May 20, 2005

USELESS OR USEFUL?

2 Peter 1:8-9

We are taking a break from our series of messages in Ezra and Nehemiah today in light of the baptism service. I want to address my remarks today especially to those who have been baptized. But I also offer this message to all Christians in the service today, as a way of taking stock of your own Christian life, your spiritual journey to date.

I am going to read a couple of lists of words. I want you to listen to them carefully.

The first list: useless, ineffective, futile, worthless, inept, good for nothing, unproductive, sterile, barren, unprofitable.

The second list: useful, effective, productive, valuable, profitable, fruitful.

My question is this. For you that have just been baptized, which of those two lists would you like to have characterize your Christian life? I said in my introductory remarks before the baptism that baptism is not a graduation ceremony. It is an initiation rite. It doesn’t symbolize the end or conclusion of anything. It symbolized the beginning of new life in Christ. So, as those who have taken this step this morning to enact the beginning of your life in Christ, what do you want the rest of the journey to look like?

For the rest of us, some possibly quite new to the Christian life, others who have been Christians for years and years, how would your describe your Christian life so far? And what do you want the rest of it to look like?

I attended a school for missionary children in Kenya when I was growing up. Because the school was in a rather isolated setting, we developed our own slang, with a constantly shifting vocabulary of words and phrases that would take on a certain meaning and be used almost incessantly. Then suddenly a word or phrase would be dropped and replaced by something else. This changing vocabulary included the flavor of the month or the year in insult words that we would use to put each other down. I still remember one particular insult which was in vogue when I was in grade school (primary school). It was the word “useless.” We used it constantly. Anything we didn’t like, anyone we didn’t like, anyone we were mad at was subjected to the insult. “You’re useless!”

That word carries a peculiar sting, doesn’t it? Every human being is born with a deep need for significance and impact. It is a need to be useful, to have and to fulfill some vital purpose in life. What an awful thing it is to be labeled “useless, ineffective, futile, worthless.”

As a Christian, do you want to be useless or useful? I think all of us would answer, “Useful.” So what I want to do this morning is to share with you a Scripture that will ensure that we are never useless or unproductive as Christians. The passage is found in 2 Peter 1:8-9.

Let’s read verse 8: For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Here is the spiritual truth that I want all of us to take away from the message today: SPIRITUAL GROWTH ENSURES SPIRITUAL USEFULNESS. If we want to be spiritually useful, we have to grow spiritually. And if we want to continue to be spiritually useful, we have to continue growing. Because I think the reverse of this principle is also true: When a believer stops growing, he stops being useful.

But before we go too far, let’s define what we mean by spiritual growth. I don’t want to use my own definitions here, but follow closely what Peter himself is saying. Look at his words in the opening of this verse: For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure…

What qualities is he talking about? They are the qualities he has just listed in verses 5-7: For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control, and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure…

We don’t have time this morning to do a detailed study of each of the qualities in that list. But I do want to make a couple observations. The list starts with faith. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:8. That is where the Christian life begins; by trusting in Christ and his death on the cross for our sins. But that is a beginning point, not an ending point. Faith is believing in what Christ did for us. But now we are to supply something. We are to bring along diligent effort, hard work, intense commitment. That effort is to add to our faith the rest of the things on the list.

When we look at the list, we find that every word in the list describes a character quality. It’s easy, as Christians, to get hung up on activities and actions. We have a list of prescribed actions: go to church, read your Bible, witness, and so on. We also have a list of proscribed or forbidden actions: don’t go here, don’t go there, don’t hang around with those people, etc. Christians from different backgrounds and from different countries may have different lists. But every group of Christians has their list. The problem is that we can get completely hung up on these actions and activities, and completely forget what lies underneath it all. That the Christian life is not so much about what we do as it is about who we are. It’s about character. It’s about the inner life of the soul as it is expressed in outward actions.

Look again at this list: goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. That list makes up a wonderful description of Jesus himself, doesn’t it? The Christian life, Christian growth, is really about becoming like Christ, being molded into his image.

It’s also important to look at that phrase, “in increasing measure.” These qualities of Christian character are never static or absolute. We can never say: “I have enough goodness, or knowledge or self-control.” Christian maturity, Christian growth is not a place of arrival, but a direction of travel. Here is the precondition for spiritual usefulness: If you possess these qualities in increasing measure…Literally, “if these things are in you and increasing…”

SPIRITUAL GROWTH ENSURES SPIRITUAL USEFULNESS. That’s the promise of the word of God here: For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The word translated “ineffective” here is the Greek equivalent of our word “useless.” It comes from a word that refers to “any product whatever, anything accomplished by hand, art, industry or mind” and then adds a negative prefix. In other words, someone who is not producing anything useful at all – useless. No one wants to be useless. But the promise of God is that we don’t have to be. SPIRITUAL GROWTH ENSURES SPIRITUAL USEFULNESS. But remember the opposite is true as well. When a believer stops growing, he stops being effective. In other words, he becomes useless.

Peter also uses another word here. It is translated in the NIV as “unproductive.” KJV accurately translates the word “unfruitful.” The metaphor of fruitfulness and unfruitfulness is found throughout the Scripture, both Old and New Testament. The prophets spoke of Israel as a vineyard that produced only wild grapes. Jesus referred to himself as the vine and his followers as the branches. He promised us that if we, as the branches, abide in the vine, we shall bear fruit, much fruit, fruit that would last. Paul spoke of the fruit of the Spirit. He also spoke of his converts as the “fruit of his labor.” Jesus also told the parable of the sower and the seed, and spoke of seed that fell among thorns. This seed became “unfruitful.”

