Thank you for this privilege
and opportunity. Let us open up to Titus chapter
three. Titus three. And we'll start
reading in verse one, I want to take my text starting from
verse three, but let's let's read for a little bit of context.
Titus three, one through seven. Paul tells Titus, put them in
mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates,
to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man. to be
no brawlers but gentle showing all meekness unto all men for
we ourselves also were sometimes foolish disobedient deceived
serving diverse lusts and pleasures living in malice and envy hateful
and hating one another but After that the kindness and love of
God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the
washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, which
he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that
being justified by his grace we should be made heirs according
to the hope of eternal life. What a wonderful passage of scripture
is this. I want to marvel with you tonight
about grace, about grace, about the Lord's calling us out of
the dark night of the soul, the delusion and the death that we
were living in under that hard, evil taskmaster. that we lived
under. I'm talking about the enemy of
our souls, the devil that we lived under, who had usurped
authority over us, who had taken us captive, the enemy of our
souls. What a hopeless condition that
he had us in, described in this passage. Then look at our rescue
when our true father shone his light into our hearts. by the
Holy Spirit, by His marvelous grace. And so first of all, I
want to say our rescue where the Lord saved us has nothing
to do with our merit or condition. We could call this our ruin or
our rout. Our rescue has nothing to do
with our merit or our condition. Let's look at verse five. Verse
five, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according
to His mercy He saves us, not by works of righteousness which
we have done, as Romans 9 says, not of him who wills or of him
who runs. The Bible teaches the total depravity
of man, the total depravity of man, the fact that there's not
one area of goodness that would affect our salvation, that would
cause God's attention. The world criticizes that word
depravity. Many people criticize that. It does not mean that we are
as bad as we possibly could be. And the world sees moral goodness
in man. Thank God for his restraining
and his keeping grace because we could be worse, much worse
off in moral evil. Total depravity means total inability. There's not one part of the soul
unaffected by the fall of man, not one area in our soul where
we could call out to God as some called an island of righteousness
unaffected by the fall, where we could call out to God and
we could seek God. None seeks God, the Bible says. When Adam fell and deliberately
disobeyed God in the garden, we all fell in Adam. We were
thoroughly corrupted. Romans brings that out, and it
quotes from Psalms. It quotes from Psalms. It says
that it's written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There
is none who understands. There is none who seeks after
God. They're all going out of the
way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that
doeth good. No, not one. Not one. whose mouth, it goes on to say,
whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Feet are swift
to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in
their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. No fear
of God, it says, there is no fear of God before their eyes. And we see the same fruit of
our former conduct in Titus here, 3, 3. Look in Titus 3, verse
3. For we ourselves were also sometimes foolish, disobedient,
deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice
and envy, hateful and hating one another. I can remember that.
I remember that in my life. And I know you do too. The fact
that the word teaches the spiritual death of the soul. That's what
we're talking about. We're talking about spiritual
death, spiritual separation from God. Death in the Bible is always
separation. And spiritual death is the soul is separated from
God. He said in Isaiah 59, your sins
have cut you off from God. And so, the Bible is very clear
about that in Ephesians 2, where it says, And you hath he quickened,
or made alive, who were dead in trespasses and in sins. Who were dead. We were dead because
we all sinned in Adam. When Adam sinned, we all sinned.
God imputed Adam's disobedience on all of his posterity. Also,
Adam had a son in his own image, in that fallen image, didn't
he? and that spiritual fruit was made manifested in that fallen
world. David wrote in Psalm 51, Behold,
I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive
me. We were born in sin. Paul says
in Romans 8 to be carnally minded is death because the carnal mind
is enmity against God. And it says it is not subject
to the law of God, neither indeed can be. There's no possibility
that the carnal mind can please God. It says, they that are in
the flesh cannot please God. Period. That's just the assessment
of the human soul of man apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. And
the consequence of this death, the natural man does not perceive
the things that are the Spirit of God, as Corinthians says. And because for him there are
foolishness due to his spiritual death. It describes there, nor
can he understand them. And why is that? Because they
have to be discerned spiritually. And man is spiritually dead.
