Vessels - used of God

2nd Timothy chapter 2 verse number 19, Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and meet, or suitable for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work.

Of course 2nd Timothy, we have before us little pictures that the Apostle is painting to teach us different things. He talks about a good soldier, of course, and he talks about a husbandman, and he talks in relation to the fighting of false doctrine about that workman. But what we're going to talk about for the next few minutes are these vessels, these vessels.

Now, we understand that vessels in this case are very simply containers that have the potential to be filled and used. And that's what I want to focus on for the next few minutes. The potential that can be filled, or the potential that you have, I should say, to be filled and used by God.

When we were singing, I turned around. I don't know if people notice that. Sometimes people watch every move you make.

I turned around to look around, and I saw pretty much exactly what I thought I was going to see. A good mix. A good mix of older, more mature, I should say, believers with younger believers.

And I am one who believes, brethren, that the Lord feeds both the sheep and the lambs together. And as this meeting, or the meetings of this conference, have been going on, I do feel that there has been ministry that has not only warmed the hearts of young and old, but that has been instructional for both young and old. But what I see when I look back and I look out here is remarkable potential.

I don't know if you see that. Sometimes, brethren, we have the blinders on, don't we? And we start to think, well, things aren't like they used to be. Well, they're not like they used to be.

And there are some cases where the past has been better. Yeah. But I believe that today, right here in Stout, Iowa, as we look around, we see the faces of those both young and older in whom there is potential for God.

And it really is our desire, isn't it, to see that potential fulfilled. What we're going to consider are three different young men. All three of them were young.

From the Old Testament. Now, keep in mind, sisters, these could easily be interchanged with sisters for our purposes today. All right? First one we're going to look at is Joseph in the book of Genesis, a young man.

I'm not going to turn there. I see some heads down and some pages turning. But we're going to call on your memory.

That's what's great about speaking in ministry, is that you can call on the memory of the saints without having to read every passage, right? But we're going to think about Joseph, that young man as he was down in Egypt. A vessel. Really, a vessel that had tons of potential.

And the happy ending was that he was used of God. He was. We're going to think of Daniel, from Daniel chapter 1. Another vessel that had loads of potential.

And the good news is that he was used of God. And then we're going to take Moses from the book of Exodus, mainly, but looking at other passages as well, to build the picture of Moses. Now, Moses might not have been quite as young as these other men, but still a young man.

And the wonderful news is that Moses reached his potential. I believe that all three of these young men actually reached their potential. They were used of God for the specific purpose that God had for them.

That's what we want for you, isn't it? I would take it that's what you would want for me too. Joseph. Joseph was about 17 years old, of course, when he was sold by his brethren into the land of Egypt.

And it was not long after when he found himself in a situation. A situation that could have marred him as a vessel, that could have contaminated him as a vessel that would have been neat or suitable for his use by God. We recall the circumstances were that woman.

That woman that wanted Joseph to compromise his values that he had received from the teaching of his father, really in light of the word of God, if you want to put it that way, the woman whose desire it was to compromise Joseph's values and defile him. And that at least brethren. Would have been a major setback.

I'm not saying you would have had to write Joseph's life off. I don't believe that at all. I believe that mistakes can be overcome, that restoration can be a real thing in the lives of believers, even when they fall.

But Joseph here had an opportunity to keep himself pure. And when you look at Joseph's situation, it could be that we're looking here at the purging or the keeping himself clean from immorality. So he could be used by God.

But it may even get a little deeper than that. You see, God had a plan for Joseph's life. And there was a woman in the plan.

But it wasn't that woman. And it is possible, and I speak kindly now, it is possible that there's a young man or a young woman here, and you have your eye on a young person, and you think she'd make a good wife, or he'd make a good husband. Maybe they would.

But you'd be very exercised that the person that you have your eye on is the person that God has his eye on for you. First of all, you're going to go by the word of God, aren't you? And you're going to find out that it is a sin for a believer to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. So right away, brethren and sisters, going after a person for a mate that is not saved is absolutely sin in the eyes of God.

It's not right. So if you have your eye on someone who's not saved, do your best to quickly quench that. It'll affect you.

It will mar you and it will contaminate you and your usefulness for God. It will. And then I believe, brethren, that the marriage is to be in the Lord.

