Here we are in chapter two, going
to revisit the last five verses, eleven through fifteen of chapter
two of Titus. Preparing ourselves in to the
next week to enter the final chapter of this text, but it
will not, of course, be quick. Should take us well through Easter. And as a way of review. The Word
of God here to Titus through the hands and pen of Paul. Written
to him and to the elders of Crete for us as we stand here today. Paul. Is effectively trying to
show Titus the reality of what the church should be, how it
should be governed. And to what end it should live
that it may display the glory of God and the manifestation
of the power of God, which is the gospel, who is Jesus Christ,
the living word through which we are taught and through which
we have life and then for which we live to the praise of his
glorious grace so that the world may see and the false teachers
may be put at rest and silenced. that the world may see and that
each other may see that the power of God rests perfectly in his
word and his people are empowered to live perfect lives, not perfectly,
but striving for holiness. We saw a little of the false
teaching issues and part of the correction of false teaching
is that the word of God is held to. We saw the audience of the
local church and specifically that there are older men and
younger women and older men and younger men, older women and
younger women. It goes older men, older women,
younger men, younger women or young. You know what I mean?
And then slaves. And it can get very confusing
there. So be careful. I'm not pairing these up on purpose.
I'm just saying there's a whole slew of folks in different age
brackets. And so Paul is now showing that this audience here.
And I would say that even in slaves, as last week we looked
at adorning the doctrine of God, that we are, as the people of
God, to put on the righteousness of Christ, which is ours and
given to us as a gift from Christ by the grace of God to the elect,
because that is why Paul writes these words for the sake of the
faith of the elect of God. That's his words, not mine. and
their hope and the foundation of eternal life coming through
Christ Jesus, through whom he has been sent and empowered to
preach life. And I want you to think for a
minute, as we move to this next text, let's let's look at it.
In verse 11 through 15, look at it, it's so hard to start,
Helen, start over. For the grace of God has appeared.
bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness
and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and
godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope,
the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus
Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness
and to purify himself of people for his own possession, who are
zealous for good works, declare these things, exhort and rebuke
with all authority, let no one disregard you. And it would be very easy just
to move on from that, because we looked at it in a very, let's
see, 73 minutes last week. And it would be easy to go in
now, the first one of chapter three, because it is a thought
that's continuing in the argument that Paul is writing to this
elder and Crete. But the full thing that we need to keep in
mind as we continue is that there are two people that play here.
There are the false teachers of Crete who are known as Cretans,
who are known as liars and lazy and evil, wicked gluttons and
who are teaching and purveying not just with their mouths, but
the practice thereof of their lives that they do not hold fast
to the sound doctrine as taught by the apostles. So then the
other side of this coin in comparison is the true church of Jesus Christ,
who has been born again, who has been saved by grace through
faith that they could explain not of themselves, but of the
God of God alone in his mercy and love and kindness toward
them in Christ, that they are effectively saved through the
living out of the empowerment of the gospel as a people set
apart from the world. So there's a contrast, the wicked
who are in the church. The wicked who are teaching the
gospel, the wicked who carry their Bibles, the wicked who
live the way they want to live, but are in the church. This is
the thing. And then those else who are in the church who are
indeed born again. Here's a comparison. Don't forget,
Paul's not talking about the wicked who live in wicked town
doing wicked stuff at the wicked hour. He's talking about the
so-called righteous who look good and smell good and act good
and speak good and talk good and walk good and do all the
good things. But he says that their work is
detestable, disgusting, defiled and wicked. So we look around
and we look around, we go, I wonder who it is. Well, we should look
inward before we look around. Be very careful that the light
in us not be darkness. So I want you to think a minute,
then, as we get ready for that, I want you to think about your
faith. I want you to think about the reality of your faith. First
of all, what holds true to you? What is the substance of your
faith? Is it that you have faith? Is
it that you believe in a cognitive way that Jesus Christ is God,
that he did come, that he was the lamb, that he did redeem,
that he had the opportunity and privilege and power to save,
and that you think that that conscious Evaluation of this
factual information has placed you in the right standing with
God. What do you do with the text that says the demons believe
in tremble? What do you do in the Gospels when the devils of
hell? I say of hell. That's where they're
headed. They're not there yet. When the devils, when the demons
from fallen from heaven, profess Jesus to be the Lord and Christ
and the holy anointed one of God. What do you say to that
church if your faith is in your faith? What do you say to that, except
that your faith. Not placed in Christ. Is worthless faith. And Paul,
they would argue your faith, just as James argues and John
argues in this first epistle that faith without fruit is worthless
faith. And I want you to think about
the reality of faith, I want you to think about the one to
whom you cling. the fullest of God's glory, as it ever could
be brought to you in the depths of your soul, replacing the darkness
of sin, replacing the dead flesh, replacing the wickedness of your
being, but the depravity of your heart and mind. I want you to
think about the reality of the one in whom you trust, the holy
anointed one of God, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,
who was made manifest so that you would be saved, not could
be. Certainly saved without fail
for this. The redemption of the Lamb of
God is a sure and certain and absolute without worry or bored. A burden of what I would say.
Jesus almost saved the people. He certainly saved the people.
