Titus chapter three. Now the subject of our message
this morning is in three words. First three words of verse five. He saved us. He saved us. One of the things I like about
the scripture is it never speaks of salvation in terms of possibilities
or might be's or we think so's. Notice just how clear and pointed
this statement is. He saved us. Paul had no problem
making that statement. He did not do as some would do,
and maybe we might be tempted to do, saying, well, we don't
really know anybody's heart, and so we hope that he has saved
such and such, or I hope he has saved me. But Paul, addressing
a gathering of believers, said without hesitation, And without
qualification, he saved us. Now, we realize that while the
apostles would say that, some of whom they might have said
that later proved to be unfaithful. I'll give you an example, Simon
the sorcerer. who saw what the apostles were
able to do by the gifts of the, the power of the Spirit, the
gifts the Spirit had given them. And him being a sorcerer, he
thought, boy, if I could do that, I could really make good money
off of my sorcery business. And so he made a profession of
faith. I think the Bible just says he
believed. But the Bible often speaks in terms of the outward
appearance of things rather than the reality of them. He believed
he was baptized. And then he approached the disciples,
how much money would it take for you to lay hands on me and
give me that gift? And Peter said, you have no part
nor lot in this matter. You are full of bitterness. And
essentially sent him away. So even as we read these words
from the apostle, he saved us, we understand that Paul said
this, taking at face value the professions of faith that people
had made. But that bears out my point,
that Paul didn't look for anything else other than people saying
they believed. You know, some churches, they
have evangelistic services, or they, of course, every time we
meet, it's an evangelistic service, because the word evangelistic
comes from the Greek word, which means gospel, and we're gonna
preach the gospel every time we meet together. And we preach
the gospel because that's what feeds the sheep of God and strengthens
them, but also, somebody might show up, the Lord hadn't saved
them yet, and they need to hear the gospel. That's the wonderful
thing about the gospel. It's the right message for everybody.
I don't ever have to think, well, what does the church need to
hear this week? We need to hear the gospel, that's what it needs
to hear. The particular text of scripture from which we preach
it varies from week to week, but the basic message is the
same all the time. But we preach this and we preach
it with the confidence that those who claim to believe it, God
has indeed saved them. And we take it that way unless
they say otherwise or prove otherwise. But as I said, some churches
have these evangelistic meetings, and then people make a profession
of faith. They say, well, a believer's
supposed to be baptized, but before we baptize you, you've
got to come to New Believers class. That's what they called
it in the church I was raised in, New Believers class. And what
it was, they teach you the theology that they expect you to believe
to be a member of that church. And then, you know, if you passed,
or I don't know that there was a test or anything like that,
but if you agreed to that, then you could be baptized. The apostles
never did anything like that. On the day of Pentecost, they
preached 3,000 people were baptized that day. Why? We're never told to examine
people like that. If they hear us preach and they
say, God has revealed his son to me, I believe that, and I
called on the name of the Lord, and he saved me. That's as far
as we need to go. And if that's their profession,
and they say, I wanna confess Christ, then I go down and I
fill up the tank. Now, it may prove later that
it was all just so many words, but that's not a problem, at
least not to anybody but the one who was being hypocritical
from the beginning. People say, well, we gotta make
sure we keep a pure church. Really? You can't do that. And by pure
church, they mean that there are no members on the roll except
those who've truly been saved. Well, how are you gonna figure
that out? If they say that, if they listen
to us and say they believe that, we're just gonna take their word
for it. It's what the apostles did. Because the scriptures say,
he that believes shall be saved. And since we can't look into
a person's heart to find out if they really believe, we're
utterly reliant upon what they say. And if they say they believe,
and they are content to listen to the gospel being preached,
and don't try to rise up and cause divisions within the church
by introducing false doctrine or whatever, we never question
whether they belong to God, and neither do the apostle, and therefore
he could say, he saved us. I love such wonderful confidence. There is absolutely no virtue
in doubt. Now all of us do it, but doubt
is not humility. Doubt is simply evidence that
there remains within us, that is in our flesh, That awful,
awful sin of unbelief. You say, why is unbelief such
a sin? John tells us that he does not
believe the record that God has given concerning his son has
made God to be a liar. That's why unbelief is so bad.
