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Maintaining Spiritual Traction in a Shifting Culture
Part 8
Choose to be a Gracious Servant
2 Timothy 2:23-25
We are glad you are here today. If you would, please take out your Bibles now and turn in them, in the New Testament, to 2 Timothy. It is right behind 1 and 2 Thessalonians. If you don’t have a Bible with you, there should be one under a chair in front of you and you could take that Bible and turn in the back part to page 166 and you would be located at 2 Timothy.
You know, life is all about choices. We make hundreds of choices daily. For example, what are you going to do when you first wake up in the morning? That is a choice you have to make, are you going to brush your teeth or not? Are you going to comb your hair or are you going to pop on a hat? What are you going to eat or are you going to skip breakfast in the morning? Hundreds of choices that we make daily, but not all choices are equally significant. Some choices are low significance choices.
I remember one time I went to the store and I counted how many different types of toothpaste there were there, 36 different kinds of toothpaste. That is a choice we have to make, but it is a low significance choice.
Then, there are also high significance choices. For example, what vocation are you going to choose? Whom are you going to marry? What are the values you are going to build your life around? Those are high significance choices.
There is a saying that has been around for many, many years. It says this, “The choices you make, make you, thus, we should choose wisely.”
When we have come to the second chapter of 2 Timothy, Paul is talking about some choices we need to make if we want to steer clear of spiritual catastrophe. Choices we need to make if we want to experience spiritual steadfast in our Christian life. I just want to remind you, we have been looking at them, the first choice we saw is to Choose to be a Diligent Workman. We saw that in verses 14-19a.
Let your eyes go back to verse 15, where he says, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” We need to choose to be a diligent workman because there are people out there who distort the word of God. There are people out there, in the Christian community, who are divisive, who thrive on controversial questions, who crave word battles, who like to get into meaningless disputes that cause strife.
I’ve always been impressed by Proverbs, chapter 6. It says there are six things the Lord hates, actually seven, that He detests. You can go look at that list, but the last one in the list is someone who spreads strife among brothers, or as the New Living Translation says, “sows discord.” Or the NIV, “stirs up dissention among brothers.” God is turned off by that. So, we learned that we need to be diligent; we need to make every effort to handle the word of truth accurately.
A second choice we’ve already looked at is that, he says we need to Choose to be a Vessel of Honor if we are going to be spiritually steadfast. We saw that in verses 19b-22. Go back to the last part of verse 19, “Everyone who names the name of the Lord is to abstain from wickedness.” Literally, that word ‘abstain’ means ‘to stand off from.’
Bryan Chapell talks about what he calls the new legalism. The new legalism is something that is quite hip today. He says this new legalism is a caricature of the old legalism that you would often hear among the evangelicals, which would say, these are legalists speaking, ‘You are not really a Christian,’ is what the old legalism said, ‘if you smoke, or drink, or chew, or go with girls that do.’ Those of you who are a little older know you have heard that one before.
The new legalism seems to counter that by saying, ‘You’re not really a mature Christian if you don’t smoke or drink, or chew or go with girls that do.’ This new legalism seems to imply that you need to swear, you need to cuss a little bit, just to show that you really understand your freedom from the law.
But Paul says we are to be a vessel of honor, we are to be useful to the Master. We are to hunt down, with resolve, remember this, in verse 22, “righteousness and faith and love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.”
So, we are looking at all these choices. Today we are coming to choice number three. If we are going to be spiritually steadfast, we need to Choose to be a Gracious Servant and we see that in verses 23-26. If you have your Bibles open, I want to read those verses and invite you to follow along.
Paul says, in verse 23, “But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels. The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”
As we tackle this choice of Choosing to be a Gracious Servant, we have an outline to understand the verses we have just read. Here is the outline.
#1. We are going to look at the call to be a gracious servant.
#2. We are going to look at the context of that call.
#3. We are going to look at the characteristics of a gracious servant. We are going to see that there are five of them.
#4. We are going to look at the aim of being a gracious servant.
So, that is where we are going. It is early on a Sunday morning. Are you ready to travel? Here we go.