So then you're looking at a person who is obeying the word of God when it comes to their personal life, when it comes to their personal responsibility to be found in the house of God, the assembly, and you should be looking for another young person who's in the assembly. Yeah, I believe that's what the Bible teaches. But even among those dear people in the assembly, you want to find someone who shares your same exercise for the things of God.

You say, could it be possible that a young man would marry a girl in the assembly and it would limit him in his service for God? Absolutely. Absolutely. There's some brethren who have been gifted to preach the gospel.

They married a wife who has no interest. Oh, she attends the meetings. She's not willing really to sacrifice for him and for his work in the gospel.

And there are other times when maybe a sister is exercised about a certain vein of work that she has been fitted for by the Lord. And she marries a man that was so worldly that he takes her away from her exercise and her desires and her goals. You have to be careful.

It was God's plan for Joseph that he would have a wife, not this one. It was God's plan for Joseph that he would maintain his purity so that he could be used of God. And Joseph was used mightily of God, wasn't he? He was used to preserve the nation.

He was used to help God's people. He was used to lead God's people. He was used to spread blessing beyond the walls of just the nation of Israel right out into the entire world to where it could be said of Joseph that he was the Zaphnath-phaneah, the Savior of the world.

I would say that Joseph reached his potential because he knew to say no to that woman. So let's just be careful. Then we think about Daniel.

Daniel was younger. I don't know if we can pinpoint the exact age of Daniel. I'm one who thinks the boy was probably 13 or 14 years old, but no older than 16, right? At the time of Daniel chapter 1, no.

So we find that he's been taken. He's been taken out of his comfort zone, if you will, and he's placed in a situation where not only would it have been easy for him to compromise his values as to what he knew was right and what he knew that he should be doing, but he's now placed in the position where it's actually encouraged that he compromise those values. Babylon is really a picture of the religious world, isn't it, brethren? If Sodom is a picture of the world, it is a picture of the world in immorality.

If Egypt is a picture of the world, it is a picture of the world and its pleasure and its possessions and its politics. And if Babylon is a picture of the world, and I believe it is, it is a picture of the religious confusion in the world. Go back to the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis.

You find there that men have come together with ability and with the ability to think and to come up with a plan, and they put their energy into building a tower. And as they watch that tower rise, their goal is to make that tower reach all the way to heaven. And we know it ends in confusion.

And really that's what religion is. It's man's effort and man's ideas to somehow find a way to heaven apart from God's waves. And then we find Babylon as is depicted in the book of Daniel, don't we? And I like to look at some of the details perhaps with you for a second, but you see where Nebuchadnezzar, he brought the people down and he brought part of the vessels of the house of God down.

That's an important word, part of the vessels of the house of God. He was going to go back and he was going to ransack the temple and do all the rest. But at this time there was only part.

You know why? Because in Babylon there was room for a little bit of everything. There was. They worshipped the god Nebo.

They worshipped the god Bel. They worshipped the sun god and the moon god and the star gods. They worshipped all of those things.

But if you were to take the complete set, if you want to call it that, of the vessels that were in the house of the Lord in Jerusalem, what you would be saying in effect is this. There is one God at the exclusion of all others. And Babylon won't accept that.

And this is what Babylon is like today. The religious world. That includes the evangelical world, brethren.

It does. Well, they preach the gospel, but they don't preach the old truth, do they? And there's room for a little bit of everything. But there are certain truths that they call divisive.

Things that will cause division among the evangelical world or amongst the people that are in the religious world. And it is those truths that they will ask you to leave out. We're not going to discuss points of doctrine in our gatherings together ecumenically, because that causes strife and division.

So they will ask you to set aside some of the things that you believe to be right in order to keep what they call unity. Well, I don't know about you, but there are truths from the Word, every truth from the Word of God. I value enough to not set it aside for anyone.

But that's Babylon. And if you get together ecumenically with those in your community, you know what's going to happen? They're going to say, well, we don't really want to teach eternal security here because some of us really don't believe it. So you want to leave that before you come in? Brethren, would you leave it? I won't.

It's too important. Daniel found himself in Babylon, and it was very easy to compromise in Babylon. But you know what Daniel realized? He has to remain separate from that religious world if he is going to fulfill his potential for God.

