Titus chapter 3, beginning in
verse 1. Scripture says, 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 were sometimes
foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers 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 righteousness which we have done, but according to his
mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and 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 this
is a faithful saying and these things I will that thou affirm
constantly that they which believe in God might be careful to maintain
good works these things are good and profitable unto men the title
of the message this morning is the motive of meekness. The motive
of meekness. He says in verse 2, he says,
"...showing all meekness unto all men." The Apostle here encourages
this pastor of the church of Crete, Titus, that he should
remind the saints that they should carry themselves as how they
are to live in this world, to remind the saints, to rebuke
the saints, and to exhort them, to exhort believers as how we
should behave in this world. I have a question for you. Do
you always know how to behave in this world? Is this not needful for us to
be reminded of how we should behave? It is needful. We need these things. We need
to be reminded again and again, as believers in Christ, how it
is we should conduct ourselves. The Apostle Paul said this about
the church at Corinth. He said, You are my epistle. That's pretty strong, isn't it?
You know what? You are my epistle. So when you go out into this
world and you conduct your affairs, do you realize that when people
ask you, where do you go to church? Well, man, if you're not behaving
the way a believer should be, then they're not going to have
any interest in these things. We should promote the gospel
by our behavior, not diminish it. by our behavior. Now we know
that that doesn't save anyone if our behavior was perfect.
We know this, it takes God to do that, but yet God has chosen
to use means, means. And our behavior is a means that
God uses to promote the gospel, to to preach the gospel by our
behavior. You remember the believers who
were scattered abroad in Acts chapter 8, that they went everywhere
preaching the gospel. That word is, they went out gossiping
the gospel. Basically they lived their lives
in front of people. They lived the gospel. Now Titus
was encouraged in the previous chapter in verse 15, he said,
these things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority.
Let no man despise thee. Now the Apostle is not saying
that he shouldn't let men talk bad about him or anything like
that. We know the Apostle was talked bad about. We know that
all gospel preachers are going to be offensive to this world
and they're going to suffer persecution. What did he mean? He said don't
be discouraged in your work. Don't let the men who despise
you, that hate you, don't let that discourage you in your work. of reminding the believers. Preachers are ambassadors. We
speak in the place of God. Is that not awesome? That is
an awesome thing. And we dare not speak our own
opinion about things. We only speak what the King has
commanded us to speak. We are ambassadors for Him and
we would only dare tell you what God says. We are ambassadors
for Christ, the only God-man mediator. We are sent for the
purpose to declare God's Word, and we must not be concerned
when the gospel offends. Now, we don't intend to offend. It's not my purpose to make an
offense. The gospel offends all by itself. I don't need to help it. I know
that's a temptation for us, isn't it? We want some reaction. We
want somebody to react to this. And so maybe we go out to offend. We shouldn't. That's not our
purpose. The gospel is a rough gospel. It offends all by itself. The
cross of Christ offends the natural man. So we don't do that on our
own. We must not be moved from our
message of Jesus Christ as the only Savior. There's only one
Savior for you. There's only one Savior for me.
There's only one Savior for sinners. It is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. There is no other salvation but
Him. We must therefore exhort, reprove,
and rebuke God's people. as to how they should behave
themselves as saints of God. You, believer, are a saint of
God. You don't have to go through
a committee after you die to be a saint. You don't have to
go through all kinds of examinations and miracles to sow your... You
are a saint of God if you are a believer in Christ. You are
a chosen vessel of God. Now then, as a chosen vessel,
I am as commissioned of God to reprove, rebuke, and exhort you
in the gospel. Now how is this to be done? How are we to do this reproving,
rebuking, and exhorting? We are preachers and we rebuke
God's sheep, not by the whip of the law. We are not to conduct
home inspections. I go over to Joanne's and others,
and I don't go over to inspect you. I go over to visit with
you, to fellowship with you. I don't go to inspect you. we
don't follow you around and mark all the things that you're doing
wrong and you know sometimes I know that the gospel comes
out and and you're pierced in your heart as to your sin but
I didn't follow you around to see what you were doing and then
just kinda preach on it no I didn't do that at all we're not to do
that we're not to set up laws or rules or bylaws or creeds
we're not here to take attendance and check who's on the roll and
who's not No. The apostle by the Holy Spirit
does not leave this to our imagination as to how preachers are to rebuke
and to reprove and to exhort God's people. How do we do this?