And it doesn't matter what excuse you may give for your unbelief.
You know, folks say, well, you know, I believe those doctrines,
but I just don't know if God saved me. Well, have you called
on him? Yeah, I asked him to. Well, did
not the Lord say, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved? But now you're saying you've
called on the name of the Lord, but you don't know if you're saved. You
just put a big question mark on God's word. You said it's
possible he's a liar. But that's the devil's way. He'll
take that which to the human eye appears virtuous and apply
it or cause them to use it in such a way that it actually comes
out just as wicked as can be. We who know the gospel should
be, should be absolutely confident. that God has saved us and that
all is well with our souls. It should be, and I understand,
I've got that word should in there. There are a few I've met,
at least they talk like that, it was that way with them, and
there are times when it's that way with me. But usually they're
not very long lasting. But we should be able to approach
the passing years Look at the hourglass of our lives, as they
say, and see there's not many grains of sand left in the upper
part of it, and say, that's okay. All is well with me. We should be able to confront
anything that happens to us in this life, and even though it
causes us sorrow and grief, it should never cause us to doubt
God. Because we have his word. And God's word trumps everything
else. Well, but you know, my conscience,
your conscience, your conscience is your word. Are you going to
put your word up against God's word? Yeah, but I've done so many wicked
things. Well, of course you have. That's
why you need a savior. But I thought once God saved
me, I wouldn't keep doing wicked things. Well, then you misunderstood
part of the gospel, part of the message, because the very one
who wrote, he saved us, also wrote, oh, wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? I thank God
through Jesus Christ my Lord. So Paul still had within him,
well, if he's like me, he's got all the wretchedness he had before
God saved him. The only difference now is he
hates it, wishes it wasn't there, sees something of its weakness,
but it's still there. He saved us. Also, that little
three-word statement, Makes it clear who does the saving
and who's the one that's being saved. It doesn't say he wanted
to save us. Now he did. And because he wanted
to, he did save us. But I don't ever preach. And
you know that, you that have been with me many years, you
know that. I never tell people, God wants to save you. I'll say
things like this, if God wants to save you, he will. And you'll
eventually agree to it. God doesn't want to do anything,
he doesn't try to do anything. Why should the heathen say, this
is the psalmist, he said, why should the heathen say, where
is your God? Our God is in the heavens, he's done whatsoever
pleased him. And then preachers stand up and say, well, God wants
to save you. Well, if he does, he will, because he does everything
he wants to do. But it's he that does the saving,
every last bit of it. Say, well, you know, I had to
add my faith. If you add your faith, you're
lost. Say, wait a minute, a person doesn't have to believe in order
to be saved? This is where things get confusing to people, because
salvation is such a broad term. And sometimes the apostles of
the Bible will use the word save, referring to just a particular
part of the entire work of salvation. But salvation is actually everything
that God has done to save his people, which means everything
that God does to take his people from what they are by birth,
and make them like the Lord Jesus Christ. So there is some sense,
so far as our experience of salvation is concerned, there is some sense
in which salvation is not yet complete in us. Because we are
not like Christ, are we? We will be. But he has saved us. He did not, it's not like, the
concept of well God's done all he can or all he wants to or
something like that and now you just got to add your faith to
what Christ did in order to make it effective for you. You mean
that there is something within a natural man that he can add
to the work of Christ and make that work effective? No. Faith does not make the death
of Christ effective. People will point to John chapter
three, verse 16. Say, oh, but it says, for God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son in order
that whosoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting
life. You see, Christ died for everybody, but it's only if you
believe that that death is applied to you, otherwise it's no good
to you. That's not what that scripture says. Notice it does
not say that the death of Christ is made effective by faith. It
says that faith is made effective by the death of Christ. Listen
to it. For God so loved the world, he
gave his only begotten son in order that whosoever believes