He paid for the sins of a people, who are they? All who believe
alone. Jesus is not one that comes and
almost saves the people, but he has surely sought and found
that which he sought after. See, the gospel church is for
you. The gospel, as we teach Paul's letters, are not so that
we could, as the church, gather up as many of the wicked as we
could find and try to get them to do what the book says. That's
not what preaching is for. That's not what the church gathers
for. The church doesn't gather so
that we can get a plethora of wicked people, plethora of lost
people, plethora of so-called seekers to gather up in hordes
so that we can do something. And through cunning and twisting
of Scripture, that we can get them excited about some kind
of reality that's close to the Word of God, that's close to
the people of God, that's in the vicinity of holiness. And
then when we get in there, we go, ha, gotcha! For Paul says, we do not lose
heart, we do not practice cunning, we do not tamper with the Word
of God, but by bold statement of the truth. What truth? The
gospel of Jesus Christ. Sound doctrine, sound teaching,
sound living, sound worship, sound truth alone brings life. Not attaboys, pats-a-backs, hot
dogs, snow cones and ice cream. Those are good. Let's eat them.
But let's not pretend that those things bring people to the saving
knowledge of Jesus. And let's not forget that the
gospel here in Titus, Paul wrote this letter to his people, to
the people of Christ, not to the world. He didn't leave these
on urinals. He didn't leave his letters in public places. He
didn't nail them up on bars. I'm going to get some. He gave
it to the people of God. Friends, the gospel is for you. The gospel is for you as it found
you in your lostness and saved you, and now it is for you even
more powerfully than it ever can be, because now it is for
you to be empowered to live as Christ has made you and bought
you. There's a really bad four-letter
word in the world today. I want you to write it down.
Holy. And the four-letter word holy
is one that most millennials would say, ah, that's not, that's
not cool. You can't sip a latte and say
holy. You can't you can't grow a goatee like David Crowder and
be holy. That's just not cool. You can't you can't you can't
force you can't force the idea of teaching holiness to the church.
Now, that's just not people aren't going to come here. You will
listen to me, friends. The sheep know the voice of the
Savior. And they hear his voice and they
do follow his voice. And Jesus says that all who follow
me are mine because the Father has given them to me. I am the
good shepherd, Jesus says in John 10, and the sheep know my
voice and they follow me and they come in and out. I am the
door. They come in through me and out
through me, and in both ways they get pastures that fill them
with the full satisfaction of all they've ever longed for.
I am the bread of life in John 6, and I give life to all men. I am the bread that comes down
from heaven. He stands there at the Feast of Booths, and he
stands and says, I am the living water. Come who are thirsty,
drink of me, and you will never hunger and thirst again." And
he warns the hearers, he warns the religious zealots of his
day who hid the oracles of God from the world and for millennia
have held them close to their hearts and on their face and
written them on their minds and on their bodies. And he said
to them, you cannot see me. For Isaiah's prophecy has been
fulfilled that you will preach and they will not perceive. They
will hear, but not understand. They will see, but they cannot
grasp the reality because I have hardened their hearts and turned
them over. And if we steal away from Paul
to couple that in Romans one, God has given judgment by hardening
their hearts and turn them over to reprobate minds to do what
is unnatural. And what is unnatural in the
world? We think of all this horrible stuff and it's listed here in
Scripture. But what is most unnatural in the world is to look at all
that there is that proves fully that there is a God in heaven
and to say there is no God. What's most unholy and unnatural
is to look at everything that God has done to show his son
and look at that and go, I'm coming on my own terms. I'll
get right when I'm ready. Or, I know I got Jesus because
of something I've done. It's wicked. Satan said, I will
ascend the throne of the Most High. I will sit next to Him. I will stand on the mountain.
I will be like God. Satan didn't want to throw God
off. He's not stupid. But he wanted to be exalted just
like Him. Friends, the heart of men suppressed the truth because
of their unrighteousness and ungodliness. And because of that,
God turns them over to think that they can affect their salvation
through some form of following some program or some some prescription. What's all that about? Hence, the gospel, the word of
God, the trueness of his grace, the fullness of God's glory,
Jesus Christ is given to his people. For the grace of God
has appeared. You see that? That's why I'm
so excited about it. The grace of God has appeared. The biggest lie of the so-called
church today are those who say, well, we cannot live like Christ
wants us to live. Or worse, we don't have to. We
don't have to strive to obey. I think the outcome of that thought,
those thinkings, that word, that type of thinking, I think it
comes from a serious issue that's even deeper. And I think that
issue is a failure to see that those who say that don't
love or desire to be holy. It's an excuse. It's what they
called, when I was a teenager, a license to sin. You're preaching
license to sin. God loves you and it's okay.
You're forgiven anyway. Sin away. No. Paul says, absolutely
not. John says, if you say you have
fellowship with God and with His Son and with the church,
but you walk in darkness, you are a liar and you do not practice
the truth. He says, if you say you have no sin, you make God
a liar for he says you have. To say that we do not have to
strive for holiness, church is a slap in the face of God Almighty. For not only is it a command.
It's the power of the gospel. Where do you get this? That's
what I'm about to tell you. So Paul is saying here. We cannot
take sin lightly. The smallest of sins, the frustration,
the doubt, the worry, the fear, the anxiety, the small things,
the covetousness. Oh, I wish I had a better life.
Wish I had a better job. Wish I did this. Wish I did that.
The doubt. Oh, I wonder if the Lord's going to help me. I wonder,
wonder, wonder, wonder. John the Baptist in the cell moments
before, well, sometime before his head was taken. He wonders,
did I choose the right one? Peter, after the arrest of Jesus,
never will I forsake you. I'll die with you. Thomas, let
us go there with Him so that we might die together. He didn't
even have enough faith to think Jesus could be successful in
His ministry. He thought it was a martyr's march. Let's just
all go die with Him. I've given it all up anyway.