There's no discernment of man. What man needs is life of the
spirit. What man needs is new life. What
man needs is a resurrection. He needs regeneration. He needs
a new person. He needs to be renewed in his
spirit. The Bible also says here in our
text, it says we were deceived. here in verse three. Serving
diverse, sometimes foolish, disobedient, in verse three. Deceived, serving
diverse lusts and pleasures, or various lusts and pleasures.
Deceived requires a deceiver, and we know who that is. We're
under bondage of Satan. Ephesians 2.2 talks about that.
When you were once walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh, in the Sons of Disobedience. Worketh means
that word is energizing. He causes them in that bondage
to lust after a multitude of things that oppose God. It can be a thousand things,
but something that takes your attention away from your spiritual
need. That's what the devil wants to
do. Spiritual blindness. The Bible
says in another place, in whom the God of this world has blinded
the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious
gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto
them. You see, that's his goal. He
doesn't want the gospel, the truth of the gospel to penetrate
your heart, so he keeps you deceived into believing, into wanting
or lusting after something else other than God. And he has reached
his goal if the gospel does not shine into your heart. That's
what his goal is. The enemy guards his court well
until one stronger than him comes, the Lord Jesus Christ, to bind
him. Paul says in 2 Timothy 2, 25
and 26 that God comes and grants repentance. He gives a person
repentance through His grace. It says, if God perventually
will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth
and they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil
who are taken captive by him at his will or to do his will. Without this, man goes on in
his religiosity, his carnal thoughts of God. Man, by nature, worships
something. Something is his God, his idol.
Our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, you worship what you do
not know. And Paul, standing in the midst
of Mars Hill in Acts 17, he said, you men of Athens, I perceive
that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I pass
by, I beheld your devotions. I found an altar with this inscription. to the unknown God, whom therefore
he ignorantly worshiped, that is mankind. ignorantly worshiping
a God that he's built in his mind that is not the true God.
Man has no problem accepting a God who is sovereign in acts
of creation and providence, yet even complaining when things
happen that he can't understand, it doesn't tie in with his fables
of a benign God giving blessings to all the world. And he cannot
bear the knowledge of the true and living God who's holy and
will not make exception for sinners. And He's sovereign in all things.
He's sovereign in providence, He's sovereign in blessings,
He's sovereign in calamity. And He's sovereign in including,
He's sovereign in salvation of the people that He has chosen
before time began. Man thinks that God can be pleased
by religious deeds, and that they will balance out his sins
one day in the judgment. I hear it all the time. If someone
says, oh, I don't need what you're talking about or what you're
passing out. We were practicing. They would say, or I go to church,
I give to missions, or I have my name on a church roll, or
I've been baptized. That's precisely the problem.