in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. If he
hadn't died, you could believe in him all day long and still
perish. Faith has no power to save. Only the work of Christ makes
faith effective and useful. And in all reality, the faith
with which we believe God is not simply that kind of faith
that a natural man can express. People can be talked into religious
opinions. They can be convinced of theologies. They can be manipulated into
saying certain words and praying certain prayers. But it says,
for by grace are you saved through faith, and that's not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. Do you
believe God? If you believe God, it's because
God gave you faith to do so. I don't mean, do you believe
there is a God? The devil believes there's a God. I don't mean that you believe,
do you believe the doctrines of the gospel? Lots of people
believe the doctrines of the gospel, but they're not believing
God, they're believing their preacher, or they're believing
the book that their church gives out to describe doctrine. But
if you believe God, and that's the way the scriptures put it,
Abraham believed God. Now, if you believe God, you'll
believe anything he says. But you can believe things that
he says and not believe him. You may be believing him because,
well, you trust the person who told you about them. If you believe
God, you have everlasting life, and that faith is the gift of
God, it's not something that any natural person is capable
of doing. Paul says, the natural man, and
what's that? The natural man is somebody who's
not been born again by the Spirit of God. The natural man does
not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness
to him. Neither can he know them, for
they are spiritually understood. The gospel is not just so many
words that a person can understand the meaning of those words and
therefore say that he truly perceives the nature of God's grace, nature
of his gospel. It's a spiritual thing and it
requires a spiritual nature in order to believe it. Now I say
these things and they're matters of theology How do you experience
that? I don't know that the feeling
of believing God in a spiritual sense is any different than those
whose faith is only natural. The proof of God-given faith
is found in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, where after speaking
of all these things that people did by, through faith, it says
these all died in faith. Now a faith that quits is a faith
that was born of the flesh. The faith that comes from God
never dies. But the only thing that I could
say to a person that said, I don't know that my faith is truly that
faith which is the gift of God. I don't know that my faith is
genuine stuff. But I'd ask them just a few questions.
The first question I would ask them is, well, is all your hope
in Christ? I mean, really, is all your hope
in Christ? You're not trusting anything
else. Okay? Have you called upon him for
his salvation? Yeah. Are you calling on anybody
else? No. Do you believe God's promises
are true? Yes. Well, then there's no reason
to doubt that your faith is the real article. Because you will
find in everyone who has natural faith, somewhere in there is
something that the person did. For most people in modern evangelicalism,
that something is going to be their faith. Say, do you have genuine faith?
Yes, I believe. Well, how do you know it's genuine?
Well, I believe. I'm sorry, that's, our faith
is not the proof of our faith. The object of our faith is the
proof of our faith. When the gospel is preached, such things as he saved us, just
the simplicity of it, does that bring joy to your heart? Does
that say to your heart, yeah, that's the way it's got to be
if I'm going to be saved. He does the saving, and I'm the
one that's getting saved. He's doing all the work. I'm not doing
any of it. Is that honestly what your heart believes and confesses?
That's the faith of God's elect. He saved us. Now, it's obvious
that Paul is speaking about the initial experience of salvation,
because he goes on to describe it this way. Not because of righteous
things we have done. We're back in verse 5 of Titus
3. Not by righteous things that we have done. That is not on
the basis of anything we have done that pleased God. And people can, you know, they
can make a righteousness out of anything. Normally when we think of not
by works of righteousness, which we have done, we think, yup,
it's not by the deeds of the law, and that is the truth. It's
the absolute truth, but it's not all the truth. Because as
I said, people will make a righteousness out of anything. They can even
make a righteousness out of confessing how sinful they are. They think
because they go around talking about how bad they are, that
God is pleased with that. And because they confess that
they're sinners and put on a show of being really
sad about that, they think that God looks on that with favor.