I'm sick and tired of this. Let's just die with Him. Who do you say that I am? You
are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Blessed you, Peter. Simon, the rock. For man has
not said these things to you, but God has taught them to you.
And on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell
will not prevail against it. And I'm going to go where you
can't go, and I'm going to be with you just for a little more
life. No, you don't. You don't have to die. You don't have to
do that. Get behind me, Satan. Sin. Taking a plan that God has
and not trusting in it. Friends, stop, yes, continue
to see sin as what it is, but stop thinking that we're so good
after salvation that we live sinlessly. If I dare even go to the what
we would call the sins of omission. I think sins of omission or sins
of commission, we commit the sin of not obeying. We don't
pray. A prayerless people is a people
that is not dependent upon the Lord. We don't study the Word
of God. A studyless people is a people
who say they love the Lord, but never spend time with him. Well, we'll show up at church
every now and then. Well, what else are you doing
that you don't have a desire to be with the people of God? Well, you know, God understands
I can't give this up and I can't give that up and give that up
and give that up. We took it, put it on his son, crucified
it, gave you his righteousness to put on. Where is it at? No
excuse. I'm not a. I'm not one who prescribes
a sense of perfection, it's impossible, the very thoughts of our hearts
and minds, but I am a believer that the gospel empowers us to
strive for such. Because that is the longing of
our soul, that we would stand before Christ one day immutable.
It's not that let's live in this dirtiness as long as we can and
just get as dirty as we want to, so that when Jesus comes
along, he'll just clean us off finally and we'll be done. How
about let's do this? Let's long for the day when we
stand before our King, face to face in the flesh, who took on
His flesh our punishment for all of eternity in six hours,
the fullness of the judgment and the fury of God against Him
for my sin. So let me work to strive for
sinlessness today, in this present day, so that when I get in front
of Him, He will see that the work that He did was not in vain,
for I have not believed in vain, but I have been saved by His
grace. Some of like this are very frustrating
for the church, because in America we have an entitlement. We have
an entitlement to believe the way we believe and understand
the things that we understand. We have this demonized, satanic
idealism that comes to the place of the pulpit and says, you know
what? That's OK. You're a good person. You're
a good person. You're a good person. And now that you're saved,
you're even better person. I don't know why that's so prevalent,
except that Nobody's learning. Pastors aren't learning. Nobody's
teaching. Nobody's thinking that the word
of God, as it's called, has any effect on the people who hear
it. And generation after generation, after generation, after generation,
they've annihilated and erased and obliterated and blotted out
Sola Scriptura and put it in there with Sola philosophy. And there's no Jesus left. There's
no gospel. The gospel is an addendum at
the end of a message that Dr. Phil could do a better job delivering.
Or Oprah. God saved them both. In order to make it work, to
make the law work, we have to manipulate people, we have to
move people, we have to change people, we have to change their
behavior. So we incorporate some who catch the vision and we put
them employed with our vision machine and we tell them we push
this button, you do the thing that we want other people to
do and they'll follow suit. And we call it salvation. And
we stand in the corners and we say, look what God has done.
And all the while, we're the ones behind the curtain pulling
the strings. And we wonder why those same people, when the strings
are cut, they run off. Like Geppetto and Pinocchio. And he runs off and he joins
the circus. And I believe in that metaphor, the circus is
the Church of America. And before you get all high and
mighty, be careful looking in the mirror because it might be you.
It might be me. God's grace has appeared. Bringing
salvation for all people. The grace of God is the power
of God. Romans 1 16. For I'm not ashamed
of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto
salvation, first of the Jew and then the Greek. And that same
power, as we see in second Peter, verse three of chapter one, that
God, his divine power, what gives us all we need for life and Godliness. The grace of God has appeared. What is it like to be in a cave
hidden from humanity? What is it like to be in a wreck
under the depths of the sea with only a few short days of air
in a pocket above your head and no one anywhere knows that you're
there? And at the last moment of your
last breath, you see light. That's a love story. That's not
even the truth of death. That's not even the truth of
depravity, it's not even the truth of sin. We're not desperately almost
dead, we're dead. And so when the light shines,
we can't even see it. Nicodemus for four days rotted
in the tomb to the point that his body smelled. And they wailed. And his family, being wealthy,
hired others to come and wail. And lament. And they did that
walking through the streets with the families. Lazarus is dead. Well, they were professional
mourners. They were hired by rich families to mourn publicly
for the for the dead. For four days, they did that.
And Jesus comes. And before that, we know what
happens in John 10. What does it say in John 11?
That's John 11. Jesus loved Martha and Mary and their sister and
their brother Lazarus. And when he heard Lazarus was
sick, he stayed. Because he loved him, he stayed
extra days. Why? Because there was a spectacle
going on in Bethany, Bethesda. And Jesus shows in the morning.
And what does Martha say? If you've just been here. Oh,
if you've just been here. Don't you know that I'm the resurrection
of God? Yes, we know He's coming back one day. And Jesus was like,
no, I am. Now, move the stone. But He stinks, Lord. There's no death that's more
powerful than me. There's a darkness there that's
rotted and decayed, but I'm the light of the world. Move the
stone. Lazarus' body was rotted. His ocular cavities had begun
to decay. It's one of the first things
that rot in the body is the eyes. Well, that's a little macabre. They're gone. He couldn't see. The inner workings of his tendons
in his ears were not operating. Even with the loudest shake,
they would not vibrate to produce sound. And Jesus said, Lazarus,
come out! And in the depth of death, the
Word of God created in this corpse life again. And he rolled himself
off the death stone and out the tomb he came. And Jesus says,
unbind him and let him go. Because he's free. The grace of God has appeared.