Isaiah 64 describes this. He says, all of our righteous
deeds are as filthy rags before God. Notice he's saying our righteous
deeds, our religious deeds are as filthy rags before God. We
all do fade as a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have
taken us away. He just paints that picture of
the wind coming and all our deeds are like dead leaves on the ground
and the wind comes and just takes them away because we cannot please
God. Not only that, there's another
deception of human religion, even among those who profess
the Christian faith, and man wants to invent his own religion
in which God wants to save everyone, but he's powerless to save anyone
without man's permission. That God with a little g does
not exist. I've even heard from a radio
preacher the idea that God who forces Himself against my will
is not a God of love, but He's a violator. And that there are
those others that they claim that we say that He holds back
from coming and that would come to faith in Him. The Bible says
none seek after God. None seek after God. I like that
hymn that says, My Lord, I did not choose You. Fold I could
never be. My heart would still refuse you
had you not chosen me. We love him because he first
loved us. We don't seek God, he seeks us. He seeks us. And so man goes
on in blindness, deadness of soul, separated from God, deceived
in his heart, energized by the wicked one and running away from
his only savior as fast as he can go until God seizes him. I think of that That time when
I saw that young man, that young child running as far as he could
for that street out there until his dad run faster than him and
grabbed him and got a hold of him. That's us running from God
as far and fast as we can until God gets a hold of us. And in
our deadness of soul, running from God. And so let's look at
the rescue. Let's look at the rescue. Titus
3, 4. Titus 3, 4. But after that, the kindness and love of God
our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness,
which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us by
the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. First, the effect, and then the
cause of that, of the rescue. The effect is new life from the
dead. Regeneration, the washing of
regeneration, resurrection from the dead. Let's look at Ephesians
1, Ephesians 1 verse 19. This is part of Paul's prayer
that he wants them to understand. And I don't want to read that
whole prayer, but look in verse 19, where he says he wants them
to know what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us
who believe according to the working of his mighty power,
which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and
set him at his own right hand in heavenly places. Isn't that
beautiful? His power worked in us who believe
according to the working of his mighty power, the same power
that he used. He's comparing that to that power
that he used when raising Christ from the dead only existed, only
operating on our soul in a spiritual realm, raising us from the dead. The working of his mighty power,
which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead.
That's regeneration. The washing is a renewing according
to the covenant of grace. Look at Ezekiel 36. Ezekiel 36. It's a washing of regeneration
by the Holy Ghost, our text says. And that referred to the new
covenant blessing of the covenant of grace here where it says in
Ezekiel 36, 25. Ezekiel 36, 25. Then I will sprinkle clean water
upon you and you shall be clean from all your filthiness and
from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart will I give
you and a new spirit will I put within you and I will take out
the stony heart of your flesh. I will give you a heart of flesh.
I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statues
and you shall keep my judgments and do them. What a wonderful
passage it is. That washing and renewing of
the Holy Spirit, that new spirit that He put within us according
to this passage here and according to our passage is the washing
of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit where the
Lord said you must be born again or you cannot see the Kingdom
of God. The Spirit moves where it lists,
where it wants to, and we see the results of the moving, but
we don't know where it's coming and where it's going. It's a
sovereign work of God, the moving of the Holy Spirit in regeneration. It was done by the Spirit of
God when God called us out of darkness to His marvelous light
in 1 Peter, when He called us out of darkness to His marvelous
light. And it happened when the kindness
and love of God, our Savior toward men appeared. It happened, as
in the book of Titus says, after that, the kindness and love of
the Lord appeared. Look what he says here in verse
four. After that, the kindness and
love of God, our Savior toward men appeared. And he goes on
to talk about the regeneration. That's the loving kindness and
the tender mercy where Jeremiah says, I've loved you with an
everlasting love. And therefore, with loving kindness,
I've drawn thee with loving kindness. That's the kindness and tender
mercy of God. But God, who is rich in mercy,
Ephesians 2 says, He's rich in mercy for His great love for
which He loved us. What good news when the love
of God appeared, manifested in His holy word, declared and written
down by Moses and the prophets and the Psalms, yet this love
was manifested in eternity past according to God's own plan and
not according to what He saw in us. God bases His love upon
His purpose to love and His eternal covenant that's expressed to
the fathers in Deuteronomy 7. Look at Deuteronomy 7, verse
7. Deuteronomy 7, verse 7. He bases
his motivation to love on his love. I loved you because I loved
you, he says. This is Deuteronomy 7, verse
7 and verse 8. The Lord did not set his love
upon you nor choose you because you were more in number than
any people for you were fewest of all people. But because the
Lord loved you, it's like saying, because why did I love you? Because I loved you. I purpose
to love you. And he goes, because the Lord