And just by claiming they're being sinners, they're trying
to establish a righteousness with God. What is a work? Well, going back to Ephesians
chapter two, tells us how to know whether we are trusting
in something that we have done. For it says, for by grace are
you saved through faith, and that's not yourselves, it is
the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Anything that you feel inclined
to boast about, is a work. I don't care what it is. If it's
something you boast about, and I'm talking about boasting in
the sight of God, you might do it in the sight of men too, but
most of us learn we're not supposed to do that, so we know how to
act humbly even when we're not. But if in your heart you are
finding comfort in something other than what Christ has done,
what God has done through Christ, If you find any peace of conscience based on what you have done,
as Henry used to say, even as just wiggling your little finger,
he said, you're boasting. And you've made a work out of
whatever it is you're boasting about. So what is a work? Anything that
you would be inclined to boast in as having something to do
with whether or not you were saved. That's why Paul, using
exactly the same word, I believe, said, God forbid that I should
glory, that I should boast in anything other than the cross
of my Lord Jesus Christ. That's our whole boast right
there. Our boast isn't even that our boast is only that. We don't
even boast in the fact that's our only boast. Our only boast
is Christ and Him crucified. That's the only hope I've got.
If Jesus Christ and Him crucified is not in and of itself sufficient
to put away my sins, indeed, if it has not put away my sins,
then there's no hope for me. If I've got to add something
to that, it's just not gonna work for me. Not by works of
righteousness, which we have done, but because of his mercy. You see,
even the motivation for our salvation comes from God. He didn't save
us because we wanted to be saved. He saved us because he wanted
to save us. You know, mercy is a wonderful
attribute. We should try to learn to exercise
more of it. But when you see someone acting
worse than you think you do, do you look at their conduct
with contempt or do you feel bad for their sake that they've
made such a mess of things for themselves? Do you realize that when God
looks upon his people, wallowing in their filth, being held captive at the devil's
will, he doesn't look at them on them
with wrath. He doesn't say, okay, I've had
it with these guys, that's enough. He looks on them with mercy,
with pity. It's kind of like, and a lot
of parents, probably most parents to some degree or another have
this, particularly after their children are grown and they didn't,
your upbringing didn't take. You did what you could to tell
them the right thing to do, but they're not doing it. And they're
living their lives in some kind of grossly immoral way or Any
other kind of thing, you're making their lives into a disaster.
And you look at them now. You might look at someone else
and get mad and disgusted and contemptuous toward them. How
do you look at it when you see your children do that? Oh, so-and-so, what you're doing
to yourself. And when God looks upon his people
in their sin, he's of the latter sort. He pities us because we're
so stupid. He pities us because we're so
stubborn. He pities us because we find
pleasure in sin and are deceived by the deceitfulness of sin.
And if left to ourselves, would enjoy the pleasures of sins for
a season, maybe the entire season of our lives, and die and go
to hell. He looks at his people and it's
not wrath, it's not contempt, it's mercy. It's like those people who see
suffering in the world. Take for example the homeless.
Now we realize people are homeless for a lot of different reasons.
Some of them are homeless. because their conduct has degraded
them to that place. Or they found out they can make
a better living begging than they think they can make working. And therefore, we are taught,
be careful when you see the homeless. You know, better not give them
any money. They're probably just going to
spend it on alcohol anyway. But I've noticed more and more
people Answering that with, that's not my problem. I see people
hurting and I feel bad for their sake. In other words, instead
of being contemptuous toward these homeless people, they have mercy on them and they
give. Now, we can't save people. We
can't save them eternally, that's for sure, and we probably can't
even save them with regard to the things of this life. I've
seen parents waste their resources trying to recover their children,
and it doesn't work. You can pray for them, you can
teach them, you can love them, but there's really not anything
you can do that's going to make a person act right. We can't save people, but we
can demonstrate that characteristic of mercy. And instead of harrumphing
in contempt, we can reach out the hand and help. And maybe
some good will come out of it. And I know this, if we do so
out of love, love to them and love to God, it's brought about
this good, it's pleasing to the Lord. Because when we act in
mercy, we're acting like God does. You realize there's nothing more
God-like than mercy. A lot of people think the best
way to deal, and I'm talking about religious folks, the best
way to deal with the fallen is stomp on them while they're down.