Bringing salvation to all people for excuse me, all people, there's
no two, there's four. Big difference. This is a manifestation that's
very akin to that story there in John 11 and that historical
narrative when Lazarus' dead body came alive. It's not a,
I'm seeing the light, let me see what it is and investigate.
This isn't poltergeist. We're not walking toward the
light. The light can't be seen. The voice can't be heard. Only
by the grace of God and his mercy as a gift can the voice of God
be heard in the heart and mind of a sinner. And he says, you,
yes, you come alive and you do. And then you begin to perceive
all that he is. It's a sudden awakening, it's
a sudden dawning, it's like the sun piercing through the horizon,
just there it is. Oh, look, the sun. It appears. So what Paul is saying
now to Titus, the grace of God has appeared. The Son of God
has appeared. The life of God has come and
dawned upon you. It has breathed into you the
breath of God. The word of God is breathed out
by him, as Paul teaches young Timothy, that is effective for
life. The words of Christ, as Paul
teaches the Romans in chapter 10, 17, he says, gives life to
the hearing and the words give hearing. The Son of God has appeared as
the light of the world and the darkness has not overcome it. This grace of God, who is Jesus
Christ alone? And I got carried away here.
I just looked at this. That's a little much. Two pages
of bullets. Let's go. The grace of God, who
is Jesus Christ alone? Who is the fullness of divinity,
the fullness of glory, the fullness of hope, the fullness of peace,
the fullness of purity, the fullness of God, the fullness of man as
the son of man who created the womb from which he came and came
into the world like humanity. But he was fully God. He is.
the one whom the father loves without measure, and therefore,
because of the love that God has for the son, he gives the
spirit without measure. He gives the son the power and
the authority to give life. He gives the son the power and
the authority to judge. He gives the son the power and
authority to love. who came, Jesus, to glorify the
Father, to do the works that the Father is doing, to speak
the words of the Father, to seek and save the lost. He came to
heal the sick, to raise the dead. He spoke and the world came into
being. He is forever and forever will
be and forever has been. He is the one who created all
that there is. And by the word of his power,
Paul says, holds it all together. He spoke and the cosmos and the
space between it. Hung in the balance of creation,
Jesus is the one who hung the heavens in their expanse. He
is the way to the Father. He's been tempted in every way
possible, but yet did not sin. He is the one who became a slave
when he stepped out of glory. He trusted the Father in the
hour of his death. He was raised to life by the
power of God. He is the giver of life. He's the sustainer of life. He's
the ruler of life. He's the reigner over all kings
and kingdoms because he is the king of king. He is the magnificent,
the majestic, the glorious, the wonderful. the holy of holies,
the mercy seat of God, the great counselor, the provider of all
things, the judge of the world, the judge of the earth, the judge
of the dead and the judge of angels. He's the line of Judah,
the lamb of God, the face of the father, the righteousness
of holiness, the righteousness of God, the merciful savior,
the prince of peace, the establisher of kingdoms and the destroyer
of them all. He is Jesus, the one who saves
the grace of God manifested to you for your salvation. Jesus
is. Yeah, I got carried away. As the gospel Luke says, to give
light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to
God, our feet into the way of peace. This is Jesus. The grace
of God. Has appeared. See, don't don't
read things like that, just go, yeah, next. Don't go there. If it takes us six months to
preach that phrase, we'll preach it. Exposition is to wake you
up and expose to the church the fullness of every outcome of
the text in its original meaning. And when Paul wrote to Titus,
the grace of God has appeared. I promise you all that flooded
his mind. Every bit of it. Not one thought
left. Boy, for the God who said let
light shine out of darkness is shown in our hearts to give us
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. And so what? The grace of God
has appeared. What did it do? It brought salvation
for all people. bringing salvation in this little
grammar lessons there. Every time we see salvation in
this way, it is a noun and it means the salvation of a people. It doesn't mean the possibility
of an action. It's an actual concrete thing.
So bringing salvation for all. People. We need to understand that in
two parts. First, bringing salvation. Salvation is the light of the
gospel. Salvation is that which changes
what was dead to life. All that I just talked about.
Salvation happens in the mind. Salvation happens in the heart.
Salvation happens in the soul. Salvation is saving one over
the chains of sin and death, saving one with no respect or
person, age, gender, place, economic status, nationality, ethnicity
or anything above. All persons, all people, salvation
has been manifested. and has appeared bringing salvation
for all people. There's several things that we
need to understand that this is not saying. First, ask yourself,
does this mean if the grace of God has appeared, it's a definite. Bringing salvation, that's a
noun, the salvation for all people. That's the outcome. So if this
means every individual person in the world, then what that's
teaching is that every individual person in the world is saved.
That's what it means. You can't, even in English, you
can't make that say anything else unless you destroy the syntax
of your grammatical construct, which is a sort of redundant.
If you screw it up and pretend it says something that it doesn't,
you can make it say what you want it to say. What it says
is, The grace of God has appeared, bringing, securing, creating,
making, saving all people. What does he mean? Well, we don't believe in universalism.
