2 Timothy 2:21

A Vessel Unto Honor

A vessel unto honor... meet for the master's use. 2 Timothy 2:21.

Do you know what happens when somebody special is coming to pay you a visit, or when you are going to have a party at your house? I can tell you. Mother gets out all the best silver and the best dishes to honor your guest or guests. The best silver teapot, the best cream jug and sugar bowl are taken out of the bags in which they have been laid away, and they are polished up till they shine like mirrors and reflect you and everything else in the room. The best spoons and forks also come out of their cases, and they, too, get a “shine up,” and so do the company knives. Then mother takes a chair to the pantry and hands down the good dishes from the top shelf, and they are all washed or dusted. It is a lot of trouble, this “making ready,” but you don ' t grudge it. You are so anxious to honor your visitors and put before them the best you have.

But I hope that when you are trying to have things extra nice what happened to a certain missionary's wife in South Africa will never happen to you. The Governor of the Province was coming to dine, and she was naturally most anxious that everything should be right. She planned the dinner, and she lectured the black cook, and she made the black boys who were to wait go through a rehearsal of waiting at table. At the last minute she paid a flying visit to the kitchen to see if all was going well, and she noticed that the paper frill or collar for the pudding dish was not laid out in readiness. So she said to the cook, “Be sure not to forget the collar for the pudding.” Now, it was a pity she said “collar,” for poor black cookie thought she must mean something else, something specially grand in honor of the Governor. So he paid a hurried visit to his master's room. And lo and behold! half an hour later when the pudding appeared at table, the dish was surrounded by two of the missionary's white collars neatly pinned together!

Now, to come to our text. St. Paul was thinking when he wrote it of something rather like this honoring of a guest by setting before him the best dishes. He was thinking of God's children as dishes or vessels in a great house. He was a prisoner in Rome at the time, and very likely he was living not far from one of the palaces of the Caesars, where costly dishes of gold and silver were used at the Emperor's table.

But the apostle was thinking not only of the costly vessels, but of the plain useful vessels too those of wood and earthenware which did not appear on the Emperor's table but were kept in the kitchen. And St. Paul said God's children were like these two kinds of dishes. Some were plain humble earthenware sort of people, who would never make a show in the world, but would live a quiet life doing jobs that were not at all ornamental. Others were gold or silver, they had a fine education and a high position and perhaps a name that was famous. But, said St. Paul, though God's children resembled the different dishes so far, they were unlike them in one particular. Humble or exalted, poor or wealthy, earthenware or gold it mattered not each was a vessel unto honor, fit for the master's table and meet for the master's use if and this was the one condition if they were clean.

Now, this seems to me a very cheerful text, for it tells me that I don't need to be a great person in the world's eyes before I can serve Christ. He can use me though I be ever so humble. You see, we can't all be kings or dukes or governors or statesmen or M.P.'s. Lots of us have to be shopkeepers and engineers and masons and plumbers and carpenters and scavengers. It doesn't matter a bit to God whether we call our work a trade or a profession. All he asks is that we should be clean.

What do I mean by clean? I don't mean scrubbed and shining with soap, though that, of course, is important too. What I mean is that we should be morally clean straight and true and honorable, above all meanness, scorning all deceit, hating all lowness of whatsoever kind it be. “Death rather than dishonor,” should be our motto, and the earlier we begin to make it our watchword the better.

Two men who had been schoolfellows when they were boys met one day in a foreign land. They began chatting about the other boys who had sat at the same desk with them. “What's become of Brown?” said one. “Oh,” replied the other, “he's manager of a Bank in London now. One or two fellows have told me he is the most honorable man in the city straight as a die.” “I'm not surprised,” said the first man, “he was always so straight at school. And what about Smith?”

“Ah well, poor Smith! that's a sad business! He came a cropper, and made a horrible mess of life. Just before I left England he was sent to prison for ten years he was a lawyer, you remember for taking his clients' money.” "That's hard,” said the other, “but I don't wonder. He was a horrid little cheat at school.”

Boys yes, and girls too one of the teachers of Harrow used to say something like this to his boys the day they left school: “Whether you are very clever or very popular does not matter much. But if it is known by those about you that you would not for any consideration in the world depart by a hair's breadth from the strict line of honor, then, there is nothing nothing too hard for you in life.”

Yes, and I would add this there is no limit to how you may serve Christ if you refuse to do what is unkind or nasty or low or disgraceful. Honor yourselves, children. So doing you will honor God and become “a vessel unto honor... meet for the master's use.”