By preaching the gospel. That's how we do this. The gospel
that we preach, it rebukes, it reproves, it exhorts you. The gospel of God's grace. Look
at this in chapter 2 in verse 10. After the Apostle had given
a long litany of things, the aged men and how they're to be
sober, and the aged women, how they're to teach the younger
women and to behave in holiness, and how that the younger women
are to be sober and to be keepers of the home, chaste, good, and
obedient to their own husbands, that the Word of God be not blasphemed,
young men to be sober-minded, not to be foolish, but to be
serious about the things of God. workers, obey your employers,
not purloining, not loitering around, but showing good faithfulness. Why? That they may adore the
doctrine of God our Savior in all things. We preach the gospel
and we reprove you, rebuke you by the gospel of Jesus Christ
and we say, old man, you should be grave and temperate and sober-minded
and that the women should be chaste and keepers of the home
and that they should love their husbands and the older women
should teach them this. Is that not amazing? That the
older women should have to teach the younger women to love their
husband and children? But it is necessary. Now, are
these things grievous to us? No. No, these things adorn the
gospel. These things show forth the gospel
of God's grace in our hearts. Our conduct should always show
forth God's gospel, God's grace. In verse 11 he says, For the
grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching
us. Does not the grace of God teach us? It teaches us that
denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, the grace of God teaches
us that we should live soberly, righteously, and godly. When?
When we get to heaven? Do we wait? No! In this present
world we are to live soberly. It doesn't mean that you're just
to abstain from drinking. What that means is that you're
to be serious about this thing, to live seriously concerning
the gospel, not to be lighthearted about it. The gospel to live
soberly, righteously and godly now looking for that blessed
hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior who
gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and
purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous for good works
we instruct you to adorn the doctrines of God in all things
that you do in everything you do believer you should adorn,
put on If you have a nice piece of jewelry
and you put that on, you want to adorn it. You want people
to see it. It is beautiful and people can
admire it. That's how we are to live. We
are to live adorning grace. We are to live, eat, and breathe
grace. We're in every aspect of our
life. You should honor God in all your
conduct, not because of law. We don't do this because of law. I'm sure that if I gave my wife
a nice necklace with diamonds all over it, I wouldn't have
to give her an edict to wear it. She would love to. She would love to, and that's
all right. It was given to her to wear.
And so we should adorn the gospel of God's grace. We preach that
salvation is by free and unmerited favor of God. In Hosea 14.4,
God says, I will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely. Don't you want to adorn that?
How did God love you? He loved me freely. without a
cause in me. He didn't find anything in me
that to be lovable. He loved me freely in Romans
3 24 being justified how? Freely! Freely by His grace through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. The Apostle in 1 Corinthians
2 says we have received not the spirit of the world but the spirit
which is of God that we might know the things that are freely
given unto us. If you are a sinner without Christ,
our Lord Jesus says come and let him that heareth say
come, and let him that is a thirst come, and whosoever will let
him take of the water of life freely." This gospel is free. It's the only thing that is absolutely
completely free. Do you suppose that when you
get something and you get it for free that it actually was
free? No. If it was, it wasn't worth
anything. But I'll tell you this gospel,
this message of eternal life is free. And that's the only
way it's obtained freely. You can't buy it, you can't earn
it. It must be given. It must be given. It is God's
grace that brings salvation to sinners. It was by the grace
of God that Jesus Christ came and accomplished, finished salvation
for His people. Believer, behold the mercy of
God towards you. Behold how that you and I were
no less the son of Adam than any other human being. We were no more worthy or able
to come to Jesus Christ than any other sinner. And yet by
grace we have received of God's salvation freely. Freely. Jesus said, no man can
come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him.
Have you come to Christ? Have you believed on Christ?
And I tell you, you could not do that had He not given it to
you freely, absolutely without cost. He gave it to you of His
own sovereign free will. God, who is rich in mercy, has
chosen you by sovereign eternal love. God the Son has given Himself
for you, that He should redeem you from all your iniquity. Is that not wonderful? All your
iniquity. And make you His peculiar people. Special. Not peculiar as in weird. We say, that person's peculiar.
Now, we may be weird to the world, but I tell you that is not weird
in the eyes of God. We are His precious children. I tell you, we are more precious
in the eyes of God than our children are in our own eyes. His love far exceeds our love.
His grace far exceeds ours. His kindness far exceeds ours. Let this then be all the motive
for godly living. Is that not motive enough to
live godly? Is that not motive enough? Let
this be the source of our strength in time of temptation. Let the
grace of God teach us how we are to live in this world. The
character that the Apostle would have us see here in our text
especially is the characteristic of meekness. showing all meekness to all men. Jesus said come unto me all you
that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest take
my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in
heart. You want to know how we are to
conduct ourselves in this world? Jesus Christ is the ultimate
example of conduct. He was meek and lowly. If anyone deserved to be exalted,
if anyone deserved to be boasted of and praised, if anyone had
a right to not be lowly, it was Christ. Yet He made of Himself no reputation. Is it all right for you to live
and to die and everyone just forget who you were? Is that
all right with you? That's all right with me. That's
all right. It's all right with God's people.