Using this metaphor, no one wants to be unfruitful. When we think of synonyms for this word, we come up with words like unproductive, sterile, barren, wasteland, desert. But we don’t have to be unfruitful. God’s promise here is that if these qualities are in us in increasing measure, they will keep us from being unfruitful. Altering our theme statement slightly, we can say: SPIRITUAL GROWTH ENSURES SPIRITUAL FRUITFULNESS. But remember the reverse is also true. When a believer stops growing spiritually, he becomes unfruitful.

I was a youth pastor once. Do you find that hard to believe? It was a long time ago. I realized just how long ago it was when we received a letter from one of the guys in the youth group saying that he was celebrating his 50^th birthday! There was a girl in the junior high youth group. She was smart. She was cute. She was vivacious and full of energy. And she was very, very short. She looked like she was about 7 or 8 years old, rather than 12 or 13. She had a growth problem. Her parents spent a lot of money taking her to different doctors to find out the problem. Finally they were able to diagnose what the problem was, and by taking certain growth hormones, she was able to grow. She was still short, but at least she fell within the normal range, rather than remaining child size.

Maybe you have a spiritual growth problem. If we can diagnose the reason for the growth problem, maybe we can get the growth process started again. Peter suggests such a diagnosis in verse 9: But if anyone does not have them (these character qualities) he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

Peter tells us that the believer who is not growing, who lacks these qualities of Christian character has two problems. He has an eye problem and a memory problem.

First of all, he is nearsighted and blind. At first that sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Actually Peter is using a graphic, if somewhat imprecise metaphor. He actually says: “he is blind, being nearsighted.” In other words, he is blind, but it is not a total blindness, but a particular kind of blindness. It is a kind of blindness that renders him unable to look ahead, to see distances, to see beyond his own hand, so to speak.

In what sense is the stagnating, non-growing Christian nearsighted? Let’s look at 2 Corinthians 4:17-18: For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

If we are nearsighted, we can only see what is temporary, what will yield immediate gratification. But faith is the ability to fix our eyes on what is eternal, what is in the distance. To see the eternal glory that awaits the growing, faithful believer.

It’s interesting, if we go back to the parable of the sower and the seed that fell among thorns The thorns that choke the seed and make it unfruitful are clearly identified by Jesus. I am quoting from Mark 4:18-19: Still others, like the seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word making it unfruitful. Notice how all these things are temporary things, things near at hand. That’s all they can see. They are nearsighted, and this peculiar kind of blindness renders them unfruitful.

Secondly, Peter tells us that the stagnant, non-growing Christian has a memory problem. He has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

How does such a failure of memory prevent spiritual growth? Peter doesn’t elaborate in this text, but let me suggest two ways. First of all, if we forget that we have been cleansed from past sins, we may well continue to participate in the same sins. In Romans 6:1-2, Paul tells us: What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Remembering that we have been forgiven does not lead us to continue in sin. It increases our desire to live new lives.

Peter uses a couple very graphic metaphors in 2 Peter 2:22: “A dog returns to its vomit” and “A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.” Both of these word pictures from nature are built on the forgetfulness of the animal. The dog returns. The sow goes back. Why? Because the dog has forgotten that he has been purged of that which made him sick, and the sow has forgotten that she has been cleansed from that which made her dirty. Let us not share their forgetfulness. We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

There is a second way in which such forgetfulness can hinder our spiritual growth.  We may have stopped participating in the same sins, and yet still be so weighted down with guilt feelings for the sins we have committed, we have the impression that we are useless to God; that he can never use someone as soiled and spoiled as we are. Romans 8:1 announces the good news. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Why not? Because we’ve been cleansed from our sins! And because of that cleansing, there is nothing to hold us back from spiritual growth, from being molded into the image and character of Jesus Christ.

So, if you are not growing in your walk with Christ, if the character qualities that marked his life are not in you and increasing, I would ask you: Is it an eye problem or a memory problem? Whatever it is, treat it with the truth of Scripture and he will restore your vision and your memory and you will be ready and excited to go on in spiritual growth toward maturity. And with that spiritual growth will come a return to spiritual usefulness.

There is a wonderful little story in the New Testament, related to us in the letter of Paul to Philemon. It is the story of a slave, who stole from his master and then ran away. In his flight he came to the city of Rome and there, by the sovereignty of God, he came in contact with the apostle Paul who was in prison there. Through this contact, he became a follower of Jesus. The letter to Philemon is a letter Paul wrote to Philemon, the slave’s master as he sent him back to make things right. It’s a delightful little letter. But I want to focus on a couple of verses.

In Philemon 8-9 we read: I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me.

What isn’t immediately apparent in the English is the play on the word meanings. The name Onesimus literally means “useful.” It was a great name, but he hadn’t exactly lived up to it, had he? Paul admits, “Formerly, he was useless to you.” But now things have changed. He’s come to Christ. He’s growing in his faith. His character is being transformed to become like that of Christ. The one was “formerly useless” has now become “useful.”

I don’t know about you, but I want to be useful. I want my life to count for something, not just for the short term, but for eternity. How can I be sure that will be true? By making effort to continue to grow spiritually and to become like Christ. For if I possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep me from being useless and unfruitful in my knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is a wonderful promise. Will you join me in that quest?