loved you and because he would keep his oath, which he has sworn
to your fathers, that's the covenant, that the Lord brought you out
with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondman
and the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. All that that passage
will preach because that's just the same thing we're talking
about, how we were brought out of bondage to our spiritual enemy. So God bases his love upon his
purpose to love, upon his covenant. God gave us mercy when he loved
us in that covenant of grace, our covenant of peace promised
in old eternity. I like Isaiah 54 10, just write
that down. We don't have time to turn there,
but he says, for the mountains shall depart and the hills shall
be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee. Neither
shall the covenant of my peace. Be removed, saith the Lord that
hath mercy on thee. You see the parallel there? It's
beautiful because it says, I will not take out my covenant of peace. I'll not take it away, says the
Lord who had mercy on thee. And our writer, the Apostle Paul,
put it this way in Titus 1. Look back in Titus 1 if you don't
mind going back close to our text. Titus 1, it's so close. where he says in Titus 1, verse
1, Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according
to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth,
which is after godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God,
that cannot lie, promised before the world began. He promised
this before the world began. Paul's revealing this to us here. And Peter put it this way, elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through the
sanctification of the spirit and obedience of the sprinkling
of blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. God gave us mercy in Christ Jesus
according to His own purpose and grace. When Peter says foreknowledge,
that's love in eternity past. He set His love upon us. That
is not He's looking ahead to see what's going to happen. That
word no means to love. He says, you only have I known
among all the nations of the world. That's love in eternity
past. Ephesians 3 11 also says according to the eternal purpose
which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord this is where love and
mercy of God appeared in old eternity as we learn in from
the scriptures as God revealed the mystery of it. In the covenant
of grace, we were given to our Lord Jesus when he became the
God-man mediator and the surety of the covenant. A surety is
the one who did everything for those in the covenant. Those
he undertook to save, he saved completely. He died in our place
because we had broken God's laws and he became guilty in our stead. just as if He had broken them,
although He was completely innocent and just. 2 Corinthians 5.21,
if you want to write that down, it says, He was made sin for
us, He who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. And so, He became guilty just
as if He had broken all God's laws, although completely innocent
and just. And in our place, he worked out
an eternal righteousness as a man. He became for the lost sheep
their surety, and he will bring everyone back and set them before
the Father. If he could not bring all of
his sheep back and set them before the Father in eternity, then
he would have failed. And I'm thankful for that in
Isaiah 42, he shall not fail. He shall not fail. He would bear
the blame as a surety. And not only that, he's a surety
and he did everything for us. He was also a mediator. He made
peace between God and man. Look at our text in verse six
and seven. Verse six and seven, Titus three. which he shed on us abundantly
through Jesus Christ our Savior. That being justified by his grace,
we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Heirs according to the hope of
eternal life. This is where the kindness and
love of God appeared in Jesus Christ. the kindness and love
appeared in Jesus Christ. It says, for there is one God
and there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus
who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time. All those he came to save have
been ransomed and bought with a price. I like what Isaiah 53
says, it says, By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify
many, for he shall bear their iniquities. Justifying them,
declaring them righteous, one part is on the basis that he
bore our iniquities on the cross. And now God is a God of peace. God is a God of peace. Now the
God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus,
that great shepherd of the sheep. through the blood of the everlasting
covenant. You see, I was guilty and condemned
under the law that all my life I've broken, but he established
a perfect righteousness for me as a man. He worked that righteousness
out as a man, and he gives it to me. I like Daniel chapter
nine, verse 24, Daniel 9, 24. If you could flip over there
real quickly, Daniel 9, 24. the prophecy of the coming Messiah
in the book of Daniel, the Lord Jesus Christ who came. And it was foretold in Daniel
9, 24, it says, 70 weeks are determined upon thy people and
upon thy holy city to finish the transgression and make an
end of sin and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in
an everlasting righteousness. and to seal up the vision and
prophecy and anoint the most holy. The prophecy to make an
end of sin, to make reconciliation for iniquity. That's what the
Lord did. And to bring in and everlasting righteousness. And
that's mine. That's my robe of righteousness
that he gives me. And he gives you that he earned
as a man recounted righteousness, recrowned righteous, not only
because he died for our sins, every one of them, but he gives
us a justifying righteousness, a perfect righteousness. Man's
problem is the righteousness that he tries to earn as a lost
man will never allow him to entrance into God. But those that He calls
out of darkness to His marvelous light, He grants them a perfect
righteousness and accounts them righteous. in the courtroom of
God. They're counted righteous with
the righteousness of Christ, with the righteousness of Christ.