We believe in specific, particular, individual, absolute atonement. We believe that Jesus Christ
paid for the sins of all who believe. All who have already
believed and all who will believe in the future. Who are those
people? God only knows. How will they believe? Through
the preaching of the gospel alone. The gospel is not this. If you say this and do this,
God will save you. That's not the gospel. That's
a recipe. The gospel is you were not created as a vessel for destruction,
but as vessels of mercy. And the only hope that you have
is that Jesus Christ, who is the God of heaven, who deservedly
should judge you for your guilt and sin because you were conceived
in wickedness. has come to this earth, created
a womb, birthed out of it, learned obedience, stood before the Father,
glorified Him fully, fulfilled the fullness of the law, and
willfully and obediently and joyfully went to the cross. All
of your sin was placed on Him. He was nailed to the cross for
the purpose of displaying the righteousness of God, Romans
3, 21 to the end. And then on the third day, God
raising from the dead, that you might have life. Do you trust
in Christ alone forever? Not today and never more. Forever. Are you turning from your sin
because Christ has effectively saved you by making you born
again, John 3, by the Spirit of God that goes where it wishes
for those who are born not of man, nor blood, nor the will
of the flesh, but by the will of God. John 1. And I would open the door of
dialogue and debate to anyone who would love to sit under the
teaching of Scripture and hush their philosophy and their Americanized
fodder and stand against God in salvation. Let them repent
and believe the gospel by the grace and mercy of God. Because if it doesn't mean what
I just said, what does it mean? If it doesn't mean every person,
what does it mean? Well, if it meant every person,
then in Romans 5, it says, therefore, as one trespass lends a combination,
what does it say there? For all men. So one act of righteousness
leads to justification and life for all men. What does he mean? Everybody's justified. Why are
we here? Why is our brother right now fighting off pneumonia in
the rain in Savannah to preach the gospel if all men are justified? Because they can't be justified
except they hear and believe the gospel as preached, as written
in the Word of God. So what does all people mean?
He's already said it. You've got your older men and
your older women. gender and age, younger men and
younger women, and your slaves, and not just you, not just us
Jews, but you Cretans. So as in Adam all die, so also
in Christ shall all be made alive. But shall we say from man? They
are afraid of people, for they all held that John was really
a prophet. Did everybody in the world hold that John the Baptist
was a prophet? No, only the people in Palestine,
basically in Israel. And he went away and began to
proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him,
Mark 5, 20, and everyone marveled. Is that all? Everyone in the
world? And they found him and said to
him, everyone is looking for you in Mark 1. Is that everyone in the
world? It's everyone he's talking to. And John the Baptist disciples
is to look all are going to him. All. So what I want you to see there
is that when we see all there's a context and relationship to the argument
of who they're talking about. All men doesn't mean each individual
person in existence and nowhere in Scripture doesn't mean that.
And if you would study the gospel of John, his epistles and his
apocalypse, you would see also that the construct of the word
cosmos and context would also mean something. What's cosmos?
World. It's in counter relationship to the argument being presented.
Because if Jesus. And I'm not saying the gospel
is not available to the whole world, it is. Come drink, be satisfied,
come eat, come believe, repent, believe the gospel. That's why
we preach. We believe in evangelism as the
only means for salvation, if the gospel is a true gospel. Grace has dawned and it appeared
to all who believe of all persons, of all places, of all races,
of all nations, not just Cretans. Not just Plaxtonians, not just
Statesburyans, not just Glenvillians. That sounds good. Glenvillians. So therefore, no man, Romans
1, has an excuse. No one can say, hey, I can't
be saved. I'm a Jew. I can't be saved. John Hagee, false prophet, false
teacher, liar. It says that the Jews are not
culpable for their unbelief of Jesus because Jesus refused to
be their Messiah. I heard him say it yesterday.
He's a liar, false teacher, and Titus says he should be silenced. Don't read his stuff, even though
it's in the Baptist stores. Shame on them for putting that
crap in there. It's like going to your favorite
restaurant and seeing rat turds sitting on the buffet. Well,
they were in the floor. We don't want you to step on
us. We put them in that empty bucket right there. Sorry for
the image. Salvation is offered, but it's
not given to all people, it's only given to those who see the
gospel, who believe, repent, and not everyone who says to
me, Lord, Lord, when are the kingdom of heaven, but only those who
do the will of my father in heaven. So now we're back to here. So
what therefore? The grace of God has appeared.
bringing salvation for all people, training now what us as an individual,
there's a there's a specific people now being taught to training
us to renounce some godliness and worldly passions and to live
self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age. So God's grace is the teaching
of God and the teaching of God is training us. To live holy
lives. Look at this. To renounce, and
I touched this so quickly last week, I hope I don't go too quickly
this week. To renounce ungodliness. This means to reject it. Romans
1 18 says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness
suppress the truth. So ungodliness must be rejected. What is ungodly? Oh my, we went
through the first of the New Testament. We would see a list
of those things. Sexual debauchery, sexual immorality,
sexual lust, sexual passions, physical lust, money lust, material
lust, pride, greed, envy, covetousness, murder, sin, gossip. I mean,
you just go through the list. Anger, frustration, doubt, fear,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And wow, but the list goes on
and on. We know what it looks like. We know what ungodliness
is when it taps us on the shoulder of our soul and it rakes over
the cloudness of our mind. We know what it is and we recognize
it and we think to ourselves, if just a nanosecond, I shouldn't
feel this way, I shouldn't think this way, I shouldn't say this,
shouldn't do this, shouldn't go there, shouldn't have it, shouldn't
drink it, shouldn't see it, shouldn't hear it. But we do it anyway
because we rebel. And so the Word of God saves
us, the Word of God teaches us. How does it save us? It teaches
us who God is. We can't be saved if we don't know who God is.