If he is going to be the leader, if he is going to be God's man in God's place at God's time, he has to remain separated from the confusion that's out there and simply adhere to the Word of God that he knows to be true. And it's very true, brethren and sisters, young people. The assembly is the place.

I said the place. I didn't say the assembly is the best place for you to be. The assembly is the place God wants you to be.

The assembly is the place for you to be, separate from all the religious confusion so that God can use you. You want to be used by God? It all starts in the assembly. It does.

So now we're going to move along. Moses, when he had come to years, I believe that all three of these individuals were mature. They were mature.

Perhaps something to think about in your definition of maturity would be that they were willing to take responsibility for their own actions. They were. So many of us are really quick to blame others for the way we behave, aren't we? Oh, well, I'm offended.

It's their fault and that's why I'm not coming to meeting. You know, I appreciate what her brother said. It's my responsibility as to how I handle that.

It really is. But they all were mature. Daniel, mature.

14, 13, yeah, mature. Look at the way he behaved. Joseph, mature.

Yeah, 17. And Moses, we're not going to be hard on Moses. We love Moses, but it took him about 40 years to grow up.

That's what it says in the book of Hebrews, didn't it? Moses, when he had come to years, and then you go to the book of Acts and you find that it was 40 years, 40 years before he had come to years, but thank God he did. Never too late, brethren. Now he had come to years.

He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin that only lasts for a little while. You know what he said? I have a decision to make. I have potential for Egypt.

I could be a leader in Egypt. I could be the man in Egypt. And he could have been.

Acts chapter 7 tells us there that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was educated in Egypt. Perhaps God used that education for him putting some of the word of God on paper.

God can use that. Education's not wrong. But he now has a decision to make.

Do I put my energy and my efforts into Egypt or do I turn and turn completely from Egypt now? There's no half and half. He's not going to be able to have one foot in Egypt and the other foot suffering affliction with the people of God. Doesn't work.

He has to turn his back completely on Egypt. And when he turns his back completely on Egypt, God uses him in the redemption of the children of Israel and in the leading out of the children of Israel. And I know that there's a lot of events that happened in Moses' life from that point right to the end.

But brethren, I believe he was used exactly for the purpose that God had for him. But he had to make a choice. And we have to make a choice.

We do. You have potential for Egypt. Yeah.

You're smart. And you have the ability to get a good education or learn skills. Perhaps you're very skilled with your hands.

It's all kinds of different things and you have potential. God would never discourage hard work. God would never discourage honor in the workplace.

But you know what happens to people who have potential for Egypt? The boss will knock on your door when you're in your office and he'll say, you know, we have big promotion for you. We just like to see you put an extra 10 hours a weekend, or we'd like you to move. Like you to move to a place and right away you say, oh no, no assembly there.

And even if there is an assembly there, you're thinking it could be God wants me to stay here. And that potential for Egypt can be a snare. Then you have to make a choice.

Am I going to put all of my efforts and all of my energy into Egypt? Or am I going to suffer affliction with the people of God and be used by God? Again, I'm not asking you to quit your job. That's not what God is saying. And he's not asking you to work less hard.

What he is asking you to do is consider, am I on this earth to put my energy into the world? Or am I here to be used by God? Very simple. So you see what I'm saying? Three young men, three young men who had great potential. Now I don't know what your gift is, but you should be trying to find that out.

Exercise before God. You should be looking for things to do in the assembly, to help the assembly, to help the brethren, to help the sisters. And if you're really serious about finding out what your gift is, come to meeting.

Every meeting. Oh, that's hard to do sometimes. Yeah, it's hard for everybody, but that's the place to be.

And as you pray and as you read, and as you're exercised, God will show you what your gift is. Perhaps your gift is just what you see a need for in the assembly. And you start to do that because no one else is doing it.

And you find out no one else was doing it because God wanted you to do it. It's your gift. And you can be used by God.

You have that potential. You may have to, not may, you do have to be very cautious about who you choose for a mate if you're going to realize your potential. You have to be very cautious about your affiliation with the religious confusion of Babylon.

Don't go there. And you have to be careful in your decisions when it comes to where you put your time and energy. But if you're conscientious and exercise before God, there's great potential in your life for Him.