Show your contempt. Say, I'm glad I'm not like that. Like the Pharisee did when he
was praying and said, I thank you, God, I'm not like other
men. And he gave us all the good things he did. And then finally
said, I'm certainly not like this tax collector over here.
And so he looked at the tax collector and said, what a poor wretch
that he would sell himself out to the Roman government so as
to exact unjust taxes from his own kinsmen. Now he's gotten
mad and full of wrath and put up a wall. But you see, God saved
us according to mercy. He looks upon his people and
sees them as homeless. Homeless by their
own fault, yeah. Homeless because they're spiritually
ill and don't have good sense, to compare with the mental illness
that puts a lot of homeless people on the street. Homeless because
they've given themselves over to the pleasures of the flesh. Homeless because they won't listen
to Him. But He walks the streets of the
skid rows, the spiritual skid rows of the world. And he finds
his people laying there, wasting away. And he doesn't say, serves
you right. He said, my poor, poor child.
And gathers them up. Takes them home. Heals their
mind. Makes them think right again. Mercy. David sinned horribly. And in
the psalm he wrote, expressing his repentance over his sin,
the first word is mercy. As though he's coming in to the
throne room of the king. And before he utters a word,
he's just got a sign up in front of him with the word mercy written
on it. Because he wants the king's first thought toward him to be
of mercy. He saved us, and here's the method
of how He saves us in our experience. He saved us
through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.
Now this is just one part of the complete broad subject of
our salvation, but it's when we experience that salvation,
and notice this, it said, He saved us by the washing. a washing away of our sins, and
it's done by this method, rebirth, being born again. Now this shows us that being
born again precedes believing. You know, I'm not saying so much
it precedes it in time. I think the moment a person is
made alive spiritually, he believes God. Because faith is the natural
expression of a living spirit. But logically, faith being founded
upon spiritual life, then the giving of spiritual life must
come first. That's why our Lord said to Nicodemus
the Pharisee, you, and he used the plural there, meaning you
and all your buddies down there at the synagogue and over at
the temple, you must be born again. They understood a lot of things,
but they didn't understand the kingdom of God. You must be born
again. The washing that comes from this
rebirth and renewal. Now in Adam, we're old and wearing
out. And in our bodies, which have
not yet had any work of grace done upon them, that's still
going on, isn't it? And I tell you, you know, it's amazing
how quick that goes by. Wearing out. Do you know what? One of these days he's gonna
fix that too. He's gonna renew this. He's gonna give a new birth
to these bodies, a renewal. And they shall be washed free
of all the corruption that makes them fall apart now. But he's
already done this to his people, spiritually speaking. The believer
in that spiritual nature of his. And you say, what spirit? I don't
know what it is, but I know what it does. It's the nature that
links us with God. God is spirit. God said, let's
make man in our image. That means he made man to have
a spiritual nature. Therefore, having this similar
nature, you're able to fellowship with God. Now, having that nature,
that spiritual nature, it has been reborn, and it has been
renewed, and it's not getting old. It's not wearing out. It has no sin and does no sin. Now this flesh goes right on
sinning. And it will war against the spirit
and the spirit will war against the flesh and that battle's just
gonna go on till you die. But understand this, the spirit of a believer never
sins. The flesh of a believer never
does anything else. We have been washed spiritually. And there is no sin upon that
part of us and it doesn't add anything. We've been renewed. We're no
longer that old unbelieving person. From our hearts we truly believe
God. Our consciousness is a mixture
of both of those natures. It's got flesh in there, and
it's got spirit. It's all expressed through single
nature. And we have this warfare going
on in our minds, and we, you know, the spirit's saying, trust
God, he's worthy, and the flesh is saying, I can't see God, how
do I, you know, both of them are in there. And we say to ourselves, that's
why Paul said, oh wretched man that I am. It's a wretched thing
to be altogether sin. It's even more wretched when
part of you is perfectly righteous and the other is perfectly sinful.