John 17, Jesus says this is eternal life, that they know you, the
ones who God and the Son whom you have sent. So if that's eternal
life, then we don't know God, we don't have life. Salvation
isn't do this, do that, do that. I keep saying that because I've
taught a dozen people in the last few weeks who swear to me
they're going to heaven. They hate my guts, but they say
they're saved. They're liars. You can't hate
your brother and say you're in Christ. It's impossible. It is
impossible to hate in Christ. Well, I hated them. Do you still
hate them now? I'm not saying not have hateful feelings for
a second. And that's sin. And sometimes they come in there
and you can't stop them. But you put them to death. You reject
ungodliness. So the gospel teaches us who
God is and God teaches us the fullness of God. Who is it? Jesus
Christ, who is the savior of our souls. And we see it through
the teaching of doctrine, doctrine of doctrine, which is theology. Somebody said to me a few years
ago, Jesus had no theology. I disagree. Jesus has taught
us all we know about God. Jesus is theology. The problem is, is that we think
that doctrine and theology, because of their terms, are academic
ventures when they're not. There's a lot of smart people
at Harvard Divinity School that are going to bust hell wide open.
There's a lot of smart pastors. There's a lot of smart church
members that might bust hell wide open. The doctrine of God saves us
by teaching us who Jesus is. Therefore, we know who God is.
And it's not just the knowledge of the mind. It's the knowledge
of the soul, because it's through the doctrine of teaching and
teaching the word that we are made alive. When we hear who
Christ is and what he's done, the Spirit of God uses those
words to give us ears to hear and brings us to life. And we
go, wow, Southern Baptists. Since their inception, have always
believed that when the grace of God is given to everyone who
received, who gives, who the grace is given, they always respond
with faith and repentance. Article for salvation. Section three, I think. Regeneration is the work whereby
the Holy Spirit of God brings about the knowledge of sins,
a paraphrase here. Bringing to life that one, bringing
and giving them a new heart. And it says that repentance and
faith are inseparable experiences of grace. Hallelujah. Where is it at in our fulfillments? Reject ungodliness. The teaching
of God is the teaching of God. For salvation. Then for empowerment. That we put away those things. We can say no. We can say no. We can say no. Nancy Reagan didn't
start that. Jesus did. No. I'm not going there. I'm not
saying that. I'm not looking. I'm not hearing. I'm not eating. I'm not thinking. I'm not. We put off the old self
and we put on the new self. It doesn't make us right before
God. It proves we are. Worldly passions. 2 Timothy 2.22. I love it. Had a youth pastors network in
Rhode Island, Virginia called the 2.22 network. And that was
our motto. That was our verse. Put away
youthful passions. And we just stopped right there.
We played games. Our motto was no games. What's
that mean? Come to church and find out.
And 20-some-odd of us youth pastors and student pastors and college
pastors and young adult pastors, some of which were in their 50s
and 60s, you'd be shocked. Still, we made a pact that we
would teach the Word of God to the people under our charge.
And we would flee youthful passions and the Americanized idealism
of bait and switch. And Paul's saying, Salvation
that has been given to you, that has appeared to you, has empowered
you and is teaching you to renounce ungodliness, not just that you
should, but empowering you to do so. It's training you to renounce
worldly passions. For all that is in the world,
the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the
pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world
and the world and everything in it is passing away. And if
the love of these things is in us, then the love of the Father
is not. You see what John 1 John 2, 15-17 says. If we love the
world, then we don't love the Father and the Father doesn't
love us. That's sort of what he's saying. The love of God
is not in us. Because they're dead and dying.
In Titus 3, you stick around there for just a minute, it says,
We, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, once led
astray, once slaves to various passions, once slaves to various
pleasures, once passing our days in malice and envy, hated by
others and hating one another. But when the goodness, oh, I
can't get ahead of myself, but when the goodness and loving
kindness of God our Savior appeared, right there again, He saved us,
not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according
to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration, rebirth, John
3, by the Spirit, by the renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured
out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being
justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the
hope of eternal life for which Paul is preaching, which accords,
he says, a servant, an apostle of Jesus Christ for the sake
of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth,
which accords with godliness in hope of eternal life. We could read the prologue of
these letters and just quit. We could. If we knew the rest
of it, just because that's it, it's an outline of what he's
going to continue to teach. We're not foolish anymore. So
God's grace is the teaching of God and God's grace is the giver
of the holiness of God. And it doesn't mean labor. Look
this. We're to live self-controlled,
upright and godly lives in the present age. Present age. What is that? That means now.
Not in the age to come. We've heard that. Now. Right now, we are being taught
to live self-consoled, upright, holy lives now. It didn't seem
perfect, because we'd have to contradict what John taught.
But for the sake of the church, friends, we might as well look
to perfection as our goal, because that's our heart. And not be
dumb enough to think we can attain it. But have faith enough to
know that God can work it in us as close as it's going to
be. Friends, I really believe that
right now, these are the effects of grace, if grace is in you,
you will live a life that's upright and you will strive to practice
righteousness. You'll be self-controlled, which
means that your life reveals a spiritual essence, that it
has the power of the gospel, that you'll live uprightly before
God in a way that settles the question of redemption. When
someone says that, are they a believer? The purity of living and the
power of life through the person of the Lord Jesus. That's what
I like to say. The purity of living and the power of life
through the person of the Lord Jesus. This is the teaching of
Paul here. Waiting. What do we do while
we live? Are we just sitting here and fight sin? No, that's
not powerful. If all you did was struggle,
it's a lot like the zombie apocalypse. Whatever zombie movie you might
have seen in the last 60 years, I'm sure there's hundreds of
them. They started in the 1950s, 40s actually. And then going
on, there's zombies in the Old Testament. Look at the Valley
of Drawbones. They came to life, flesh came
on them, there they were marching, but they were dead, and God breathed
life into them. That's an amazing text. But imagine the idea, if
there was this plague, if there was this virus, if there were
these creatures and they were all after, and every time you
stepped outside, somebody, somebody was getting eaten, somebody was
getting bit. And that's how we lived our life. And we're running
from town to town and robbing bread from the birds and formula
from the babies, just trying to stay alive. And it's just,
and after a while you just go, I quit. And you walk out of there
and say, dinner time, come get me. I mean, you're just done.
