All right, will you open your
Bibles back to Titus chapter 2? Titus chapter 2. Now the subject of this message
is found in verse 13. while we wait for the blessed
hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior,
Jesus Christ. But whenever we look at a verse
like that, it's important, if we want to understand it, it's
important that we see the context in which the writer wrote those
words. And if we go back to verse 11,
we'll see what it was inspired him to mention this blessed hope.
He says, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared
to all men. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness
and worldly passions and to live self-controlled upright and godly
lives in this present age. Now, it would do nearly every
church, ours included, because nobody's free of this particular
error, but it would do us good to learn
what it is that actually teaches a person to behave. Most people would say lay down
the law, but that's not what Paul said. The law will tell people what
they should do, but it says the grace of God that brings salvation
teaches us to say no. all ungodliness, worldly passions,
and so forth. Believers are not ruled by law. They're ruled by grace. They
are not governed by Moses. Paul said that the law was not
made for a righteous man, it's made for an unrighteous man.
And you know what believers are? They are righteous people. Say,
wait a minute. I'm a sinner." You say, we're
still sinners? Yeah. But we're righteous in
the sight of God because of what Christ has done. We who have
believed have been given a standing before God as one who is righteous. We are seated with Christ, says
Paul, in the heavenly places. Now why is Christ seated in the
heavenly places? Well, there's many reasons that
could be said, but one of them is this, he's a righteous man
and deserves to be there. And we who are in him are accounted
to be righteous like him and worthy to be there. And therefore, our conduct is
governed not by a legalistic fear of what lays ahead for us
if we do wrong. Our conduct is governed by the
grace that teaches us what glorious things await us through Christ. Spurgeon said, that the believer's
way of life begins where the legalist's way of life ends. He says, he went on to say, the
legalist works in order to be righteous in the sight of God. The believer starts with an understanding
that he's righteous in the sight of God. And therefore, he works,
he strives, he reaches for and longs for perfect conformity
to Christ. Unbelievers, and every unbeliever,
according to the Bible, every unbeliever is counted to be an
unrighteous person, and it doesn't matter whether They have been
what we would consider mildly unrighteous, basically decent
people in this world, or if they are, you know, serial killers. They all stand before God the
same as unrighteous and condemned. And everyone who believes is
in Christ and is accounted to be perfectly, flawlessly righteous
in the sight of God. And that's where the believer
starts. We're not striving to be righteous. We take it as a
matter of fact because God says in Christ we are. We don't deny
that we commit sin. We don't deny that if you were
to look at us in the flesh, in our natural selves, we're as
sinful as anybody else. But grace has taken us out of
the jurisdiction of the law, and it's under the law that sin
is discovered. He's taken us out of the jurisdiction
of law. He's put us under the jurisdiction
of grace. and their sins are covered, they
are atoned for. We've been redeemed and there
are none. We see them, but God does not. You notice this, when David prayed
his penitential prayer with regard to his sin of adultery and then
murder to cover it up. He said, my sins are ever before
me. He never did say, my sin is ever
before you. meaning God. Why? Because God
says, I have cast your sins behind my back. We see them. He doesn't. And it's the grace that has made
us that way that teaches us how to live. When believers rebel. That is when their flesh
seems to gain the day. You don't have to tell them that
they shouldn't be doing what they're doing. Why? Grace is already telling
them. You don't have to go over there
with a list of the Ten Commandments Say, God said thou shalt not
kill. That was the wrong thing to do. They already know. Even
if their murder only, and I use the word only in air quotes,
only rose as high as hate. Never took action on it. I remember
the first time I realized that was in me. I was mad at someone. And I thought, world would be
a better place without them in it. And right away, it dawned
on me what that meant. I mean, I wish that person was
dead. And if I could have done it and
got away with it. All what is in these minds. But that's the thing. Those under
the law can hate and never feel guilt, not the believer. For grace teaches him. Now what grace teaches us, we're
not necessarily that good at following, but we know it. We
know it. And so he says all of this, that
grace teaches us, and then he gives us, actually what you might consider
a means of living up to the instruction that the grace of God gives us.
Now, most of the time if you are in a church and they want
to teach on how to live and how to achieve a more godly life
or whatever word, holy life, righteous life, They're going
to speak about things like determination and setting goals and stuff like
this. Here's how the apostle says to
do it. Our translation is a little bit, I mean, it's okay, but it
kind of makes us miss this point because it says, the grace of
God teaches us to say no to ungodliness and all this, to live upright
and godly lives in this present age, looking to the blessed hope. How can you deny ungodliness? You cannot deny ungodliness by
saying, okay, today, no ungodliness. You couldn't do that as an unbeliever.