Because then you not only have that sinful aspect still in there,
corrupting everything, you've got a conflict within you. Nonetheless. We've been given
this spirit which has washed us through being born again and
renewed, and it was poured out on us generously through Jesus
Christ, our Savior. The Spirit of God wasn't just
a little sprinkle, you know, a little drop here. The Spirit
of God comes to every one of God's people in the full power
of an omnipotent God to give life and sustain life. Verse seven, so that we having
been justified by his grace. The word justified means to be
declared guilty. Having been justified, not because
we've never done anything wrong, but because God's grace looked
upon us with that favor. And as a sovereign act, he declared
us to be righteous. He's the judge. He's the one
that justifies or condemns. So he justified us. He declared
us to be without sin. And Jesus Christ came to die
for our sins. And understand what I mean here.
It was more a work for the sake of God than it was for us. So
what do you mean by that? Well, God's the King. He can
justify if he wants to, but God's also just. And that means he
cannot justify a person who does not deserve to be justified. So Paul says that Jesus Christ
was made a sacrifice of atonement. That is a sacrifice to put away
sin so that God could be just and the justifier of them that
believe Jesus. If God had just said, you know,
okay, I'm not gonna hold your sins against you. Well, then
he'd be unjust. If he looked at us and said,
all right, I'm just gonna say not guilty. So that's an unjust verdict. So Jesus Christ came not so that
God could justify, he came so that God could justify and remain
a just judge when he does it. You see what that, you catch
what that means? The significance of that. So we've been justified
by his grace that we might become heirs. having the hope of eternal life.
Now, if we are heirs, then we're not slaves. Slaves don't become
heirs. Slaves get paid for the work they do. Sons get an inheritance. Now, I know in our day, we treat
sons and daughters more equally. But it used to be, in fact, there
used to be laws against women inheriting property. Always figured
it had to go to a son. And in the Jewish culture, before
Christ, the firstborn son got a double portion and was considered
the head of the household once the father passed away. But the
point here is, if we are heirs, that means we're members of the
family. Paul says we're heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ
Jesus. Heirs of what? Eternal life. And all that eternal life means.
All that it involves, not only its everlasting nature. Would you want to go on living
like this forever? Getting more, getting older and
older, and sicker and sicker, but just never die? No, I wouldn't
call that eternal life. I'd call that a kind of eternal
death, just keep going on. Eternal life means not only that
you live forever, but the life that you have is the kind that
is not only not corrupted, it can't be corrupted. It means to live forever and
never grow old. It means to have that life which
is from God that enables us to fellowship with God, communicate
with God, love God, find our fulfillment in God himself. and that forever. He saved us. If we have trusted him, we have
no reason to doubt that reality. It's just so. He saved us. And we don't have to put on false
humility and say, well, I hope he saved me. I hope someday he will save me.
Well, I believed him and I hope when I die that it proves that
I was saved. We can say he saved me. Well, the Lord add his blessing.
Father, we thank you for these words. We thank you that your
promises are so clear and simple and trustworthy. Dismiss us with your blessing
in Christ's name, amen. Chorus books, number 11. And
I don't have one, there's one. Number 11, and we'll be dismissed,
standing to sing, Hallelujah, God Has Saved Me. And if you
believe Christ, sing it with confidence. I was lost that day,
I don't know where I should go. My God is in mercy. He hath let
me die a sinner. I look up, I say to Thee, Thank You, God, for
so good grace. He has not lost me, nor me. I am saved by Your
grace. You shall join my Heavenly Father
in the King of Jesus Christ. I am justly fire-given and accepted
by my God. I will go now, I will save thee. Jesus died for me, for me I am
saved, I shall be raised. He died for me, for me I am saved, I shall
be raised. He died for me, for me I am saved, I shall be raised. He
died for me, for me I am saved, I shall be raised. He died for me, for me I am saved,
I shall be raised. Oh, say, does that star-spangled
banner yet wave