Let’s begin by looking at the call to be a gracious servant. It is right there in verse 23. He says we are to refuse something. This is a command in the original language. The NIV says, “Don’t have anything to do with…” We are to “refuse foolish and ignorant speculations.” This word ‘foolish’ is the word ‘moras’ in the original language. M-o-r-a-s. We get the word ‘moron’ from it. Those kind of speculations that are foolish and ignorant. Ignorant just means that someone is uninformed; there is really no true spiritual development behind their speculations. And, guess what? It produces quarrels. Literally, the picture is, it gives birth to quarrels. I think the New Living Translation translates it, “They start fights.”
We’ve already seen this background in this chapter, the idea of getting into word battles and getting into disputes about controversial questions. I think what Paul is saying is this, as you are tangling with all those petty issues, lost people are dying and spiritual people are not growing. This is the call to be a gracious servant.
I want you to go look at the first part of verse 24 with me please. Notice it says, “The Lord’s bond-servant must not be…” Let your eyes go to those words, “The Lord’s bond-servant.” Guess who that is? That is you, that is me. That is who we are. We are the Lord’s bond-servant. We are the Lord’s slave and we need to remember, truly, who we are. We are not just living our life the way we want to live our life. We owe it all to Him and we need to remind ourselves who we truly belong to. We are the Lord’s and we need to be a gracious servant.
I just want to remind you of the context of this choice that we are to make. If you just look at the overall context of what is happening, the primary context in which we are to be a gracious servant is to be inside of this spiritual church family. That is the primary context that we need to be thinking about. It is especially true for those of us who have spiritual leadership in various dimensions of the local church.
So, that is the primary context that he is talking about here, but I believe it also can apply, and should apply, in principle, to our personal family, not only our spiritual church family, but to our personal family. That is a secondary application of these verses. In other words, these verses apply to men, they apply to women, they apply to young people. Frankly, I think they especially apply to those of us who are husbands and dads. There are lessons for us all in these verses. I don’t want you to just think about someone who is a spiritual leader in the church alone; the principles apply to all of us.
Having laid all of that out so far, we’ve seen the call; we’ve seen the context, let’s just dive into these characteristics. What are the characteristics of a gracious servant? The first one is listed there in verse 24. It says, “The Lord’s bond-servant,” that is a description of you and me, “must not be quarrelsome.” A gracious servant is not quarrelsome.
This word just comes from the original language word that means to fight. In fact, it was used of hand-to-hand combat. Again, the context of all of this isn’t that we are punching one another out, it’s the war of words that we tend to have. We should not be quarrelsome. Not be quick to start fights, not be quick to accelerate fights. Remember what he said back up in verse 22? We are to pursue, chase after with vigor, righteousness, faith, love and what is that last one? Peace.
In other words, a gracious servant seeks to steer around strife when it is possible. A gracious servant is a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. You could just jot down 1 Peter 3:11. You can go back and look at it; the context of chapter 3 is the context of marriage. Very interesting passage, it says in those verses, if you want to inherit a blessing…anyone want to inherit a blessing? I’d like to. If anyone wants to love life…anyone want to love life? Yeah, I would like to do that. If anyone wants to see good days…anyone want to see good days rather than bad days? It says this, seek peace and pursue it. Make it our target and run after it with energy.
When you have, think about this, in a relationship if you have two troublemakers, what have you got? You’ve got a big problem, don’t you? When you have one troublemaker and one peacemaker, now you’ve got far less of a problem. But, what if this happens? You have two peacemakers. Problem solved when you have that situation.
So, if we are going to be a gracious servant, if we are going to choose to be a gracious servant, a gracious servant, number one, not quarrelsome.
Number two, look at that one. A gracious servant is kind to all. This word that is translated here ‘kind’ is also, sometimes, in the New Testament, translated ‘gentle.’ Isn’t that an interesting phrase? Gentle to all. In fact, in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 2, verse 7, Paul says to the believers, he says this is the way I related to you, I related to you in a gentle way. Same word. And then he uses this descriptive, “as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children.”
What does it mean when it says that as a gracious, gracious, gracious servant that we are kind to all? It means that we are not mean spirited; it means that we don’t put people down. It means that we don’t manhandle [handle roughly] people with truth. It means that we are not overbearing, we don’t browbeat [intimidate] people. When we are kind to all, that means we display good manners towards people.
