” vs. “wood and clay” (earthen).
-         I read about 20 different English translations of the next phrase and there were a lot of different and colorful renderings that help us see the two types of people Paul refers to in this analogy:
-         “some for honor vs. some for dishonor” (KJV, NKJV, NASB, Geneva) or “honorable use vs. dishonorable” (ESV)
-         Or “some for special use ~/ occasions vs. some for ordinary” (HCSB, NRSV, ISV, GNT)
-         Or “some are specially honourable, and others for common use” (Weymouth NT)
-         Or “some things are used for special purposes, and others are made for ordinary jobs” (NCV)
-         Or “some for noble purpose or use, vs. some for ignoble” (NIV, RSV, NET “honor vs. ignoble”, AB adds “menial”)
-         Or “some for lofty and others for humble use” (NAB)
-         Or “some of these are special and some of these are not” (CEV)
-         Or “The expensive utensils are used for special occasions, and the cheap ones are for everyday use” (NLT)
-         Or “some which are highly prized and others which are treated with contempt” (Wuest’s NT Translation)
-         One paraphrase says “The expensive dishes are used for guests, and the cheap ones are used in the kitchen or to put garbage in.
If you stay away from sin you will be like one of these dishes made of purest gold—the very best in the house—so that Christ himself can use you for his highest purposes.”
(TLB)
-         Another paraphrase has “In a well-furnished kitchen there are not only crystal goblets and silver platters, but waste cans and compost buckets—some containers used to serve fine meals, others to take out the garbage.
Become the kind of container God can use to present any and every kind of gift to his guests for their blessing.”
(/The Message/)
 
Some commentators even think the Greek phrase for “vessels of dishonor” may refer not only to a waste basket but for containers that might carry out waste products, even human waste.
When I take out the trash in our house there are often offensive odors emanating, whether from garbage or decaying products or diapers or whatever, it’s not a pretty picture or a noble one.
Paul used a term like this that was considered really even gross and uncouth and offensive to respectable ears when he wrote in Philippians 3 that he considered all things as rubbish or a waste (even dung) compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, who is the most beautiful and pure and lovely and valuable and satisfying person in the universe.
And the image in this text is that those who are Christlike are beautiful in God’s sight and are valuable and useful to the Master who owns the house and owns everyone in it.
There are certain containers or vessels that He can use in a special way for His purposes and our Master wants us to be that kind of person.
Perhaps we could say some people are like vases that can be used for a beautiful bouquet of flowers to encourage or bless someone.
There are some vessels that are like the fine china your mother might have on display or that she might use to serve guests of honor or for special occasions in honor of the Master.
Not the ordinary everyday dishes, or the old rusted utensils, and no Master would want to use dirty dishes that haven’t been cleaned because that would reflect poorly on the Master of the house to others.
Verse 20 begins talking about gold and silver vessels that are for honorable use - you don’t use gold platters for feeding your animals or the most precious metals for your slop bucket, or a priceless silver punchbowl for scrubbing the bathroom floor, or a solid gold container for a trash can.
In the context here, Paul is essentially saying “Be clean and separated from those who defile in teaching or living, or you will be a wastebasket to the Master.”
If that sounds like a strong statement, then I think we’re on the right track to what the original language is emphasizing.
*/How can we avoid being wasteful with our lives and instead by Useful to the Master?/*
*/ /*
#. *BE FORSAKING SIN AS A LIFE PATTERN – v. 19-21*
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