That's the only thing an unbeliever's got, is self-determination, and
we know how that works usually. And your self-determination ain't
gonna work any better because that's of the flesh. But here's
what enables us not only to hear what grace says, not only to
know what the grace of God has taught us, but to give us a desire
to live that way. Looking to that blessed hope. And what's that blessed hope?
The period of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, in glory. Now, the hope of the believer
can be described in many ways, but all of the things that the
Bible talks about the believer hoping for, they are realized
at the moment described in verse 13, the glorious appearing, the
glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a hope of righteousness.
When will we be righteous? I mean actually in our experience
righteous when Christ appears. We have a hope of eternal life.
When are we going to receive eternal life in the full experience
of it? When Christ returns. So that's
why he calls it the blessed hope. Blessed hope. There's a lot of
people, well everybody's got hope, but not all hopes are blessed. Any hope that you have that is
based upon what you do is a cursed hope. I remember talking to my uncle,
and I was, well, it had to be before, no, it probably was just
after Elvis Presley died, shortly after that. So we're talking
1977. And I was a young adult, and he was a pretty works-oriented
guy. And I think that he probably
thought he was doing a good job of it. But I'd mentioned something
about, well, I don't know why it came up. Where is Elvis? Did
he go to heaven or did he go to hell? Now, I've gotten to
where I don't even bother with that stuff anymore. I'm not the
judge. I'll leave that to God. But I
had said that my opinion was he probably was under the wrath
of God. And my uncle said, I don't know.
He bought his mom a house, and he gave Cadillacs to people. Now, he's a generation older
than me, and I was taught you don't smart off to your elders. But if he said that now, I'd
go, are you serious? A person with millions of dollars
buys his mom a house. Big deal. Gives away a few Cadillacs. You think that's gonna cover
his sin? Oh, what a cursed hope that would
be. People always have a hope for
their children. Doesn't matter what their kids are like. Well,
I know he's done some bad things, but he's got a good heart. No,
that's not true. We should be more inclined to
say, well, he's done some good things, but he's got a bad heart, because
everybody does by nature. There's only one blessed hope
and that's Christ. All other hopes are cursed. Your hope is cursed if your hope
is in this world. You say, I hope someday to be
a millionaire. If that's your hope, your hopes
are set pretty low. You say, okay, billionaire. No,
that's not what I'm talking about. I don't care how much money you're
talking about. If your hope is about gaining wealth, that's
a cursed hope. Why? Because you're either going
to lose your wealth, or your wealth is going to lose you. If God did give you wealth, you'd
either foolishly use it up, or when you died, you'd give it
up. Your wealth and you, whatever it is, is going to be separated.
cursed hope. Here's a blessed hope. Here's
what we look for. Here's what we long for. This
is the day we long for. We're looking to that blessed
hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior,
Jesus Christ. We long for Him to appear. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he
walked through those doors? Now that'd be something. I hear churches brag, well the
president came to our church, big deal. Big deal. Now I believe Christ is here,
but we can't see him. He's here, but he's not appearing.
Oh, when he appears. Occasionally we see that song,
and I shall see him face to face. Won't that be good? But it's more than this. It's
not just that he appears. It's his glorious appearing. Now why would Paul say glorious
appearing? Well, because the last time he
appeared on earth, it wasn't that glorious. Now, I say that. We look at it and it's glorious
because we glorify him for taking such an inglorious position in
order to save us. But as it is written in Isaiah
53, there is no majesty in him. that we should desire him. And
there was nothing about the Lord Jesus Christ that would attract
a natural person. He did not go around in a kingly
display. He was not pompous at all. He
didn't hold himself above others. He looked like other people. He looked like what the religious
uppity-ups of his day would have considered to be the trash of
society. And the last time they saw him,
he was hanging on a cross, cursed. That's not a very glorious appearance,
is it? In fact, it was such an awful
appearance that it says that his appearance was marred more
than any man, so much so you could hardly tell that it was
a human being. Here he said, Paul says, here's
our hope. He is coming again in glory. begrudge anybody God's salvation. That's why, one of the reasons
I do what I do. I preach the gospel in the hope
that God will use it to save some, and he has, for which I
am thankful. But when the Lord returns, I'm gonna say I told you so. I told you that that Jesus that
you worship isn't the real one. This glorious one whose very
glory terrifies you now. That's what I told you about,
but you wouldn't believe. And now he appears. And I won't
be saying it to vindicate me, but to vindicate him. You know, Doesn't it bother you
that the world can treat the Lord Jesus Christ with such contempt? I mean serious contempt. They
throw his name around like it's just the only time they ever
say it's when they're angry. They mock him. They mock them that believe in
him. They claim that he is not who
he claimed to be. Some even claim that he never
existed, that he's a fictional person created by the apostles. Oh, I want to see my Lord vindicated.