When I was growing up, spiritually, back in the late sixties and the early seventies, there was a pastor and Bible teacher from Houston, Texas. His name was Lieutenant Colonel R.B. Thieme. Some of you may have heard of him. He was a very interesting dude. But, he was very harsh and very forceful and very cutting in the way he talked.
In the late sixties, this actually happened in his church down in Houston, he was preaching a Sunday morning sermon. You have to remember that in the sixties, a lot of us wanted to grow our hair longer and it was quite a radical departure for someone who grew up in the fifties. It seemed to be very rebellious. R.B. Thieme is actually preaching his message and he notices a young man sitting a little bit back toward the middle of the auditorium. He came in and sat down there and R.B. noticed that he had long hair. R.B. Thieme stopped his message from the pulpit, told that young man to stand up, told him he was violating scripture by having his hair long and he was not welcome in their church. That is not being kind, that is not being gentle with people.
To give you a little contrast on the other side, when I was in seminary Dr. Charles Ryrie, many of you have heard of Dr. Ryrie. He was one of the very first ones to put out a study Bible. He was one of my professors and I got to know him. I spent a little bit of time in his home. He was a gentle spoken man, the opposite personality to R.B. Thieme. He said to me one time, ‘When you deal with people, you need to be irenic with them. I-r-e-n-i-c. Which comes from a word in Greek, ultimately, that means ‘peace.’ Being irenic towards people means that you are peaceable towards them, that you stress harmony rather than being contentious. Someone who is irenic is not namby pamby [feeble, weak]. They’re not wishy washy [indecisive, without character]. They are just marked by kindness and fairness even when there is a disagreement.
What was interesting in the years after I left seminary, Dr. Ryrie came under fire. He became the target for some very unfair, inaccurate criticism of some of what he wrote and some of the theological positions he had taken. I even knew some of the people that were authoring these things. I actually went to them and I said, ‘Have you sat down with Dr. Ryrie and talked about what you are saying, about what he believes? Because I don’t think he believes that.’
‘No, no, no, but he wrote it in a book, in an article…you know…and we’ve created this whole big…it’s what he said’
I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to go talk to Dr. Ryrie about this myself.’ So, I went to him and I said, ‘Are you aware of what is being said about you and the way they presented your position?’
He said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘I’ll tell you, it hurts because they’ve misrepresented me.’
A gracious servant is kind to all. When I said some of this is for husbands and dads, is that a word that gets brought up as it describes you and your life? That you are kind to your kids? That you are kind to your wife? If we are going to be a gracious servant, we are kind, that means we don’t manhandle people, we don’t browbeat people, we are not mean spirited, we don’t put them down. A wife shouldn’t be receiving that kind of stuff from us. Our kids should not be receiving that kind of stuff from us.
If we are going to be spiritually steadfast, if we are going to steer clear of spiritual catastrophe, we need to choose to be a gracious servant. A gracious servant is not quarrelsome, kind to all, and then number three, the third characteristic, is that a gracious servant is able to teach. Kindness, by itself, is insufficient. This word that is translated here ‘able to teach’ is actually one word in the original language, it means being skillful in teaching. I think the New Living Translation translates it, “able to teach effectively.”
In the context of teaching truth to people, if we are going to teach effectively, first of all we must study hard. You can just look at Proverbs 2:1-11 later, it shows us the kind of effort we need to put forth to know the truth. You can’t teach what you don’t know so you have to do a little mining of understanding things. Then once we understand it, we need to communicate it clearly, we need to communicate it practically, we need to communicate it in a way that it shows how it applies to everyday thinking and everyday living. It needs to go beyond just teaching head knowledge, stuff that is up here [Bruce points to head]. It is why we constantly stress we need to be doers of the Word; it needs to filter down in our life. Our life should look like what the Word describes, not just that we can recite it in our head.
If we are going to be spiritually steadfast, we need to choose to be a gracious servant. That means not quarrelsome, kind to all, able to teach, and here comes characteristic number four, patient when wronged. That one is too convicting, let’s just skip that one, alright? If we’re just skipping this one over, let’s just move right around that characteristic. Nah, we can’t do that. A gracious servant is patient when wronged. The NIV says a gracious servant is not resentful, is not bitter. The New Living Translation says a gracious servant is patient with difficult people.
