We're reminded today as Brother
Al commented on those verses concerning Samson. Samson is surely not the poster
boy of how a person should live their life. But never let it
be forgotten that in the annals of faith, Samson is mentioned. The Lord would teach us at every
turn that we have nothing to bring to Him. That we can't enhance
Him in any way. That we cannot add to His glory. But that He takes unworthy wretches and He uses them for His glory.
And they can't take any credit whatsoever for it. And by the
grace of God, as He teaches us, He calls us to rejoice in that.
That we cannot take any credit, but that we give Him all praise
for all things. He's worthy of praise, even in
those times when we fail to see it, and we are weak in our thoughts
And then our mind and our doubts and fears often overwhelm us.
But yet the Lord is faithful to his own. He never will leave
us nor forsake us if we belong to him. May he be praised. We're looking in Titus, and of
course Titus, Paul is exhorting Titus to speak things which become
sound doctrine. That's what this chapter is given
to. And he has given much instruction
to Titus. And he continues on with that. He says, in all things showing
thyself a pattern of good works, in doctrine showing uncorruptness,
gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that
he that is of a contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil
thing to say of you. Exhort servants to be obedient
unto their own masters and to please them well in all things,
not answering again, not purlorning or being, a thief or being a
thief of time by loafing, but showing all good fidelity that
they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all
men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust,
we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world,
looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of
the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself
for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify
unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These
things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man
despise thee. Now with sound speech that cannot
be condemned, You know, sound speech that cannot be condemned
must be spoken by those who, he says here, are in all things
showing thyself a pattern of good works. Now we're called,
we're predestined, according to what scripture says, unto
good works. The Lord has designed that his
people might walk in such. And it would be contrary to that
to think that the Lord would have men to set forth an example
of bad works, that is, those things which do not bring glory
to God, and yet stand to tell men the truth of God from the
Scriptures. And so he says to Timothy, or
to Titus, that he is to show a pattern of good works. And God's people, our thought process
should never be in any consideration that we can offer up some good
work to God as a good work, but that we do the things that we
do unto the glory of God without regard as to whether or not,
how the Lord would consider that insofar as if we would think
it was valuable and that he would think the same because of that.
The Lord uses his people and he stirs his people up to good
works. May we desire to be a people
of good works. Go about doing good. It was said
of Christ that he went about doing good. May it be said of
us as well unto the glory of God. Now he says something here,
I'm kind of going to move through this. Exhort servants to be obedient
unto their own masters. and to please them well in all
things, not answering again, not purloring, but showing all
good fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God and
our Savior in all things." Now, of course, he's speaking there,
you know, in times past, in many cultures, and in many cultures
today, There were people who were brought into servitude through
various things, either through being captured in war or they
got in debt. That was primarily the way that
many people came into servitude. In some ways, the laws that we
have in our society have circumvented that possibility so that a man
might go out and incur a bunch of debt and then just automatically
come to a place and say, well, you know, I can't pay it anymore
and declare bankruptcy. And so he's somehow freed of
his debts. Now, I'm not here to debate the
pros and the cons of that type of thing. But I do know this,
that if you incur a debt, you owe the debt. You can't just
say, well, I don't owe you anymore. I'm not going to pay you. Can't
be done. And times passed when people
got in that situation, they became the servants of those to whom
they were indebted. And until they worked that off,
they were their servants. And so he's saying here to those
that find themselves in servitude, that is, to be a faithful servant. You put yourself in that position,
now work yourself out of it. Not purloining, he says, not
trying to steal from the one you'd work. We could probably extrapolate
that today into being employed by someone, in some ways a very
similar situation to servitude. Now we don't like the term servant,
to be a servant or a slave, but when we work for somebody else,
we in a measure, we sell ourselves to them. They are paying us for the time. It's not our time. I mean, if
somebody's paying you to do something, that time doesn't belong to you.
It belongs to them. Now, they're not paying you.
You know, you're strictly on your own. A lot of people say,
well, I'm my own man and all that kind of stuff, you know,
and that's fine. And it's fine, you know, some people are not
geared up to work for other people. And so you would work for yourself. I'm kind of that way. I don't
like to be told what to do. And that's not a good thing always. Sometimes you need to be told
what to do. The older I get, in many ways,
I wish I had somebody that did tell me everything to do, because
I hate having to decide what to do. So there's pros and cons. Some people want to be told what
to do, and that's fine. That's okay. But if we find ourselves
in servitude to someone through employment or debt or whatever,
we're not to not consider, well, you know, they're not paying
me enough, so I'll take something here. You know, maybe you're
flipping hamburgers for somebody. You say, you know, they don't
hardly pay me nothing. I'm gonna grab me one of these
hamburgers and eat it. That's a small thing, isn't it?
