Sometimes, we need to be reminded about what’s truly important.
I think a lot of my problems in my own psychology
come from protecting the wrong thing too much and
protecting the right thing not enough. I don’t
mind admitting that I’m defensive. I was telling
a story the other day. Somebody asked me, “Are you
confrontational?” I was like, “Let me tell you.”
This one guy one time was telling me, “Pastors
ought to this, and pastors ought to that,
and pastors ought to that.” The thing is he wasn’t
doing anything that he said pastors ought to do.
So, I said, “Hey, real quick, show me the
Scripture (this is my Bible; maybe you have a
different one) where it says there’s a different
standard for a pastor than a regular person.”
Don’t cheer for that. That’s stuff God needs to
get out of my heart. What’s wrong with y’all?
This is a confession, not a testimony.
But I’m defensive. I sometimes
protect my opinion, my preference.
Let me give you a Scripture Paul said. Remember,
Paul is writing this Scripture in 2 Timothy 2
at pretty much the time where his ministry is
about to close. It’s quite possibly right at the
same time after the shipwreck, but he’s writing
this letter to Timothy. This is why I told you to
protect the vessel. Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:20,
“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 honour, and some to dishonour.
If a man therefore purge himself
from these, he shall be a vessel
unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the
master’s use, and prepared unto every good
work.” If he purges himself from these, he
shall be a vessel God can use. I was excited…
Don’t worry about it, because
I have a case for my phone, so it’s
fine. Do you have a case for your phone?
I think the cockiest people in the
world don’t put a case on their phone.
“You mean you are that together
and that sure of yourself?”
Did you hear how they gasped when my phone flew
out of my hand? I practiced that 15 times to try
to make it believable, because I wanted to show
you that we have cases to protect our phones.
How much was your phone…$500,
$700, $300? We have a case for our
phone, which you can get another one of,
but they don’t make a case for your soul,
for your heart, for your faith, for
your expectation. You can still use a
phone with a cracked screen. It’ll still work.
When the Lord started speaking to
me about this message, he said,
“Tell them they are spending more time
protecting things that can be replaced…”
I want to use an example. Paul says to
Timothy, “These things.” “Protect yourself
from these things.” Do you know what the
things he mentions are? You can look it
up. He’s talking about false teaching. He said
it spreads like gangrene. That’s disgusting.
He said you have to really protect yourself from
those things. One thing he calls it is godless
chatter. See, this is the thing about
it. I didn’t know Paul had Twitter
until I read him say, “Protect
yourself from godless chatter.”
He said avoid… This is the same passage,
2 Timothy 2. Look it up later and check me
out. See if I’m telling you the truth.
It says, “Avoid stupid arguments.”
The reason I chose to go off Acts 28
today, talking about “Protect the vessel,”
is even though the boat that was
carrying Paul broke into pieces,
it wasn’t as important what was carrying
Paul as it was what Paul was carrying.
There are a couple of ships in the passage. One of
them is nautical. One of them does what boats do.
But the other vessel in the passage, of course,
is the apostle Paul, who was going to Rome
because he had a case (double meaning) to stand
before Caesar for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So, as he’s on his way to Rome, of course,
there’s a shipwreck. I’ve preached about
this before. It’s an amazing story. We don’t have
time for it today, but there’s something in this
passage for us to realize. There’s something
that happens after Paul survives the crash
that is even more important than
what caused the crash to begin with.
I spend a lot of my mental energy trying to
figure out why things are the way they are,
and a lot of times I can come to conclusions that
aren’t necessarily accurate. I’ve noticed this
about myself. A lot of times I connect things, and
I think the reason this happened is because that
happened. Now, I wouldn’t consider myself prone to
self-pity, necessarily, but I do have my moments.
Even Paul did. As a matter of fact,
when he was in the storm… Let me just
bring this up to refresh your memory. It became
apparent that there was going to be a crash.
He tells all of the people who are in
charge of the ship, the other prisoners,
in verse 21, “Men, you should have
taken my advice not to sail from Crete;
then you would have spared yourselves this
damage and loss. But now I urge you to keep
up your courage, because not one of you will
be lost; only the ship will be destroyed.”
Which vessel is God interested in
protecting? Read the passage again.
He says, “You have to keep your courage even
in the midst of really horrible conditions,
because the important vessel
isn’t the one that carried you.”
The most important vessel, or the most important
container isn’t something that carries you.
It is the heart God has given you, the calling,
the assignment, the gift, the ability, the
imagination God has given you to carry something
to the world. Now, we’re not all Paul, so we’re
not all carrying what he was carrying, but the
significance of this story would apply to anybody
in the room. I promise you there is something
you are carrying that only you can carry.
I don’t know if you see yourself this way
or not, but it’s like Paul knew, “Whatever
happens to the boat I’m in, there is something
in me that is more significant to God.”
So, whatever is breaking apart in your
life at any given point in time is not
as important as what God has put on the
inside of you, so protect the vessel.
Don’t put a case on your phone but then
use the same phone to expose your heart…
Do y’all want me to preach? I could read a
poem and go home. I already got the revelation.
As a matter of fact, please do not email
me about this. I barely even open emails,
so it would be pointless. I heard one person
one time who talked about how they eat clean,
eat clean, eat clean, and all of that.