I know it may be a little revealing but, anybody here have difficult people in their life? Let me just see…3 of you? Okay, a few more of you do. Patient with difficult people, a gracious servant is patient when wronged. When your spouse degrades you…patient. When your co-worker criticizes you…patient.
A great principle to remember here when you are wronged is what I call the 50/20 principle. It comes from Genesis, chapter 50, verse 20. It is from the life of Joseph. Here is basically, the 50/20 principle, while they meant it for evil, God meant it for good. That ultimately means there are no accidents anywhere. Someone who embraces the 50/20 principle takes refuge in the sovereignty, in the providence, of God. Even when you are wronged, it is not an accident. God has a purpose for it in our life. Patient when wronged. Wow!
Then there is a fifth characteristic of being a gracious servant, that is number five, a gracious servant corrects with gentleness. You can just write down, if you are taking notes, the word ‘meekness’ because it is that word that we have seen before in the Bible, sometimes translated ‘meekness,’ sometimes translated ‘gentleness.’ It is used to describe Jesus Himself. What a surprise that we should be like Jesus.
Gentleness, meekness, is one of the fruits of the Spirit also. As we rely on the Spirit that should be growing in our life. But, meekness is a funny word, meekness doesn’t mean weakness. When we respond with meekness, or gentleness, here is what we are doing, we are responding at the right time, in the right measure, and for the right reason. Very important principles, at the right time, in the right measure, and for the right reason. Someone who is correcting with gentleness does that tactfully and humbly.
I remember a time when I violated this principle. In fact, you know, I can still feel it. I am going to go to my grave still feeling it. I can remember the room that it happened in so utterly clearly in my mind. My son, Kyle, was about five years old and I had told him to do something. We are on vacation when this is happening, too. He said something I didn’t appreciate back to me. I reached down and I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and lifted him up in the air and I kind of shook him a little bit. ‘Don’t you…..’ Now, if you know my son, that is impossible for me to do today, at 6 foot 3 inches and 230 pounds. No way that is happening. Was that correcting with gentleness? Was that at the right time, in the right measure, for the right reason? No, no, no. Not at all. I was not being a gracious servant to my son at that time.
Notice the aim of all of this, the aim of being a gracious servant, we see that in the last part of verse 25 and verse 26. “With gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance.” See, ultimately, the response is between them and God. Did you catch that? It is never about out arguing people. It is never about bludgeoning people with the Bible. It is never about bullying anybody. “If perhaps, (somehow) God might grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth.”
It is interesting how often this happens, and I am around a lot of people here who are married and then I am involved on weekends from time to time at Weekend to Remember marriage conferences, and it is interesting how often husbands will tell their wives, ‘If you are not submitting to me, you are not doing such and such…” and how often the wives will say to their husbands, ‘You’re not loving me like Christ loved the church and so forth and so forth.”
You know, last time I checked my Bible those directives were to the husband and to the wife. He doesn’t say, ‘Husbands, tell your wives where they fall short. And wives, tell your husbands where they fall short.’ It doesn’t say that. Husbands are do to such and such, wives are to have this sort of response. Because, the aim is, perhaps God might grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.
I want you to just jot down a passage, it is from the book of Hebrews, chapter 5, verse 11, it goes through chapter 6, verse 1, and then you can go down to verses 9-12. What you see is, the author to the Hebrews does this very thing with a group of people. If you want to see how the style of how it is to be done, it is a great illustration of doing this with the aim that perhaps God might grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, hoping that the other individual, instead of rationalizing, would realize they are headed the wrong way. Instead of making excuses, the aim is that they might agree with God and do a 180 degree turn from where they are.
“If perhaps God might grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses.” Literally, in the original language, that they might sober up. It doesn’t mean that they are drunk, just that they need to come out of their spiritual stupor, right?
“That they may come to their senses and escape from the snare, (the trap), of the devil.” He, men and women, is the ultimate enemy. He is the ultimate enemy in every potential conflict.