Or one of your buddies comes in the door and you say, well,
here, you know, I'll give you some free food. Well, it wasn't
your food to give him. You know, it didn't belong to
you. And that's what he basically means here by not purloining,
that is not taking something that doesn't belong to you. But showing all good fidelity,
faithfulness, to do that which you said you'd do. If you said
you'd do it, then do it. Well, that wound up, that cost
me more than I thought that it would. Well, did you agree to
do it for that? Then do it, even if it costs
you money. And not try to take advantage
of someone for your own benefit, basically what he said. that
they may adorn the doctrine of God. Now remember, that's how
he started off. Speak things which becomes our
doctrine. Becoming something means adorning
it. That is, it causes it to be beautiful. Now we can't cause the gospel
to be beautiful, but we can cause the gospel to be odious in the
sight of others by poor habits, can we not? I mean, if you are
employed by somebody and you go about talking about being
a follower of Christ, And yet, you're not faithful to that employer. You don't give him a good day's
work. And that sort of thing. Or he grows suspicious of you
taking something. You're not adorning the doctrine
of the Lord, are you? I mean, that's an affront. That's
a shameful place. So he says that they may adorn
the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. Be faithful in
all things. In whatever position you're in.
If it's a low position, be thankful. that you have that position.
You know, I think that's one of the things that has happened
in this nation, is that people have grown entitled to think
that they're owed something. And a lot of people, you know,
they just somehow or other think that the government ought to
take care of them. Well, the government never was
put upon the earth to take care of anybody. The government was
put here to corral wicked men. We need the government. I'm glad
we got a government. I'm sad that the government doesn't
do what it's supposed to do, you know, because the government
spends more time getting involved in things they shouldn't be involved
in than doing what they should be doing, which is, you know,
they bear not the sword in vain, and wicked men need to fear the
government, and the government needs to do things that would
cause wicked men to fear them. But the government is not sent
forth to wield political power or anything of that nature. So
may the Lord give us a mind of these things that we may adorn
the doctrine of God our Savior in all things. And he says, for
the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all
men. The gospel is not hid. Now on
the one hand it is hid. The Lord said, I thank thee,
O Father, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, revealed among the babes. So the essence, the truth of
the gospel, the spiritual nature of the truth of the gospel is
indeed hid from men, not because it's not placed out there, but
because men in their wickedness and their darkness and their
desire to put God out of their lives, they cannot see it. They
don't want it. The Lord said to the Pharisees,
He said, here's the scriptures. He said, search the scriptures.
He said, you claim to believe the Bible. He said, search the
scriptures. He says, they are they which
testify of me. So the gospel is not hid. It's
there. The grace of God that bringeth
salvation hath appeared to all men. In other words, this is
no secret. The Lord saves sinners. That's
a message that rings throughout the land. Now sometimes it's
corrupted and it's mixed with other things, but the truth of
the matter is that the Lord saves sinful men. And if you don't
believe that, I mean, you look at men like Samson. I mean, you
wouldn't, write Samson down as being a man of faith, but the Lord did in the book
of Hebrews. He listed him right there with
some others who were men of faith. They did the things they did
through faith. The grace of God that bringeth
salvation. Now that's, you know, We desire
to be known as those that preach the grace of God that bringeth
salvation. Because if God doesn't bring
salvation to a man, he'll never have it. And grace is that which
brings salvation to men. It meets a man where he's at. See, a man can't lift himself
up to God. That's the man's mindset. He's
gonna go out here and he's gonna get to know God on his own terms. But he can't do it because he
dwells in the light to which no man can approach. And a man
can't approach unto God. He's immortal, he's invisible.
How would we know him if he doesn't come and visit us? Oh, what a
glorious thing the grace of God is. Look, he says here, The grace
of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, and
here's the message that it brought. Here's the message of the salvation
that the Lord Jesus Christ came to teach us, teaching us that
denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly,
righteously, and godly in this present world. Now that's a fundamental
tenet, is it not, of that which the Lord has ordained His people
to do, to walk in the light that He has given, to walk as Him
for an example. As we have Him for an example,
follow His steps. Look at Him. What did He do?
He denied ungodliness and worldly lust. He lived soberly, righteously,
and godly in this present world. He is the One who is our example. He is that One who is set on
a pedestal before us, and we see Him. Thankfully, as we see
Him there, we are also taught that the grace of God that bringeth
salvation has made His righteousness ours. So that when we're desiring
to live righteously and godly in Christ Jesus, it's not because
we're trying to earn His favor, but it's because He has done
these things for us. And he says, in the midst of
this, as we teach men to walk, as Christ walked. Now, you know,
if you wanna know how to walk in the world, you don't need
to go read the Ten Commandments. Now, the Ten Commandments are
fine, and I'm not against anybody having the Ten Commandments,
but the rule of life for the children of God is not the Jewish
Ten Commandments. It's Christ. How would you live?