Granted, I have my own certain way I eat, and
I am very, very picky, and I am very, very
disciplined in my own way, but the only thing
is I get to eat unlimited bacon on the eating
lifestyle I have chosen that God has given me and
foreordained through Dr. Atkins. Don’t email me.
I’m not going to read it. But the person who
was eating clean… They didn’t eat this. They
didn’t eat that. We went to the thing. They
had bean sprouts. That’s what I remember.
What I remember is they were saying all this
stuff. They were like, “Because if you eat this,
you get killed with that, and then if you
eat fish, then you have mercury poisoning,
and then if you don’t eat fish…” So I sat
there, and I thought, “Huh. This is funny.”
It was an example to me of you are so
careful about what you will put in your body…
And it’s great. Study it all. I
know; you know science. That’s great.
But it wasn’t coming from just a place
of wisdom. It was all fear based.
“I read this study, and I saw this, and I
Googled this disease, and I YouTubed that
disease,” and all this stuff. I thought, “It’s
funny, because you eat clean, but you think crap.”
This is what I thought. I didn’t say this.
You eat clean, but you think crap.
So you live long, but you hate life.
You are protecting the shed, but
you’re not maintaining the equipment.
You’re managing your profile, your image,
your appearance, this physical body. It’s going
to break. Take care of it, but the real vessel
has nothing to do with anything that can
be counted in calories or carbohydrates.
That’s why Paul says, “Let go of
the boat and keep up your courage.”
It’s okay. I have a case. It’s all right.
Then they get to the island, and Paul is like,
“I told you. I told you God was good.” “This is my
testimony!” He’s singing worship songs and stuff.
“Jireh!” He had the bootleg YouTube
version. He had learned it a long time ago.
But he said, “Here, let me help.” These islanders
are being nice, so he’s like, “I don’t want to
just sit over here and not help. If you’re nice
enough to build a fire, I’m nice enough to help.”
Just to read the Scripture again… He said,
“Here, let me help,” and when he was putting
the wood on the fire, a viper, driven out
by the heat, fastened itself on his hand.
Have you ever been trying to help somebody
and in the process of helping you got hurt?
This is one of the main things
you have to look out for.
I’ve been in the process before where I thought
I was doing something… It’s awesome, because
he’s only trying to be useful and he gets
bit by a snake. So, at this point, when I was
reading the Scripture, I had to stop and ask
the question, “Why did the snake bite Paul?”
I’m going to see what you think about it.
You’re not going to just sit there and make
me do all the work. Put it in the chat. Why did
the snake bite Paul? On three. One, two, three!
I don’t know what they’re saying online, but…
Are y’all speaking in tongues? Is this the tower
of Babel? What happened at Elevation Church?
“It was the Devil! That’s how the Devil
is. He’s always picking on Paul at his
weakest moment. He wants to take him out
so he can’t preach. This is the Devil!”
Right? “The Devil is the snake…Genesis 3,
the Serpent, the symbolism. Revelations!”
Maybe it was the Devil. A snake bite… I
guess that’s the Devil. “No, it was God.
It was God who let the snake bite Paul, because
everything happens for a reason.” People will say,
“That’s why you’re single: because the Lord is
preparing your ship in the harbor.” It’s like,
“Shut up! I want somebody to watch Netflix with.
Shut up!” “It was God who let that snake bite
Paul, because, well, then Paul got to show that
‘That snake can’t hurt me. God is greater than
the snake.’ Graves into gardens, you know. So
it was God.” But it’s not that deep, y’all.
It says it in the text. It’s crazy how many
somersaults we will do just to get around
what the text actually said. It says
the viper was driven out by the heat.
It was nothing but a natural
consequence of the fire.
But watch what everybody was so quick to
do. Watch what God wanted me to show you.
While Paul has a snake hanging from his hand…
This is unbelievable. I can’t believe this.
This reminds me of church people. Everybody
is standing around talking about why he has
a snake on his hand. Did you see it in the
text? These kinds of people get on my nerves.
“That’s why you’re going through that. If you
would have raised your kids on the books I read,
then your kids wouldn’t be struggling
with this.” “Well, when I raised my kids,
we had prayer times at 8:30 for Matthew 8:30.”
I don’t even know what Matthew 8:30 says.
“And we would sit around… If you would
train them up, that would have been…”
Now, it says the islanders
were kind. They built a fire.
These were not evil people, even
though they were strange people,
but something in even the nicest human
heart has a tendency to want to do this.
In the Scripture it says that while
a snake was hanging from Paul’s hand,
while a snake was hanging from the man of
God’s hand… This could have killed him. Verse
4. We would never get to verse 5 if Paul would
have listened to what they said in verse 4.
This could have killed Paul. This. “When the
islanders saw the snake, they said, ‘This man
must be a murderer.'” They are interpreting
his identity through the lens of an event.
“If this is happening, then
you must be…” “This man.”
The pointer finger. It’s like the
logo for a lot of Christianity.
Those people. That lifestyle.
“If this man was a good man, he
wouldn’t be going through this.”
“If you had not wasted that season of your life,
then God could have blessed you like that. If you
would have listened, if you would have been in
church, if you would have…” I never saw any power
released through a pointing finger. Personally,
I never saw it. When you read in the Bible,
you read a lot about the hand of God much more
than the finger of God. This kills. This heals.