And so, Isaiah 42, the Lord was well pleased for His righteousness
sake. He will magnify the law and make it honorable. Now for
His own people, His sheep, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone who believes. You see, because he made the
law honorable. He put himself under the law.
He magnified the law and showed it's impossible to keep because
you can break the law in your mind and in your heart. And you see, he showed that it
was impossible to keep, but he kept it completely for us. He
magnified it, made it honorable, and he pleased God for his righteousness
sake. Oh my, and he's the end of the
law for righteousness. The law of Moses only condemned
us. It showed how short that we fall
from the glory of God revealed in his holy standard. Now with
Christ's robe of righteousness, I'm justified. Isaiah puts it
this way, I'll greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be
joyful in my God for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation.
He has covered me. in the robe of his righteousness.
That's how we stand today. Covered in the robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride
adorneth herself with her jewels. That's Isaiah 61 10. What did our Lord do as a mediator
of the covenant? He ransomed and reconciled us
to God. He justified us. He justified
us by His grace here in our passage in verse seven, being justified
by His grace. We should be made heirs according
to the hope of eternal life, not by works, by grace. We're
justified also by His blood, it says in Romans 5, 9. Therefore,
being justified by His blood, it says, we're saved from God's
wrath through Him. Justified by His blood. We're
justified by His righteousness imputed unto us, Romans 4, verse
24. God is the one who justifies, the Bible says in Romans 3.26
and Romans 8.30, God justifies us. We're justified by faith
without deeds in Romans 3. That justifying righteousness
is imputed or accounted to us, accounted to us. So finally,
I want to close with this. Our text brings out the work
of God in the glory of the Trinity, the glory of all three persons
here, because the love of God appeared revealed to us through
preaching in Titus 3 verse 4 it says, after that the kindness
and love of God our Savior appeared to us, the love of God appeared,
revealed to us through the preaching of the gospel, we found out that
God planned it and predestined it, that he set his love on us
from old eternity, as the Puritans call it, old eternity, eternity
past, We find that out in Titus 1, that He promised it in eternity
past, God planned it, God the Father. The Son purchased it
in 6 and 7 here, we see this in 6 and 7, being justified by
His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of
eternal life. And the Spirit applied it through the regeneration
and renewing by the Holy Spirit. up here in 5, not by works, but
according to His mercy, saved us by the washing of regeneration
and renewing of the Holy Spirit. He created that new man. He saved
us by regeneration, that new birth when the Spirit of God,
using the Word of God, as Peter states, the incorruptible seed
through the gospel preaching, preaching of the gospel through
the Word of God. And so preaching is essential in the book of Titus. You see that in all three chapters,
how it's essential. But I'm so thankful that God
crossed our path. We're the preacher of the gospel.
And I'm so glad that it's clear in God's word. It's written in
God's word. We trip over it until we begin
to see it on every page. We see it on every page of the
scriptures. When the Lord opens your eyes to see it, So let's
ever marvel and worship God for loving with an everlasting love.
Let's have a worshipful attitude towards God and just praise God
and be thankful to God forever for having mercy on us when we
were foolish and disobedient and coming to our rescue and
granting us a resurrection from the dead, regeneration, a new
birth. and crossing our path with a
preacher who declared the scriptures to us for opening our eyes to
see the truth of redeeming grace. Thank the Lord.