Profitable Things

Could I ask you to turn to 2nd Timothy please in chapter 3. 2nd Timothy in chapter 3 and verse number 16. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God and Timothy was one of those men in our Bibles described as a man of God, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished or perfected in his furnishing unto all good works. Now over to Titus please or 2nd Timothy, stay in 2nd Timothy chapter 4 please.

Chapter 4, just next chapter and verse number 10 and this really is in contrast to who he speaks of in verse number 11 where he speaks of Mark but verse 10 says for Demas hath forsaken me having loved this present world and is departed unto Thessalonica. Cretans to Galatia, Titus unto Nomasia. Now verse 11, only Luke is with me.

Take Mark and bring him with thee for he is profitable, I like that, he is profitable to me for the ministry. Now finally 1st Timothy chapter 4, 1st Timothy in chapter 4 and verse number 8. For bodily exercise profiteth little but good godliness is profitable unto all things having promise of life that now is and of that which is to come. I don't know if you've picked up what really is before me and speaking in the ministry this afternoon but I want to speak on profitability.

We sometimes hear businesses described entitled as non-profit organizations, no such a thing exists. They may mean by that that we don't take money from people and so on but there's no such thing or a family, a house can operate non-profitably otherwise you go to business. And you know when it comes to Christian experience you and I have to know what it is to be profitable in our Christian experience and there is there's a charted course for that.

If you are going to be recognized as a profitable believer there's an understanding from the Word of God that is only one way that that can come about. Now we've read three things this afternoon that are profitable, other passages could have been read, I simply will quote from them. First of all I want you to think about a profitable book.

You and I this afternoon are holding the most profitable book in this world that it has ever had, that it ever will have, that we know to be the Bible, the Word of God, the Scriptures, the prophets and so on that are deemed and termed as such. So we'll consider very simply a profitable book. Secondly I want you to think of a profitable believer.

Is there such a thing? Is there such a person as a profitable believer? How would we term or how would we designate someone as being a profitable believer? I mean if I was to speak to Christians, fellow believers in your assembly, just simply ask them, is that brother a profitable believer? How would they assess that? Then the first time in the chapter rather, yes, chapter 4 verse number 8 we read about profitable behavior. So you'll notice that one develops over the other. It all begins with a profitable book.

A profitable book taken in, read, adhered to, carried out in his commandments produces a profitable believer. And a profitable believer will in turn produce profitable behavior. Now profit margins can be very very slim.

And sometimes you know we cook the books. In other words like some corporations are charged of doing their business isn't good and so they want to sell out and so they'll bring in maybe accountants and they'll just sometimes take assets and inflate them and liabilities and put them down and present a better bottom line than really is there. Now we can do the same thing in our Christian experience.

We could come across as a very profitable believer. One that would be wanted in any assembly. And the truth is we're living lives that are very liable and are a liability.

Profit margins. Maybe I don't mind, like I do have a mind really that thinks along those lines too much, maybe in just a little too keenly. I used to be in the poultry business with 30,000 laying hens.

We did an egg grading station and we processed a hundred thousand dozen eggs a week. Okay? The best year in business, do you know how much we made a dozen? One penny. To make that penny our trucks had to go to a farm, pick up the eggs, bring them back to our plant, process them, pack them and deliver them to such-and-such supermarket, store, bakery, whatever it might be, and in the process you hope to make a penny a dozen.

It was our best year. Other years we didn't make a penny a dozen. So it's a very slim margin.

You know when it comes to Christian experience it's the same way. There's an enemy outside, brethren and sisters, that we've been reminded of at this conference that is determined that our lives are not going to be for his glory, that our lives are not going to be profitable. Speaking of profit, it must come at a very early age.

I can remember my aunt, and I just spoke at her funeral here a little while ago, she never married, she was a music teacher. Now this is a music teacher going back 40 years ago, 45 years ago. I can remember sitting in Aunt Jean, my grandparents house, and we had to be very quiet, my brother Tim and I, that was a big job, while she gave her students their lessons.

And I always remember when the lesson was over they had to pay for their lesson a dollar and a half. Now that was quite a bit of money then, but she was upping the price to two dollars. So it was gonna be two dollars for a music lesson.

And so while I was sitting there, you know, bored to death, our little entrepreneur minds were going, and I remember Aunt Jean coming out, last student was out the door, we said to her, Aunt Jean, how many students do you have? And she looked at us and said, a few. She wasn't telling us whether she made a hundred dollars a week or forty dollars a week, a few. Nobody likes to let out the profitability side of things, do we? You know, in Christian experience, we can't hide them.

We can't hide them. It's nice to have profitable believers amongst us. Now that isn't just going in for the show of things and that everything looks good and everything's going good and this is the front we're putting up, but deep down we are profitable as Paul could speak concerning John Mark.