Well, look at what Christ, what would Christ do? How would he walk? How would
he think? He's our example. He's our rule. And he is that one. Now, teaching
us denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly,
righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that
blessed hope and glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ. What is our hope? Now, we're
looking for our hope. Some people think that when we
speak about hope, we're thinking about hoping something's so. Well, we hope it's so. No, that's
not it. Our hope is Christ. And we're
looking for him. He is our hope. He is that one
in whom all of our hope is placed. We have no other hope but him.
I don't have any hope in anything that I'm doing. I don't have
any hope in anything that I could possibly do. But I do have hope
in him. because he is that one whose,
the scripture says, he gave himself for us, that he might redeem
us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people,
zealous of good works. And we're looking for the glorious
appearing. Now he has already come, has he not? But he said,
if I go away, I will come again. Now he came
the first time without sin unto salvation. And he comes again
as a triumphant king. See, when he came the first time,
he came as a humble servant of men. And he walked among men
as a servant that he might teach us to love one another. But when
he comes again, he comes to separate the sheep from the goats. He
comes to separate those that have no consideration of Him
from those who tremble at the mention of His name, those who
love Him. The great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us. Nobody made the Lord go to the
cross. The Lord used the hands of wicked
men, but at any time, in all of the ordeal that the Lord Jesus
Christ underwent, He could have stopped it, had it pleased Him. But He gave Himself, willingly. You know, when you give something,
You give it up. It's no longer yours, is it?
A lot of times people give something to somebody and then they get
mad because somebody uses it in a way that they didn't like.
You know, that's not giving something because when you give something,
you gave it, you know, without regard to what they were going
to do with it. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself
freely for us without any restrictions without any expectations. He didn't give himself and say,
now you better do this. He gave himself for us because
he loved us. That he might redeem us from
iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good words. The Lord would have a people
that are oddballs in this world that march to the beat of a different
drummer, that have one whom they desire to serve with all of their
heart, who desire to walk according to his precepts. purified unto
himself a peculiar people, to sanctify them, zealous of good
works. These things speak and exhort
and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. Now,
no man can despise the word of God. He might say that he does,
but the word of God cannot be despised, that it cannot be brought
down. I remember one time A brother
Forbes, few of you know him, but he was a gentleman that we became acquainted with. He
had come from, he had pastored a church in the Virgin Islands. But anyway, while he was there,
he had come across this gentleman, and in their conversation, the
man said, well, I'll just curse God. And he said, well, you can't
curse God. And the man said, well, sure
I can. He said, well, you can't curse God. And so the man let
out all his, you know, expletives and stuff like that. He said,
see, I told you. He said, you didn't affect God
at all. I mean, you can't curse God. The fool had said in his
heart, there is no God for me. But he hadn't changed God at
all. Because the Lord is the Lord. Men are men. And apart from the grace and
mercy of God to show us that, we will perish. Oh, that he might
teach us two things. And I, you know, if you learn
these two things, you'll be blessed. If the Lord
gives you grace to believe these things and know these things
to be true, One is what a great center you are. I know we live
in an age when that's not popular to tell people that they're centers.
We're supposed to tell people, well, you're just a product of
your environment. You know, you've had all these
problems and you just need to think positively about yourself.
Because your problem is that you don't love yourself. Now,
I never read that in the scripture. Now, I've heard it. People say
it. But everybody I read about in
scripture and every time I look in the mirror, my problem has
nothing to do with me not loving myself. It has with me loving
myself too much. You know, I do love myself. And
what we need to learn about ourself is that we are indeed sinners
in need of a savior. So if the Lord's pleased to teach
you that, he's taught you a great lesson. And then, if he's pleased,
and I believe he will, if he teaches you the first lesson,
he'll teach you the second one. I've never known of anybody that
he taught the first lesson that he didn't, in his mercy, teach
him the second. Learn that we're great sinners,
but that Christ is a mightier Savior. Grace that is greater
than all our sin. Oh, what a glorious Savior He
is. and he came to redeem his people
came to buy us back out of sin and he came to purify unto himself
a people unto good works and if he came the first time which
we believe he surely did he will come again and I don't know when
that is I know there's a lot of Preachers that claim they
do know when it is. And all these different things
happen, and this, that, and the other, and they interpret this,
that, and write books, and get on TV, and try to scare people,
and all that kind of stuff. Christ will come again for his
people in his own time. In flaming fire, the scripture
says, taking vengeance on them that know not God. But the grace
of God hath appeared to all men. Oh, the Lord might give us ears
to hear it today.