It's like being in a foxhole in ancient warfare and just being
stuck there for months and months and months and months. If I just
go, gun, I'm done. You know, there are still people that they
think are still in the jungles of Vietnam that think the war
is still going. Ten years ago, they found a few who came out. You know, dude, the war is over.
Look it up. They didn't know. So we get so
labored and fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting
that sometimes we just give up, we quit. That's not what we're supposed
to do. We're not supposed to be so focused on fighting sin. We're to be focused on awaiting
our Savior, which empowers us to fight sin. I can do this because
he's coming. You see that? I can hold on because
he's almost here. I can wait because he's worthy. How are you going to know that?
You study the Word of God. You hear the words of God. You
learn and hold fast to the teaching of the Scripture, the power of
life, the person of the Lord Jesus, waiting for our blessed
hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior,
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all
lawlessness and to purify himself of people for his own possession
who were zealous for good works. Look at this real quick. Waiting
for our blessed hope. Let's talk about that and then
we'll close. We wait. Because the only hope we have
is not empowered within us from our flesh, but empowered within
us because of the power of God through the hearing of the Word
and continually eating. That's why I really believe more
Christians like us need to hide the Word of God in our hearts.
The whole text of passages, not just verse or two or a half a
sentence or three, but the text. Let's work on memorizing Scripture. Because there may be generations
one day who don't have this at their hands. Then what will we
do? We'll make it up. But at the same time, I don't
believe that the Word of God will ever be gone. But it may
be in short supply. There are nations and tongues
for which the Word of God has never been given or translated.
And there are places in the world in Palestine, in Asia, that if you're caught
with it, you die. What is our blessed hope? Well,
it's laid out there for us, for us to see. Let me tell you what
this hope is. Several thoughts that came to
mind. that is seen, the hope that is seen is the hope of Jesus
Christ, our glorious and great God and Savior. Now, some people
would say that's God comma and Savior Jesus Christ. But here,
especially in in the construct of the Greek, there it is. God
and Savior Jesus Christ. It's the title of him. It's his place, his offices.
He does these things. Jesus is God. Jesus is Savior. So the hope that is seen through
the light of the word of God, who is Christ, the gospel is
able to help us see the hope. But then there's another hope
that's blessed, that's unseen. The hope of the one who is to
come that we see here, though vaguely, one day we will see
face to face. You see that? So we hold to that. We wait for that and we long
for that. And because of that, we are getting
ready. We're getting ready to see the
one that we long for the most. We're not going to look like
a depraved wretch when he comes. We're not going to stand around
saying, well, when I see the dust kick up, I start getting
ready. We're ready now or we're going to get lost. Hope is unseen for it is that
which we hope for. It's like Hebrews says that you
were what you had a better hope and abiding inheritance, one
that would last. Peter says that we have been
given what blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who has caused us to be born again to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to a what? An inheritance that is imperishable
and fading and undefiled, kept in heaven by for you who, by
God's power, are being guarded for the day of judgment. This
is unseen and it is seen, a blessed hope, also this, fault number
two, a hope that is sought after and settling. So we look for
it. We long for it. So therefore,
we look into the word of God to see that which we are able
to see now. And then we long for that which
we long to know more intimately and more perfectly who is Jesus
Christ. And it's settling for us. We
rest in it. So we long for the day of rest
when Christ comes, that we don't have to fight sin anymore, that
we don't have to fight the world, that we don't have to fight the
flesh, that we don't have to deal with pain, that we don't
have to deal with anger, that we don't have to deal with sadness,
but we rest in the reality that it's done already and we just
have to be patient. Hope that is salvific and satisfying. This isn't just a message of
I'm coming, y'all. This is a message of I've come
and I've done it and I'm coming again to finish it. That's it. I'm coming back and that's satisfying,
that's what makes it blessed. That blessed means it brings
joy and delight and happiness and glee and bliss. A hope that
is. Oh, this is so silly. No pun there. A hope that seriously serves
to sever our dead and dying worldliness. That's what a blessed hope we
have. that we're being brought into the light and our sin has
been brought to light. Our repentance is given to us
as a gift, and it's pushing us deeper into the perfected love
of God to be more like him, that God predestined in love for us
to be like before the world began, that we would be like the sun. And it's a hope that is blessed.