Now he wasn't always profitable. And brethren and sisters, to be honest, there's been times in our Christian experience when we have been left less than profitable, when we were literally a liability to that assembly. We were maybe taking a course doing things that were having a detriment on the testimony as a whole.

And we were pulling things down. We were affecting the bottom line. There's likely a reason for that.

Because we weren't sourcing a profitable book. Now that's the first thing that we read about that is profitable. The Apostle says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.

Definite statement. For doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Literally the phrase means God breathed.

Now nothing comes deeper from within you than your breath. Nothing comes deeper from within the heart of God than His Word. And as you read the Word of God, you are reading a book that is literally God breathed.

So I sometimes point out to people, the Bible is unique. We read other books. It's true, we do.

We read other books. This is the only book that reads us. This is the only book that hits us where we live.

It's the Bible. Very unique. Sometimes I wonder if maybe it cost us more if we'd read it more.

Come on brother, what if you had to pay $2,500 for your next Bible? Take better care of it? Read it a little more? Maybe it's because just in a natural sense it comes to us too cheap. Too much is too readily available. We're not in a country where if you had a Bible you'd hide it.

I can think of a Hungarian lady that came over and got saved in meetings we had in Westlawn, Ontario a number of years ago. My, the Word of God was so precious to her. We'd go to visit her and she'd have something from the Word of God that she'd want to show us.

She would simply wash her hands. Yes, wash your hands. Go in and get her Bible and bring it out and start to talk to us about the Word of God.

That's quite a rebuke to us. Listen, you can go into a, back our way I'd say a McDonald's or here maybe it's a Starbucks or whatever it might be and you can put any other magazine down on the table and nobody give you a second look. Or even a dirty magazine, nobody looks at it.

You walk into one of your restrooms, you open a Bible, put it down your table. We're in ministry meetings one time, I've said ministry meetings one time in Cape Britain. It's kind of a snowy night, a storm, a real stormy night when the Brethren had given me their four-wheel drive vehicles.

I likely couldn't have made my way around. And I didn't keep them late that night because meeting was, people, I was wondering if I could got home all right because of where I was staying. I wasn't sure everybody else could.

So one of the Brethren there and I decided we were going to a Tim Hortons coffee shop and we just got discussing what was being taken up in ministry. I said, listen, I'll go, let me go get my Bible. Sure.

So I went out to get my Bible, brought it back into the Tim Hortons coffee shop and I was really sitting with my back to the counter to where coffee and donuts and so on were being served and, you know, we're going into the Word and we're talking. He's looking at me and he's starting to laugh. And I said, excuse me, I said, what's striking you so funny? Well, he said, look around.

And I looked around, there wasn't a soul left in place. Well, I came in, there was all kinds of people there. It's amazing.

This book has an electrifying power to it that sometimes brethren and sisters, we dismiss. How do you make it out with your reading? Now, you know, listen, let me, let me just encourage parents that take the time to dress up children, haul them out to a conference, to run out somewhere and fall down in the mud and get all dirty or whatever, or holler and carry on. Keep at it, will you? Keep at it.

There are a lot of us in God's assembly today are the result of parents that were faithful in doing that. We've lost a lot because parents weren't faithful in doing that. Paul reminds Timothy that from a child, he had known the Holy Scriptures that were able, wise and able to make them wise unto salvation.

From a youth, he had known that. But God have mercy on these preachers. Don't you feel like hollering at them? A mother must when they get up, they say, I know it's conference weekend.

Yeah, they had nothing to do but comb their hair and come to meeting. And they say, where'd you read this morning? You feel like sit down, you read. I hardly had time to remember my name, trying to get three or four children ready and get them off the meeting and so on.

It's a busy life. And when it comes to conference weekend, there's a lot of things that kind of go by the board. I'm not talking about that.

Let me ask you, were you reading? How much are you reading? I am told that one way or another, either through, because of the computer age and that sort of thing, there was never a day when there was more reading than there is today. There's a lot of information that is literally push status, advertising, billboards, digital, whatever kind they might be. There was never a day when people read more than they do today.

And I would say that my own experience. I was not, before I went in the Lord's work, by nature, I wasn't a great reader. I likely didn't have the patience or the time.

I didn't think I had the time for it. So, but you know, as I started in the work, I developed reading habits and a reading pattern. Try to read a little from the Old Testament day, a little from the New Testament, and then reading and studying whatever I'm working on.

Now, I realized that there are people that morning isn't necessarily their time to read. They're not morning people, like I told them this morning in the house. They're morning people.

All right. Spell with a U in there. Okay.

It means it's kind of a sad event. But morning people are people that know what it is to get past what Mr. Peter Orszag used to call LTP. You say, well, what's LTP? Love of the pillow.