That'll do me good. I want to see every knee bow. And every tongue confess, mine
included, that he is Lord to the glory of the Father. And if I would think about that
more than I think about what I normally think about, I'd be
a happier man. And I would find it easier, if
that's the right way to put it, to live as grace teaches us to
live. the glorious appearing. Why will
it be glorious? Well, it'll be glorious because
of who he is. He's glorious in his person because
it says, we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing
of our great God. Now, if he'd have said, the glorious
appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, we who do believe in him would
have probably been satisfied with that. But Paul makes a point
of saying that this Jesus Christ is our God. Actually, some translations put
it this way, the glorious appearance of the great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ. Now, there are rules of Greek
grammar. Greek's what the New Testament
was originally written in, and some say the rules say that the
word our applies to both God and Savior. Both ways works. If what Paul
meant by this was saying the appearance of the great God and
our Savior, here's one thing we can draw from it. He's everybody's
God. But he's not everybody's savior.
He's the great God of everybody. Now, he's not the great God confessed
by everybody. There's lots of other gods that
people believe in. They profess to believe in this
God, worship this God, and whatnot. But there is only one God. So
it would be perfectly acceptable to say the glorious appearance
of the great God, the one and only, true God. And here's who
He is, our Savior, Jesus Christ. The Lord will return, and when
He does, everybody's going to know He's the great God. He's
their God, even though they wouldn't acknowledge it. But there will be some who can
say, He's my great Savior. Oh, what a person. How do you
combine the great God and Savior? To be a great God, you must be
just. But we're sinners. How can He
be a Savior to us if He is a just God? Doesn't He have to punish
our sin? Wouldn't he be unjust if he set
us free from our sin? Well, if he just simply did that,
yeah. And he would no longer be the great God. He'd be the untrustworthy God.
Because if a person is not just, they're not trustworthy. But
he is just. Well, then how can he be a savior?
Well, look at this. the glorious appearing of the
great God and our Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us
to redeem us from all wickedness and purify for himself a people
that are his very own eager to do what is good. I believe it's in the book of
Isaiah the Lord says that there is none like Him, a just God
and a Savior. And the only way that He is a
just God and a Savior is by Him taking on our inglorious form
and in that form giving Himself as an atoning,
redeeming sacrifice. He became as inglorious as a
human being can become. And all the while he's doing
it, he's the great God. But in that form, he bore our
sins in his body on the tree. Not only did he bear them as
simply having them laid upon him as though it were a weight
or burden, he suffered the penalty that comes for those who have
sinned. I made a point that believers
are righteous. And we are, but only in the sense
that that's how God perceives us, because of Christ. But when
the Lord Jesus Christ died, while he in his nature never changed,
he was still the one who did no sin, thought no sin, in him
was no sin. That's all true. And yet, from
the viewpoint of God, he was a sinner. Why? Because the sin
of God's people had been laid on him. He was covered up in
them. I said God doesn't see our sin.
There was a day he did see our sin. And when he saw it, he did everything
that a just God would do against that sin. But he didn't see it
on us. He saw it on Christ. And he did
to Christ what justice would require a God to do to us. He's a just God. And he satisfied
his justice in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ
is the great God. He is our great God who sacrificed
himself so that he might justly save
us from our sins. He is glorious in that He is
God. He is more glorious, if there's
a way to, if that's the right way to put it, that He took upon
our form. More glorious yet that in our
form He took upon Himself our sin. More glorious yet that He bore
the full weight and punishment of the sin, such that they were
put away, gone. Therefore, he raised from the
dead. He was no longer under the burden
of sin, because he paid for them all. More glorious yet, that
God said, today, you are my son. Sit here. Get my right hand.