We're not here to exalt ourselves. We're not here to lift up ourselves.
We are here to conduct ourselves after the manner of our Lord. after the manner of our Savior.
Meekness should be shown to all men. He says in verse 1, put
them in mind, and I'm putting you in mind this morning, I'm
putting you in mind that you should be subject to principalities
and powers and obey magistrates, be ready to every good work,
speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers but gentle. This is
meekness. Believers should be the meekest
of people. We should be the most kind-hearted
and gentle people on the face of God's earth. We should be the most compassionate. We should be the most content people on the face of this earth. even because of God's grace,
love, mercy, and kindness and compassion towards us, which
he has shown and he continues to show even now. Therefore, the apostle tells
Titus, as well as all preachers of the gospel, to remind saints
to live in meekness, showing meekness and obedience. Now,
I know we live in an age where we have wicked rulers. We do. We have wicked men leading this
country. We know that. We know that this
country we live in is in serious decay. Believers, in Christ we should
be, even in the midst of this, good citizens. And whatever country
we live in, we should be good citizens. And yet we need to
be reminded to be subject to our rulers. We must be ready to do good.
to those around us. We must and are required to be
good citizens, but in all our doing we must not speak evil
of them that rule over us." Anybody here need that? To be
reminded of that? I do. It was God that put these men
in power. God raises up men and puts down
men as he pleases. It's not our business. We can
do our civic duty, we can vote or whatever we have that we can
do, but it is for believers in Christ to not speak evil of these
magistrates. We're not here to stir up trouble.
The Apostle Paul never attended one picket line. Never. He was in prison a lot, but he
never attended one meeting against Nero, who eventually put him
to death. That's not our business. We are
here as ambassadors. We are here as servants of a
king. And our king says to obey the
laws of the land. And we should obey the laws of
the land up until the point where they command us not to obey God. And then, and only then are we
to obey God rather than men. You remember Daniel spent most
of his life underneath a wicked king and yet he served him in
all fidelity, he served him in honesty. He did not contradict God. When the king commanded him not
to pray, how was he to do? He prayed anyway, because that
was God's command. Those three young Hebrews, instead
of bowing down to that statue, we don't do that. You know what
caused the Romans such grief with Christians? It's that they
wouldn't offer incense to Caesar. They said, look, you don't have
to believe that Caesar is a god, you don't have to trust in Caesar,
but all we're saying is just light a candle! And they could
not. They could not. And they were
killed for it. That's alright. But friends, we are not to speak
evil of these people. We're not to stir up trouble.
Meekness has a bridled tongue. If your tongue is not bridled,
you cannot claim to be meek. James says, If any man among
you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but
deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is empty. In meekness, let us not speak
evil of men. In other words, we're not to
slander men. We're not to slander men. Now when John the Baptist
was taken before Herod and he told him of his sin, Herod had
an open sin. And he said, that's not lawful
for you to have that woman. Now he was speaking the truth.
He wasn't slandering Herod. He was telling the truth. My
friends, if we are confronted with evil men, it's not speaking
evil of them to tell the truth concerning their conduct or concerning
the gospel of Jesus Christ. We're to tell the truth. We're
to make sober and righteous judgments of things, but yet we're not
to be gossipers. Alright, who needs that? We're not to be tail-bearers. We're not to be back biters,
stirring up trouble. We must be swift to hear and
slow to speak. Let it not be named among us
that we are brawlers or debaters, but that we are kind and passionate
and meek. How can this be done? seeing
that we have such wicked rulers that are bent on the destruction
of God's people? How can we live in meekness and
gentleness and love when all those around us are bent on destruction
and ruin? How are we to keep from speaking
evil of men while they daily target us and curse at us? How is it? Here it is. One thing. By keeping
in view the grace of God on you. Examine yourselves. If we are to be meek, we must
first examine our own self. He says, for we ourselves were
sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived. Do you get upset with the lost
of this world? Do you get upset with them? When
they hurt you, when they despise you, when they ridicule you,
do you get upset with them? Know this, you are in the same
situation they're in now. Should we not have compassion? Should we not be the kindest
and most gentle people realizing that we ourselves owed a debt
to God we could not pay. And he freely paid it. You remember
the story of the parable the Lord told of the man who owed
500 pence and the man that owed 50 or 5? And when the ruler frankly freely
forgave them both, which do you suppose loved him most? or the one that owed the most.