As we said, people have a big disease. You know, Christians have it. But anyhow, I'm the morning person that can get up in the morning.

But boy, at night, I'm wasted. I don't read too much before I go to bed. I couldn't keep awake long enough.

If I can keep awake long enough, my thinking clear to get my praying done, that's it. That's me out. But somewhere somehow in the day, there must be a point in times when you can give yourself to the Word of God.

And like I say, never forget, as you hold this Bible, never forget how special this book is. Because here's the secret, Christians. Profitableness and fruitfulness go together.

Profitableness, fruitfulness. John chapter 15, the two go together. A profitable believer is one that is producing.

Luke chapter 13, the Lord Jesus taught, if I could just apply that, the principle of the fig tree. He says, why cometh it the ground? He comes seeking fruit on it, he'll find none. In other words, it had to justify why it was there.

So here we are today with this book. Profitable book. Listen, come on, let's all admit, there's a lot I read in the course of a week that isn't profitable.

There's likely a lot I read that wouldn't really harm me, okay? And it likely wouldn't even harm anybody else. But it's just not profitable. Mr. Albert Ramsey said, and I'm an awful newspaper reader, terrible.

Really, maybe not so much since I read a lot online, but if I was flying across the country and my first stop was in Cleveland for fuel, I'd pick a Cleveland plane dealer. Next stop was Chicago, I'd get in the Tribune. Next stop, say, was Cedar Rapids, I'd grab the cassette.

Mr. Albert Ramsey said, there's one way to read the newspaper, standing on one leg. It's amazing how fast time goes when you're reading something you want to read, versus something, how time goes when you're reading something you should be reading. You say, how do you handle that? When this no longer ceases to be an ornament, and it becomes a timepiece, and you look at it, you say, okay, I started reading here, and I just want to stick with this.

You'll discipline yourself, and diet yourself accordingly. And the more that you read this book, and the more that you get into it, the more that you'll love it. And it'll become such a part of you.

If you don't develop those habits, and there isn't anybody in our experience, really, that doesn't have to go back and review with just how are we making out, even in our homes, even as couples. I sometimes tell people, we've tried to read with our family, as a family, the four are going up, the nest is empty now, they're all gone. And I was calling one of them one day, and they weren't answering the phone.

I thought, I don't know what they're doing. I thought they could get out of bed. Some of them are a little, but not these ones.

So I called them back and said, they weren't answering your phone. I said, sorry, dad, we're reading and praying. And I said to them, that is not something you've got to be sorry about.

No apology needed there. They're reading and praying. I'm saying it for this reason, deal with either chick or child in the house.

It takes more discipline now for Shirley and I to read our Bible together than it did when we had four hanging on each arm, and the bus was coming, and books are lost, and homework isn't done. You know how it is. It's a rat race.

It takes more discipline now, with my wife and I and two cats, to read, than it did when we had all these kids going. At least I thought they were always going or coming or whatever. So there's no point in your, you know, I know that you think, you know, when I get retired, I'm going to read a lot then.

Yeah. I thought when I went into the Lord's work, which was 33 years ago, I'd hardly believe it. What do I do with my time? I don't think that way today.

Why? Things change, don't they? Profitable book. I tell you, brethren and sisters, youngest to oldest, most recent saved to those who've been saved the longest, if we can leave this conference with a love for this book that I have not had before, because I love its author, it will become a profitable book to me. Secondly, a profitable believer.

These are all most lamentable words that the Apostle is speaking here in 2 Timothy chapter 4. He said, only Luke is with me, the doctor. Demons have forsaken him. There are those that have just, you know, he just found himself alone.

You ever feel yourself like that? You ever feel yourself like that, brother? You're just alone. You want to do things, I'm thinking in a spiritual sense. Nobody's really with you.

That's how he felt. But there was one man that was upon his mind. His name was Mark.

And here's what he says, bring him with thee. Now, it's not like a sort of a thing where Paul is saying, you know, if you bump into him, you better bring him because after all, we did have a little thing back there and it would kind of look good. You know how it is.

You want to go to a conference and there's this other kid and he's kind of a nag. You think, well, it would look good if we took him. Didn't happen.

Did when I was growing up. What happened to you guys? Sure does. These words, the word there is cease.

In other words, don't come without him. That's a man who's passed. It's a good thing that they took him with them in the first missionary journey and not a later one because they could do something with him.

He's a recovered man. John Mark has recovered. Paul is saying here, he's insistent.

I've got to have him. And I love what he says, for he says he is profitable to me for the ministry. He is profitable to me for the ministry.

Now you go to any given assembly. I, we don't do this, but sometimes you would think you go to assembly and you'd say, listen, sorry, you've got to do without one brother. Okay.

Who's first to go? Who do you think should be first to go? Think it through. Brethren come and say, what are your brother that got to leave? We need one brother over in this assembly. You'd look around and you'd say, you know, they don't come half the time.