Don't forget it. The foundation of our soul. Hebrews 619 says this, we have
this as a sure and steadfast, listen to this word, anchor of
the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the
curtain. We've been lodged into the intimacy's place with Jesus
Christ, into the intimacy of the arms of God, into the intimacy
of the holiness of the Father, and there is no escape. We're not just hanging on the
periphery of hoping to peek in and look in. You couldn't even
peek into the Holy Ghost. You couldn't get into the inner
court to get close to look. And Jesus saw us running in the
darkness against the grain of holiness, and he said, no, the
Father gave you to me and he picks us up. And I would suggest
he picks us up kicking and screaming, and then we see. And we believe and we cherish. And he places us not in the courts,
not in the inner courts, not in the Holy of Holies, but straight
in the Ark of the Covenant. right in the mercy seat of God,
who is Jesus Christ, where God meets man. And Jesus is the place
where God meets man. And when He finished His sacrifice
on the cross, He was exalted and raised to life. And He sits
at the side of the Father, interceding us. He was finished. And He said, It is finished.
And He sat down. Except for when people like Timothy
are martyred. And he says, I see the heavens
have opened and I see the Son of Man standing at the right
side of the Father. And then he died. I say he lived. May the God of hope fill you
with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy
Spirit you may abound in hope. Friends, we have hope by the
Spirit of God. To be hopeless in the church, as the church,
is to mean one of only two things. Unregenerate, fake convert, or rebellious child. Unwilling
to put their face in the Word of God and worship. Which are you? What's the outcome of hope for
you? Well, we endure. Paul tells the Thessalonians
that remembering before our God and Father your work of faith
and labor of love, steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ,
we endure. We have a hope of eternal life,
Paul says, which God, who never lies, promised. Our hope, the cause of hope,
we are bold. Paul tells the Corinthian church that since we have such
a hope, we are very bold. We're bold. We're bold, as the
Hebrews says, before the throne of God. Because of hope, we are
pure and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he
is pure. First John three, three. We wait for our blessed hope. God, Jesus is our savior. And the full effect of His glorious
grace through His glorious truth is seen when Jesus returns. The full glory of God for all
of eternity is seen when Jesus returns. We receive what we have
fully lived to obtain, His glorious holiness, when He returns. His
salvation from the labor in this world is over. His salvation
has come. His grace everlasting, fully
and complete. But why do we live for Him, Church? Because he came to redeem us
when we were unable to redeem ourselves. Look at that. He came
to pay for our sins that we could never pay if we had 20 eternities
to do so. He came to cleanse us from the
power and the presence and the penalty of rebellion and sin
and death. He came to carry us into the
presence of God. Without spot or blemish. That's what it means when he
says he came to purify himself of people. Not just justification, but progressive
sanctification, as we become more like Christ, as we live
on this earth. Through the word. The teaching of God, the doctrine
of Christ prepares us to be the people that Christ has saved
us to be. It purifies us. He purifies us. or by making
himself known to us. And we aren't just people who
he has saved. We are people who he has purchased of his own possession. We are
his. He bought us. He paid for us. We were slaves
to sin. Now we're slaves to freedom. We're slaves to the freedom of
the work of the Son of God. Slaves are righteous. We've been
set free and we freely of our new will and our new heart and
our new mind long for him, long to be in the likeness of him
to whom all praise and honor and worth and glory and worship
is due. Because of that, we are zealous
for good works. I guess that's the ultimate test.
I could have saved an hour if I just went there. Are you zealous
for good works, church? And in being zealous for good
works, do fruitless works bother you? Does sin trouble you? J.C. Ryle wrote years ago a little
question. Are you sure that you're a Christian?
That's one of the key things he deals with. Does our relationship
with sin differ? Or do we just look for a way
to get away with it? Christians don't do that. At
the best, they hide it because they're ashamed. The passion and the zeal of Jesus
Christ is that he did the works for which he was sent to do in
full joy and obedience. And in John chapter five, when
it says, would you like something to eat? And he says, I already
have food that you know not of. He said, who gave us something
to eat? And Jesus says, my food is to
do the will of the one who sent me. Do you know what that means?
That means there's no hunger, there's no lust, there's no pain,
there's no stress, there's no desire, there's no passion that
even comes to the table over doing the will of God for Jesus. So if we are in Him, that indeed
is our hunger as well. Jesus had zeal for good works,
so should we. This is the judgment, and I'm
done, I promise. The light has come, but the people
loved the darkness rather than the light because their works
are evil. They do not come to the light.
Lest their works be exposed. But all who do come to the light,
do so that it may be clearly seen that their works have been
carried out by God. What must we do to be doing the
works of God? They asked Jesus in John 6. This
is the work of God, Church. Believe on the Son whom He has
sent. Your full hope? Your fullest
treasure, your fullest bread, your fullest water, your fullest
thirst, your fullest satisfaction. And anything that steps in the
way of that is an idol. And we push it away. We reject
it. We reject the world. And we have an unnatural obsession
for the things of the world. We see it because the light of
the gospel is given and it's ours. And we have a mind which
is ours in Christ. And we subject ourselves not
to the things of the world, but to the perfectness of God. The teaching of God creates life
in Christ. The teaching of God creates power
for the church. The teaching of God creates ability
and obedience. And the teaching of God and salvation
creates holiness. Let's pray. Dear Lord in heaven, our mighty
God who saves. Thank you so for your grace and
your mercy and your gift of faith and repentance through Jesus
Christ, your son, whom you have sent for the world to see. But the world loves the darkness
rather than the light. And Lord, we once were like the
world. But you tapped into us while
we were dead. a spark of life and brought us
to Yourself. Would You bring others to Yourself
today? Would You bring others to see
the Gospel and to repent of their sin and to trust in the work
and person of Jesus? Would it please You, Father,
to please bring others to faith? It does. Your Word tells us that
You delight in the salvation of men. So, Father, use us each
and every one, not just preaching on the Lord's Day, but teaching
throughout the rest of our days. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.