Examine yourself. How much do you owe God? Even God tells us who are believers
in Christ, He said, look unto the pit from which you were digged. How deep is the pit of our sins? How far did he reach down to
get us? I don't know, I was pretty good,
so he didn't reach too far for me. Well, you love little. If we were to be truthfully honest,
we're worse than the person cursing us. Examine ourselves. Examine that
we are of the same race of Adam. We were haters of God. We were chosen of God? Yes. Given grace? Yes. But there was
no difference between us and them. We could have known all the mysteries
of the universe, all the theology of scripture, committed ourselves
to reforming our conduct, but this would not give us salvation
had God himself not come to us. And it's the same of those that
ridicule and curse you. The only hope for them is the
same hope for you, that God come to them, that God save them. Grace is the only hope. The Spirit
of God must come and impart righteousness, the righteousness of God, which
is of Jesus Christ. He must cover their sins with
His blood. He must atone and redeem them
before God, just as He has done to us. And if He had not done
it for us, we never would have come to Him. Therefore, Paul
says, recompense no man evil for evil. Believers, when we are tempted
to mock the lost, when we are pressed by the wicked and others
and trampled beneath their feet, and our names are slandered unjustly
in the mud, let us not speak evil of men, remembering our
own natural estate and how graciously God saved us. Robert Hawker says
this, you and I shall never be able to rightly value the Lord's
righteousness until convinced that we have none of our own. We'll never truly value the righteousness
of Christ unless we see that we have none of our own. Have you seen your lack of righteousness? Do you know that yourself in
yourself is no righteousness at all? That we could never please
God had he not graciously, graciously provided all that he requires. Meekness beholds that Jesus Christ
is all our salvation. Verse 4 says, But after the kindness
and love of God our Savior appeared, 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 renewing of
the Holy Ghost. Friends, Jesus is the kindness
and love of God that appeared. When man sinned, God was not
obliged, not obligated, to his fallen creature. He could have left us like he
did the angels that fell. But God rich in mercy proclaimed
a good message to the sinners. Isn't that what God did when
He came down? Did He come down in righteous vengeance? Did He
come down? No, He came down seeking His
fallen children. And He had a message for them.
He said, the seed of the woman. He preached the first gospel
message right there. The first gospel message preached.
The seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent and he'll
bruise his heel. Christ in him crucified was the
first message. And when the last saint is saved,
it will be the last message that is ever preached in this world.
Christ. Believer, be meek for Christ's
sake. Consider what He went through
and ask yourself, are you above Him? Do you deserve more than
what He got? We think we do. Our God loved us so much that He became one of us. I hardly wish that on my own
children. He became one of us. He suffered, was persecuted, and yet he was
meek and lonely. Jesus appeared in the flesh to
put away sin forever. By his own death he carried his
blood in the presence of God and offered it as a sacrifice
for sin. He suffered in our place. There is no remission without
the shedding of blood and Jesus Christ shed his blood for Is it not a wonderful thing to
know that Christ has finished the work? The grace of God appeared,
the grace of God toward man appeared, and His name is Jesus Christ,
and He has finished our salvation. Once for all, O sinner, receive
it. Once for all, O brother, believe it. Cling to the cross.
The burden will fall. Christ has come and saved us
once for all. Does this not give us great cause
to be the meekest of God's men? Praise God for His Son. Praise
God for His love and kindness that appeared to us by His Holy
Spirit and quickened us. We didn't deserve it. And I tell
you this, those around us, those around us who persecute
us, We should adorn the gospel of God's grace in hopes that
God might be gracious to them. Do you believe God can be gracious
to those around you? Just look at yourself. Was He
gracious to you? Is His arm shortened that He
cannot save? I tell you this, He will save
His people. from their sin. He will show
grace to His people. And this is motivation enough
for God's people to be gracious, isn't it? Is this not motivation
enough that God was gracious to us? So if you have troubles
with those around you, then just look at yourself. Look at what
Christ did for you. Look at how the Holy Spirit came
to you without your desiring it or wanting it, and yet He
came to you. I tell you, if someone's living,
there's hope, isn't there? Better is a live dog than a dead
lion. In life, there's hope. May God use us. You know, I want to be used of
my Lord. I want to be used of Him. I hope that God would make me
the meekest of all men. I know that's your prayer if
you're a believer in Christ. And I know we need to be reminded
of this. May God the Holy Spirit remind us of this. Pray God will bless this to your
hearts.