Yeah. Let him go. And you know, he never comes to permitting yet.

Let him go. And her, you can't satisfy her in the kitchen. It wouldn't matter what, maybe she should go to.

But my point is this, when you go to the other side of that, there are certain ones that you don't want to go to. You just say, no, you don't touch him. We have to have him.

No, that sister has to stay here. We can't do without her. That's how all of us should be in the assembly.

Down in Virginia, a number of years ago, there was a very qualified nurse working at a medical center. And there's a doctor that came down from Pittsburgh, very well-known, skilled surgeon to do his work. And he'd come down there and do surgery and that sort of thing.

And one day in the lunchroom, he looked at her and he said, what are you doing down here in Virginia? He said, do you realize what you could be making in a bigger center? He says, and furthermore, he says, God knows you're worth it. She said, doctor, that's all that matters. If God knows I'm worth it, that's why I'm content to stay.

I have no plans of moving. God knows your value. God knows your profitability.

And when God knows it, others will too. I love it. I love it in our assembly.

I think of our home assembly, assemblies in the Maritime Provinces, and I think of different ones. And, you know, dear young men, just like these brethren here and sisters, I did, I don't know some of their names, but I snapped a picture out there of you all standing there. I thought how delightful to think of young people that could go everywhere and anywhere.

It's a wonderful thing, brother. They come to our conference. It'd be a sad day when they don't come.

A brother penned me a letter not that long ago. He's not a computer agent. He was about heartbreak.

Once a good size assembly. He said, for the first time in our experience, there was nobody sitting in the backseat. Nobody coming on.

No outreach. Some had left. Do you know why they'd left? For various reasons.

I'm not sitting here in judgment, but I'm one of those that preach and teaches. You use them or you lose them. Fill their hands, brethren.

Give them something to do. I just love it. Thrilled my heart to come here.

First time ever I've been here. The brethren here have invited me before. I've never been able to come.

Just knew if I walk up a shop, I name it, I would see some of them didn't know them that well at the various conferences in Iowa that I often attend. But what a delight to come here and to see young brethren and older ones with them carrying on for God and younger ones coming from various parts to be here at this conference. Profitable believers.

The purpose of my ministry is not to rebuke you. You know, that is to encourage you to be more profitable. And you will become more profitable when you understand even the value of this profitable book.

Paul wrote to Philemon and he said, remember concerning Onesimus. Here's what he said concerning that man. He said, which enticed past was to the unprofitable, but now is profitable.

You know, there was a sister back our way. She professed the meetings that I had was involved in. I don't like to say I had meetings of these preachers that talk about their meetings, my meetings, all that.

I get a little tired of that, to be honest with you. But anyhow, I wouldn't give you much for Dorothy at all. You know, that girl attended a conference, not a big one, just like you're attending today.

I do not know necessarily what she heard of that conference. But from that conference to this day, as a mother of four children, you would know she's the same girl and the same woman. And she is a profitable believer in many, many senses.

And there are times I think of brethren, some of them I used to wonder, what's up with them? They're not plugged in. What's going on? But today, he says, which before was unprofitable, but now is profitable. I just got to go with the last one.

Profitable behavior. Paul writes and he says, for bodily exercise, profit little. You know, I don't have to come here and tell you that today, the big glamor and the big focus, the big pictures are the human body.

So it makes you sick, doesn't it? Sick. Go buy any magazine rack. Just take a look at it.

It's all about the body. And listen, I'm not decrying or depriving people of jogging or whatever it might be. Some of us could do with a little more of it ourselves.

I'm not taking that from you today. I don't have to tell you that. But here's what he says.

But godliness is profitable and all things having the promise of life that now is and of that which is to come. That's what is profitable, brethren and sisters, a profitable behavior. Paul writes to Timothy.

He said that one may know how one ought to behave himself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. As our dear sister sat in silence this morning as they are now. Do you know what they're doing in God's house? They're behaving themselves.

That's true behavior. Brethren rising one by one this morning and worshiping God in God's house. Do you know what they were doing? Behaving themselves.

That's right behavior for God's house. Brethren that aren't doing that and have a new exercise, maybe in that direction, are actually misbehaving in the house. Sometimes we think about behavior as bad acting, things that people will be spoken to about.

No. Proper behavior in God's house in that context is me seeking to function and behave as God would have me to. Profitable behavior.

Go in for it, dear Christians. Go in for it. The dividends, what it pays and what it will yield.

Not only now, but he says in the life that is to come, having this promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. What are the words that Moses way back in Deuteronomy 32 reminds those people as they're about to go into the land? He said, for this is your life, your life, make it your life, make God's assembly, make the things of God, brethren and sisters, your life and the reward and rewards are eternal. Amen.