Now I've said he's our God, and then I say God says to him, you're
my son. It's part of the mystery of our God. And I'm not going
to try to explain it, because you can't. But being at the right hand of
God, that's an indication of being in God's favor. He is right
now existing in unparalleled, unimaginable glory. John saw
a vision of him and fell down at his feet as a dead man. And
John was a believer. Such is the glory of the Lord
Jesus Christ at this present time that none can stand before
Him unless they stand by grace. And when He comes, that's how
the world's going to see Him. He's not going to be like that
fellow, he was an actor and a country music singer. I think
his last name was Weaver. But he had a song, Me and My
Friend Jesus. And I remember hearing it, I think he was on
Hee Haw, if you all are old enough to remember that show. And he
was singing Me and My Friend Jesus, and one of the lines,
I kid you not, this is what one of the lines went, Me and My
Friend Jesus, we got a lot of doubts. Really? You might, he
doesn't. He has no doubts whatsoever.
He has no failure, whatever. He is absolutely, he was absolutely
successful in everything he was sent to do. He is still successful
as the ruler of the universe. And when he comes back, he will
come back in that glory of the perfect God and perfect humanity
combined in a single person. Now, why is that a blessed hope
for us? Well, we could say it's our blessed
hope because that's going to be the end of our struggle with
sin and doubt. That'd be good. I'd love to not be tempted to
sin. I think it was Mark Twain said,
I can resist everything but temptation. I'd love not to be tempted by
it. I'd love that there was no part of me that loved sin. And that'll be true on that day. Not only will I have no love
for it, not only will my record be cleared of it, there won't
be any of it in me. I love, this is a glorious hope
to me, Because it means Actually seen
with my own eyes my Redeemer Job in the midst of his struggles
Said I know that my Redeemer lives and in the latter day He
will stand on the earth and I shall see him And I'll see him with
my own eyes I'm not just going to get a report about him. I'm
gonna see While he sat there scraping his boils I suffering
the loss of all his children and all of the wealth that he
gathered up and he was as low, just about as low as a man can
get. He said, I know my Redeemer lives.
I may not. In fact, I'd just as soon die.
Whether I live or whether I die, my Redeemer lives. And in the
end, He's the one that's going to be on top. Well, he already
is, but everybody will see that. But John describes to us the
great hope and why it's a great hope. He says in 1 John chapter 3,
let's turn over there, I was going to try to quote it off
the top of my head, and see what happened to the top of my head,
so I might not want to rely on it. Verse 2, Dear friends, now we
are children of God. This is 1 John chapter 3, verse
2. Dear friends, now we are the children of God. That's now.
Are you a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? You're one of God's
children. You always have been. You didn't become a child of
God by believing, but when you believed, it proved you were
one of His children. Now, we are the children of God.
And what we will be has not yet been made known. You say, well,
what are we going to be like when we're done with this life
and we go to be with Him? Don't know. And I think if God told us, we
wouldn't be able to understand it. But he goes on and says this,
but we know that when he appears, who? The great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ. When he appears, we shall be
like him. People think salvation's about
going to heaven. And of course, usually they're
thinking about heaven in terms of golden streets and pearly
gates and things like that. Salvation is not about going
to heaven. Salvation is about being made
like the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you don't want that, you
don't want God's salvation. Most people would like to think
of salvation as simply a means where they can go on pursuing
their ungodliness in the knowledge that they're never gonna have
to pay for it. In the end, they're gonna live in a mansion, you
know, just over the hilltop or whatever. I have a song that
you say, I've got a mansion just over the hilltop. No, heaven
is being, or salvation, is being made perfect like Christ himself. What a hope. Don't even know what it means,
but that tells me quite a hope. Because I can understand some
pretty great things, but I can't imagine what this will be. David
says such things are too wonderful to me. It's high. I can't attain
to it. That's kind of proof it's something
pretty special. Now friends, this business of salvation, it's
not based on anything we do, but if we keep our focus on that
salvation, fully realized that the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ, a salvation worked and accomplished by Christ, and freely
given to us, if we keep our minds on that, it will affect how we
live. It will affect how we live our
day-to-day lives. It will affect how we face trial. It will affect how we face success. It will affect everything. Looking
to that day, You say, well, when do you think it's going to be?
I haven't got a clue, and neither does anybody else. I'm telling
you, everybody loves a prophet. Trouble is, anybody that tells
you they think they know when Christ is coming back, people
will say, I know it's got to be soon. No, you don't. Because
he did not give us anything by which we could predict his arrival. He just said, you just be ready.
Because he said he's going to come like a thief in the night.
And what is that? Thief never gives you a warning, does he?
So our Lord's not going to give any heads up, you know. Sometime
in the next 10 years. Nope, don't know. Could be in
the next moments. Theoretically, could be a million
years from now. The Father's already set the day. But it's
the day we're looking for. Because it's the day when our
Lord appears in glory and we'll be like him and like Paul. We're in a race, grabbing air,
trying to grab that experience. May the grace of the Lord be
with you.