“That they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.” If we are not making the right choices, guess what? We become pawns in Satan’s strategy. You do remember that he has a strategy, right? He has schemes, he has plans. You know what his strategy is, what his goals are? He wants to undermine the church. If we haven’t awakened to that, I’m telling you, that is his every hour goal. He does not want a local church being effective in its community. He will do anything he can to undermine the church.
His hourly goal is to undermine your marriage and undermine my marriage and undermine your family and undermine my family. He never gives up. It is always what he is about and he wants to undermine your individual spiritual life and my individual spiritual life. He is thinking about that every single day. That is why, ultimately, it is a spiritual battle living our life. It is why, in Ephesians 6, it says we wrestle not, we are not in a wrestling match, really with flesh and blood, with people, whether it is people in our family or people at work or people in our neighborhood or people in our church. It is a spiritual battle and guess what? A spiritual battle takes a spiritual response.
So, it is “with gentleness, correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will,” which is to undermine everything. Everything.
If we are going to experience spiritual steadfastness in our life, Paul says, if we want to steer clear of spiritual catastrophe, who wants to hit a spiritual wall? One choice we must make is choose to be a gracious servant. The choices we make, the choices you make, will make you, therefore choose wisely.
I want to talk very briefly, and then we are going to close our time, by discussing some life response we can have. Here is one I am going to suggest we all do. That is a prayerful, personal evaluation on where I stand in terms of being a gracious servant.
We have looked at these five characteristics:
A gracious servant is not quarrelsome
Kind to all
Able to teach
Patient when wronged
Corrects with gentleness
There is the description for us. What we need to do is, evaluate ourselves in five spheres. This is when you might write some extra notes down.
Am I a gracious servant with my friends? Am I a gracious servant in my family? Am I a gracious servant in my marriage? Am I a gracious servant on the job? Am I a gracious servant at church?
Get the idea? Five characteristics, looking at five spheres, friends, family, marriage, job, and church. Then, here is what we do. We ask ourselves, as we evaluate three questions.
Question number one. Where do I need to grow the most?
As we are doing a personal evaluation, the second question is, have a I been guilty of rationalizing and making excuses? ‘Yes, but you don’t know…but…’
Then, the third question is, what do I need to repent of or repent from? By the way, you do remember that repent basically means a change of mind that leads to a change of action in our life.
So, we are going to take five characteristics, evaluate the five spheres, friends, family, marriage, job and church. Where do I need to grow most? Have I been guilty of rationalizing and making excuses? What do I need to repent of? What change of mind do I need to make that leads to a change of action?
Let’s pray together. Father, we just thank You for the word of God. It absolutely steamrolls me, Lord. How incredible this book is, how pertinent it is, how much it just simply brings me under conviction. May we make the right choices because choices are going to make us, in terms of the kind of life that we live on this planet, but ultimately we are doing all of this, not so we just have an easier life or a better life, or a smoother life, we are doing this because we want to reflect Christ to our spouse, to our family, to our friends, to our co-workers, to our community. Because we have a great God. We pray these things in His name. Amen.
Questions for Reflection: (week eight)
–Name 7 examples of low significance choices we might make in a week.
Name 7 examples of high significance choices we might make in a lifetime.
–“The choices you make, make you” Share a personal example of how this has been true in your life.
–Have you observed examples of what Bryan Chapell has called “The New Legalism?”…where people seem to imply that drinking, coarse talk, watching questionable movies, or other external behavior is a sign of spirituality? Elaborate.
–Paul says we can be described as “The Lord’s bondservant.” How might your life look differently if that was your daily mindset?
–Give specific examples of how marriages would look differently if both partners were committed to “Seek peace and pursue it” (1 Peter 3:11)
–In 1 Thessalonians 2:7 Paul said he related to the people like a nursing mother tenderly cares for her children. Is this really possible for a guy? What might it look like practically?
–Have you known Christian leaders like R.B. Thieme? Like Charles Ryrie? To which style are naturally drawn?
–Cite some examples from your life where the 50-20 principle (from Genesis 50:20) would have made a big difference in your outlook.
–Do you know of some folks who appear to be caught “in the snare of the devil” who have “been held captive to do his will?” Without giving their names (only their first initial), take time to pray for them.
–What arena (friends, family, marriage, job, church) gives you the greatest challenge when it comes to living the life of a gracious servant?